In the Zone Today

Some days, getting words out on a page is about as easy as pouring molasses in Anchorage in December. Not today. After a few days of false starts I was able to find the right voice for my bio. I had been struggling in writing pertinent information that was not a bullet point better suited for my resume.

The bottom line is that I was able to convey my intentions and goals for On The Spot Games in a way to captures my feelings during the early days of the company. Since I don't have glowing results to recount, I've decided to discuss my plans, actions and lessons learned. The latter is best discussed during an interview. A draft of opening to my bio appears below:

Rob founded On The Spot Games in 2002 and served as the company’s Big Picture Guy until he closed the company in the spring of 2007. After a long career selling industrial chemicals (more below), Rob founded On The Spot Games in order to create and distribute games for families to play while dining in casual restaurants. With no prior experience in consumer products, Rob conceived and produced DidYa Know®, an award-winning card game, in 2003. He then marketed and sold the game to specialty retailers in the US. During the company’s four-year existence, Rob commercialized over a dozen toys and games. Rob was able to adapt DidYa Know and several other games for play in casual restaurants, working with both Pizza Hut and Red Robin as development partners. Finally, Rob developed a toy brand called SMore Toys™ for a line of active toys produced in Asia and distributed through On The Spot Games in an effort to broaden the company’s offerings in 2007.

It was very difficult to summarize my experience with On The Spot Games to a single(?) paragraph. After pouring every ounce of myself into the company, there's so much more to tell. For example, I got the idea for creating the DidYa Know storytelling game after a discussion with Wizards of the Coast alumni Mike Davis, in which we discussed the difficulty in creating a game that three generations could play equally well. But alas, brevity must prevail. So, that story will live here in the blog and make select appearances sometime down the road...