A Life Untold & Uninteresting

Open Thoughts

Is Sunday evening and I’m sitting here with a nice glass of Famous Grouse (I’m running out in case any of my loyal readers wants to know what to get me for Christmas), and my thoughts turned to this blog and the lack of attention its received lately.

Its not that I’m sitting at home twiddling my thumbs and so their is a lack of unique content to write about.

Unfortunately I think its the exact opposite. I’m being willingly pulled in multiple directions and the obligations and desires leave me with little time to sit down and write.

But the desire is always there and the moment that there is some time available I turn to this page. I’ve got a number of ideas and projects that I’d like to expand on further, and share my thoughts about.

• The growing interest and community involvement in UnLondon and the UnLab
• The upcoming SMarts Conference
• Projects brewing at Museum|London
• The concept of failure
• Reviews of books I’m reading or have finished reading
• etc

What would you like to see me discuss?

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Reading List

I’m currently back on a reading kick (this seems to happen in waves, rather then an ongoing organic process), and I’ve just finished or am almost done a couple of really good books.

Rework - by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson of 37Signals . An amazing and detailed look at how to approach your work with an emphasis on creativity, corporate culture, and a proper balance. A must read for anyone, entrepreneur, or president of a large business.

Ignore Everybody – by Hugh MacLeod. This book is a great compliment to Rework and focuses on the need for personal creativity and the buckling down to create. This is a super quick read, and the book is interjected with MacLeod’s signature “cartoons drawn on the back of business cards” illustrations.

Lastly, I’m in the middle of reading Drive - by Daniel Pink. It ties together the previous two books in an uncanner manner. I’ll post my full thoughts once I’m done reading, but its quickly becoming one of my favorites for 2010.

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An Upward Trend

When I got my first iPod in 2003 I was quite happy to put the white earbuds in my ears and stroll around university with a seamlessly endless supply of music.

An interesting thing happened that winter though. As I walked from class to class when ever I would pass a fellow student with an iPod would would nod slightly to each other. We didn’t know the other person but we were connected by the shared bond of having one of the few iPods on campus.

Fast forward to 2010. On Sunday I went on a leisurely bike right around downtown. I noticed a vey similar trend taking place. Whenever I passed a cyclist (who was obeying the rules of the road) we telepathically acknowledged the other, nodded, and essentially provided them with (a tiny amount of) personal approval.

The iPod took off like wildfire and before too long there were more then justa dozen on campus. The exclusivity bond disappeared, but I didn’t mind that. Thousands of people had discovered the excitement of having all your music in your pocket and I was glad that they had.

I’m hoping and I’m optimistic that the same trend will be repeated with cycling here in London. I hope that one day events like Critical Mass are no longer necessary because there are tonnes of cyclists using the roads to commute.

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Social Network Organizing

I was listening to this weeks TWiT and one of the hosts, John Graham-Cumming, made a comment about what he uses different social networks for. I’m going to try to implement the same system myself.

• Facebook for friends and family
• LinkedIn for colleagues and work contacts
• Twitter for new acquaintances and information

I think if we start to use this organizational method then fewer people will be worrying about privacy and “information leakages”.

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Ignite London

Last night I was able to attend the second iteration of Ignite London. I left throughly impressed and encouraged by the people in this city, and the work that so many are doing to better our community.

I wrote a post last week, but never published it, about how I felt that Londoner’s weren’t getting enough recognition for the many awesome things that we are doing in the new media / digital media space. By recognition, I meant outside of the 519 and 226 area codes. Honestly I think this can be traced back to a larger London problem; that of humbleness to a fault and the urge to rather talk about a solution that actually implement one.

After spending an evening at Aeolian Hall listening to my friends, peers and acquaintances give short, from the heart, pleas about what we could be doing and what they already are, I’m starting to feel renewed.

Its no longer a bunch of people talking about how we could improve Municipal politics; its ventures like Hack the Vote.

We don’t have people complaining that the arts are inaccessible; events like SMarts continue on.

Innovation in the digital media space continues to flourish, and by an active community with varied insights and experiences. They collaborate to build an application like London Trash.

This is just a small sample of the projects in the city that are looking at a problem and tackling it head on. There are many more initiative either in the works and I’m excited to follow them into fruition.

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The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men….

I turned on a feature in one of the many plugins I have running on my site that would post a weekly “livestream” of my various activities around the Internet.

I had hoped that this would encourage me to post more frequently so that this blog wouldn’t become a wasteland of automatically generated posts.

That plan backfired.

As you can see that past three weeks have been kinda (humanly)-quiet around here. There’s lots going on in my life, and the various projects that I’m working on are moving full steam ahead, but for some reason I haven’t been able to find the time or ambition to blog about whats going on.

So please forgive me as I neglect this space. I hope to be back soon.

In the meantime, I’m going to turn off those auto-posts – they only make me feel more guilty.

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Daily Digest for July 21st

	Checked in at Gig’s Grillhouse
	Checked in at Convergence Centre
	Shared Open Data in London Ontario. Open Data in London Ontario

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Open Data in London Ontario

The City of London has taken another step closer to joining the ranks of cities like Ottawa, Vancouver and Toronto, and releasing city data in a machine readable format; or Open Data.

This is a result of the hard work of a variety of individuals, including Shawn Adamsson and Aaron McGowan.

It shouldn’t come as any surprise that I think this is a great step forward for the City of London. As more and more information and data sets are released and become publicly available the better our society will become.

I’m also excited about this recent announcement because of the potential for further collaboration that UnLondon and the UnLab could help facilitate by connecting like minded individuals who will continue to iterate and improve upon various ideas, projects, and platforms. .

A citizen led initiative around Open Data has already started in London, and I suggest any interested parties connect with them for more information.

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Upcoming Events

I just added a new page to the blog that hopefully will capture a snapshot of all the initiatives I am involved with.

At this point it’s by no means exhaustive; some announcements just aren’t ready for prime time yet. So be sure to check back again soon!

Until then there are a couple of projects that I’d love to draw your attention to.

The first is ChangeCamp London, which is an event that I’ve wanted to do here ever since I heard about it a couple of years ago. I’m ecstatic about the team that is involved, and I’m sure its going to be a great program with definite benefits to the city.

Secondly is the annual PodCamp London that is coming up on May 8th. Be sure to check out the wiki for a list of speakers and sessions. I’m sure regardless of your skill level or interests you’ll find a topic that piques your interest.

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Morality and the iPhone

Having recently completed a course in business ethics, and then following with heavy interest Monday’s enticing story about the leaked/lost/stolen iPhone 4 prototype, I think it only makes sense to offer some perfunctory remarks here.

In addition to the main technology sites covering the details about the new phone; the Internet has been awash with comments about the actions of all the parties involved. Questions about whether the finder was morally right to sell it to Gizmodo, and did the tech site act properly in purchasing and ultimately dissecting the phone for their website.

However, what’s missing in all of these accounts is a discussion about the public, and our role in encouraging these behaviours. Its no surprise that any item that comes out of Cupertino is received with the same amount of fan fare usually reserved for the winning soccer teams of South America. And how much more excited do we get when we can combine our lust for Apple with our natural and insaitable curiousity for tech voyeruism.

Rather then criticizing Gizmodo for their actions, I think we should take a look at ourselves. Are we getting caught up in tech envy and would put aside our own morality just to learn a bit more about a consumer product? I’ll be the first to admit it, I get swept up in the excitement too. But I’ve decided to incite a change and I’m going to work harder to make sure that my love of objects justifies behaviour.

I’m not suggesting that having new toys is bad, or that the capitalist culture of “stuff” is inherently evil. All I want to point out is the double standard we create to satisfy our own interests and desires. Most of us wouldn’t engage in the same dubious practices that some tech journalists use, so why should we reap the rewards?

What do you think? Can we reclaim morality in concepts and no longer let our love of “things” tell us what is the right thing to do?

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