I’ve been using Twitter exclusively on the iPad this week. It has the advantage that I can’t be distracted by it while I’m working on other things, and the screen is big enough to be comfortable viewing links and pictures. I clip any interesting articles to Instapaper unless I have time to read them right now, which is an improvement over my previous tendency to leave them open in yet another Firefox tab which just gets in the way later. When the iPad gets threaded email this fall, I might see if I can handle mail the same way (Gmail in the iPad browser is nice, but I have more than one account to keep track of).
I’m using Tumblr as a kind of public notebook. Altered photos and screengrabs, snippets of commentary or rant, quotes from something I’m reading. For notes I don’t want to share, I’m using Evernote. Still getting the hang of what sorts of folders are useful, and trying to remind myself to move iPhone photos into there when relevant.
My todo list still lives in The Hit List even though development appears to be completely stalled. I like the interface and how it handles recurring items too much to switch unless forced. Most of the time it doesn’t matter that I can’t sync it with my phone—the only reminder I seem to miss is a result is my twice-a-month contact lens switch, and being a day late isn’t terribly fatal. If I really need to track a errand or grocery list while out and about, I put it in Evernote.
One of my consistent goals with all of this is to have a system that’s so calm and easy to maintain I don’t think about it. When I’m working, I want to minimize distractions and have everything I need easy to access. When I’m reading or browsing information, I want it to be so easy to clip and track I can find the good parts again later. So on and so forth.
While everyone else was at OSCON, I worked. And tried not to melt (I still have no hot weather tolerance, surprising no one). At work we’re wrapping up an intense 2-week sprint, and about to launch into the next one. Head down, work work work feels pretty good right now. I’m behind on email again but it’s so mundane that’s hardly worth noting. Yesterday was spent reading Feed, which I recommend if your summer reading list needs a zombie thriller.
I also picked up Being Digital, after seeing it mentioned in passing. In 1995, when Nicholas Negroponte wrote this book, I was a high school student who accessed the internet through a dial-up connection to the library gopher system, using a Macintosh Classic. 2400 baud. Text-only too (I wouldn’t have regular access to internet with pictures or graphical browsing for another two years). So it’s interesting to see how many of his comments are still relevant, given that the technology has advanced, but the issues around people using the internet to shlep bits remain completely familiar.
I suspect work work work is the background to think think think. Filling my conscious thoughts with a set of activities while ideas churn underneath. Reading and watching things to load more ideas into the crush. When the weather cools, I hope it will explode into a cascade of insights, project pieces, the shape of what I’m doing next.
I forgot to post yesterday because I was mostly offline, part of a lovely 4-day birthday weekend. Also, we were busy assembling a new couch.
Things this week:
The PDC’s second survey is online for you to take. This one includes questions about the specific kinds of resources tech community groups, events, side projects and startups need. If you participate in anything of the sort, please take a few minutes to fill it out.
Tonight is the first ever CivicApps Awards night. I think there’s still time to RSVP if you’d like to attend.
WhereCampPDX planning is underway, and we’re meeting Thursday evenings to work on the event details and talk about our projects. If you’re a geo-geek in town for OSCON, you’re more than welcome to drop by. Produce Row, where we meet, is a short walk from the convention center.
Hot weather. The end of the world cup. Watching endless episodes of X Files on Netflix while knitting socks (just starting the heel on sock 2 now). Lucas and I celebrating our seventh (7!) anniversary with dinner at Nostrana and a bottle of my favorite pinot (a previous year’s version). A Timbers win against Miami on Saturday night. The first WhereCampPDX planning meeting for the year. Working through SICP with my coworkers.
I’m still hermiting. Lots of staying in and reading and working on things. I’m trying to motivate myself to spend more time writing—I have an idea for a story that would be fun to write, but I haven’t managed to get started yet. Still thinking. I have a bunch of project ideas like that right now.
I finished Anathem at the start of the weekend and immediately started on How to Teach Physics to Your Dog, which is a fun guide to quantum physics (a major topic in Anathem). I’m a few chapters in and learning all sorts of weird things that happen when you try to observe quantum processes. Also, yesterday I picked up Americana, which I ditched 3/4 of the way in last year, and finished it. Not sure if it was worth it, since the end of the book is kind of a mess.
I’ve been catching up on knitting too. I finished the first sock from a pair I started last year. I’m not entirely happy with the toe, but if I tinker and get something I like better on sock 2, I’ll redo it. Otherwise, not a big deal—it’s going to be hidden in my shoe when I wear these.
My birthday’s in just under two weeks. Somehow turning 30 last year seems less startling than being a year into my 30s now. It feels sort of random that this should matter, but there I am.
It’s sunny outside. And 70 degrees. Shocking. Now if we can just keep things exactly like this till September, I’ll be thrilled.
I have to admit, though, despite the weather being nice I haven’t been outside so much, because I’m having a anti-social streak and all I want to do is watch movies or read. I’m also woefully behind on email. Just letting you know, nothing personal. At some point I will get over my angst/mental exhaustion/full-time World Cup habit and catch up on all the people-stuff.
Work-wise I’m switching between 2-3 projects in any given week. I’m glad we’re busy, but it definitely forces me to stay organized. I had a great experience on Friday, though. I had a task that had a set of technical pieces that looked like they were going to be time-consuming and messy, but I kept researching and trying things until I found the simple solution. I love when that works out.
Not work stuff:
We signed up for Netflix so we could try the streaming content on the Wii option, and it’s awesome. I think Lucas and I watched a movie/show almost every single night last week. My personal obsession involves the stockpile of X-Files episodes they have available. I wasn’t a regular viewer, so a bunch of these are new to me, and it’s really interesting seeing how well it’s held up over time.
I also started reading Anathem. I think I was avoiding it for fear the setting was going to be kinda wanky (even though I really like Stephenson’s work) but so far it’s holding up well, the invented words aren’t interfering with the fun, and at a third of the way through I feel like I’m in the middle of Lord of the Rings without knowing what the Epic Task for our protagonist will be (I do have a guess).
I did go out to watch USA/Ghana on Saturday. Tanker Bar was a good pick. Alas, the US did not win.
What else? Summer weather means summer cooking, so we’ve had potato salad, homemade crackers, cherry pie, and hopefully coleslaw later today with the cabbage Lucas picked up at last week’s Eastbank farmers market. I’m starting to feel really confident about making dressings and cold salads. I did a bunch last summer during the heat wave, and it’s getting to where I just check a recipe for ideas, not because I’m worried about a disgusting mess if I don’t.
Enough rambling. It’s lunchtime (cheese and homemade crackers and potato salad!) and Brazil is currently beating Chile 3-0.
It’s Monday again, somehow. I woke up briefly, early this morning, to wonder what day of the week it was. Another Sunday? No such luck.
It feels like I’m in a review and re-thinking phase right now, after a very project-oriented spring. I’ve been making lists: roles I play, behaviors I want to model, things I’d like to be doing right now. The Summer Fieldbook has a page at the start of the week for planning—I wasn’t sure how I’d use it, but this week’s is a mix of “talk to so-and-so about project X” and “remember to make pesto from the basil you bought at the farmer’s market”.
Taking time to rest and reflect feels hard, like it’s not “real work”. I know this is silly, that it’s a productive activity, but I resist it, so I’m practicing patience and awareness. Letting myself wait and see.
I went to the OpenGovWest meetup last night, which I sort of flubbed by arriving 40 minutes late (I thought the meeting started at 7pm, not 6). But I got there in time for most of the discussion, which ranged from “what does this group want to be doing?” to “why is the city/county RFP process so obtuse?”
A recurring theme was the need for hubs, info centers, central communication points. I said something about needing a telephone tree, which led one of those “this is too simple to work” insights: if the lowest common denominator of government technology usage is email, and we need a contact point for government to talk to the indie tech community, why don’t we give them an email address to cc, and filter or redistribute it on our side? I mean, the PDC sent out notes from the meeting at w+k, and how did they distribute that? Email. How visible is email to people not on the list? Right. But that gap, that’s just tech stuff, filtering and rebroadcasting and we totally know how to do that. So Reid will set up an email alias to use and we’ll start tinkering.
I’m also thinking about creating a tumblr for CivicApps. There’s a communication/visibility problem for the project, because they’re on Twitter, but Twitter posts are transient. They scroll off the screen and cease to exist (in our immediate consciousness). There’s a mailing list now which is great for discussion, and a news page on the site, but it’s all press releases and the link is buried at the bottom of the page. One of the things I like about Tumblr is that it makes it easy to combine content from a variety of sources, and you can configure it so other people can submit posts.
Yeah, why not. I can always delete it if it’s not useful. If you’re working on something CivicApps related you want to see posted/linked, send it to me.
One of the other things I’ve been trying to do it sort out the various needs and pieces of this. There’s the “how does the tech community talk to the government” piece. The “how do we address the business needs of small businesses and startups” piece. A professional development / community-building piece that often comes back to “we want a community collaboration space” and “getting sponsors & volunteers for events”. And some things that stretch outside of Portland or the region, like “connecting our CivicApps and OpenGov activities with the global government transparency effort”. Each one might need different tools, have different people involved.
And now I’m at the end of my lunch break, and the MEX/FRA game is over, so I’ll post this.
The meeting was two weeks ago, and while we had a small group I think it went well. I’ve been trying to organize these notes into some sort of coherent narrative, but it’s not working, so I’m just posting what I have in semi-raw form. I edited down a lot of the discussion to focus on what I thought were the key points. Much thanks to Addie for taking the notes I’ve edited and annotated below.
Here’s what I wrote down for follow-up from our discussion:
We need metrics (still)
Figure out economic impact of open source, community meetups
How can we build community structures that can help represent us?
PDC is experienced in real estate development, so… how do we make what we need have a structure they can work with?
