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13-Year-Old CEO Steals the Show At TiECON
An anonymous reader tells us about a 13-year old Silicon Valley CEO with a plan to change the way kids learn chemistry. Yesterday he stole the show at TiECON 2007, the big entrepreneur conference held in Santa Clara, CA. VentureBeat has the story and a video interview. The company's VP of sales is the CEO's sister. She's 11. They're looking for $100K to ramp up production and distribution.
What the hell? What kind of company is this?!
At least that help to demonstrate that a CEO only need to know how to make a keynote. Technical knowledge, experience, ... : that's only required for low salary workers.
I would've been helpful if there was a link to his site in the summary.
Maybe it could be expanded, but this isn't exactly all there is to chemistry. How can you teach, with a card game, the procedure for a titration? The workings of an atomic absorption spectrometer? Electron configurations? Secondary interactions?
You could, I suppose, write on every ionic compound a paragraph about ionic lattices, and an explanation about dipole-dipole interactions on every polar molecule's card, but how is that different from the textbook?
Perhaps better textbooks would be in order. I'm studying Year 12 Chemistry now, and it could not be considered boring. Those who don't enjoy it, don't enjoy it. Those who do, do. A card game would certainly do no good, other than bore to tears everyone involved. This is just a tacky thing that sounds fun to a 13-year-old, but in reality would never work.
11-year old... shouldn't this be 'senior' VP of sales?
I can't find the link to it on Scott Adam's site, and out of courtesy to him I won't link it without his permission. If you've followed Dilbert for at least the last ~13 or so years, it was an early one. Something to the effect of an older engineer giving a younger guy a coin with a dialogue box that said "Here's a nickle, kid. Go get a real operating system."
I only think of that because theres so little info in the article about the actual company, so I can't comment positivily on these smart kids innovative skills.
I actually am rather impressed by the youth of today. They get a bad rep. I'm relying on them to undo a lot of the damange my generation is going to do, if they haven't already started.
~WBGG
PS if anyone has more links pertaining to this, please publish them!
~WBGG~ "And I'm so sad like a good book I can't put this Day Back a sorta fairytale with you" ~Tori Amos
Somehow I think the 'anonymous' reader that told them about these two are the parents whom are the real individuals pushing and pulling the product. I'd be willing to bet the kids are just a gimmick to get investor interest in the novelty of their age.
WTF?
On second thought, let me in the same breath welcome our new prepubescent overlords! (Who knows what those critters are capable of? *trembles*)
And when you gaze long enough into the code, the code will also gaze into you.
Childhood is a precious time and I would not want my kids of that age to be doing this sort of thing. Childhood is something that should be treasured and nurtured. It is very sad they way that kids are rushed to adulthood so they can become consumer units. I find the sight of 10 year old adults quite pathetic.
I find it kind of sad. Yeah, the world probably needs the capitalistic natural selection to move forward, but I'd wish the kids would aspire for something else too, apart from trying to be rich.
The kid's idea is stupid anyway, sure you can roleplay very basic things with it by providing an analogy, but that analogy doesn't work consistently and does not allow for a deeper understanding of chemistry. So unless you are satisfied with the "iron card and oxigen card equals rust card", it does not allow for a deeper understanding. Don't tell me kids are not supposed to learn more at that (around twelve) age, you're probably expecting too little of them.
Either this kid is a gifted one, in which case he'd better spending his time working on something that has use or he's not and probably articles like this are doing a disservice by encouraging him and by taking his idea seriously. The kid apparently has charisma, but that is only enough for deluding people.
Talking about public education, initiatives like this boy's degrade education. For example not teaching children proper algorithms for basic multiplication, division and addition but instead encouraging them to come up with their own reasoning is the equivalent of starting a coding project with two tonnes of sand and some heavy metals. Most of the kids fail at it. It is not against self development and creativity to build upon the work of others, as progress is incremental.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
I'd spend it all on hookers and blow. And maybe blackjack.
... welcome our new teenage CEO overloads? :S
This is my sig. There are thousands more, but this one is mine.
My personal rule of thumb is to not invest anthing in companies unless the CEO is at least old enough to buy me a Guinness.
~WBGG~ "And I'm so sad like a good book I can't put this Day Back a sorta fairytale with you" ~Tori Amos
What a lovely attitude. It helps so much when you demonize people who are different, doesn't it? It give those "us vs. them" arguments so much more punch.
What about girls? Sure, some might be interested in this but it seems extremely male orientated.
With upper management so young, there might be some decent perks. Maybe snacktime, naps, and cartoon netwoork and console games in the breakrooms. (Naptime especially if the parents are overbearing.) I could always go for on the job naptime and ice cream Wednesdays at Coldstone.
*shrug* never worked for someone younger than me
~WBGG~ "And I'm so sad like a good book I can't put this Day Back a sorta fairytale with you" ~Tori Amos
Actually, no. The parent's statement is almost universally accurate.
I did know of one or two high-profile exceptions to the rule myself, and praised them almost embarrassingly, as pearls beyond price. But now they too have since been assimilated into the general slime.
The mental age is what matters and if these kids have a mental age of 13, they're already more mature than most executives. They're probably also better adjusted with fewer physiological and emotional problems.
Scary isn't it?
As somewho knows something about Chemistry (going to the 2007 Moscow IChO), this idea is flawed. A high school chemistry syllabus is structered the way it is for a reason. I can think of several examples. 1. Chemistry is not all about elements, even at this basic level. For example, how will they teach acid-base chemistry? How will they teach gas laws? Even if this is just a small component of the syllabus, it is a waste. 2. There is too much of a gulf, knowledge wise, between the reactions that are listed in this RPG. For example - 2Mg + O2 -> 2MgO . This is simple to explain, using an Ionic Bonding Model. But then, using similar cards, you have 2Al + 3O2 -> Al2O3. Now you have to teach valencies. Then you have H2 + Br2 -> 2HBr. Try explaining that with an Ionic bonding model (If you can, account for it's properties). Then, lets say they do do acids. Mg + 2H+ -> Mg2+ + H2 . But how do you then account for Au not reacting with dilute acid, whereas Mg will? At this level? How do you account for Mg + Cu2+ -> Mg2+ + Cu ? Teaching electrochemistry cannot be done at similar times to teaching a simple valence bond theory, but that is what will happen with this stupid solution. My take - chemistry may be boring in high school, but so are most things. It's structed in a way that builds upon previous knowledge, and this guy is just hoping to make a quick buck off VC's with a product that is clearly not thought out.
"Sure there's porn and piracy on the Web but there's probably a downside too."
You can see from just the summary that they are too young and inexperienced - if they want to be taken seriously they should be asking for at least $5M. (hmmm, funny? insightful?)
ccalam - acoustic versions of new songs.
I'm looking for $100000 too. By plain logic I should do twice better. I have charts to prove it :P
:( ?
Where did you guys all go
Almost universally? So you've met, and/or have read available documentation on, almost all CEOs? Quite impressive. When do you sleep?
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
Instead of feeling outrage at a mere thirteen year old treading on adult turf, think of it as a learning experience, a project if you like, for what is obviously a very bright kid. I'd be impressed if he were my child. Is anybody truly surprised that he is inexperienced?
In most times, most places, by most people, liars are considered contemptible. - Ursula Le Guin
Lousy Ferg-breath, always stealing the spotlight. I bet he made his sister program a goofy video game for his company too.
Did you ever notice that *nix doesn't even cover Linux?
For me, it still exists: Monopolistic Competition. It's like Monopoly, except actually based on economics. I'll spare you the details, but I'm sure if I sat at the kitchen table for a weekend, I'd have all the minutiae figured out and a game fully designed. I think we've all had ideas like this when we were this kid's age, and that he simply got lucky (parental intervention, a grant of $500, the support of some gullible VCs, media coverage). The idea is interesting, but it seems like something I'd see sitting gathering dust on the shelf of the Discovery Store, not catching on and sparking any revolution.
From what I can see that's where this kid is coming from. Sure, the game won't teach you things like redox reactions, or actual experimental processes, but if you get a good grounding in the basics it makes it much easier to understand the more complex things later on.
You can learn a lot about a person if you just take the time to inject them with sodium pentathol
... that this one doesn't throw chairs when he's frustrated.
Do i detect the familiar setup of a stage mommy/daddy here somewhere going "you're not raising seed money fast enough! no dinner tonight!"
stuff |
Wonder who Ender is fighting.
-Cham
I was also making money before I was 13, and Elementeo doesn't surprise me. It is much more easier for children to be engaged in business than adults. First, children have lots of imagination, while in general few adults retain it after they turn 22-23. Furthermore, children are usually free of debt and get free food and financial support from their parents, and children normally have no responsibilities; compare that to an adult who is indebted, needs to work in order to eat, and has a family to support. Moreover, children have more free time than adults. Another important factor that is in children's favour is that they usually have good health, while many adults do not. Lastly, laws in general seek to protect children, an advantage mature entrepreneurs cannot have.
Just glancing through his website I hit a pretty glaring chemical error: "27 Elements: This is the bulk of your army... from gases like Hydrogen to metals like Iron to halogens like Phosphorus; these creatures are the ones that will bring you victory!"
Hopefully this was done by his flunky webmaster and doesn't reflect the attention paid to chemical details in the actual game...
it's a gimmic. without fail there is an adult pulling the strings in these things.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Q: How to succeed on slashdot?
A: Grab the ankles of the person above you and, PULL!
Honestly - how about aspiring to TEACH KIDS IN WAYS THEY WANT TO LEARN?
There, read his webpage - find out what his intentions are, rather than just making stuff up.
If you can impart two or three important concepts in this game, which seems more than likely, you've basically got Super Flashcards. And frankly, just getting kids to KNOW the names of elements is one step to getting them to ask questions about elements. What happened to slashdot's ability to dream? I don't get it, I really don't.
Bottom line is, Anshul Samhar inspires, whereas YOU just piss on the parade.
Because putting it in a Flash applet would be too hard.
American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry is not protesting him!
Boy 13-year old,
where are your mamá & papá for your biggest responsabilities?
But to make positive change is difficult. To change chemistry is taught in a sound manner and to consistently produce statistically significant results is a tall order.
I smell vaporware and marketing hype. But hey, it's business. What should I be expecting from a bunch of suits? I do however pity any student which has to go through this program.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
I think a lot of good points have been raised about this type of approach towards getting kids interested in the subject.
But for those of you who think this is limited to grade school... at the college level I am familiar with a professor who uses a similar approach. Imagine looking at a Snickers bar and talking about conglomerate rocks, or talking about geological stratification with a peanut butter sandwich. And getting numerous teaching awards for it.
There are some of us who scratch our heads and wonder exactly what he is doing in college. He doesn't teach the upper level classes, but he is a hit with the intro classes. I have seen absolutely no assessment data indicating whether his approach is actually helping these students learn. Perhaps it is, perhaps not.
Over the years I have come to the realization that there is no one right way to teach, and that not everybody responds equally to a given teaching approach. I (a college professor) and my sister (an MD) both like the "soak up as much knowledge from the knowledgeable professor at the head of the class" approach. Chalk notes on the board, copied by hand to to the notebook, working on assignments outside of class, asking specific questions after getting stuck on something for hours, etc... that approach works for us. I really hate games and interactive working-with-other-students approaches in the classroom. I find it to be a copout by the professor; he or she is the one with the knowledge, not my fellow students (who are likely to be less knowledgeable than myself).
But some students do respond more to this approach. The "inquiry based learning" approach is catching on like wildfire in some schools, and some of this has bubbled up to the college level. There are many who sing its praises profess its superiority to "chalk and talk" but from what I can glean from conversations with those in the field of Education, this approach is not clearly better (as determined by test scores), but that it does work better for some (just like the traditional method works better for my sister and me).
As someone in the sciences, I have found that learning is really hard, and not always pleasant, and I do not hesitate to remind my students who are struggling with the material. I feel their pain. But no amount of entertainment will substitute sitting down with the text/notes/assignment and slogging through this stuff alone in the library for hours. I think the idea of individual hard, grueling work as an approach to learning has fallen out of favor. The majority of my students do not study outside of class until a day or two before the test. I can pretty much gage what the scores will be before I even collect the tests based upon the kinds of questions I am asking, and the depth of knowledge required to answer these questions correctly (think thermodynamics here).
In conclusion, I see some - not all - of these approaches as style vs. substance. I think we can all agree that engaging students with the material is always good, but that there is no single approach which will engage all students at the same level. Perhaps the best approach (one which I am gravitating towards) is a mixture of traditional and somewhat less traditional approaches.
A squid eating dough in a polyethylene bag is fast and bulbous, got me?
No need for facts.
Obviously, that kid is there because they need attention and what's better that having a kid as CEO, but of course without success...
ghostbar page.
It's gotta be Nike, and finally, thank god!
We can credit them with tearing down the corporate 'ceiling' for children. They used to be stuck only in sweatshops, but now.... well, now the sky's the limit.
Here's to you Nike!
Atari quack Nolan Bushnell said it nicely with geek flair:
"Business is a good game - lots of competition and a minimum of rules. You keep score with money."
Just look at how people play games: they look for shortcuts, strive to collect every coin in every level, use "soft cheats" like auto-fire (*rimshot*), and when they're tired of playing the same old game, they sell it to some cheap bastard and start all over with a new game.
That's very much like business.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
This card game is just what it is: a card game. Yeah, the cards are given names and "explainations", but it's just a (simple) card game which has a periodic table included.
So what do you learn from them? Well, elements. It's just a list of elements. There is (looking at the cards themselves) no reason why silver would "react" with bromine.
If he told me only that he had made a card game, I'd expect explainations about how salts work, physically. What are electrodes? How come oil doesn't mix with water? How is sodium hydroxide made? What is an organic compound?
If you WANT, you can learn any child the periodic table. It's not about whether it's a game or not. Children have enough free time, and as long as you tell it with a lot of exitement and "ohh!" feeling, they will listen and remember.
Not that it's useful... but... a cardgame isn't gonna help much.
I have met and went to school with far more articulate kids than this boy. I don't understand why people are stating that he speaks well. It sounds EXACTLY how I would imagine a young boy to speak about a science project to his teacher.
That, and he has a lisp.
Yeah, excellent speaker.
And then there was E
You'll notice the "An anonymous reader" line in the summary is different in this one post than in all other "Anonymous" article submissions.
0 54222, anyone?
It also doesn't help much that kdawson is a closet pedo supporter, either. Oh, pardon me, a "minor-attracted adult". Maybe he's looking to sleep his way to the top of the corporate ladder, starting with the 13 year old CEO.
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/11/06/2
... he was supposed to make it to an earnings conference call but couldn't because he was stuffed in a locker.
His CFO had to report that the company had lost $5.35 when a bully stole its lunch money.
He was exposed for spending corporate funds on comic books and Big League Chew.
I could probably go on forever with these. The reality of this story is that venture capitalists are so desperate to turn anything into money that they apparently see no problem with trying to monetize an 8th grader.
Get off my damn TiECON, you damn kids!
- Licking asses is part of politics, do it right and you get to the top, do it too much and you end up doing it for the rest of your life, for you will be despised.
- Stomping down on peers is BS. You do not have to stomp down on peers to start and lead a successful enterprise. Exploiting your employees is also a lie, although more common. You pay for people to work, but you don't overwork them when they're good because in a free country, good people can find other jobs.
- "Treat customers with contempt" and you lose them. It's called goodwill, and it applies to masses of small guys as much as the big money you're supposed to lick the arses of. And in the age of the internet, the corporate world has learned to fear the man who can send and receive packets. [You're starting to sound a little too lefty by the way, not a crime, but I'm just saying].
- Non-customers are potential money when you are in the office, but I bet that outside the office CEOs see us as regular blood and flesh. If the market econonies work by CEOs tagetting customers with products, I'm not going to cry. They can still be nice people.
- Business people do not hate the "community", except the lets-all-share-absolutely-everything community. It's that community which hates the concept of people making legitimate money in a free economy. Bad companies with bad CEOs exist. Don't do business with them. If you feel that you have no choice but to do business with them, go to court and sue them for being a monopoly.
Communist-inspired stereotypes are so 90's.
say "TIE fighters"?
(ducks)
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
For a second I thought that said, i for one welcome our preteen Traci Lords . . .
Even if I had mod points, I'd need one for +1 Awesome Reference.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
This kid is in middle school, he, like most kids, hates textbooks, but unlike most kids, he actually came up with an alternative. He's touting it like a replacement for textbooks, and of course it would work better as a supplement, but it's still a great idea. And if the parents are helping out, they're doing the right thing. If my kid came up to me with a brilliant, if not necessarily feasible idea, I wouldn't want to quash his dreams right away. I'd want to encourage him. Any kid that's come this far isn't going to be shaken by temporary failure. Look at the about the creator page on his website and read his quotes in the article. Just because he's thirteen doesn't mean he shouldn't be taken seriously, it just means that he has a different approach than most adults.
As for the game's actual usefulness... I remember how much more exciting world history was for me because I recognized the names of cultures and cities from Civilization II. This could inspire the same kind of fascination in kids for Chemistry. Most kids aren't taught a lot of Chemistry until the middle of high school, and I don't think anyone other than the creators think this can replace textbooks completely, but how cool would it feel to walk into your high school chemistry class and already know about valence and the periodic table from a card game you played in middle school? If this game inspired a lifelong love of chemistry in a few kids and helped a few more understand the basic concepts... that alone, I think, would be worth it.
"Fry, if you don't make this deal I will lose all respect for you and punch you."
What sound do people on rollercoasters make? Hint: it's not Xbox 360.
Finally somebody who thinks for the children
It is very hard for all the companies that offer a service to be so dystopian. There will always be profit to be made from being the desirable service provider. And if they were found innocent by law then no need to sue them again, the problem is with an immature market in that case.
As for music and movies, I am yer fave, of all eye-patched sea farers, I am! yaarrrr! The system is unconstitutional. I will not bend to it.
It never occurred to me, but when I played Lineage II (and I'm sure even WoW to an extent), they have trades or skills you can learn - one is typically chemist or alchemist. What he's doing here isn't necessarily anything new, it's just that the names of the elements have been changed from various roots, body parts, herbs, metals, and magic, to those directly related to the periodic table. Just the same, re-packaging the idea for education in real-life chemistry is an interesting twist.
After clicking on the article link and watching the video, isn't it completely obvious to everybody, that this CEO kid simply recited a script, and the only aspect of this "child educational software" was the line "command and conquer"?
Isn't it completely obvious, that the only thing this organization even has any idea about, is money?
After clicking on the article, isn't it just transparent, that this is nothing more than sensationalist tripe?
Dear Slashdot with all due respect, what the fuck?
Not only is Slashdot becoming a day-later Digg mirror, but the worst fucking stories are the ones making the jump.
Slashdot has been in decline ever since the VA Software buyout. The evidence shows it's pretty well close to dead.
The truth hurts, doesn't it?
In my former job as a journalist I was of course required to type every day. In high school I had taken typing class but skipped most of it because it was deathly boring. Thus, I never learned proper technique and my skills were very weak indeed. Despite this, I got my work done -- but it wasn't pretty. Then I started playing Everquest. People would quickly tire of talking to me in-game because my typing speed was lacking. Interest in the game forced me to teach myself proper technique as I wished to be an officer in my guild, and therefore it was necessary to be able to communicate swiftly and effectively. Now I type between 60 and 70wpm... and this has of course had dramatic positive ffects on everything I do with the PC. Thanks Everquest!
Hah, I was wondering who would make an Ender's Game reference. Shame my mod points just expired.
though apparently I still make typos... 'effects'. damn.
Locke and Demosthenes, anyone? Timing seems to be right - when we're about to go to war again with the insect-like collective zergs.
No offense to anyone, but, age does -not- define exlusive access to knowledge, you only grow older and wiser -if- you are susceptible to the "inputs of life" (cfr: wise warnings, repetitive problems, reactions, happenings, morals and values ...)
..
I started with IT around my 14th and knew Assembler by my 16th; I sold my first software at that same age too; it was rather knowledge made out of interest. The only stuff I didn't knew back then was the "business rules" as in "how to do everything official" but hell, the knowledge is there and is still growing
Would that be sad or motivation of knowledge?
Why would this kids idea be moot just because of a stupid number which defines "legal age" or not?
nb: There are enough CEO's around the world NOT knowing any morals/values or how to do business while being adult.
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
13 year old steals show at TiECON. MPAA trying to force him to give it back. More as this story develops...
Chemists in the lab "work" because they are trying to produce specific rections of value in opposition with destructive factors such as impurities. With a little thought, you can assign a scale of "reaction sensitivity" measured on some scale such as % of impurity required to damage the reaction. Then one player assembling his reactions gets more points of something correlating to the difficulty of the reaction he put together before his opponent could sabotage it.
"Clean Room": Your reactions are +x harder to pollute by your opponent."
"Budget Deadline/Limiting Reagent": "You only have two chances to prepare the reaction."
I haven't worked it all out, but you could approach a 9th grade chem course using game mechanics. Despite other posts here, RPG gamers are quite used to dealing with the interactions of HUNDREDS of pages of rules.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
The game concept seems like something you'd work up for a school project.
The kids are clever, no doubt. It's quite impressive; but what's been done? Just made a cute little game using chemistry knowledge as the subject matter - sounds like a cross between chemistry and Pokémon.
Quoting paganizer (later in comments)
>>> "[My son] can tell you everything that is written on any Pokemon or Digimon card ever made."
So you think that writing something on a pokémon card will mean that he will learn it? Sure some will find it an interesting distraction but it's not going to replace textbooks.
Oh and the website says that they took pre-orders at the show; so it's not a business yet just a concept.
That one is a snap!
... because of the definition of acids. Loosely put, they're connected to the elements on the right side of the period table. HCL, H2SO4, the works. Gaming elements already have between 5-10 classifiable factors, so it's a snap to put Chlorine and Sulfur in an Acid guild, and those metals on the left in a Base guild.
In the world of modular RPGs, it's quite easy to adapt the concept of "guilds" to Acid/Base and beyond.
Acids are what they are
For certain knowledge bits such as "Au not reacting with dilute acid", fine. Gamers are used to remembering things like Gold has +1 or +2 Resistance to Acid. Or put the other way, Mg has +1 or +2 Affinity for Acids.
What this kid is really talking about is taking knowledge off of page 47, and letting the user shuffle it around as a physical model of the way people shuffle knowledge in their head.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
So if you're trying to convince a hardball skeptic, ... make NONE of it fantasy!
At the root of the guy's innovation is decompiling the monolithic text into digestible fragments. Done properly, there would be some kind of rules authority (hire a PHD as a "rules judge".)
Find whatever scale declares that Gold doesn't react much, line everything up on to that scale, and index that as a chart in some rules handbook.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
You miscounted.
There's 60 cards in the deck he's playing *at that moment*.
There will of course 10,000 plus cards in the set.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
That kid might have stolen the show, but who stole the From the---Dept.?
I think that this idea could really work, but these kids need to learn what I learned in my current job as a web programmer - to look like a professional, you need to rely on other professionals.
These kids have a concept. Now they need people. Hand-drawn art and crude bitmap editing may cut it when you're making a game for your friends, but if you want to look professional, you need someone who knows what they are doing. You need someone who knows how to use a vector graphics program (probably Adobe Illustrator), you need someone who knows how to use a page layout program, and you need someone with artistic talent. In other words, you need a graphic designer.
I don't go it alone when I'm working on a major site. I have a graphic designer creating compositions and producing the final images for the site. I have a layout designer who takes the graphic designer's vision and converts it to CSS. I have a copyeditor to make sure that the text is clear and concise. I have a (white hat) SEO professional analyzing link structure, page layout, and code structure, to ensure that the site is properly indexed. And, in some cases, I have a human factors professional doing user testing to ensure that users will be able to find what they are looking for.
Now, I know quite a bit about graphic design. I can use Illustrator and Photoshop. I also know plenty about CSS and XHTML - I can hack together a website just fine. I'm decently good at copyediting, I know the basics of SEO, and I have an eye for UI design as well. But I'm not as good at any of those things as the people I rely on. They are more effective, more efficent, and make fewer mistakes.
They make me look professional. I make them look professional.
When you're 13 (that was only 6 years ago for me!), the desire is to do everything yourself. But that's the last thing you want to do. Maybe you've picked up a copy of Photoshop. Maybe you can scan photos into your PC and make graphics. What you lack, however, is the experience that's necessary to look professional.
That's OK if you're starting a business. Most of our clients have no idea how to run a website. That's fine, because that's not what their business is. If you're big, you can have dedicated professionals who will work on your website. If you aren't, there are companies like mine who will do it for you. We can make you look as good as the big guys because we are as good as the big guys. This is our whole business - just like the professionals who work for lare companies, we practice our trade every day.
So, my advice to these kids would be - hire people who know what they are doing. At a minimum, they are going to need the services of a copyeditor (to ensure that card and instructional text is clear, concise, and free of grammatical and spelling errors), a graphic designer (to prepare print-ready, professional graphics for the cards), and an accountant (business = accounting and taxes, two things that 13-year-olds tend not to be very good at).
Find people you can trust. Find people you can count on. Their professionalism will make you look professional.
"RPG gamers are quite used to dealing with the interactions of HUNDREDS of pages of rules."
;).
Yeah but then you might have the problem of ending up with a subset of "kids who like chemistry" and "Classic RPG gamer type kids". Both of which aren't very large sets
Anyway, I guess its worth a shot if they take the time and effort to do it well.
What if all the bad companies with bad ceos are lawyers, and you can't sue all of them?!?!
(english is not my native language, sorry) But acids and bases are NOT exceptions to the game! The wonderful world of chemistry is that everything can react with everything, but it might be very unstable. That is why Sodium Hydroxide doesn't just stay Sodium (s) in something close to water. It CAN be, but it won't, simply because it's unstable. If you'd extract all forms of energy from it, it'd stay Sodium (aq) + Hydroxide (aq) This game is just a way for the boy to earn money. Oh, and his ego gets a facelift too. Let me refer to the irritating use of "IQ" in his game: http://www.elementeo.com/thegame . "Brain power". Hah! The idea of learning while playing is once again great, but, as always, in a wrong form.
Your guild never heard of Ventrilo or Teamspeak??
1999...