starting a company in a weekend is an excellent exercise because there is NO TIME to argue about each decision. you just need to learn to roll with stuff as it comes and let go of your preconceptions regarding what the team is trying to do. every speech is an elevator speech. everything needs to be distilled into its essence. everyone needs to bring full energy full time.
in terms of best practice, we are unable to do the full amount of user research and usability testing that we are taught to believe necessary, but since we are doing everything in a couple of days, there will also be a lot of room for flexibility when we’re done. basically, we are creating a full working prototype of a business, and just launching it to test as we go. it is agile business creation. it is throwing us at the ground and making us run, and that is exactly the skill people need to develop in the tech world right now – just make things people. that is a form of research.

i’m having fun. :)

this startup weekend thing is really an awesome idea, and part of why i’m so excited about it is because i am increasingly finding myself saying things like “what i really need to do is just start a business that is basically a place for people to come together and start businesses”

and i realized i hadn’t said that here before, so…

i really just need to start blogging more little statements like that.
:)

listening to talk now. pizza soon. yay!

greetings from bloomington, people of the internet.

i arrived in town a few weeks ago under cover of friends whose circles overlap only somewhat peripherally with the HCI/Design/Informatics circles of my world, and since i tend to blog most consistently within the more techie circles, that’s the easy excuse for my silence since the new year.

the fuller story, however, is that i decided to take this hoosier hiatus not only because i am using this time to think about my plans from the perspective of finding work that puts my degree to good use, but also because i am growing increasingly convinced that the good uses that most attract me have to do with communities outside the hipster design bubble, and i want to reconnect with the non-university world of bloomington, which was the world that first led me to view this town as a home.

i am staying with good friends of mine whom i didn’t spend enough time with during school, playing with them and their kids, making up projects for myself in the name of my ongoing education, hacking out a little work back at the math department, and sincerely enjoying the chance to get my bearings for a while in a place that i know and love.

i haven’t felt too stressed about the question of reuniting with planet informatics, however, because right after i arrived i signed up for this: http://bloomington.startupweekend.com/ which is beginning in the room around me as i type. the school of informatics (principally kevin) is playing a major organizational role, and i’m really excited about it because it’s giving me the opportunity to merge my current personal business development goals, my love of design, and the larger-than-IU b-town that i am realizing i will always, at least in some fashion, call my home.

it’s a great opportunity to practice keeping the lights on in multiple areas of my personal and professional life, and i’m excited to see where it leads.

i should listen to the welcome talk for the weekend a bit now, so that’s this post.

i’ll be back soon.

um, hi there…
i have no excuse for not keeping everyone updated on my exploits over the past month, apart, i suppose, from the exploits themselves, which have kept me rather busy.

but that’s pretty lame.

i am writing today from palm beach gardens, FL, where i have spent the holidays with my mother and grandmother, and actually, i don’t have any updates for you beyond that skeletal announcement, sooo… maybe i should skip this part and go with more of a distraction-oriented technique…

is that a new sweater you’re wearing? because the color really suits you. you look ten years younger. i hardly recognize you. in fact, have we met? i think you need to send me your bank account information and the last four digits of your SSN, just so i can be sure you’re really who you say you are… and by the way i’m going to tahiti next week, can i send you a postcard?

:)

(don’t really send anything, grandma…

…but i’ll still send a postcard)

ok so anyway, a year ago i wrote a post describing a potential new end-of-year tradition – the compilation of a playlist; a soundtrack of sorts for the year gone by; a record, as i put it at the time, of “the songs that happened to stand out for me in a given year, be they new discoveries or old favorites that are somehow heard anew.”

i like this idea for lots of reasons, not the least of which that i have always found the compilation of mixes to be hella fun, and it turns out that picking out songs that trigger memories of the key events of the year gone by is a very enjoyable activity with quite a bit of reflective potential, so… good new year’s game! i did it again!

this year, however, i finally abandoned all pretense of ever intending to actually burn the finished product onto CD, and as a result there was no very strong incentive to limit my choices to a number that would fit easily within the memory requirements of antiquity. whether that led to a bloat of laziness or a blossoming of potential i shall leave for you to decide, but, whatever the verdict, if you decide to play along i shall increase your mp3 collection by 44 units, so i hope that there are at least one or two selections that help you kick off the year with a smile.

fwiw, 6 of the songs are actually the movements of one cello suite, so that kind of skews the tally, and in a few cases there are several songs in a row because they have been inseparably fused together in my memory as components of some pastiche of imagery and sound that i heard in my head at one point or another during the year, but have not yet fully discovered how to translate into this shared domain we know as the physical world. that is quite possibly a project for the year ahead, so… stay tuned for volume 3! :)

as it is, i offer you my year in music, 2007, zipped up for less frustrating downloading (but still passively time-intensive… go read someone else’s blog! drink tea!), ordered with one ear to a rough chronology and the other to pacing and flow. whether any of it shines through the cracks of my tinkering or not, i hear a story when i listen to these songs, and i am privileged to have the chance to share that story now with you.

enough words.

1. Ain’t Got No/I Got Life – Nina Simone
2. Superman – REM
3. Sneakin’ Out the Hospital – The Beastie Boys
4. Chapter 24 – Pink Floyd
5. Babe I’m Gonna Leave You – Led Zeppelin
6. Look at Miss Ohio – Gillian Welch
7. The Gloaming – Radiohead
8. The Only Difference Between Martyrdom and Suicide is Press Coverage – Panic at the Disco
9. Lotto – First Coat
10. Suite No. 1 in G: 1. Prelude – Johann Sebastian Bach/Boris Pergamenschikow
11. Find the River – REM
12. Suite No. 1 in G: 2. Allemande – Johann Sebastian Bach/Boris Pergamenschikow
13. Intermission – Panic at the Disco
14. Suite No. 1 in G: 3. Courante – Johann Sebastian Bach/Boris Pergamenschikow
15. delicate – damien rice
16. Suite No. 1 in G: 4. Sarabande – Johann Sebastian Bach/Boris Pergamenschikow
17. Hook – Blues Traveler
18. Suite No. 1 in G: 5. Menuett I + II – Johann Sebastian Bach/Boris Pergamenschikow
19. Fourth Time Around – Bob Dylan
20. Suite No. 1 in G: 6. Gigue – Johann Sebastian Bach/Boris Pergamenschikow
21. smaller rivers – Sam Prekop
22. I’m Free – The Who (Tommy)
23. Where Do They Make Balloons? – They Might Be Giants
24. Measuring Cups – Andrew Bird
25. cold water – damien rice
26. Chinese Translation – M Ward
27. April Come She Will – Simon and Garfunkel
28. Alpenglow – Victor Hanson Smith
29. Weatherman – First Coat
30. Singin in the Rain – Gene Kelly
31. Across the Universe – The Beatles
32. Saturday Sun -Nick Drake
33. Nude – Radiohead
34. Greetings in Braille – The Elected
35. It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding) – Bob Dylan
36. Is It Wicked Not To Care? – Belle and Sebastian
37. volcano – damien rice
38. I Am The Walrus – The Beatles
39. Such Great Heights – The Postal Service
40. Ramon – Laurie Anderson
41. Life in a Glasshouse – Radiohead
42. Fuel – Ani DiFranco
43. Blackbird – Bobby McFerrin

happy new year.

go read rice boy now.
so simple, so nuanced, so gorgeous.
i’m hooked.

i have officially failed to write a novel for NaNoWriMo.

sigh.

i did very much Start to write one, however, and i wrote several poems and made progress on short stories that i have been putting off for a very long time, so i do not consider the experiment a complete failure. the true test will be if i keep up writing every day.

that has been a “this-should-be-a-new-year’s-resolution” topic for a few years now, so i think 2008 will be the year, in tribute to my as-yet unborn novel.

i reach for the moon, i get the stars. :)

i am hereby moving my camera into my purse even though it takes up too much room, because keeping it in my backpack clearly doesn’t do enough to ensure that i have it when i want it.

i got back last night from a little trip to palm beach, FL, where my mother is living now and where she was just officially ordained as a unitarian universalist minister after many years of preparation and hard work. the ceremony was a big success, and it was nice to see and hear so many people telling my mom how cool she is, because they are right. :)

congratulations, reverend momma. i am proud of you.

[insert touching photograph here]

it was fun to see both of my parents – my dad flew down for the weekend and i realized that i hadn’t seen him in nearly two years! – and i am going to colorado and then florida again during the holidays, so there will be more time to catch up, which is good.

i also enjoyed seeing the ocean, and floating in it for a little while yesterday morning before we ate lunch and headed to the airport to send me back west. i have been to the pacific ocean a couple of times this year but i swear that the water in florida is warmer and bluer in november than the water in southern california even under the august sun, and the shells on the beach push some buttons that giant seaweed creatures still don’t quite reach, as much as i love them and as much as i learn to appreciate the beauty of rugged, rocky pacific views.

[insert super blue ocean shot here, followed by fun close-up of the broken shell section of the beach where i made little mosaics for a while]

the autumn weather in portland has made me hesitant to make too many rain jokes, lest i reinforce false stereotypes or tempt bad weather sprites to teach me to be careful what i ask for, but last night i flew in to heavy fog and drizzling rain, which continues today, so perhaps winter is starting to stake its claim on the PNW. flying into PDX at night is kind of a ripoff because you can’t see any of the mountains, which are absolutely stunning from the air. i had a window seat on both flights this time, too, and it was fun to fly over cities at night and try to guess where we were. it’s actually quite hard. i started wondering whether, as we enter the age of satellite photography on every desktop, a new dimension of urban planning will emerge to play with how we look from above.

so now i’m back, WAY behind on nanowrimo, and confronting the task of gathering and/or redistributing my portland material footprint before i head out for a while. i am both glad to be here and glad to be in motion. the west coast has set some deep hooks in me over the past eight months, and now i begin the task of determining which lines i want to sever and which i want to continue to play out, no matter which ocean i swim in next.

tonight lauren and tif celebrate their november birthdays and some time in the next day or so victor returns from his bowling and supercomputing convention, at which point he may or may not have energy for portland adventures that will most likely involve neither. and sharon and i are inventing a tofurky dance. and chakra wants me to make a pie. and there may be another boat? and i might be hijacking jonathan’s car?

hello, friday. another cup of coffee, anyone?

but it’s the best one i encountered this year by far.
i mean damn, that’s cool.

no, i don’t know the dude. the pic is immortalized on flickr.

thanks to the ReadyMade magazine blog for pointing the way.

i mean, how much sake does it take to be this holy freakin hilarious?

because that’s how much i want.
and a spicy tuna roll.
and some tea.

who’s in?

so lots of people do what i just did (and am doing now… MY META FRIES YOUR BRAIN!!) and say “hey it’d be cool if blah” and then nothing happens because making ideas happen is a skill that is much rarer than just making ideas up.

but the complexities of actual production and distribution aside, one of the things that keeps people from feeling compelled to invest much energy in their ideas is the fact that it’s hard to really gauge how ridiculous something is, and it’s hard to know how much things should cost.

i therefore present a fun web 2.0 challenge:
a website and associated blog-ready button a la rss, digg, del.icio.us, or technorati with interaction as follows:
P “the Rock” Rastinator is reading blogs at work and happens over kynthia’s sweet idea about a daylight schmavings time alarm clock. he clicks on the button below the post that says “I’d Buy That!” and a little box comes up that says:
Good Idea! I’d buy that for [dropdown menu – “actually, you’d have to pay me”, “less than $10”, “$10 – $25”, “$25 – $50”, “$50 – $100”, “lots!”].

maybe then there’s a follow up that says “Seriously?” and gives choices like – “i mean, maybe, if i already bought new outfits in secondlife that month”, “as long as i don’t get fired for reading your blog first, beeyotch”, “really truly”, and “if i’m lying you can have my firstborn child”.

it would also be fun to have sister services to handle responses like: “that already exists, dumbass” and “hey, that’s my idea!”
because those would undoubtedly crop up, and it would be sweet to start linking related ideas together because folks could join forces and/or throw themselves off of buildings because their life’s work has already been accomplished.

i’m not saying market research would be totally replaced, but it would give people some fun data to start with and i bet we’d see some really interesting stuff happening as a result.

and like all things intarwebbian, it would only get more interesting when other people made the next thing better.

apparently when i procrastinate when i know i should writing, i come up with ideas!
either i should stick with being a designer, or my entire graduate education has just been revealed as a huge diversionary plot by my subconscious…

i pick both!