writing lots, writing little

May has arrived.



Officially a few days ago, but it really seemed like May in Vancouver today with the warmth, sunshine, and green. And it's been a very intensive few months at work. I'm leading a large website redesign project, have been writing quite a few proposal responses this spring, and am conservatively guessing my word count to be somewhere in the 60,000 to 80,000 word mark.

As such, writing anything of substance on this blog has suffered somewhat. To all of my 10 non-yacht-stalking readers, my apologies.

I have taken up a much smaller form of publishing on the web, with a Tumblr site that I setup last year and decided to dust off in March. I'm using it to capture quotes and ideas from books I'm reading and photos I'm taking. Less of what I'm writing and more of what I'm reading. Not sure it will be much interest to anyone other than myself really, but it places the ideas in time, in context with the images from my everyday life, the passing of the seasons, etc. I like the elegance of the publishing format, the minimal effort required to add something, and the end result. A bit of a scrapbook, really.

I've also taken to posting to Twitter on occasion, still questioning its utility and relevance.



Posting content like that probably isn't helping Twitter further the cause of relevance.

Certainly our recent Tubetastic marketing campaign for ThoughtFarmer has utilized it with a degree of success to communicate with enterprise 2.0 pundits and experts. It's a source of traffic referrals to our site that has grown over the past few months of use.

Of course, good old blog posts about the product, like the one on ReadWriteWeb and this evening's TechCrunch post are better for reach and acquisition. But I've been able to have a few quick exchanges on Twitter that I might not have had otherwise.

So that's that. At some point, when my writing for work wraps up, I'll try to be inspired enough to write something of substance here.

Or, when in doubt, I'll post something about bike racing. Like the fact that World Tuesday Night Championships are starting up tomorrow here in Vancouver or how Cycling Fans Anonymous is the best cycling blog going.

But perhaps it's just as well. As my Tang's Noodle House fortune cookie told me tonight: "Even a brief pause to rest should be worth taking now." Fair enough.

Burnaby Velodrome Six Day

Spent a couple of nights this past week at the Burnaby Velodrome, watching the Six Day race. In 2005/2006, I was fit enough to ride the madison and suffered night after night against a lot easier competition than what's up for this event. Pearce & Friedman from Slipstream are the world ranked #2 madison pairing and they're currently 2 laps down on Symmetrics' Tuft & Bell -- a couple of amazing riders in their own right, Tuft the #1 ranked cyclist in North and South America for 2007 and Bell a seasoned World Cup track rider, as well as an impressive road cyclist.

Anyhow, one more night - if you have a chance, go watch. It's amazing.

And if you don't get a chance, here's what it's like to ride the boards of Burnaby. You too can take a Learn to Ride lesson and experience the thrill for yourself.

Edward T. Hall meets ThoughtFarmer

I read the Hidden Dimension in second year university doing my undergraduate degree in Communications. Working in IT, it's not often you get to dust an anthropology book from the 1960's, but Hall's notion of proxemics seemed like a fitting backdrop for trying to put a structure to the social software problem of activity notifications and the potential firehouse of information you can be drinking from in a busy corporate social intranet, like those that ThoughtFarmer affords.

So it's a work in progress, but today I blogged about the proxemics of the intranet over at the ThoughtFarmer blog. I think it's got some legs and is a meaningful way of thinking about the gravity of content, interpersonal relationships in an enterprise 2.0 setting, and the problems of notification / activity monitoring in complex information environments.

Should be interesting to hear what people think.

on the giving of gifts

Every year around this time, give or take a week or so, I head out to purchase gifts for Christmas. I try to stay close to home, accomplishing my gift buying on foot on Broadway or throughout Kits if possible. And if not, then within walking distance of my office in Gastown. I try to stay away from malls. They can be an efficient use of your time at certain periods throughout the year, but this is not one of those periods. I don't mind crowds that much, but supporting local businesses that make my neighbourhood so enjoyable during the other 11 non Christmas shopping months of the year seems important to me.


Santa visits OpenRoad

I also sit down and read a brilliant little essay by Clive Dilnot called "The Gift." It's an essay from the book The Idea of Design, edited by Victor Margolin and Richard Buchanan. There are many brilliant essays in the collection, but this one and its opening few pages always prepare me for creating my list and heading out into the blustery December weather and the crowds.

Below is the first major passage of the essay.

A paradox of gift giving, often alluded to, is that when conducted as obligation, it is profoundly depressive. There is something wrong here. After all, the act of giving, if we disengage it from Christmas and its horrors, should be a positive thing. The gift ought to be that which, when proffered by the giver, induces a double joy -- that of the receiver in the object, and that of the giver at the receiver's joy. Neither of these joys is inconsiderable. It is worth analyzing them because they tell us something about how things work for us and, therefore, something about the character of design activity.

Ideally the receiver of the gift obtains a double joy. First, and most obviously, there is a joy in the thing itself, the object received. The proper gift gives happiness because it matches perfectly one moment of the receiver's needs and desires. Sometimes it even helps receivers discover and satisfy desires they did not know they had. Second, the gift gives joy because the successful gift affirms a positive relationship between giver and receiver. It is concrete or evident proof that the giver knows, and has understood, recognized, affirmed, and sought to concretely meet the other's most intimate needs and desires. Moreover, the receiver finds additional joy in being the subject of the imaginative work undertaken by the giver in securing and giving this gift. The successful gift proves to us that our relationship to the giver is more than merely formal or nominal.

For the giver, the joy is perhaps more subtle, but nonetheless significant. It is a joy, first and foremost, in pleasing others, in getting to know their tastes, interest, and character, in recognizing and accepting their needs and desires (even if contrary to our own). But it is also a pleasure in successfully finding a material thing that successfully concretizes these desires - that gives receivers "exactly what they wanted."

Note that the gift is not just the thing itself. If the nature of the object or product that we proffer is essential, it is, nonetheless, not all we give. What the giver gives beside the gift-object is recognition -- which both Lacan and Hegel recognized as the fundamental human desire, which we crave above all else.

- from "The Gift" by Clive Dilnot in The Idea of Design, MIT Press, 1996.

2007 Canadian Cyclocross Championships

Headed up to Kamloops this weekend with EV'er Jason Thompson (yes, that Jason Thompson) to check out the Cyclocross BC Provincial and Canadian National Championships. A nifty course, in Riverside Park, put together by Cycling BC VP Mountain Bike Henry Pejril, who happens to have now organized a Mountain Bike Nationals, Road Nationals (twice in Kamloops) and now Cyclocross Nationals. Impressive.



I took some pics of the event and even some small videos on my phone. The anticipated Plaxton vs. Reain battle didn't materialize due to Plaxton busting his seat and not having a spare bike. And Reain didn't manage to defend his title, losing to a hard-charing Garrigan. No Kabush, no Tolouse, no Pinner -- last year in Nanaimo was perhaps a bit more exciting and hard fought, not to take away anything from the two man duel that did materialize.



In the women's race, the 3-way Bessette vs. Simms vs. Sydor race was pretty entertaining. Simms took it in the end, leading into the final run-up, which I managed to catch on video. It was anyone's guess as to who would win. Sydor looked to be struggling anytime she had to get off the bike and run, Bessette and Simms had tested each other the day before during Provincials as a warm-up. It was a close race.

Here's a few 30 second tidbits from the camera.

Elite Women Start:


Elite Women First Lap:


Elite Women Lap 2 Run-up:


Elite Women: Sand!


Elite Women: Last run-up (30 seconds from finish)


And the crazy-fast Elite Men start


Yes, that was the sound of a train in the background. Very apropos.

All in all, some great racing. And some very entertaining fans.



More cowbell! Ukraine is weak! More carnage!