A Walk on the Beach and A Strange Sign in Front of MIT

A Cold but Sunny Stroll
We took a walk on Kitsilano Beach today. After all, we couldn’t let this sunshine go to waste. However, the wind had other ideas. It was very chilly, reminding us that despite the fact that it is spring and all of the trees are blooming (and the city is showing some of its most gorgeous aspects), it’s still early spring, and we are, after all, in Canada, not Fort Lauderdale or Puerto Vallarta. I did bring the camera, though, and we even documented another brush with a Bald Eagle. The large bird even roosted for quite a while on a boat (called ‘Free to Roam’, of all things) in the False Creek Marina, where crows seemed to treat it with no respect whatsoever.

Interesting Items Back on Mass. Ave.
I sometimes read the blog infosthetics (meaning Information Aesthetics) for my other blog, drucker.ca, because I often deal with some of the same issues and subjects (visualization, information architecture, infographics, etc.)

A couple of days ago, however, they made note of a very odd piece of performance art that’s located at a spot that I often went by for about 15 years. It seems in front of MIT Building 1 (the one with the columns out front), on Mass Ave. in Cambridge, an artist named Leonardo Bonanni posted something that looked like a bus schedule. Except it’s not a bus schedule: It’s a “framed piece of paper listing the latest results on untimely deaths/suicides at MIT university.”

It looks like Mr. Bonanni has been busy. He’s a 1st Year PhD Student in the Tangible Media Group at the Media Lab, and was recently a finalist for the Kendall Square Interactive Design Competition, which appears to have been sponsored by Lyme Properties, the developer who build many of the Biotech Powerhouses that now dominate so much of East Cambridge.

Here’s a video of his proposal.

Kind of cool. Looks like the receiver of the very public cell phone text message on a huge text crawl was in a room at the Marriot, as far as I can tell from the animation. Many other projects of his are hosted by the Media Lab’s site.

It’s too bad that our paths never crossed while I was living so close by. I would have liked to met him.

M&M (Massive and Meetup)

John Bollwitt did an excellent job of describing (and photographing) the Massive Tech Conference this year. I took no pictures, as I was not in Journalist mode. I did take some notes, though. The only thing I’d add was that some of the Conference sessions upstairs (where I’d never been before at the Convention Centre) were pretty good. Opening remarks were by Leonard Brody, the founder of NowPublic (the impressive local startup that I learned about way back at my first Northern Voice — actually, Moose Camp 2006, to be precise), and also the author of “Everything I Need to Know About Business…I Learned from a Canadian” as well as “Innovation Nation: Canadian Leadership from Java to Jurassic Park”. The main thrust of his talk? That Canada is one of the most innovative, entrepreneurial, and fiscally well-positioned countries in the world, but often are our own worst enemy because of our self-image (modest, self-effacing, perhaps even self-deprecatory). He felt that Canada needs to get over this low self-esteem, make the most of our coming wealth from being the number 1 oil producer in the next decade (which I have to say I’m not completely in agreement with), and better reward small businesses and investors in those businesses. He offered equal parts praise and criticism for Canada, and probably got many attendees thinking about what we have here, as well as what we might have. The statistics and findings he quoted alone (and I wish I’d taken down more of them) were surprising. Examples: Canada has twice the rate of entrepreneurs as the US. Canada is in the best fiscal shape of the G8. Canada’s reputation among other countries, or rather, it’s ‘brand’ is ‘people’, and is decidedly more positive than that of the USA (surprise, surprise).

Cybele Negris, who I know from work as the COO of Webnames, gave a very good overview of the new .mobi domain for cell phones; not too technical, not too sales-y. This is a hard thing to do, since it’s a relatively new top-level domain (like .com or .net) and still within the realm of techies, but shouldn’t be. The main issue is that North America has to catch up with Asia in both adopting it, and offering wireless data plans that don’t charge by the byte. At the end of her talk she announced that Webnames was offering everyone at the show a free domain registration (a nice promotion as this could in some cases be worth the cost of going to the show).

As for the show floor for me, I was extremely pleased with the reaction to my search for employment. I have a stack of business cards in front of me from various potential employers and recruiting firms , and many of them have ‘Send Resumé’ written on them. I handed out about 6 or 7 copies of the resumé to various people on the show floor. It was not a ‘feeding frenzy’, but I definitely heard the message many times that many businesses were hungry for hi-tech workers, and that my skills and experience were extremely valuable. In the coming weeks and months we’ll see how that plays out. For now, the morning after, I’d say that I’m very encouraged by what I saw, the people at the booths who I talked to, and the general employment picture of Vancouver.

Party at the Finish Line
After a long day of meeting strangers (for the most part), it was nice to relax and talk to some friends. The monthly blogger meetup was at The Whip, a bar/restaurant at Main and Sixth (East Sixth, just barely). Despite the S&M sounding name, it was comfortable and a good venue for the 9 of us who met at about 7PM.
The topics included the latest fad(?): Twitter, how to maintain (or document) your good reputation online, google bombing, the Streisand effect, and what one post ever got the most traffic (whether you’re happy about it or not). Notable in her absence was Isabella, the group’s organizer, because she was attending to her daughter giving birth (which some of us learned via twitter!). After imbibing and talking till about 10, we all shuffled off, in some cases to continue the conversations via blogs or twitter.

Now that I think about it, it was quite a contrast from the day I went to Massive in 2005. At the party after that show, I didn’t know a soul (but did my best). Last night, I knew everyone around the table, either online or offline. What a difference 2 years can make.

On Your Mark, Get Set, Network!

Tomorrow, at the Vancouver Convention Centre by the Waterfront, the Massive Technology Show returns to Vancouver. This show means a little bit more to me than other trade shows. When we were considering moving to Vancouver, it was the Massive show that was the reason that we made our first exploratory trip here from Boston, so that I could get the feel of the local business climate, and perhaps even find a job. We also used the visit to look for a place to live. It’s a good thing we did. The show not only ended up putting me in touch with my first employer (and Provincial Nominee sponsor), but a chance chat with someone in the Beer Garden at the end of the show resulted in us locating (and eventually purchasing) the condo where we now live. It’s rare that an industry show can become a life-changing event, but that’s exactly what the 2005 Massive Technology Show ended up being for me.

So, now it’s two years later, and I’m once again looking for a job, but this time I’ve got lot more knowledge about the area, Canadian work experience, and most importantly, Permanent Resident status. I’m hoping that this year’s show proves as helpful as it was in 2005.

I’ve got a couple dozen print copies of my resumé, have printed up new business cards, and even established a business blog (in which I’ve got a few entries already) in my area of expertise. Today I got a haircut. Vancouver Businesses looking for a User Interface Designer, here I come!

Best Company Video Ever

I never had much respect for Kodak, especially when I lived in their company town of Rochester, NY (in fact, I used to say that the reason they located there was simply the fact that the city is so dark that it’s the one place in the US where you can develop film outdoors).

However, I have to admit, this video done for employees absolutely blew me away:

Turn the Schmaltz up to 11! Genius!

What Were They Thinking?

I know I’m of a tiny minority of people who listen to CBC2 in the morning. Therefore this is probably going to be irrelevant to most people. Oh well, I’m going to shout anyway.

WHAT THE HELL HAVE THEY DONE TO CBC2?

This past week, there have been big changes in CBC2. For those not familiar, this is the FM CBC, which, up until now, was Classical music and some talk in the morning, more Classical and some Jazz in the evening, and various different programs in the evening with an emphasis on Jazz. On Saturday mornings there is the venerable Vinyl Café, which sounds suspiciously to these NPR-raised ears like A Prairie Home Companion, but that’s not relevant here.

Somewhere in the CBC, they decided that CBC2 was to be about music. Music, music and little else. In fact, they have a new slogan, CBC2: Wherever Music Takes You (which is not only meaningless, but smacks of focus-group tested marketing pablum).

So how does this new commitment to more music play out? It used to be that you got a good deal of music, probably about 40 minutes worth per hour, but you also got a little local news, national news, weather, some sports scores, and a pleasantly chatty Arts Report with Joe Cummings as he bantered with Tom Allen over the current Arts scene or event.

That’s all changed. Now, there is 57 minutes of music, followed by an unbelievably short National news report on the hour. There is no local news or weather, no sports scores, no arts coverage. There is no Joe Cummings, which means that for the vast majority of each hour, Tom Allen is left to carry Music and Company on his own. Now, I think the world of Tom Allen. In fact, I’ve lauded him in many of these pages as probably the best Classical DJ on the planet. But I can tell that he is having a hard time with the new format. He can’t do as much research on the selections, and it shows. What’s more, it just gets too intense. You need more of a break in the morning from solid music. At the end of the 2 minute and 50 second newscast, you get a message saying to tune into CBC1 to hear more news. Otherwise, it’s another 57 minutes of music before any relief. There’s no balance whatsoever.

So that’s the new segregationist approach to the CBC. If you want talk, tune into CBC1 (which is, of course on the AM dial, and all but impossible to receive in our building, so I have to stream it from the Internet; the sound quality is horrific because of all the compression from the AM band plus digital conversion and down-sampling.) Otherwise, you’re out of luck. You’ll get music and little in the way of voice ‘interruption’, aside from Tom’s DJ work.

Was the CBC thinking that people who listen to Classical music in the morning don’t want to hear the news of the day? That they don’t care what the weather forecast is? That they don’t care who won in hockey last night? That they don’t want an Arts Report?

I’m afraid that CBC2 is falling into the same trap that so many American Classical music stations fell into over the years, that Classical music should be treated as a pleasant wallpaper for people, a lulling doctor’s waiting room for the day. If that’s the case, I’ve got news for you, CBC: Those stations usually don’t last long. You’ll need the support of some set of posh car dealers, carpet merchants, and other luxury merchandisers who’ll want some recognition, and you’ll steadily narrow the programming diet until it’s nearly all Vivaldi’s The Seasons and Pachelbel’s Canon as you die a slow death.

I learned a few weeks ago from local CBC reporter Todd Maffin that the CBC hasn’t gotten a raise in the budget for a long time. I don’t know if these changes are budget-driven. If so, I hope that they are not driving the CBC2 into oblivion the way that NPR has made Classical music almost nonexistent (that network is nearly all News and Current Events). I would like to think that these were just misguided changes and that they will see the error of their ways. I’m not holding my breath, though.

So now, we have to do all sorts of work just to find out the weather forecast and a little bit more about what’s going on in the world. It would be nice to do this without having to dive into top-40 or all-talk-all-the-time. And, of course, there’s TV, but that just seems mind-numbing so early in the day.

All in all, this is definitely a change for the worse, at least for our mornings.