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Jason Suriano

Jason Suriano: Office Arcade

September 25, 2017

Transcript

[0:00:35] Charlie Hoehn: You’re listening to Author Hour, enlightening conversations about books with the authors who wrote them. I’m Charlie Hoehn. Today’s episode is with Jason Suriano, author of Office Arcade. Is your corporate training boring and dry? If it is, your company is missing out on a big opportunity for your team to have fun at work. Jason has helped companies gamify their trainings for many years. He does it because he sees that it helps talent learn skills faster, which helps their businesses succeed. In this episode, Jason will show you what he’s learned as a gamification expert that makes work more enjoyable. Now, here’s our conversation with Jason Suriano. Your book title sounds super fun. Office Arcade. Can you tell me a bit about your life before you realized the importance of having an office arcade and gamifying everything? Can you paint the picture of life before when it was a little bit less fun?

[0:01:54] Jason Suriano: Sure, I think the thing that really struck me before sort of this fun element was introduced, or had started to become introduced in the workplace, was if you were learning something at work or you were being trained at work, it always had to be extremely tedious and even somewhat painful. In my back story, I grew up in a family business, a family restaurant and I get a lot of the onboarding and training for those employees when I was a lot younger. I just found that when we made some things a lot more fun or more game like, it just seemed to resonate a lot with the new hires.

[0:02:33] Charlie Hoehn: Can you tell me about the first time you really noticed that it had a significant impact? What the exact situation was like, can you tell us that story?

[0:02:43] Jason Suriano: On the digital side, I think it was really in the beginning just a matter of the actual time for the end user. Because when we were first starting off and this sort of have been kind of the early 2000’s. You know, just getting your materials online and into a digital format was even just a bit of a challenge. I think the first thing that I saw was that there were ways using hyperlinks or different web pages that you could condense the material down already into smaller bite sizes, or what they call now bite sized learning chunks, that would allow that end user to get through things a lot more efficiently. Even that in and of itself already was a massive advantage. You could take like a three-hour course with an open book exam and condense it down into maybe like an hour or less. That was already like way more enjoyable and this is absent of any sort of like game based or playable elements at this point.

[0:03:39] Charlie Hoehn: Can you describe that a bit more? What specifically does that look like? You said, bit sized chunks but what does it look like before, versus after?

[0:03:48] Jason Suriano: Well, before, I mean, it’s more give the learner everything and they basically have to filter through and break out those relevant items. The pieces that are like important to them on the job because the old way of thinking and sadly, this is still happening in a lot of companies is that, well, we haven’t given them all the material, right? But the issue is that by giving someone all the material, they start their work day like day one and they actually can’t remember what the top five or 10 things were, right? They’re left to their own devices to kind of figure this out. When we say bite sized learning now, I mean, it’s a lot of it is us working with our customers or our partners to break out those pieces. Only give the learner the exact things that they need to know at work and then allow them to research or dive in to the areas that they find to be more important. That would be the biggest shift I think from before to now.

[0:04:53] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah. This really resonates with me. I have created courses myself which initially my first impulse was exactly what you said, was to give them everything they needed. I realized that didn’t work at all, I could actually see the percentage of the course that people were getting through and it was so low that I realized, I’m bombarding them with information, they can’t even take action. There’s just too much going on. The more I divided it into little tiny bite sized chunks in as few steps as possible, the better results I got. I think everybody has that impulse, especially when they’re an expert on something. I got to teach them everything. No, you have to teach them as little as possible to get them moving in the right direction, right?

[0:05:45] Jason Suriano: That’s right. I mean, a lot of this comes down to, there’s a lot of discourse around like design thinking or like game design based thinking. One of the pieces that I kind of talk about a lot when I’m working with clients or when I do presentations is this idea of smart phone based learning, right? Almost every one of us has a smart device and when you look – when you go into your phone to say, check the weather, you’re going to tap that weather app and be in there for maybe like 30 seconds to a minute and then you’re going to back out and tap another app and do something in that app. Well what you’re basically doing is you’re doing it in increments, like you’re learning something piece by piece because you’re going app to app to app. That’s the same kind of philosophy, right? You’ve only got like a minute or two per task or item before you need to move the person on to the next thing and you almost have to interrupt that user experience in between to make sure that they stop and start. Which is completely different than the way the old model of continuous or full-time learning is, where you sit in a desk for an hour and just listen to a lecture, right? I mean, this just doesn’t work anymore.

[0:06:57] Charlie Hoehn: You know what this makes me think of? Is level one of Mario. I remember listening to an interview, Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of Mario made where he said, that first level, we could have just given instructions on the screen as to how to use Mario. You press A, hitting the forward button makes him go, that sort of thing. Instead, they designed that very first screen, the very first space as intentionally as possible for the user to learn, as quickly as they could. Is that the kind of thinking that you’re talking about applying to businesses?

[0:07:41] Jason Suriano: Yes, that’s something we do in our software and trajectory IQ already and it’s mentioned in the book, right? This is actually something that we call the learning pathway that we’re predefining, right? What’s interesting about what we do is that, in our software, we don’t – we actually in our introductory or first chapter, when we onboard the user, right? The player of the training or the learning material, there’s no instructions on how to use the software, right? Because there’s only one item that they can click or tap on and they’re already into the experience, right? It’s basically moving them along and its progression through this learning pathway but that was one of the first challenges that we had to overcome when we built the software and when we started working this way. Is that a lot of the, in particular, the boomer demographics or the older adults that would sort of interact with the application. They would get sort of freaked out because there wasn’t any guidance or instructions, and all the instructional learning and all the pieces were already broken down into these bite sized tasks. Once they started playing it, like one or two minutes in, they would perform better than some of the millennials because they had the experience, right? The millennials appreciate the form factor because it’s way quicker to get through like, through the material, right? It’s presented in a format that they’re already used to. It’s very much none instructional, get to the point and you know, get in the game basically and get going.

[0:09:10] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah, so, let’s say I’m a listener listening to this interview and I’m thinking, “Okay, I’m on board with gamifying our processes, I see how it’s important to our customers. What do I really need to take away from this conversation, what do I need to take action on this week or what can I bring to my team and tell them about this idea or this story to get them onboard?” What would you say to that person?

[0:09:39] Jason Suriano: Well, I think, I mean, it’s kind of two parts. I mean, because one is like a tangible task that they can start working on. One of the things that we always recommend is for them to really take a look at their training binder, training manuals, HR manuals, whatever these – even their power point slides and figure out first and foremost, what are the key bullet point items that I need to get across to this learner, right? They need to look at pretty much summarizing those core learning elements so that when someone comes in or when they start thinking about adding some of these game design layers or the storytelling on top of what they’re doing. The vendor, like if it was me or anyone else could actually hit the ground running because the content is already like, streamlined and approved. The story, the base line learning material or initial story of what, that we’re trying to tell is already in place.

[0:10:38] Charlie Hoehn: Tell me Jason about the structure of your book? What exactly is in Office Arcade?

[0:10:46] Jason Suriano: What’s in Office Arcade? I mean, I think the base elements in Office Arcade are, it’s trying to, I think at the outset, really help with an understanding of gamification. I think one off the problems that – and one of the reasons why I decided to write the book is that I’ve actually gone through a few different shifts in the market. I was there when we were doing things at the time that we’re called edutainment. Then it shifted over to serious games and now it’s gamification. It’s this buzz words that keep running but that game theory still applies. A part of what I’m trying to do in the book is help like the reader understand what gamification, or what it should be based on all of the past experiences that I’ve had. That’s one of the major focal points in the book is trying to explain it in a very plain language or I guess, English way with as limited as buzz words as possible. Then really trying to key on some examples of our work and things that have worked extremely well for us. And what these – what the reader should be looking for when they apply these tactics themselves. Then we try to work in as well, what they should look for in a vendor so that they don’t get scammed by someone who is saying that they’re a gamification expert. They’re going to come in and apply points and badges and all these things to their training materials because it’s way more in depth and more involved than just, “We’re going to add some points and badges.” I think that’s – I think that’s one of the main issues right now is that the term is, you know, it’s having a hard time being adopted because there aren’t that many quality examples or an understanding of what a company should expect from the vendor.

[0:12:31] Charlie Hoehn: I mean, I love this topic and I know it’s super in depth because you’re right, on the surface, it sounds like something that’s pretty straight forward. “Yeah, we just give the user little visual and auditory rewards as they go along through the process.” But that doesn’t work on its own. It’s much more sophisticated. Can you tell me about some of the work that you’ve done that has h ad big results and maybe some of the hidden inner workings behind it that the average user may not notice but you know is driving some of that behavior?

[0:13:06] Jason Suriano: Sure, one of the examples that I talk about in the book is with one of our nursing partners or some of the work we’re doing in the healthcare or kind of the medical space. Is that nurses in particular or physicians don’t have a lot of time, right? They’re extremely time limited. What a lot of the regulatory bodies are asking them to do is to sit down and do like a five hour, open book exam. Then you know, a formative piece and then basically do a summative exam at the end but it’s all open book. They’re expected to do this in one shot, in one setting, right? One of the things we’re able to do there is because it’s digital and because they can access it at any pace and any place. They can go online and do this over a two-week period but whenever they want. They could do it in the morning, after work like in the evening, on the weekend and they still get the intended results. But they’re doing it in like a quarter of the time because only the key elements in that modular are presented. If we’re looking at something like already mixed driver example that’s in the book, with those guys, you have –

[0:14:14] Charlie Hoehn: What is ready mix driver?

[0:14:15] Jason Suriano: Ready mix like construction driver or a concrete driver, we’ll just say someone in construction I guess. I think with those, with some of those guys, the education level is pretty low, right? They might not have graduated and the letter C level is pretty low. You’re using way more imagery and visuals that demonstrates safety hazards and you know, one of the examples I always use there is you know, you’re showing them like you’re staging a picture of real work place incidents and literally saying to them, “Take your finger and tap on your device and point to the thing that’s going to harm you, right?” If they get it right then they earn points and t hose points actually tell us like a story about that person, right? Depending on how many points they earn in any given object or how many times they replay that module, we can actually tell those HR departments how those scores directly translate into their performance. It’s part of a performance metric that we have running in the background. Like I said, it’s way beyond just like adding points in badges It feels like that to the player but in the background, we actually use that to mine for, to profile and create like a data profile on that person.

[0:15:30] Charlie Hoehn: Author Hour is sponsored by Book in a Box. For anyone who has a great idea for a book but doesn’t have the time or patience to sit down and type it out, Book in a Box has created a new way to help you painlessly publish your book. Instead of sitting at a computer and typing for a year, hoping everything works out, Book in a Box takes you through a structured interview process that gets your ideas out of your head and into a book in just a few months. To learn more, head over to Bookinabox.com and fill out the form at the bottom of the page. Don’t let another year go by where you put off writing your book. That’s really cool. Tell me about, let’s say I want to hire a vendor to come in and do this for me, or a consultant. What do I really need to look for? What are the benchmarks of a good vendor versus a bad one?

[0:16:38] Jason Suriano: Well, I would say like you know, if you’re looking at a positive experience with a vendor, they should have a pretty rigid process that takes the customer through, at the outset, even just the discovery right? To understand like what learning materials do they have, what are their brand guidelines, design assets, have they tried anything like this before, what’s worked, what hasn’t? Then on the technical side, it would be, what sort of infrastructure are they working with and you know, how were they going to implement something that’s going to be successful, right? Then that process should take them all the way through like content production and how they actually create the story and adapt their materials into that platform or software, whatever system it is that they purchased. Then the graphic design is always interesting. I mean, we do custom graphic designs so they should be looking at whether they need that or how much of that they need and then there should be a pretty regimented development process. It should be very iterative with a lot of checkpoints so that they can see and make sure that you know, it’s a collaborative process to ensure that everything’s going away the way it should be. If we’re talking about the suspect or poor vendors, I’ve seen a lot of these because I present with a lot of these companies at different conferences. You know, there are the ones that are coming in and saying, right out of the gate, we’re going to gamify your materials, right? We’re going to apply points and badges and scoring or like, the story I heard from another customer the other day was when they asked one of these vendors said, “Well, you know, we’re going to apply like some wheel of fortune or jeopardy style interactions.” I’m like, “What does that mean?” They were going to turn your training material into wheel of fortune? I mean, this is not, that’s not really how that works and that’s them scrambling, right? I think the thing is, you need to look for a vendor that actually understands corporate and this is the challenge. Is finding a company or a vendor that understands like a corporate training or E-learning as well as game theory or game based elements. That could be layered on those projects to you know, help with the delivery and execution.

[0:18:49] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah, if you had to list two to three reputable companies that you could fully endorse, who would you list?

[0:18:58] Jason Suriano: Okay, can I say my own company?

[0:19:00] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah, of course.

[0:19:02] Jason Suriano: Yeah, our company would be Trajectory IQ which you know, we talk about the learner trajectory a lot in the project. You know, that would be us, another company that we know of that does some really great work as well is Axonify and third vendor, I’m not 100% sure where they’re at this point but it would probably would be one of maybe Bunch Fall Baller Badge Ville. I mean, they do something that’s a little bit – I think different than what we do on the E-learning or complete module side. I think those would be some vendors that you know, that a reader could look for.

[0:19:37] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah, thank you for doing that by the way. When you were talking about the vendors who just go out there and say, “We’re going to make your – whatever, you TPS reports into madlibs and turn all your processes into wheel of fortune and stuff.” It actually made me think of an example from a book called Effective Altruism where this nonprofit went to Africa, this village in Africa and they installed a Teeter Totter, that’s what it’s called, right? Maybe a See Saw, I can’t remember.

[0:20:15] Jason Suriano: Okay, yeah, sure. Teeter Totter See Saw, yeah.

[0:20:18] Charlie Hoehn: They installed that and the dual functionality was, it could pump water. They saw that kids were using the seesaw in that these older women were hand cranking water and they said, why don’t we combine the two and it was celebrated as this massive success in the media, this wonderful thing when in reality, neither the women or the children used it. The women that used the seesaw as the new crank for the water hated it because it was horribly inefficient and the kids hated it because it wasn’t fun. That’s kind of what I – what I’m thinking of when it’s these vendors going and say yeah, “We’re going to add badges and all these other stuff and bells and whistles.” It really far more complex than that in terms of getting to a point of usability, where you actually want to use the thing because of the things that have been added in. Not in spite of them.

[0:21:22] Jason Suriano: Yeah, I mean, that’s a perfect example, right? That’s exactly what you’re trying to do, right? I guess, from my perspective, I never understood why, like that material at work in particular had to be painful, right? I mean, a lot of us spend more time at work, sadly than we do at home, right? In terms of hours, why can’t that stuff be enjoyable at the same time? What do you wish you could make fun or like, what do you get excited about gamifying? Is it everything or are there certain things that you're really passionate about gamifying?

[0:22:02] Charlie Hoehn: At this point, what’s been interesting is we haven’t really had a topic that we haven’t been able to tackle. I mean, we turned accounting into an award-winning game for an academic institution. It was fine, I think it worked extremely well, it’s really like, I think like the coolest part for me is just seeing how much information you can really condense down into a simplistic delivery format, right? And still have that person gain the learning and the knowledge and the retention that they need. I think that’s still my main priority or the thing that I get excited about. Then I get excited about like the story telling part. How much is this partner or a customer of our going to let us like, you know, completely reinvent what the typical experience is in that content, their subject matter area? One of the ones we’re working on right now? We’ve gone, it’s in a financial sector and it’s compliance and we’ve taken this total a night of or true detective style approach to the graphics and the visuals and the sound effects and it’s going to look nothing like a typical banking compliance module, right? That’s the kind of stuff that gets me the most excited, right? Not necessarily one topic in particular, it’s the fact that it’s the challenge that comes with trying to make something really dry and stale, exciting. I think that’s the coolest part.

[0:23:32] Jason Suriano: That’s so refreshing and fun to hear. Yeah, I love that. What has been the personal biggest challenge for you that you’ve ever faced gamifying? Was there anything that you're like “Man, I don’t know if we can do this?” Actually it was the accounting project, I get a sked that once in a while when I do presentations like what is the hardest project we’ve ever worked on or even the most fulfilling. It would be that accounting project, simply because it was seven chapters of an accounting text book that had to be condensed into, like not only a playable or usable format for a student but also for the organization to use as a marketing tool. We actually came up with a 1940’s film noir style. We called it The Accounted. What was happening is you’re retracing the murder of a notorious gangster in the 40’s. When you’re doing that, you’re using forensic accounting to piece together his book of business, so what you’re doing is you’re playing this story and there’s a little mini game that’s related to the story but then, in order to proceed past every chapter. You had to complete the ledger exercise and it looked like an old time, like accounting ledger, right? Getting that validated by the institution as well as the marketing partner was amazing, right? Just the reaction that we got, it was crazy because we left the game with like a cliff hanger at the end where the character, like you’re not sure if they got killed or what happened. We ended up getting like, I think it was over 30,000 downloads of this app on iOS and android. The funny thing is, all the comments are basically like, “When are you guys going to finish the story like when is this going to happen?” And the funny thing is, the people who like kind of pushed back on it or wrote negative reviews are mostly because they thought it was going to be like a fully immersive like video game, right? This was us at that point, this would have been five years ago already, so it’s been a while ago. Where we were really sort of pushing the envelope of what someone should expect in a learning module.

[0:25:39] Charlie Hoehn: That’s so cool. You are like, you have basically applied like Where In The World Is Carmen San Diego to accounting? It sounds like.

[0:25:49] Jason Suriano: Kind of, it’s funny you mentioned that because that’s actually one of the first projects that, or one of the biggest projects I ever worked on was we built an online, offline – we were essentially internally recall it Where In The World Is Carmen San Diego 2.0, that we worked on with Discovery Communications in the US. Specifically Discovery Kids. What’s really kind of interesting about you bringing this up is that, the platform that we used to get those kids excited about real science in history like they were secret agents, is the same code stack and code base that we’re u sing in our software platform. The funny and kind of crazy thing is that, everything we learned in that project is exactly what we used to train adults now using Trajectory IQ, the software platform.

[0:26:35] Charlie Hoehn: How did you get so good at this Jason?

[0:26:38] Jason Suriano: Well, it took 14 years and 200 digital projects of practice to get to this point, yeah. I’ve been around for like you know, I’m kind of like, now, I would be considered like a dinosaur in tech terms I guess.

[0:26:52] Charlie Hoehn: In the best possible framing of the word, yeah.

[0:26:55] Jason Suriano: Yeah, I guess. It’s kind of a coolest position and coolest work to do because it is still surprises me and it changes on a day to day basis because of where the technology goes. But a lot of the principles that I was doing in some of our first projects are still the same right? It is just making things more streamline and more fun at first.

[0:27:18] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah, I’d imagine your creative meanings with your team are basically like once you have the principles of this process down your meetings are basically like, “Wouldn’t it be fun if…” and just create a brainstorming throughout that and coming up ways just to maximize the fun of anything that you are doing.

[0:27:39] Jason Suriano: Yeah and part of it is actually over the years learning how to get them to justify that vision. So it is saying things like, “Okay well we think that this customer’s tolerance…” and I guess I don’t want to say how entertaining it is, but how far they’ll let us take it is at this level. So for example, if we pitch them on a very dark learning module for compliance that has a more adult type queue and the graphics, so what are we using for that? And then that’s where the team will say, “Is it Mr. Robot like? Is it the Night Of Visit? Does it fall under an HBO show time kind of banner-like experience?” And those meetings are the funnest meetings by far, like the coolest. Then I don’t know if it’s that meeting that is the best or actually when you present it to a customer and they go, “Wow that’s amazing.” So we can actually make our module look like that and then you show them the examples. Then it’s that and then the follow on, when the employees start using it. That’s pretty cool, that’s probably the best part of my job.

[0:28:46] Charlie Hoehn: Oh yeah so let’s say I am a listener and I’m like, “Look I don’t have anything to gamify necessarily but I would like to bring this kind of joy and fun into my life”, what would you tell them? What have you learned doing these type of work that applies to your day to day?

[0:29:01] Jason Suriano: Well what’s interesting is for me, it is the reverse because my day to day like I am and I have kids now. So I don’t have as much time but I am a gamer right? So I have every console under the sun and play as many casual games as I can. All of that stuff informs my work so that’s like you know, The Accounted is interesting because I was playing LA Noir at the time that I came up with that concept, right? And then I actually saw Ledger in that game and I think I only played 10 minutes and I never went back to the game because it funneled its way into that project. I think that’s the thing that doesn’t happen as much as there is a real fragmentation between I guess like what people do in their day to day work and what they do at work right? And that’s what we are trying to do is we’re saying to customers like, “Well you should be bridging that.” If you are having fun playing games at home or trying different types of games, you should try to bring it work. Or it could even be like you said on the joy side, like I just referenced TV shows right? I mean why aren’t you taking stuff that you like? TV shows are creative concepts that are already in sort of pop culture and apply that to your training or your learning materials or your onboarding if you’re an HR? Like you could. There is nothing really stopping you from making those exercises more fun.

[0:30:28] Charlie Hoehn: I feel that what you’re saying should be heard by every company right? Because we just get in these ridiculous state of minds when it comes to work that everything has to be serious, buttoned up and in a lot of corporate cultures like it is that way right? But why not? I feel like that’s the big question of this is like why not bring that stuff? Why not bring the stuff that you love into the work and maybe you can love the work even more and so will your customers. So what have been some of the readers responses to this book, some of they’re – what kind of emails have you gotten from people who have read your book and maybe implemented this stuff?

[0:31:13] Jason Suriano: Well I mean the first reaction I think that I’ve gotten is that it’s a really simple read even though it includes some complex digital concepts right? Or thoughts around this material. That was intentional because I kept saying when I was working on it that I don’t want this to sound like a textbook. It should be like almost like you are reading a magazine and that’s been the most positive thing. I’ve had people read it, who really either are unsure of gamification or even some of these digital components at work and I have gotten to the end and felt like, “Wow, I could actually do this,” right? And that’s been one of the most positive things. You know I think the other thing is I’ve had comments about the tangible examples of projects that we have done in the studio and how they have impacted that organization. Even things like return on investment like you just mentioned like you know, why not? Well what we have been proving is that if it’s more fun and enjoyable and the employee actually forgets for a time that they are being tested or quizzed. You can actually find out from them whether there is problems that could impact the organization and there’s a lot of money at stake there right? Because if someone isn’t as safe as they should be because they’re ignoring their training, how much is that to the company’s bottom line? So I’ve had people say that to me already that they’re starting to understand that this has – it’s not just for fun. The fun has an actual return on investment or like a bottom line impact to the organization which has been cool. Then I think the only other thing was that there’s actual tangible steps that a reader could take to engage that vendor which we sort of touched on before.

[0:32:59] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah, so if you were going to write a follow up book Jason, what would you write down about?

[0:33:05] Jason Suriano: You know to be honest I think if I did a follow up book, I would probably do the follow up book on the journey to get to this point and how hard it is, like how painful it is. I mean I know the startup books right now are pretty hot but I did actually contemplate doing that because I mean my story is pretty crazy just from some of the things that have happened at meetings and even just building the businesses that I’ve had.

[0:33:30] Charlie Hoehn: Oh man before we wrap things up, can you please share one of those crazy stories?

[0:33:38] Jason Suriano: Yeah, sure. Well I know I mention the Discovery Communications thing. So one of the craziest things that’s ever happened was I was with my business partner at a meeting in Silver Springs in Maryland at Discovery headquarters. We were about three quarters of the way through the meeting and we heard this muffled voice over the intercom and they started rushing us out of the board room down these narrow hallways into the back offices of Discovery and there was a terrorist in the lobby who had a bomb strapped to his chest. And it was all over CNN and the news and then we were looking out the window and there was SWAT and soldiers everywhere. The crazy thing is we just missed the terrorist in the lobby because he came in right after we went upstairs and if our meeting would have ended earlier, would basically ran into them all the way down. But there were some people that we had met in the lobby that ended up on Oprah a few months later telling the story about how this person came in and yeah, it was unreal. It’s funny, I still have my Discovery security badge in my drawer upstairs. That I was supposed to give back so it’s my little souvenir from that event. That and I grabbed the paper on the way out of Washington when we left. So I still have a record of what happened.

[0:35:07] Charlie Hoehn: The time you survived.

[0:35:08] Jason Suriano: Yeah so it was pretty crazy for sure.

[0:35:12] Charlie Hoehn: Wow that’s nuts. Do you have any parting pieces of advice for aspiring authors apart from avoid terrorists?

[0:35:21] Jason Suriano: Well for aspiring authors, I think it would just be to really focus on a subject or subject matter area that you’re really passionate about. I mean for me, I’m –

[0:35:32] Charlie Hoehn: Clearly you’re passion, yeah.

[0:35:34] Jason Suriano: Yeah, I mean I really enjoy what I do and it’s a lot of work and it’s tough at times. I think you really want to key on a something that when you write your book you can get that passion out in the book and that for me, my advice would be just because of the space I’m in, was to create something of use to the reader, right? Like something they could really use and I know that is going to be different for every author but that was the key. Just throughout that entire process was just to key on the fact that I wanted it to be a really easy read because it is in an area of technology that is full of jargon and complex at times. I think that was the one thing and then the other thing was just making sure it was useful.

[0:36:21] Charlie Hoehn: Now how can our listeners connect with you and follow you?

[0:36:26] Jason Suriano: Well they can follow me on Twitter at Jason Suriano and if they want to visit my website, it’s at trijectoryiq.com or they could even send me an email if they wanted to talk to me directly at jason@trajectoryiq.com.

[0:36:46] Charlie Hoehn: Awesome, Jason this has been so cool. Thank you so much for being on the show.

[0:36:51] Jason Suriano: Alright, thanks. It was a lot of fun.

[0:36:53] Charlie Hoehn: Many thanks to Jason Suriano for being on the show. You can buy his book, Office Arcade on Amazon.com. Thanks again for listening to Author Hour, enlightening conversations about books with the authors who wrote them. We’ll see you next time.

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