Upcoming Events and Talks

There are some excit­ing days ahead, and I’ve been spend­ing a lot of time get­ting pre­pared. First of all, in less than a week, Bar­Camp Van­cou­ver 2010 takes place on Novem­ber 19^th-20^th at the new loca­tion of the Wal­dorf Hotel, just to the East of down­town. It’s a unique venue, com­plete with the city’s most spec­tac­u­lar vin­tage 1950s Tiki bar and it’s recently been ren­o­vated and is ready to host events. I’ve put together a pre­sen­ta­tion and demo called: Play­ing with Future Tele­vi­sion, What I learned Mess­ing Around with Plex 0.9. I’m a huge fan (per­haps even a fanatic) of this free soft­ware that turns any Mac (Intel only) into a Media Cen­ter. Built orig­i­nally from the XBMC (XBox Media Cen­ter) project, but now an inde­pen­dent ini­tia­tive, Plex includes a gor­geous (and skinnable/customizable) TV inter­face (that like Apple’s own Front Row, works with a remote), an omniv­o­rous video player that can han­dle most of the video for­mats I’ve ever come across, iTunes and iPhoto con­nec­tiv­ity out of the box, plu­g­ins that add the abil­ity to stream media from all sorts of places: YouTube, Shout­cast, Hulu and Pan­dora if you’re in the US — although I have found a sneaky workaround — Apple Movie Trail­ers, MSNBC, and again, if you’re in the US, Net­flix. (That last ser­vice ought to work in Canada as well, because we now get Netflix…sort of, but the US plu­gin won’t work in Canada, and the com­pany has not offered any sup­port for devel­op­ers try­ing to use their API in Canada, despite the cries of protest from the small but vocal group of Cana­dian Plex users and devel­op­ers.) So that’s my con­tri­bu­tion, and I’m also look­ing for­ward to pre­sen­ta­tions by Kris Krug on iPhone pho­tog­ra­phy and John Biehler and Duane Storey on Arduino.

But Wait, There’s More…

A few days after Bar­Camp, I’ll be doing another pre­sen­ta­tion, on a com­pletely dif­fer­ent topic. It’s enti­tled “User Expe­ri­ence Design for Word­Press Web Sites: Does Your Blog Design Sup­port Your Con­tent?”, and I’ll be pre­sent­ing it at the Novem­ber meet­ing of The Van­cou­ver Word­Press Meetup Group at The Net­work Hub, a co-working space in down­town Van­cou­ver. I’ve been doing a ton of research and work on this pre­sen­ta­tion, so I’m look­ing for­ward to giv­ing it. The atten­dance so far is com­pletely full, with a wait­ing list of over 16 peo­ple as I write this. Wow.

Back In the Saddle

I’ve learned what it’s like to get out of the habit of writ­ing in this blog. For me, at least, just start­ing again has been excru­ci­at­ing.  Part of the prob­lem is the first few paragraphs. I’ve been try­ing to invent a clever, or unique way of resum­ing, but there doesn’t seem to be any­thing I can do that’s novel, witty or deliv­ers a sat­is­fac­tory expla­na­tion as to why I’ve not added any­thing here since we were on the beach in Hoi An, Viet­nam. I’ve been told that you should never, never apol­o­gize for not hav­ing writ­ten in a blog for quite some time. In fact, some par­tic­u­larly pathetic blogs are noth­ing but a series of these ‘O-I’m-so-sorry-I-haven’t-written-lately’ posts. So there, no apologies.

OK, since I’m break­ing a long, awk­ward silence at this table, I’m going to clear my throat and move the con­ver­sa­tion back to you. So, what have you been doing for the past 2 months, dear reader? Noth­ing much?

With no smi­ley equiv­a­lent of a shrug, I’m just going to pick up with the here and now, and prob­a­bly will fill in some of the details about the past 10 weeks or so in due course.

So, from the here and now front… Today:

The Van­dusen Gar­den Sale

Pam, a friend of ours and I all got up early this morn­ing and drove down Oak street and parked about a block before the entrance. Before we got out of the car, there were 4–5 cars pulling in behind us along Oak! We got in line, and soon the rain started. About a half hour later, they opened the doors, and we all sloshed in, many folks with wag­ons, carts and bas­kets. For us, this year was herb year. We picked up some sweet basil, Thai basil, Rose­mary, Viet­namese corian­der and thyme. I’ll be cook­ing with most of that, and hope­fully the herbs will grow all sum­mer enough to keep up with my har­vest­ing them. We found out at the check­out that any­thing edi­ble (i.e. herbs) was tax-free! Note: Oddly enough, we learned that manure is also tax-free, although I have no idea why.
We were in and out within about 2 hours, and Pam is repot­ting some of the plants now. Good times.

Good-bye to the Oughts

While the past year has been good, I must admit that I’m in com­plete agree­ment with those like Time Mag­a­zine, who dubbed the first 10 years of 2000 as The Decade from Hell. It was a decade that belonged to Bush, whose ascen­dancy to the White House I have often said was the worst sin­gle event in US His­tory. It was for us, a great leap into the unknown, leav­ing the city of Boston and the coun­try of our births. It was def­i­nitely scary in the begin­ning, but we’ve slowly climbed back, at least in terms of our finances, to where we were when we left, more or less. We dodged much of the hous­ing bub­ble, and although Pam and I both saw time out of the work force, I sus­pect that would have been just as bad (or worse) if we had stayed.

After the elec­tion of Obama, many peo­ple have asked us if we were con­sid­er­ing return­ing to the US. After all, we were ‘Bush Dodgers’, accord­ing to some. Well, the ridicu­lous debate on Health Care reform had us con­stantly shak­ing our heads in bewil­der­ment. The fact that the US still fails to acknowl­edge health care as a human right (like the ones of reli­gion and guns that they extoll so often), is some­thing we’ll never under­stand. The lack of acknowl­edge­ment that the pro­lif­er­a­tion of guns is caus­ing more and more vio­lence and death through­out Amer­ica is also baf­fling to us. When­ever we see peo­ple being inter­viewed on the US evening news con­stantly refer to God, their belief in reli­gion and other mag­i­cal think­ing also seems fur­ther and fur­ther from us. Nope, we’re not going back to all of that.

Good-bye to 2009, Then

Look­ing back on just this year, I do have some events that I’ll remem­ber fondly. Here’s a brief list:

1. The Con­cert of works for and by Dutch com­poser Louis Andriessen for his 70^th birth­day. Back in April, I got to see and hear him (and one of his works), as he rem­i­nisced about per­for­mances by air­port run­ways and mused that the bass line in Bach Chorale Pre­ludes is “like a cow moo­ing, inter­rupt­ing chirp­ing birds”.
2. Rid­ing the brand spank­ing new Canada­Line all day on my Birth­day, and play­ing Foursquare (and ‘tourist in my own town’) as I went all the way from the south of Rich­mond to North Van­cou­ver with­out burn­ing any gaso­line (not count­ing the fuel on the Seabus).
3. Actu­ally not one but sev­eral fun and stim­u­lat­ing Mee­tups for blog­gers, graphic design­ers and Social Media folks. Sev­eral were at Caeli’s Pub, which has become one of the most pop­u­lar social watering-holes in town.
4. An after-hours tour of the newly-renovated Arc­tic Ocean exhibit of the Van­cou­ver Aquar­ium as part of the local chap­ter of the Inter­ac­tion Design Asso­ci­a­tion (IXDA)
5. Excel­lent meals at Provence at Mari­na­side, a tea (thanks to Tiny Bites) at the Fish House in Stan­ley Park and this past week, a warm­ing Hot Pot (Shabu Shabu) at a new Korean Restau­rant, Dae Bak Bön Ga, on 4^th Avenue in Kitsilano.
6. The Inau­gu­ra­tion of Barack Obama (of course)
7. Bar­Cam­p­Van­cou­ver, which was a blast this year at Dis­cov­ery Parks.
8. Help­ing to run and par­tic­i­pate in UXCam­p­Van­cou­ver, the first User Expe­ri­ence ‘uncon­fer­ence’ in the Van­cou­ver area. Many thanks to Karen Parker for pro­vid­ing the lead­er­ship and guid­ance. Next year, it will be even big­ger and bet­ter. This was, per­haps, the big high­light of the year for me.

And a few sad losses:

1. The loss of Work­space, a mar­velous public/private space that hosted many great techie get-togethers. It was the clos­est thing to a ‘par­lor’ that the Geek Scene in Van­cou­ver had. I’m hop­ing that another will come, but some­times these things take time to replace.
2. The clos­ing of a bunch of restau­rants: Chow (which I reviewed in this blog), O Thai (which was replaced by another Thai restau­rant in the same spot that is decid­edly poorer), The Fish Café (on 4^th Avenue in Kit­si­lano), and a few oth­ers that I for­get at the moment (maybe for that rea­son, they should have closed).

When I look back on 2009, I know that I will sadly have to note that it was the year that Becca Ham­mann died (see pre­vi­ous entry), and it will be some time before I am used to that fact.

I also note the birth of many babies by friends and rel­a­tives, and once again, our orchid is blooming.

My next post, will be about next year. Oh look: the clock says that it’s here already. Well, come in, 2010. Make your­self at home.

My BarCamp Wrap-Up

It takes some time to digest a Bar­Camp. For me, it was about 3 to 5 pre­sen­ta­tions and dis­cus­sions, pep­pered with 10–20 great con­ver­sa­tions, sprin­kled with a half a dozen reunions and many other new intro­duc­tions. It also had a cou­ple sur­prises: some of the ses­sions I thought were going to take place were can­celled (usu­ally at the deci­sion of the presenters/attendees), but on the other hand, some that I hadn’t known about were announced in the morn­ing. David Saslav’s remote ses­sion regard­ing Cho­rus America’s study on the effects of Choral Singing on School­child­ren and Adults did take place, and came off very well, despite the fact that he was pre­sent­ing from his home in San Fran­cisco via Skype video. I attended two dif­fer­ent design work­shops. In one, I col­lab­o­rated with a group (1 among sev­eral oth­ers) in a ‘Design Char­rette’  to work on the prob­lem of traf­fic acci­dents along the stretch of East Hast­ings as it cuts through the Down­town East Side of Van­cou­ver. I also par­tic­i­pated in J. Karen Parker’s ses­sion on Paper pro­to­typ­ing, where I noticed a pre­pon­der­ance of  touch­screen solu­tions to every­day gad­gets, appli­ances and obsta­cles (like dig­i­tal cam­eras, microwave ovens, and sky­train ticket dis­pensers). What the iPhone hath wrought! While I think our UI sug­ges­tions to improve the ticket dis­pens­ing prob­lems was pretty good, I really loved another group’s solu­tion to a microwave: make the whole oven front a large touch­screen, with a large cir­cu­lar slider/indicator, through which you can see your food cook­ing. As Karen noted, in this day and age where the com­pet­i­tive advan­tages of good design can some­times get you ahead in the mar­ket­place, a really snazzy microwave touch-screen con­trol might be some­thing they should look at!

I also got to a ses­sion on Day Trad­ing using a com­bi­na­tion of  com­puter soft­ware, twit­ter, and some knowl­edge about how peo­ple behave. I can’t say that I’ll be doing much of that soon, but it was really intrigu­ing to hear how some are doing it these days. Another ses­sion involved a more com­mon topic: Hap­pi­ness. Here, Inter­net Mar­keter Ray Kanani asked some pro­vok­ing ques­tions about what makes us happy, and how adver­tis­ers try to sub­vert and direct our desires.  Far from being a loose and vague ses­sion, it ended up being an intense dis­cus­sion about what each of us is look­ing for in life, and whether we could ben­e­fit from being hope­ful, sat­is­fied, cyn­i­cal or none of the above. We could have eas­ily taken twice the ses­sion to exam­ine the sub­ject, and I almost think there should be a Hap­pi­ness­Camp about all of the var­i­ous facets of the sub­ject (attended by, wait for it…Happy Campers!)

Finally, a ses­sion near the mid­dle of the day was one of the ones I was in fact wait­ing for; an update and con­ver­sa­tion, led by Boris Mann (one of Vancouver’s most well-connected and influ­en­tial techies), about the var­i­ous new venues and offered resources in town that are jump­ing in to fill the void left by the demise of Work­Space. Roland Tanglao, recorded the ses­sion, so I was able to lis­ten to it once more to make sure I got all of the 45 min­utes of sub­jects and places men­tioned by the large gath­er­ing of con­cerned people.

I’m happy to say that for me, at least, the day seemed to go smoothly, the sched­ule and pac­ing seemed to work well, lunch was tasty (and there was enough food and cof­fee), the Dis­cov­ery Parks venue was excel­lent, and there was a notice­able ‘good vibe’ about the day. I believe that the many ‘first time’ Bar­Camp atten­dees prob­a­bly got a good intro­duc­tion to this very spe­cial meet­ing of minds.  I’m now proud to say I con­sider myself a vet­eran of Bar­Camp, and I’m even more proud to have been able to work with such a great group of vol­un­teers this year. They  helped plan, run and man­age the event, which was a suc­cess in many ways.

Update: Check out this awe­some Bar­Camp comic, cre­ated from pho­tos taken that day.

Imminent BarCamp

Tomor­row is a big day. About 300 or so peo­ple are going to con­verge at an office park not far from here, The Dis­cov­ery Parks build­ing (old QLT build­ing) at 887 Great North­ern Way. We are all, once again par­tic­i­pat­ing in the annual Bar­Cam­p­Van­cou­ver, an ‘uncon­fer­ence’ and part of an inter­na­tional net­work of sim­i­lar con­fer­ences, “born from the desire for peo­ple to share and learn in an open envi­ron­ment.” In a Bar­Camp, (a move­ment that started in 2005). It’s hard for me to believe that the first Bar­Camp (in Palo Alto, in August of that year) was orga­nized from con­cept to event,  in less then a week, because this year I’ve been involved in the orga­ni­za­tional plan­ning of the event, and I can tell you that it took us longer than a week to orga­nize this one (more like sev­eral months).

I like to think that I have a lot of smart and inter­est­ing friends. I’m very much look­ing for­ward to some of these pre­sen­ta­tions, includ­ing a remote pre­sen­ta­tion via Skype from my child­hood friend David Saslav, who is lead­ing a dis­cus­sion (from San Fran­cisco) on “how choral singing makes you smarter and improves mem­ory”. Not only is this a topic near and dear to me, but I’m also fas­ci­nated by the idea of a remote and inter­ac­tive pre­sen­ta­tion at a con­fer­ence — hope it all works! Other top­ics dur­ing the day range from Data Min­ing Twit­ter, to how sto­ry­telling is remak­ing video games, to a pub­lic dis­cus­sion of how we are going to per­haps fill the hole cre­ated in the Van­cou­ver Tech scene by the demise of WorkSpace.

If you are in the area, have a free day this Sat­ur­day, and are inter­ested in a day of stim­u­lat­ing pre­sen­ta­tions and dis­cus­sions, head on over to Dis­cov­ery Parks on Great North­ern Way. As I always say about Bar­Camp, it proves that every­body is an expert in some­thing, and hang­ing around experts can def­i­nitely expand your mind and make your day.