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Find the savings hiding in your contracts@ironcladapp.com podcast that's ironcladapp.com podcast hey, welcome back engagers. Today I have another personal special episode. Not sure what your response will be to these two episodes in a row. Me just ranting around here some stuff that might be considered slightly more personal than usual. In this case. I'll be able to tie it a lot better to some of the work that we do in gamification and some of the inspiration I've grabbed from this. But today I want to talk about my dad. This is not something I often do. He passed away 25 years ago today, well, the day that we're launching this episode on. And yeah, he was, you know, he was fairly famous back home. He was a top tier actor. He was in soap operas, theater, movies, you name it. Back home, of course, no Hollywood or that stuff back in the day, you know, it was not very accessible for most actors. I was very pleased to see some Venezuelan actors more recently, you know, thriving in Hollywood and whatnot. And it was 10 years ago that I realized I spent half my life without my dad already. So it's had. It had a huge impact on me. He passed away when I was 15 years old. So you can make the math if you want. Yeah, I'm 40. There's been a lot of lessons and stuff that I've gotten and I'll get into that in a minute. But I wanted to invest a little bit of time just paying a quick tribute to some of the heritage that he left overall and of course particularly to me, which are some of the lessons I can take away and some of the stuff that impacts my current work nowadays. A quick reminder here. You see Captain America, my love for superheroes and especially the Marvel and DC universe came from him. Like I saw, we saw together some of the Batman movies. He loved Spider Man. It was his favorite Marvel character and probably his favorite superhero. Overall, there's so much I could get into. But of course your interest is going to be probably more in what are the lessons and that kind of stuff. So before getting into all that, his name was Mariano Alvarez. He was an actor in Venezuela. He did, you know, some of. He was again, he was fairly, fairly well known back home. If anybody from Venezuela is hearing and you're not too young, so you're at least older than I am, you probably remember some of his work. And he did. Recently there was this Venezuelan doctor who became a saint. He represented that character. One of the most well known representations of that. He, it was Jose Gregorio Hernandez. So he made us Jose Gregorio Hernandez. It was interesting how getting into that character and you can see that in movies and other things, but because he did that character and he did other epic characters like Simon Bolivar actually twice. And each person, for each of these, there were people who brought, they just met him and saw him. It's like, oh, give, you know, bless my kid. Because he represented a saint in a movie setting. So that's something interesting how we our brains associate an actor that represented something. Apparently people were very pleased with that. I'm very pleased, of course, he was my dad. But other people were pleased and very happy about how he did that to the point where the belief in that, that world that was created within that, that movie, which is a non interactive media, it was so, so, so powerful for some people that when they, they saw him in the real world and in a more interactive way, even though they knew he was not, you know, the saint was born and died well before our time, they knew he wasn't him still. It's like, wow, this person maybe has some of the, you know, religious magical powers and, and you know, from you know, difficult moments and people like, you know, my son is sick and you know, can you bless him just so he gets better, right? That, that level of hope from, from that was born out of even a non interactive media like TV and, and movies. So that was very interesting. Then when he did Simon Bolivar, who's the liberator of a significant part of, of South America again, it's like people after that they saw, it's like wow. It' who will see Mon boliva but not, not really. So that entering that realm of belief is something that. I think it would be one of the first lessons I got from him when creating immersive, yet not interactive media like movies and tv, when representations are credible, are believable. And that has to do, of course, with a script, with a setting, many things, but also with what the actors put of themselves in there in that case. Right? How, how that can become so believable that, that people extrapolate and turn that. You know, there's, there's some video games nowadays that, that have a very, very like, basically they try to imitate the literal looks of, of the actor and the looks and it's the voice of the actor or the actress. So then you can see them on the street and it's, oh look, the video game character that I played, you know, it's this guy or this gal. So creating that believability when you then see them in real life, even though your sort of logical brain is saying like, well, that's not that person, then there's your emotional side to it that's behind it as well, that, that's creating all this. And that believability is not only important, but it's also, it's also useful, right? Especially in this media. Because if you create that empathy, that believability, that world, you're able to achieve some of those objectives that you're trying to, trying to learn. So that's one of the key lessons. One of the things that I inherited in a way from him I mentioned before, superheroes and that whole magical fantastical world that has things that even though again, we rationally know are not real. Spider man. There's no such thing as Spider Man. A guy who's climbing walls and all that, yet it relates enough to you. And you, you, you can create that space like when we do good, good gamification, where you create it to be close enough to be somehow believable even though it's not true. It's like, oh, it's believable. And it relates to real situations in a way that now I can believe it and I can take sort of action upon that and I can use it for whatever purpose. You know, I want to be a better teacher. And I'm immersed in this world where there's somebody that there's this mentor in this fantastic world and using all these tools. So now I can, I see how then I can extrapolate and extract this to my daily life. That believability of superheroes Modern superheroes, many of them is something that I learned and I experienced. Thanks. Essentially, at least at the beginning, I still have some of his. His comic books. I still have, you know, these very old. I think I have like Episode Episode. The first one of. Of one of the series of. Or the first of the series of Fantastic Four I think is the one. I can check it and then I'll maybe post a picture or something. That, that, that whole world immersiveness, you know, from being super unreachable to nowadays more being like they're more like normal people who have. Happen to have superpowers or you know, Iron man has all this money and then. Then he creates a suit. But other than that he's. He's a very real human being. And he also introduced me. I. I hadn't thought of it that way in, in a lot of very long. But he was actually a gamer. Like he was a real video gamer. Um, I remember him playing this game Digger. If you've heard it. It's like a little machine that starts digging around and looking for coins. And when you eat all the coins in the level, you pass to the next level and get. Starts getting more and more difficult. And there's these beasts that through the tunnels that you've dug, it's trying to eat you. That, that was a game he was completely almost addicted to. He played it and he already had strategies for the first, you know, like 10 levels and then he was trying to figure out the next one. But it's one of these games where when you, when, when you die, you start all over from the start. So then he had to, you know, pass over again those 10 levels you already knew and then try something new on this new level and so on. And so he's, he was. He had to sort of grind through those levels to get to the one he was trying to. So that he. There was, you know, there were many elements in that game. Then we played Prince of Persia together as well. And then I remember other video games like when I, when I, when I was a kid is more. I had consoles since I was very, very young. And I played some games with him in the console and then the computer. Right. Computer games. I realized not too many people in my generation where I lived were sort of into video games at that. At that point. It came from my dad, like quite directly in that sense was. My grandparents also gave me one of the consoles. I think my mom and my dad, you know, so that influenced. But the one, the one who was actually playing it you know, my mom never played, my grandparents definitely never played. And. But my dad did play. He sat down, he played himself. So there was a big, a big influence in that sense of. On the gamer and the gamification now person that I, that I become a huge influence from, from that. And I had, until I was reflecting about creating this episode, I had never really thought about it that way. I hadn't. Like, I always knew. Of course, it's not like I didn't know he played video games, but I had never sort of associated to like, oh yeah, actually he was the first person, first adult I saw playing, playing video games. Which again, at the time was not exactly something common. It was like, oh, there's a kid's thing, right. But he was, you know, he was very much into video games and he played chess a lot. He also played chess. He started teaching me chess. I, for some reason I stopped playing chess. I'm not sure exactly how and why and even when that happened, he, he liked to play chess, even the first computer chess games. He also did a lot of that. Another thing that, that I appreciate and especially lately I've been, I've been doing more of it was his, the, the importance he placed on physical activity and, and remaining and making sure you're active enough to, you know, be physically fit. Not that fit and like, oh, yeah, you know, busted or whatever. But just being. Yeah. You know, being overall healthy, you know, and looking okay, you know, looking good. I. One thing that I remember very, very strongly for that, from that, when my, my dad passed away, he was, he was getting to close to his 50s, but many, many years before that, I remember being, you know, actors, especially when there's, even, even when it's not live performance, they usually have like this, you know, room or place where they, they change. I'm not sure how to say that in English. I know in Spanish it's called Camerino. Oftentimes they also share it with another actor. Right. Because there's, you know, there's only so many and there's all these people. So every now. And they share it. I remember. Of course, I'm not going to say who it was. It's not going to be a very flattering comment for, for this person. I remember literally the person in the name. So. But I'm just not going to say it because it's not very flattering is that I remember there was a moment when literally they were both changing. So both my dad and this, this, this other guy took their. Off their shirts and it was Very. Like, for me, I saw this other guy and I thought, oh, well, this. This guy's probably like, I don't know, like 10 years older than my dad or more. Right. He looked, you know, it was not just that he was not, you know, sort of thin. But then, you know, his, his physical, the way you saw is. It was like, you know, everything was sort of going down and they were in their 40s. My dad was in his 40s, right. So this guy's probably, you know, well into his 50s, maybe even 60s, because that's the way, like, my, My frame of mind of seeing people, you know, I saw that and associated with people who are around that age who, you know, I usually went to the. In Venezuela, we go a lot to the beach and you see people, you know, shirts off and so on. So I had sort of a frame of mind of kind of an idea of where people were. And then I asked my dad, of course, thank goodness I did. In front of this other guy, it's like, oh, but he's. He's like a lot older than you, right? And he said, well, no, actually, he's younger. And it sort of hit me very strong, very deeply, very strongly. Like, well, it's not just how you look, right? Because that's just a representation of, you know, your physical state at that point, you know, but how you look is also a representation of what you do to take care of yourself. Clearly, this other person was not taking care of themselves as much. One of the things my dad always said, since he's an actor and his main tool is one of his most important tools is his physical body, how he looks. So he wanted to make sure he took care of it. So he did go to the gym. He used to run a lot, which is something I enjoyed doing. But then his knee, he had a problem with his knee and he couldn't run anymore. So he was walking every morning very, very fast. I remember, you know, struggling to keep up with him. I was very young. I was like 10. And of course, you, you, you assume you have a lot of energy being kids, following people around. I, I remember once, the first time I tried, I literally, like, I wasn't feeling very well after that. You know, my cousin and my aunt were around, so I, I stuck around with them. But I, I thought I could keep up with my dad. Of course, you know, young, strong boy, you know, I can keep up. There's no way. So he kept up with his physical activity to make sure, you know, because of his profession, that his physique looked, you know, that he was in top shape. You know, don't get me wrong, he was not like, you know, like a gym bro or anything like that. He just went to the gym regularly to make sure he had. He put in that level of physical activity that kept him in an okay. In a normal level, you know, at least a little bit above what would be expected for his age or whatever. So that hit me very strong. And it's something I've finally come back to heavier lately. Like, I've. I've been, you know, working out and all that. Again, not like super competitive or anything at all. It's just, you know, to keep me strong. I had some back problems. Now I'm feeling a lot better because of this physical activity. So. So that's. That's definitely something. That's. That's there. And then things like overall generosity. Like, I. I remember him always talking about being. Being generous no matter what. That's something that's stuck with me a lot, like overall generosity and will and being willing to help others and just do it because it's a good thing, essentially. Not because you're expecting something back or anything like that. Just responding kindly to others and things like saying hi to the service person who nobody probably even notices, sweeping the floors and so on. That's something that both him and my mom are very sort of adamant on, have always been. My wife is very much like that as well. And definitely I. That's something I. I appreciate a lot of people when. When you see that no matter your position, your, you know, status or whatever, you're. It doesn't mean that you're any better as a human being than others. So when you see somebody of that, again, that status higher or lower, you can still say hi, just as if he is your colleague or your boss. It's like, oh, yo, good morning. Just responding kindly to other people. And a final thing that I learned, and I think it still influences my sort of way of thought, is he was not just an actor. He also started directing a lot in theater plays. And, you know, I saw that a lot. You know, I could probably still, you know, not 25, but more, because that was longer ago, maybe 30 years from now. I still think I can. I can almost blindfold it, walk through some of the scenarios that I. That I used to be around with him because I. My parents were divorced, so I just saw him on weekends, some weekends, not all of them, but it was a very. It was very intense. Of course, theater happens a lot on weekends and entertainment and so on. So I did hang out a lot in his sort of workspace, which was a playground for me, eventually. All I'm saying is that in those experiences, also seeing, you know, a lot of. Because you see a theater play, but there's a lot of, you know, going over, over and over the text over and over again and setting up things and practicing and seeing how this is going to look and, you know, figuring out how to make the scene look real and, you know, but the director's work, but then with the actors and all that. So I was involved in a lot of that as well. Especially because theater in Venezuela, it's like, not profitable for, for the actors or. It wasn't that. I don't know how that's looking nowadays. They had to do if they. If somebody was, you know, wanted to. My dad's main medium, what he enjoyed the most was theater. He studied acting unlike most other actors of his time in Venezuela. Like, he was very well above in that sense, that excellence. He also, he also tried to pass on. So. So most of the, the, the. The dedication, you know, is where his mind was at, was on theater. That's what he studied as an actor. And, and. But it was not very profitable. So he had to do soap operas when he found movies as well, which was not very, very often. There were not too many productions back home at the time. That's where he sort of made his living. Theater just brought in some income, but it didn't really make too much of a difference. But so that's why. Another reason why a lot of these people were doing things on weekends. And that's why I was more involved. And I remember specifically there was literally a scene where somebody was supposed to slap an old lady. You know, they would sort of snap out of it, right. Patient. And I remember they were, you know, the typical tricks that they do, right. Of course, you're not really going to slap a person, right? Fellow colleague and whatnot, so that you do tricks to make it look like you slap others. So the thing is, eventually what they did was, you know, the person was receiving the slap was going to raise their hand and the other person was going to do as if they were slapping and it was going to knock on their hand. On their hand. If you're seeing this in video, this is probably going to make a little bit more sense when I show it. So the idea I had, like, I saw this many times and I felt it wasn't believable. We were talking about believability before. So I Came up with an idea, right. Which eventually came to be used on set. I'm very excited about that. Of course, that this person was, like, sort of confounded and their head was hurting or something like that. They were sort of struggling with something. I was like, look, why not just have your hand close to your face, right? Somehow, like, she was. I think she was holding her cheek or something. It's like you have your hand here, and then when the slap comes, it's easier to just move your hand a little so you slap it. And it's harder to see this movement than if you have your hand down here. And then you bring your hand so it knocks and it sounds like a slap. It's like, oh, wow, that's a great idea. Right? So that kind of thinking of looking into the believability and seeing how things come together was something that I learned from that time of, you know, just hanging around and seeing him as a. As a director, which is something I really enjoyed. And when we're creating gamified projects, this is something that is definitely very, very important. Like, how do you introduce believability? How do you introduce. How do you connect this to the audience? How does everything come together? Like, all those things of directing, at least these theater plays was great. And I remember even going around my dad, there was this theater play which was one of the most probably successful in that sense. They represented in the Capitol in Caracas. And then they went all around the country, right, in different. Where they had essentially a theater that was large enough to hold display and to have enough audience to pay for the tickets and so on, to make it somewhat profitable. They went around and I think it was like, I don't know, like 20 theaters or something like that. I went maybe to six or seven. It was very exciting. But that was a very successful theater play. And that was something, again, I was seeing. And when they moved to each of these places, they also sort of used a little bit of local talent because they had sort of the main actors. But then they have a lot of extras as well. It could literally be. I once sneaked in as an extra. Not very believable, of course. I was maybe 9, 10 years old. But, you know, people. I don't know if they noticed or not, but it was a lot of fun for me. But what I'm saying is, like, anybody could do that if you had any sort of acting interest and so on. So those are some of the things I learned. You know, just sort of wrapping it up. You know, the world of superheroes was introduced to me by my dad. Also seeing and making video games be something normal and acceptable, so to speak, for adults at that time was introducing me in general to the world of video games and having somebody else to sort of hold my hand while I was struggling and grinding through some of the video games. That was something I definitely got from him. Got from him too. The whole, the whole importance of, you know, this has nothing to do with gamification but you know, keeping yourself healthy, which, you know, some apps as well and some of gamified apps that, that I've seen and worked with have a lot to do with, you know, keeping up with your health and that has to do with that physical activity overall sort of considering other people. Right. And then through generosity, responding kindly. I think that's something that I try, I try to live up to as much as I can often. And then that, that sort of, I even want to call it fondness for the audience, like trying to put yourself in that perspective and trying to see and understand how they would react to this, how they would view it so that you can create an experience that is believable. And in that case it was theater plays. In my case it's something slightly different like gamified apps or even interactive media like things like escape rooms and physical activity and physical activities, so to speak. So, so those are some of the lessons I took. Some of the great memories I still have. Of course it saddens me not to have my dad with me for these last 25 years. It's been a long time. But I'm also really happy that, that you know, he was my dad, of course, and that he was in my life and that I had the chance to learn all this things. So. So dad. Mariano. I didn't call him dad. Used to call him Mariano for some reason like his name. Not sure why. Mariano, wherever you are, you know this just this tribute goes to you with all my love, all the good memories, everything I learned. Thank you, thank you. Just thank you for being there, being who you were in many ways and you know, perhaps see you, see you, see you someday. Love you, dad. Pro drivers live for race day. But for small business owners, every day is race race day. That's why going pro with Lenovo Pro matters. One on one advice. IT solutions and customized hardware powered by Intel Core Ultra processors. 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