Author Archives: Kai Austin

The 7 Deadly Sins of Today

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The Seven deadly sins have long been in our history and our media. Everyone grows up learning about them. Everyone knows what they are. Or do they? Here are the 7 Deadly Sins redefined for our modern world. What is your sin?

Pride – There is nothing wrong with being proud. There is nothing wrong with thinking you are an awesome person, that the things you do are amazing. But there is a fine line between self confidence with a sense of accomplishment, and thinking you are better than everyone else around you because of that. We are living in a world full of self-righteous people placing themselves on pedestals of superiority. And not just themselves.

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A Writer’s Rant on Gender

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oct2013_iGiveUpWhen writing, one thing is consistently difficult: choosing a character’s gender.

I mean, what are the factors to consider? We live in a world where diversity is demanded, and offending someone seems far too easy. Countless arguments persist in the media over how certain personas are portrayed as inaccurate or demeaning. And I, personally, am more than conscious of the push for equal gender balance, or “why are there no females?!” discussions.

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Tips From Customer Service

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This past summer, I had an internship with Shareaholic – a small (less than 10 person) startup that provides a free app you can add to your blog. The app allows viewers to share a webpage to many different social media services across the globe and provides the viewer with recommendations for other pages on the website they might also join. About 1 month after I started, Shareaholic released an “upgrade” of this app in their Word Press plugin.

You all know the burning wrath of change. Innocent people are suddenly swept into a raging panic. Where did their app go? How were they supposed to edit things? Why was nothing working? Why did we ruin a perfectly good plugin?!?! So when the customer service inbox shot from 20 to 200 emails in just one night, Shareaholic stuck me on customer support duty. For two months.
Imagine answering emails for 7-8 straight hours per day from people all over the world. I have never met them before, nor will I likely ever come in contact with them again. Some speak English, some barely speak English, some send you emails in their native language, requiring “Google translate” before I can continue.

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Olin Quirks and Disorders

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In case you didn’t know, April is the National Month of Autism Awareness. Why is this relevant? Autism and its milder form Asperger’s, representing 80% of Autistic Spectrum Disorders (ASD), provide the basis for an important discussion on how we perceive other people, ourselves, and the world around us. Especially in regards to some here at Olin.

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Being Deliberately Creative

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Let me get one thing straight: I do not consider myself a creative person. This, coming from the guy who gets the phone passed to him to come up with engaging lesson plans for 5th graders or snazzy names for stuff. I do comics, have bucket lists of story ideas in progress; I have created 3 languages with respective worlds, have served as a writing consultant, and just do random sketches in general (from monsters to startups – yes you can sketch start-ups) which are utterly irrelevant to other people’s lives.

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