Hello friends,

Greetings from Utrecht!

Two weeks ago I visited Nordic Game for the first time. It was a great event that, in my mind, combines the efficiency of Gamescom (courtesy of Meet to Match) with the small scale feel of Reboot Blue. I had lots of interesting meetings and got some great feedback on the FIRM framework. Will definitely visit again next year!

I recorded my talk from Reboot Blue 2022 to be a part of the event's online track, and I'm happy to share that with you today.

On a personal note, I'm knee-deep into Tears of the Kingdom, and I'd be lying if I said it wasn't affecting my productivity at least a little bit. Still, I'm making decent progress on another digital product, which will likely be a summary of the coaching program I'm developing for my clients. I should have more news about this soon. First, though, I have to prepare a talk for the upcoming INDIGO event, where I'll be speaking alongside industry friend Vincent van Gils on indie company management.

Hope to see you there!

Video: The Missing Leadership Element

Today I want to share the video of the talk I gave at last year's Reboot Blue conference, as well as last month's Nordic Game.

In the talk, I explain why I believe that great leadership is the culmination of three core skills: strategy, management and, crucially, self-awareness. Most business books focus on the former two, with the latter being mostly relegated to the domain of self-help.

In the video, I argue that the integration of self-awareness is actually the key to long-term, sustained success. I explain why, and give some practical pointers for building self-awareness, whether alone or together with your management team.

If you want to get most of the same content in written form, I've summarized the main parts of the talk in two previous essays:

• ​Why Self-Awareness is Crucial​
• ​Developing Self-Awareness​

The Best Bits

​The root of diversity: This article, summarizing Anita Sarkeesians talk on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, underscores my belief that true progress has to start with self-awareness. Without that, Sarkeesian argues, DEI initiatives create the illusion of equity in a system that is anything but equitable.

​Sparks of AGI: In this video, Microsoft researcher Sebastien Bubeck shares some of the findings of their research into GPT-4, undertaken as preparation for its eventual integration into Bing. Crucially, Bubeck argues that even current models exhibit signs of true, artificial general intelligence, suggesting that truly intelligent AIs might not be far off.

​Mo Gawdat on AI: Alarmist title aside, this is actually a great video to get familiar with the philosophical side of AI improvements and their risks. Gawdat literally wrote the book on this a few years back already, and this video is a great summary of his views.

See you in two weeks!

Martijn

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