David Seah - Design, Development, Inspiration, Empowerment

Geek Knowledge Sharing @ Barcamp Manchester (NH, USA)

2008-12-04 17:17:34-05:00

This is a belated announcement about Barcamp Manchester 2008, the free self-organizing tech conference spearheaded by uber-networkers and buddies Ian and Kelley Muir. It's happening Dec 6th, 2008 at UNH Manchester at 400 Commercial Street. That's thiscoming Saturday, starting at 9:30AM and finishing up at 5:00PM. Lunch is provided for registered attendees.

I'm not sure what to expect this time around, as I haven't been involved at all with it this year. Nevertheless, this Saturday I'll be breaking my hermitage to check out the local technology / internet / social media scene here in New Hampshire. There should be a few Barcamp Boston people there too. I'm looking forward to a mellow, informative time (and trying out my newish 50mm lens).

WHAT IS BARCAMP?

If you're not familiar with the Barcamp concept, it's a kind of informal gathering of people interested in the same topics. The organizers provide the venue and food, the costs are picked up by sponsors, and everyone else gets to attend for free. At the beginning of the conference, a big sheet of paper is put on the wall and people write in what they'd like to talk about during blocked-out times, and then people go to the ones that interest them. Usually there's places to hang out and talk or do things, which is part of the great appeal of events like this.

WHO'S COMING & REGISTRATION

You can get an idea of who's attending by looking at the Barcamp Manchester Registration Wiki Page. I see a bunch of web developers, some designers, a few senior technology people, and some bloggers right now. You can also check out the Upcoming.Org and Facebook Event Listing. Free lunch, meet a bunch of people in the area who are into creative and entrpreneurial uses of technology...not a bad way to spend a day.

Also, people from Massachusetts can take advantage of New Hampshire's sales-tax free shopping :-)

Groundhog Day Resolutions 2008: Closing Out With Charlie Brown

2008-11-11 17:55:42-05:00

Today is Veteran's Day, November 11, which also happens to be the last "official" day of Groundhog Day Resolutions Reviews 2008. At this point, the American High Holidays--Thanksgiving through New Years Day--loom over me. so I rest my side ambitions until February 2nd. The original idea behind Ground Hog Day resolutions is that on January 1st, the traditional time of making resolutions, I'm so tired from the holidays that I'm still catching up with everything I didn't finish last year; I need some time to chill and reflect. Besides, Ground Hog Day is my favorite holiday, and it is under-celebrated.

Fractal Patterns of Perceived Failure and Recovery

2008 was the second year I launched GHDRs, and I maintained the follow up review days for March, April, May, June, and July. It was a mixed run, largely one of disappointment masked by the power of positive thinking ;-)

After July, I decided to go on blogging hiatus due to an increased project load (largely mental, in retrospect), and suspended my GHDR Review Days at the same time. When I review the wistfully-optimistic first months of 2008, I find the following themes appearing:

March: The acute need to focus, to attain mobility, and to battle the forces of loneliness.
April: The recognition that I needed to be more specific to achieve goals. Also, the decision to reduce my material needs (a necessary aspect of mobility), and to commit to writing as a vocation, whatever that means.
May: Why oh why do I lack motivation? Theorizing on internal and external sources of said motivation. Gah!
June: Acceptance that there are certain "go-getter" attributes I lack, a decision to find alternate routes other than the "just do it" approach.
July: Ground down, I rediscover part of my core, and am surprised to find what's there.

If this sounds familiar, it's probably because last week's Productivity Reboot repeats the entire cycle of fevered commitment - perceived failure - diagnosis - acceptance - return to core - re-dedication. If I were to look back at the 1200+ blog posts I've written over the past three years, I am pretty sure that I'd see the same cycle repeated, fractal-like, in everything I do. This I find fascinating, and at the same time it's kind of alarming because at first glance it seems that I'm not going anywhere. Yikes! Have I discovered my predestined pattern of doom?

Sparky to the Rescue

I flew to California last Sunday for a week of on-site work with Inquirium, which I look forward to for the shared working environment. While waiting for a change of plane at Chicago Midway, I happened upon Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography by David Michaelis. Although I had enjoyed Peanuts as a child, I had never known much about the cartoonist Schulz himself and had mentally categorized him as "too popular to be interesting, coasting on past success". However, seeing the book reminded me of my buddy Brad, who in the early days of our acquaintance had been working hard to get into a cartoon syndicate, and I decided to pick up the book to gain some insight. What I gleaned from my reading was profound insight into my own nature, by gaining a reference point of understanding about the nature of ambition and self-doubt.

Charles M. Schulz, for all his success in life, was a man who seemingly kept himself from feeling actual happiness. He was a shy boy raised by emotionally-distant parents who demonstrated their love through duty, hiding their own insecurities behind thick walls of silent denial. Highly intelligent, talented but surrounded by people who couldn't imagine--and therefore couldn't emotionally support--the notion of cartooning for a living, he nevertheless was lucky enough to find himself in employ of a company that allowed him to mature his drawing as an unwitting means to express his own pantheon of insecurities; the book is liberally illustrated with strips that echo the goings-on of his life. Throughout his life, he insisted on thinking of himself as a regular guy from Minnesota who had done OK with a modicum of talent, though underneath the surface he was highly ambitious and competitive to the point of meanness. He held grudges against the people who he perceived to have bullied, slighted, or belittled him. When he was a child, his own doubts and insecurities were fed by people who he later realized were limited in their life perspective and experience, and despite his rise to massive success he just could not accept that he'd made it and was adored by millions. Although a gracious and generous person in spirit, he had a constant need for affirmation; without his cartoon, he said, "he would be dead." He died in 2000, and one of his last interviews regarding how he viewed his life achievements produced a statement that struck me rather well. Paraphrased: "I took the talent I had and did not waste it." Producing his comic strip was an intensely personal affair; he did not seek help or advice on his work, because in his mind it was the one thing that he did himself that provided affirmation that he was doing something right.

I can see a lot of parallels between myself and Schulz's conflicts about his desire for understanding, for affirmation, and being the best while being in conflict with his Midwestern values of being humble and unassuming. Instead of rationalizing them away, as I've been trying to do, Schulz actively appeared to embrace them, using his unhappiness to drive his muse. What's interesting too is that the biography makes a point of distinguishing unhappiness from depression. I still can't quite wrap my head around the distinction, but to be depressed I gather is to not be able to muster the energy to do anything, while unhappiness is something less debilitating. In my own case, I am feeling similar doubts about my direction, and I am also beset by desires to be the best at what I do for recognition by the world. I want a calling, and I don't want to fail. At the same time, I wonder if I am being immodest and prideful in a way that will damage my soul or, at the very least, bite me in my hypocritical ass: I want to be a good person, but I also want to be the best. And like Schulz, I want to the be the sole author of my creations, because this provides me with affirmation that I am capable of doing something right as well.

After reading the biography, I was struck by a few thoughts:

Schulz, for all his insecurities, persevered through his unhappiness and consistently produced work day-in, and day-out. What drove him was an ideal of customer service he had absorbed from his father, a barber who meticulously found comfort in the daily routine of giving his customers individual attention. In time, Schulz worked it out and found success. My own belief that producing tangible things as a means to create opportunities and connections with people is similar; consistent production of items of value, as appraised by other people, is very important to me. Otherwise, how do people know what you're capable of?
Schulz belated matured, growing out of his boyish ways as he took on responsibilities in WWII. He became a well-liked squad leader because of his intelligence, competence with weapons, and ability to listen to people who learned they could come to him. This is a model of leadership that I like, and it mirrors the sentiments I've been reading about in Seth Godin's Tribes (I have 3 copies of that book now, one for me, and two for loaning to people).
If someone as massively successful as Charles Schulz could be deeply unhappy and beset by numerous demons, at least I was in good company. I lack the ability to hold a grudge for very long, and I'm not really that unhappy or depressed at all. But I am at times lonely and isolated, and seek affirmation and understanding. It would be great if I could find that affirmation in myself and be done with it, but there's something else missing. However, I don't want to be soooo dependent on external affirmation that I am a slave to it; reading Schulz's biography has put that scenario into perspective, and I want nothing to do with it. That is itself a self-strengthening realization.
There is a commitment to excellence in Schulz's work, both artistically and in the pursuit of deeper truths. When he first started attempting syndication in the early 1950s, people tried to get him to steer his creations in more "popular" directions; his own mother suggested that he needed to draw sexier girls. But Sparky stuck to his guns, and when Peanuts (nee "Li'l Folks") debuted in the 1950s, his work was regarded as a kind of anomaly in comics of the time. His audience grew steadily, then explosively, over the next 25 years, and it is (I imagine) because his work wasn't made to appease the surface desires of a large audience, but because he constantly pursued personal truths in himself and in his observations of the times. His art was the means through which he strove to portray these truths as clearly as possible. For myself as a blogger and writer, I've struggled with the ideas of writing shorter, easier-to-digest, more digg-able, top-ten list style posts for the purpose of growing audience, but I don't. I'm well aware that I could write shorter and more concise articles, but there is something about the way that I write now that is truthful to myself; creating shorter articles that jump right to the point is a different product entirely, one that will come later. I am still very much in my formative years as a writer, deciding what truths matter to me, and learning to express them to unknown people far away. My best days are yet to come; this is the lesson I've learned from Schulz's biography. Artistically, I now have the sense of purpose that I need to keep doing what I'm doing.

What does this have to do with Ground Hog Resolutions? I think they've evolved into something else. I mentioned that Ground Hog's Day is one of my favorite holidays, and this is partly because of the movie Groundhog Day, which is a fantastical movie about self-realization and improvement. In the movie, Bill Murray's self-centered character moves from surface cynicism to something deeply truthful about himself and his needs. It's the continual pursuit of these personal truths that, I suspect, drive me. I am compelled to follow them. I have no idea what kind of "business case" I can make for this, but I am making a bet that if I continue to express these truths through my writing, design, and personal interactions, I'll be OK. And so, I can distill all my future Ground Hog Day Resolutions into a single Master Resolution that goes something like this:

Seek the truthful essence, and make it artfully visible so others can see it too.

So long as I do that every day, in some form, I'll be doing what I'm supposed to be doing, the equivalent of Sparky Schulz getting up every morning and producing his strip for 50 years.

Love Styles and My Two Guts

2008-10-31 18:23:01-05:00

Although I was born in New Jersey, I spent a formative part of my youth was as a missionary kid overseas. As soon as I got back to The States for college, I stopped going to church because I didn't like the petty political aspects of organized religion. Over the past several years, however, I've been noticing that many of the "good" people I've been coming across are Christian, are not boring, and are not trying to recruit my soul so my body will pad the pews. A few nights ago I had a really excellent time chatting with a Christian friend of mine who is active in several churches, so I thought I'd brush up on my understanding of Christian fundamentals via Wikipedia. Serendipitously, I came across the mention of C.S. "Chronicles of Narnia" Lewis' book The Four Loves, which "explores the nature of love from a Christian perspective".

It wasn't Lewis' opinion that I found interesting; rather it was the Greek source material regarding the nature of love. In today's usage of the word, "love" is used as a kind of catch-all phrase. The Greek philosophers (modern Greek too, for that matter) have more words for it, describing a range of human emotional connections from the superficial to the sublime. Browsing through the concepts of agape, storge, philia and eros was very educational. And I saw answers to one of the current great conundrums of my life: the lack of a romantic partner:

what I believed

Like many single guys, I'm searching for "romantic love", but have of late been rather discouraged at the seeming impossibility of finding that magic combination of attraction, excitement, compatibility, and contentment. Part of this despair, I suspect, has been the worry that I don't really know what romantic love is. At some point I decided, like many people do, to have faith, create situations that I can enjoy and share, and above all trust my gut. However, while the gut may react strongly, it's still up to the brain to figure out what to do about it. On top of that, I think there are at least two components of my gut:

The emotional gut, which I don't question--I'm either intrigued or I'm not.
The thoughtful gut, which I think of as intuition. Intuition, however, is a kind of crap shoot based on what we've experienced before (finding patterns) and what our beliefs/expectations of how things "should work". Having browsed through these different love descriptions, I can see the nature of my own limiting beliefs about what "true love" is, and perhaps can now grow beyond them.

I tend to believe in authentic connections between people; a great deal of my design work and emphasis on story-based inquiry is my professional attempt to create them. Naturally, I want my partner and lover to also possess a "true connection" with me, and I very strongly identify such connections with the spirit of friendship. I have fantastic, amazing friends, and I wouldn't be a tenth of the person I am today if we didn't have that critical mutual inspiration, respect, and support. My exploration of the topic of love led me to Aristotle's deconstruction of friendship into three types: friendships of utility, friendships of pleasure of company, and friendships of the good. The latter, which is described in English as "true friendship", is friendship that is based on the enjoyment of each other's character. This is really what I look for in people and in myself; everything else that is positive flows from that. As I have been blessed to have many true friends throughout my life, I expect my romantic partner to also be my true friend. Together we will create the story of our life as characters in a book of our own making, testing our mettle against negative forces and overcoming multitudinous obstacles together, secure in our love and affection for each other, and passionately living. This is the baseline of interaction I already have with my best friends; how can I settle for anything less? It seemed like a no-brainer to make friendship a precondition for romance. "It will just happen", I told myself, some 25 years ago, "if I continue to pursue my path. Whatever the hell that is."

As it turns out, there is a love style called Storgic Love that actually describes how I thought I would fall in love. Storgic lovers are "friends first" and hey, THAT'S ME RIGHT?!

I read on with great interest, frowning slightly as I read the final paragraph:

Some advantages of storgic love can be the level of friendship, understanding, and intimacy in the partners, while disadvantages can include potential boredom and lack of passion in some couples.

That boredom part didn't quite fit...I don't want to settle down and live in a cottage for the rest of my life. I want to become something greater! However, because I value friendship so much, I had naturally settled into this pattern and ran into a massive internal conflict: because I value "true friendship"--that is, friendship based on character--I perceived other love styles as a failure of motive .

Let me explain myself: There are a lot of women who I find sexually enticing, cute, and so on, but to me character is everything. I am just not interested until I see the evidence of it. Once glimpsed, it takes time to draw out the subtleties across multiple interactions. Interests, behaviors, and physical appearance are somewhat secondary in importance; and it's the inner beauty and idiosyncrasies of a person's character, as I perceive it, that finally draws me close and captivates my heart. The giant insight is that my romantic interest tends to express itself as explorations of character, and I suppress the other "love styles" to "maintain the purity" of my quest. That tends to exclude such pleasantries such as flirting, winking, swooping in, sweeping away, and so forth. What most people would regard as the fun part of getting to know someone, but in my snobbery I thought EVERYBODY already does that...I'm looking for something more, and I'm doing things my own way! Or so I would tell myself, as I battled myself internally. My logic was that if I liked a girl because she was cute I wasn't living up to my own character values: true connections and good character above all else, because I believe everything is possible through this. It never occurred to me that I could think both. Yes, I'm dumb...blinded by principle, yet again. Maintaining such an attitude, however couched in idealism, is ultimately boring and dispassionate. This can lead to a good friendship, but not romance.

And so I come back to my two guts:

My "emotional gut" is 100% accurate at telling me when I like someone and find them attractive.
My "intuitive gut", however, did not have the breadth of experience and self-knowledge to see me playing out the same pattern over and over again, and instead assumed that "if I thought up the idea, and the idea affects only me, it must be right". Well, no, probably not. The idea in this case was: "true friendship is based on true character, therefore my romantic search will be strictly dictated by the parameters implicit in this directive."

the moral

I still feel kind of dumb right now, but at the same time I feel a sense of relief because I've identified a limited thought pattern. Now that I know it, I can break it and replace it with something less boring.

I know what my real romantic directive is: It's far better to live in character than to merely search for it. This follows naturally from my belief that when you put that energy out there, people can actually tell that you have it. After all, attraction of character needs to work both ways.

The role I want to play in the world is as a connector of true passions, to have the freedom to let allow random aspects of life catch my eye, and create the situations where passion and living can express themselves at a higher level. That's what great design is. That's what productivity is. That is what inspiration and empowerment mean to me. And next time I see these qualities embodied in a pretty girl, I will need to remember that although character is super sexy, it's just as awesome to tell a woman how beautiful she is in a meaningful, creative way. Even if she already knows it.

If you were paying attention, you might have noticed that I said there were TWO great conundrums in my life. The other one is the missing sense of mission, but I think I stumbled upon it while writing the previous paragraph. And I feel that I have to give Christianity some props for that; the entry for Holy Spirit, a concept I used to have difficulty accepting when I thought it meant a literal ghost flying around inhabiting people, had this tidbit (emphasis mine):

The first overt appearance of the Holy Spirit in Christian theology is in the words of Jesus, speaking to his disciples (John 14:15-18) shortly before his death. He characterizes the Holy Spirit to them as the 'Spirit of Truth'.

Further reading leads right back to the notion of agape, which is a kind of love that benefits the world we live in. It starts with you and me, and perhaps it can be expressed through the creation of more awesome design and the telling of each other's stories. Everyone, I believe, has a true way to express this kind of positivity and joy, if they can only find the means through which they can see just how possible it is. The trick is finding it authentically, but that will be a post for another day.

Motivation from Solitude

2008-10-17 04:11:00-05:00

I've been in a period of enforced solitude, which is hard for me to bear because my summer was socially excellent. I was out in the sun almost every day, forming connections with the people at the local Starbucks and marveling at the variety of life experience that had opened to me. Then a few weeks ago, it got cold, and the economy started sinking into the mire; as a result a lot of us are hunkering down for a tough winter. My mood has not been helped by the nature of the computer programming work I'm doing either, as it demands such intense concentration that my personality essentially fades away. I've developed a bad case of programmer-face, which is that impassive, mask-like expression with deadened eyes. Friends have actually stopped to ask if I'm OK, because they're not used to seeing me like this.

solitude: the inside vantage point

On the bright side, an interesting thing about this period of solitude is that with the absence of the social pleasantries has come a recognition that I need to re-establish my self-reliance in facing certain life questions. Since no one else is around, I'm the only one available to address the following awful truths:

I'm bored with the immediate life possibilities.
I'm not really fulfilled by the kind of work I'm doing.
I'm still lonely despite having lots of great friends. Lots!

It's only been in the quiet of my isolated state that I could even hear these questions echo around the inside my head. The summer, fraught with pleasant distractions, kept me from worrying too much about them.

In a past life, I would have been kind of mad about being distracted from tackling those big life questions. Being somewhat mellower now, I recognize that these "distractions" are actually the aspect of living that I value most. I've been so serious, speculatively concerned, and too darn anxious about not getting things right. It's easy to develop this kind of tunnel vision, I think, when one allows external expectations (social, cultural, or otherwise) to out-weigh the importance of letting life happen around you. I'm sure that for many people this is a pretty obvious observation, but I think some of my fellow procrastinators and perfectionists might understand what I'm saying.

the corrective action

There are two forces that normally battle within me: the desire for taking control of my life and the desire for inspiration and calling. The former is a rational/control-based desire, and the latter is more about feelings and emotions. The desire to steer my life in a self-beneficial manner is all about control and reason, while the desire for inspiration is more like that summery feeling blowing me to wherever it might take me. I can see that I really want to integrate them together.

The first step that comes to mind is to reframe both desires as one principle: Inspiration and hope can come from anywhere, but answers and action have to come from inside of me. This leads to the following line of reasoning:

I'm bored? Do something to create new possibilities to break the cycle of ennui.
My work feels lacking? Make bolder choices about the kind of work I believe will be fulfilling.
I feel isolated? Make an effort to be involved in people's lives.

This is a simple and concrete diagnosis, but it's much easier said than done.

taking on motivation

For me, the main obstacle is the lack of motivation. For example, I've been feeling really blah for the past couple of weeks, and it was really affecting my mood at the few social events I've attended that should have been a lot of fun. I spent a good chunk of a day sitting on a giant warm sunny rock in the mountains with some of my best friends enjoying wine, aged artisan cheeses and gourmet fruit tarts. And that very same day, 100 miles south, I was in Harvard Square with my awesome sister in a beautiful church listening to Sarah Vowell read from her latest book, followed by yummy pan-asian food at Wagamama and a taste of fresh yogurt and berries from Berryline. It should have been a perfect day, yet it was not. And what sucked even more was that I didn't know why I felt that way.

A few days later, reflecting on this sad turn of events, I impulsively indulged in some self-pity and lamented out loud, I am so lame. The very next instant, the truthfulness of the statement stuck: I was being lame, and I had subconsciously known this for weeks.

This was very liberating, and here's why: I have a very strong aversion to the mediocre, which is something that I'd forgotten until recently. Being lame is a form of mediocrity, or perhaps more accurately mediocrity as a value promotes lameness. I'm being a little loose with the definition here, but what I'm saying is that I believe I was withdrawing from the world because I intuitively knew I was being lame, and therefore was not doing anything to raise the level of "interesting" around me. I had found the bottom of my well of personal values, and having landed, I could now look up and see how far I had to climb to get out.

There are two familiar motivation-killers that stand in the way of getting out of my well of lameness: uncertainty and fear. I don't want to waste my time doing something that I don't know will pay off, and that uncertainty leads to anxiety. I also don't want to lose what I already have, so that creates timidity and more hesitation. This all manifests as a kind of low-level fear and desire to cling to people. And this is preventing me from changing my life, charging ahead to try something really different that could very well lead to a more interesting life.

forging two new rules

While I could self-prescribe a number of concrete "action items" to manage my way out of the doldrums, I know it won't work for me because this is a form of deferral. Next actions, while immediately doable, are just steps along the way to a larger goal in the future. This is a delayed reward, and I just am not wired to appreciate small steps despite their proven effectiveness. And if I'm not wired for this, a plan comprised of next actions serve as a very poor motivator when it comes to a team consisting of me, myself, and I.

Fortunately, I happen to also know that I am strongly value and character driven. So the answer to my conundrum of being bored and lonely will come from following this simple rule:

Face down those fears every day by daring to do something that creates something new and positive.

This is a value that I believe in, and by facing fear I am building up own character. That's pretty cool! And to acknowledge that small steps eventually yield great rewards, I can face small fears: helping out an acquaintance despite some imagined inconvenience, for example. It could also be writing a blog post, or replying to an email. Maybe it's planting a flower, or giving someone an idea that they make their own. The only criterion I have is that whatever it is, it should leaves a tangible mark or impression--large or small--on the real world. That is worth doing, and it is a role I want to play.

The second simple rule is possibly even more important:

Lighten up, don't be so serious, and remember most things are not of dire importance.

If I'm following this rule right, then what I do will be uplifting and fun for everyone around me. This is the feeling of a warm summer sun, lunching on a big rock in the mountains, celebrating and promoting those moments of life that make it really worth while.

So that's where I'm at right now, and I'm pretty danged sure that this is the right way to go.

On Hiatus

2008-07-22 12:56:02-05:00

Although at this moment I am filled with excitement at again redefining and reframing myself, I have a big project I need to close out, and I'm going to have to refrain from blogging for at least a month. This is a good time to haul out my Pickle Jar, which I think is in the laundry room collecting coins that I find in the washing machine. The Pickle Jar is used for holding ideas that I don't want to lose, a sort of promise to myself to come back to the idea later.

Before I disappear, here's some updates on various initiatives:

I'm still working on that interactive museum project, and we're at the point where development should be hitting "full steam ahead" mode. I'm falling a bit behind on the technology side of things (I'm learning how to program 3D graphics systems) because I'm becoming familiar with the underlying development system. I'm also looking for programmers experienced with XNA on Windows, particularly on the model/shader development/animation side of things, to help out on a module-by-module basis.
One of the people I met at Starbucks teaches piano lessons, so I signed up for one to see if that will help with the Gospel Music experiment I started a while ago.
I've gotten several submissions for the freelance referral building, but I have not yet processed any of this. If there's anything I post about, it will be this.
I have Printable CEO-related updates that I'd like to make, but I don't know when I'll be able to get to them. This also includes several user submissions that I haven't had the time to virus-check, zip, and upload. The challenge with user submitted updates is that I end up having to provide the technical support for the uploads; links to blog posts are much easier to deal with.

Although the writing and blogging are activities that fill me with energy, they take a lot of time and I have to shift that to my paying work for a good chunk of time. At least afterwards, I'll have a whole new body of expertise to write about.

Personal Insights from Social Media

2008-07-21 19:02:00-05:00

Yesterday was the final day of PodCamp Boston 3, and I had a really great time. I wasn't sure if I would fit into a social media event, but apparently what I've been trying to do for the past two years IS social media. It all started with insights from my first SXSW, and more recently I've been going through this progression of insights over the past month that have led up to this insight:

For the past year or two, I've been trying to figure out my "angle" so I can accurately describe what I do. I've played with ideas like storytelling by design (which I've noted interestingly that some other designers online have since adopted) and investigative design to describe my design approach. The major insight I've had, up to now, was that I should put my skills (programming, interactive, design) second, and my nature first. Figuring out what my nature is has been what's on my mind.
Following up on that insight, I'd noted in Groundhogs, The Future, and Tanabata Too that my "armor" or "persona" was in opposition to some mysterious bird-like core that wanted to "just be". In other words, I was denying myself my nature, and this reminded me very much of how recognizing such conflict can help inspire great character performances in film. Perhaps I am in my third act.
I've recently realized that I would rather be writing than anything else. At PodCamp, I dipped my toe in the water by labeling my name tag "designer / writer" instead of the usual "personal productivity enthusiast" or "investigative designer". I was pretty pleased with myself until the all-seeing Chris Brogan happened to catch it as he was sweeping by, and commented, "designer first, Dave?" before vanishing in a puff of rhetoric. Realizing I was lacking guts, I went back to the registration table and put writer before designer.

So what is social media? You can read the definition on Wikipedia, but I would flip it around and say that it's reaching people and making a genuine personal connection steeped in shared passion. It's not about technology. It's not about increasing the size of your network. It's not about monetizing the eyeballs that advertisers are desperate to reach. For me, it is about making a real one-on-one connection, to create enthusiastic conversation. What social media does, from an action-oriented methodology perspective, is create the context where such conversations can take place. That's the way I'm thinking about it, anyway.

One of my favorite presentations at Podcamp Boston 3 was C.C. Chapman's Building Your Brand Through Passion & Community, because C.C. is a living example of the kind of transparency I applaud. I didn't keep good notes, other than the link to the awesome Where The Hell Is Matt dancing around the world video, but I remember feeling that for the first time, I had some external confirmation that it was OK to equate brand and personal identity. I do not need to compartmentalize my interests for the convenience of marketing myself as a package to different special interest groups. However, I do need to be cognizant of the need to make those aspects of myself easily approached; that also means that they need to be clearly presented. That isn't the case at all right now on this website, and the scattered nature of my topical writing isn't helping either. On top of that, there are several threads that I haven't reported on in a while: the gospel music project and the freelance network wiki are foremost on my mind at the moment. I'm feeling bad about this because continuity is important when you're trying to do anything of lasting coolness; you can see the tie-in to productivity here.

I met a ton of cool people, and feel plugged into the possibility of having found another community that's close to my heart. And this time, it's right here in the Boston area. Awesome.

Podcamp Boston 3 Day 1

2008-07-20 08:29:04-05:00

Yesterday I made the trek to Boston for PodCamp Boston 3 for a first day of gettin' social with people and the media that they're creating.

Socializing

Unlike past conferences where I learned to be comfortable by myself, this time around I was comfortable approaching people and saying "hi". PodCamp Boston 3 is the first real-world test of my insight about personas vs core identity and allowing myself to be. At conferences like SXSWi, I'd tried to figure out where I fit into the social picture, and tried to come up with a way to describe myself accordingly: "I'm a designer that specializes in personal productivity and information graphic design." This time, I have the benefit of knowing what I fundamentally am driven to do--my passion, in other words. Which is, as anyone who has struggled to get through my lengthy articles will tell you, is writing stuff down. For the past year I've been chasing myself down a different path, trying to figure out how to describe the sum of my skills and interests in some snappy way that could be readily dropped casually into a creative business conversation and explode into intrigue followed by deep understanding. This week, I realized that it was not the sum, but the core that was important. And that is writing about what catches my eye. In the process of writing, I relate what I see with what I find interesting, and along the way I synthesize a few nuggets of insight that people find useful. It's very tempting to call that something snazzy, for the purposes of monetization, but at PodCamp I'm just telling people that I'm a writer/designer that writes about whatever catches my eye, and that I am best known for designing tools for personal productivity. And then things go from there.

One nice thing about PodCamp is that everyone is friendly, and generally willing to sit and talk. The pace is much less hurried than SXSW, with plenty of time and space to collide with someone and have a 15 minute conversation. Yesterday we rustled up a posse of random people to have sushi at Uni down the street, and it was a fine time despite getting back to the conference later than expected. Some people don't feel like chatting, and so you can smile and just move on. One of the other insights I had this week is that I am indeed innately curious about people, and that this curiosity had been blocked by a sense of wanting to know how I "fit in" before I spoke. Now that I've identified this mental barrier and rerouted my expectations, it's a lot easier to just sit and listen, and interject as curiosity raises its fluffy tail and starts to wag. Personally, I'm finding it rather remarkable a change in myself. Day 2, which is about to start for me in an hour when I get ready to drive into Boston, will provide a second day of data. I'm such a nerd.

The Panels

I wandered in and out of the various panels. The one that I started with was NeoVictorian, Nobitic, and Narrative by the rather fascinating Mark Bernstein, the chief scientist for a company called Eastgate with a hypertext note product called Tinderbox. The presentation, established Bernstein in his opening remarks, was to be a kind of "sermon" that took a tour through topics of...actually, I don't remember specifically what it was about without my notes---and I didn't take any other than a few pictures of interesting slides. What I remembered was that there was a lot of audience participation, and that the word "Nobitic" was very very important to what I'm trying to do. Since it is a made-up word, I'll have to find my notes on this later.

I caught a bit of the Using a live podcast to allow your readers to "become part of the conversation" by Nikki Starr, who works for Blog Talk Radio. This is apparently a service that allows bloggers to create live podcasts, take calls from readers, and archive the material online. It's a co-ownership arrangement with regards to the recorded performance, and it sounds pretty cool. Nikki mentioned that The Fly Lady, one of the giants of the domestic productivity scene on the net, uses the service to reach out to her 500,000 loyal followers.

I missed the next panel block due to the late-running lunch, and afterwards popped into Solo Podcasting by Greg Demetrick. My real agenda was to take a nap, and I successfully dozed off for a few minutes, but I kept waking up because Greg kept talking about interesting things. It was an excellent presentation on both the gear and philosophy that drives a successful podcast. I'll have to check out what else this guy has written.

I only caught a little bit of Down and Dirty (and free!) ways to put your Mac to Work by Jeff Berg, a highly-knowledgable Mac consultant that I liked immediately for his personable yet direct demeanor. At that point it as time to head home, but Sunday will be a full day for me and I'm looking forward to several sessions. This time I'm leaving all the fancy camera stuff at home and packing much lighter. My ideal note-taking setup for a conference like this would be a digital audio recorder that could take periodic stills: a slideshow recorder as opposed to a video recorder :-) I wonder if such a thing exists? It would be more memory-efficient, certainly.

Ok, time to shower. See youse at Podcamp Boston!

Little Birds

2008-07-19 01:17:00-05:00

Every once in a while I like to check out a store online called See Jane Work. I have an irrational love of paper and office supplies, and I enjoy the cheerful upbeat nature of the site. Everything is so cute! If this website were a gal, I'd marry her :-)

Today I ordered my first product, a magnetic chirping bird for holding paper clips. This is probably the least necessary thing I need in my office, but its role is more symbolic than functional. There are these little birds that I see every day at Starbucks in the morning; I believe they are some kind of common swallow. I usually sit outside if it's not raining, taking in the morning air, and observe these birds almost every day. There's something about the way these birds approach us that I find fascinating. They're tiny, fluffy, and pretty cute. They're also diligent, bold, and industrious. I realized a couple weeks ago that they do a very good job of "just being themselves", and that I could learn a thing or two from them. I sometimes get wrapped up in thinking I should be "more professional" or "building my career", and though I've definitely chosen a more non-traditional path to life-work I still get caught up in thinking about "success" and how people perceive me. Those little birds have no such pretensions, and every day they remind me that my OWN little bird inside of me needs to come out and "just be". That realization has become one of my moral compass points.

That my moral compass point is now available in shiny magnetic bird form is just a bonus. Woot!

Seeing What’s Inside

2008-07-17 14:19:01-05:00

I've got a friend, J, who is studying to become a doctor in the Washington D.C. area. Since she works almost all the time and we haven't talked much recently, we started trading snippets of everyday stories for fun. So yesterday, J is working at a senior living facility, where she is volunteering while school is out, and she had a personal epiphany that moved me to tears while I was sitting here at Starbucks. She's graciously allowed me to share her words here:

So, I have a story to tell you. Yesterday I went to volunteer in this senior living facility. I do a free blood pressure check-up for the residents there once a week there. Because the facility is an apartment for the seniors with the amenities geared towards senior living rather than a nursing home, the residents are pretty in good shape. However, one of the patients obviously did not look normal but rather disabled. He had a disproportionately large head compared to his torso, even more so when compared to his legs. His torso was so hunched over forward, he reminded me of the Hunchback of Notre Dame. On top of that, he couldn't walk well even with the walker. His lips were open constantly and he drooled. His hands were permanently deformed due to the neurological damage which caused contractures. Hope you get the picture.

I glimpsed him walking (rather, dragging himself) into the room and felt a little bit of repulsion in my gut because he just didn't look like a human to be honest. He walked in and sat down on a chair next to me while I was checking other residents' BP which took a good 10 minutes. When it was his turn to take BP, he mumbled something and showed me his note book. He couldn't even speak right so I had a hard time understanding him. He kept saying the same thing repeatedly, and finally I figured it out. It was that he drew a profile of me in his note book while he was waiting and he wanted to give it to me when he was finished. It was so touching that I almost had teary eyes. In the drawing, there were crude outlines of me which occupied half of the page. The lines were so zig-zag that it was hard to tell what it was at first glance. Yet, when I looked more closely, there was the eye, the nose, the lips and even the glasses I was wearing. The face was colored with red and yellow crayon which were the only color in the drawing. It might be just my own imagination but I could tell this person in the drawing surely is an Asian. When I looked at the drawing I could feel my heart wringing in my chest and ache. Here was this person, who didn't even look like a human to me, who had the talent and the kind heart to draw me and give it to me!

It turned out that he used to be a painter and he still enjoys it. I asked him whether he could show me some more drawings in the notebook. When he flipped through his notebook, there were pages after pages full of peoples faces all with the familiar zig-zag lines, yet with well-captured features. A chubby-faced boy with lots of freckles, a middle aged African-American lady, the security guard of the apartment, and so on. And he told me who these people were in his notebook. Some he saw in the emergency room a couple weeks ago, some were fellow residents, some were visitors, etc... He made me realize how shallow, calculating, judgmental I was. I failed to see past the person's outside. I forgot that there is a soul in every human being no matter what kind of physical state he is in. It was amazing how one little drawing could change me so much and so deeply. It was amazing.

I reflected on this story for many long minutes, sniffling quietly, and was newly amazed at how every small interaction with another person can lead to...well, I don't know what to call it. A connection? A change? Maybe it's a reminder that so long we have the capacity to recognize a genuine gesture from someone's heart, or to have the ability to express in that same way, we create the opportunity for something amazing? I have myself been going through an identity crisis of late, and have been hyper-aware of my barriers and preconceptions. I've been more self-conscious than usual---or perhaps it's more accurate to say that I've reverted to an old self-consciousness---as I've tried to work out what it is that's been bothering me and define a course of action to correct it. J's story reminds me that this is all in my head, and that if I can be open to what is out there, I'll find amazing people and experiences just like this, hidden behind doors I wouldn't ordinarily open. It could be that simple.

But there I go, introspecting again about myself. Thank you, J, for sharing that special moment with those of us who needed to hear it and didn't even know it.

Podcamp Boston July 19-20

2008-07-15 14:14:00-05:00

I've signed up for Podcamp Boston this-coming weekend, July 19-20. I don't really know that much about it, but I'm sort of craving another SXSW-style experience and this sounds like it just might be it. I convinced a good friend of mine, Erin, to tag along so she can learn about the mysterious world of social media and apply it to her nascent blog over at Living Vicariously. I'm really looking forward to meeting other people in the area who are doing the same thing. The following panel titles have caught my eye:

Turning Buzz into Business - Christopher Penn ... I feel I should know more about how business people think so I can use this with my own design practice.
NeoVictorian, Nobitic, and Narrative - Mark Bernstein ... I have no idea what this is about, but the combination of "NeoVictorian" and "Narrative" piqued my curiosity. Maybe it is my soft spot for Jane Austen.
Using a live podcast to allow your readers to "become part of the conversation" - Nikki Starr ... Until I can afford to travel freely around the world, telepresence may just be the way to do it in the meantime.
Is the 2.0 Generation Prepared to Inherit the Earth? - Alexa Scordato and Maria Thurrell ... This is a fascinating idea, and as someone who is participating more in "the world", I might pick up some hints on what I might be looking forward to.
All I Really Need to Know I Learned From Knitting - Guido Stein ... What? I must know!!!!
Marketing Over Coffee with David Meerman Scott, John Wall, and Christopher Penn ... I like coffee. And I like the human puzzle solving that goes behind advertising and marketing. Might be an interesting panel!
Audio vs. Video Podcasting: Panel Discussion - Jeff Hinz with Mignon Fogarty, Michael Gaines, Steve Garfield, Dana Hawco ... I'm interesting in knowing the pros and cons of either media approach, though I think I could guess.
Common Audio Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them - David Fisher ... This may save me some time in the future. Mostly I am hoping for software and gear recommendations ;-)
PR 101 - the Basics - Sharon Davis ... I have a very general view of how PR works from a systems perspective (agencies, news outlets, etc), so I could use some instruction here
Building Your Brand Through Passion & Community - C.C. Chapman ... This is TOTALLY what I want to do.
The Authentic Enterprise - Jacqueline Prescott ... You had me at "authentic".
Sustain the Fun - Business Models & You - David Cutler ... I want a fun business model, one that I will find motivating AND make money to fund all the various enterprises that I think would be awesome and empowering.
How People & Organizations Make Decisions - Dave Wieneke ... I am interested in comparing my own understanding with that of the panelists.
Breaking Into the Conversation, Busting the Cliques - Leslie Poston ... Although I'm far less shy than I used to be, I find it difficult to bust into a conversation where I haven't been invited. Teach me!
How Social Media is like High School - Adam Zand ... This just sounds like it could be fun :-)

I just read that PodCamp Boston Registration ends tomorrow (July 16) at NOON, so if you're planning on going now is the time to sign up. Looking forward to meeting some new people to possibly scheme with :-)