1 I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – coding 16 hours a day for weeks on end looks far cooler on TV and hurts your back far less than in real life. To make a long story short … we needed to create an app in a few […]
Start-up Diaries
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There is such thing as a stupid question. We make a point to NOT ask them when interviewing job candidates at 7 Generation Games. Here’s why… I read one of those articles going around this week about a guy who interviewed at Microsoft and was hit with one of those […]
Why We Don’t Ask Ridiculous Interview Questions
Confess! Do all of you people have early morning meetings, before I am awake, planning how to irritate me? We have been focused on letting as many people as possible know about our games, including our new release, Forgotten Trail. We write blogs, have a mailing list, exhibit at events, […]
Excuse me, I must be really stupid
A few years ago, I happened to be in Vermont on a tour of the Ben and Jerry’s factory because, hello, ice cream! When our tour guide told the story about the company, there were lots of oohs from the audience about the romantic American dream story of the early […]
Let’s Kill the Myth of the Entrepreneur
2 It’s a madhouse out there! Even if you don’t have a TV, you can’t escape all of the outrageous headlines and “scratch your head” moments that flood your computer screen, phone or tablet. From the childish antics in politics, to the rude, offensive figures in pop-culture, it seems like the […]
Hear About Our World Domination Plans – And New Podcast!
1 Hangman, a simple yet easy to understand guessing game that is sneakily quite a bit of fun. My earliest memories of hangman were of my 2nd grade teacher assigning each of us a partner and paper of hard (at the time) vocabulary words. For hard words such as “dangerous” and […]
Hangman Pt. 1
1 Well, it’s been a minute. Months ago, I started writing about reusable code and was then interrupted by flying around the country to present game results, getting an alpha version of our Aztech game to testers, getting Forgotten Trail ready for release FRIDAY (!!!) etc. You can read Part 1 […]
Game Design: Reusable Code, Part 2
I get this question all of the time, What’s it like working with your family? In case you don’t know, the three co-founders of 7 Generation Games are my husband, Dennis, me and my daughter, Maria. It’s not how most people seem to think. First of all, we’re not together […]
What’s it like working with your family? Part 347
Often people say they really support the work that we do, and although I like to be complimented as much as the next person, I am secretly thinking this: It’s sort of like hashtag activism. While tweeting, “Help our schools #education” probably makes a few teachers feel better, it is […]
The Best Ways to Encourage a Start-up Entrepreneur
Last month the 7 Generation Games team attended the California Association of Bilingual Education (CABE) 2016 conference in San Francisco, CA. As part of our presence there, our CEO, Maria Burns Ortiz and educator Jovi Buendia, presented a proposal entitled: Educational Games for ELL: State of the Art. The talk […]
CABE 2016 – Educational Games for ELL: State of the ...
Enough is enough. I was on Twitter this morning when I was officially pushed over the edge. Here’s the tweet that did it: Edge Retreats gets $1 million to simplify booking of luxury villas https://t.co/QBGoUkw6bI pic.twitter.com/ogsNKYz043 — VentureBeat (@VentureBeat) April 8, 2016 “Now, what’s wrong luxury villas?” You might be […]
Everything Wrong with Venture Capital in a Single Tweet
Entrepreneurs often hear that investors are only interested after a company has “traction”. Recently, our CEO made a wasted trip to meet someone who allegedly is interested in funding women-owned start-ups. At the meeting, she was told, “You’re too early for us. We don’t usually invest until a company is […]