Did ya miss me?
Greetings after a self-imposed "vacation" from PPOT. The confluence of a pounding work schedule and just too much "stuff" going on led me to walk away for awhile. The joke goes that "I can quit any time I want." Well, I suppose I needed to prove that to myself.
The reality is that despite the rancor and my burn out, this place is filled with many of my friends (some of whom I've known for almost 8 years now), so any break invariably leads back "home."
On the positive side I wanted to give an update on the work that has been consuming my life for the past 6 months or so. At the end of January we got a contract to create a prototype interactive counter-IED training system for the military. I work at a unique place that is an academic institution but we do R&D on immersive training. I am the co-lead on this project where we started with an idea and then turned four 40' container boxes into a self-paced interactive learning system. We delivered the first prototype 29Jun to Ft. Bragg. 6 months from contract to delivery.
The system uses narrative videos with characters telling their perspective on IED attacks along with graphic displays on the walls reinforce the learning objectives along with quizes. There also is a red vs. blue game experience where one group are insurgents who emplace an IED and carry out an ambush and the other group is in the convoy that is attacked.
Next Monday we go live with the second installation at Camp Pendleton. Pics below. There is about 40 minutes of video content which I wrote the script for and produced. The game experience was done by my co-lead, the interior design and graphics look/feel is mine. To figure out the learning objectives and take them from "death by powerpoint" and turn them into something engaging, entertaining, and education required learning a lot about IEDs from both blue and red perspectives. We worked with some great subject matter experts and I now know more than you really want to know about IED warfare.
At any rate, you can hopefully see why I'm fried. We are very proud of the prototypes and we really hope we can make a difference and help keep our guys from getting killed down range.