vanderwal.net

Personal Disconnectedness of Travel and Gerneric Architecture

Um, what does one do at 2am in the morning (after sleeping four hours and waking at 1am)? Blog.

Unfocussed Curor Bliking

I am finding that this long distance traveling has been really increasing my personal disconnectedness time this year, where the mind, body, and soul are not joined. Some call it jetlag, but it seems deeper. There were times yesterday where my motor skills just were shot (as they normally are with long travel on the first day). Other times my mind would just freeze mid-thought or sentence. It is not a bad thing, but more of a just "is" thing. It feels like the unfocussed blinking cursor syndrome, where a window on the desktop has a blinking cursor and you believe that if you type your text will show up there (the password box on a web form), but in reality it is some completely different window (like chat session) that has focus and displays the text as you hit enter to submit.

The SimCity Model for Urban Redevelopment

At a meal yesterday (brunch at Darling Harbor or dinner at Bondi Beach) I began to think that many cities are just replications of SimCity with similar architecture, where the cities are rather modern and/or developed in the mid-1800s. You can plop down a new structure that is similar to one from another city. Much like the new buildings in Darling Harbor look strikingly like the new Baltimore, Maryland Inner Harbor. Much of Sydney yesterday felt like something on the North America West Coast, as they were built and grew up about the same times in the mid-1800s and had similar cycles of growth over time. On Pitt street in Sydney, where it is a pedestrian mall, it really felt like there were some Commonwealth flourishes, like shopping arcades, put in San Francisco's Financial District.

Architecture as Cultural and Location Grounding

This quasi-generic western culture Pacific Rim architecture washing tended to compound the personal disconnectedness I was experiencing. Not only was my being disconnected, but the physical markers of my surroundings were off kilter as well. I somewhat experienced that in Berlin last Fall with the new modern architecture around Potsdam Platz. I felt far more grounded and connected in Friedrichshain as it was not modern and had native architectural elements that were not pan-global.

When I travel to Europe I like doing my time correction to resolve the personal disconnectedness is Amsterdam as it is distinctly Amsterdam. I know internally that I am in a different city, different country, and different culture. But, in Amsterdam they speak English very well and are technically adept (often leading to better understanding of mobile usage and other technosocial interactions that are missing in America as it lags Europe with technical adoption on many many fronts.

Similarly, I found Innsbruck to be similar to Amsterdam in its distinctive architectural elements, but even its modern architecture was very germanic. Growing-up I was a model railroad fan, but many of the buildings were not similar to the architecture I knew growing up on the West Coast of the United States as the larger makers of pre-built buildings and models for model railroads was from Germany, the Netherlands, or Belgium (I really do not remember the name of the company), but when taking a train from Schiphol to Amsterdam many of the post-war-modern (World War II) buildings looked straight out of the scene set catalogs for modern railroads. But, there were many buildings in Innsbruck that had the same architecture mixed in to the Tyrolean architecture.

Stormy Connections

Storms tonight are flickering our power and messing with connectivity. I hope all is better tomorrow.

Power Tools

Today as part of finishing rebuilding our basement I am losing power for a few hours. It could be that I will hit a local coffeehouse, but much of the work I need to get done is tied to things at my desk and are not things I or my clients would be comfortable sitting out in a coffeehouse. Such is life. All this means the month or so of banging, jackhammers, and other power tools is nearly done.

Oddly, I was supposed to be out in the Hamptons today, but some last minute work and bumps in the schedule this week made it a better choice to hang out home and get work done. The Hamptons is also notorious for horrible mobile phone connectivity and few Wifi access points. I had enough "vacation this month already", which is busy season.

Non-Connectivity

Due to "circumstances" I will have limited connectivity this upcoming week. E-mail for my main accounts will work, but much beyond that is iffy at best. See you on the far side of this little outage.

Terra Plana Pleasure

My Terra Plana Boi shoes arrived today. They not only fit, but they are very comfortable out of the box. I had tried a pair at Imelda & Louies in Portland, Oregon but they did not fit and I needed the next size up, which they did not have. I enjoyed shopping directly at the Terra Plana site and even though they are a UK firm they have local U.S. shipping. Brilliant that!

The true test will be walking around in them in the upcoming weeks and months. These are replacing my 18 month old Born (semi-racing/driving) shoes that I really liked, but they no longer make. One of the things that interested me was Terra Plana shoes are environmentally friendly, which is really rare in the shoe making business (at least from what I have read) with the toxic glues and plastics. The only important thing is how they fit and how comfortable they are for a day of walking, as well as how well they hold up. If these are still in regular use in 18 months I will be a huge fan (I am well on my way to being that now).

World Cup Moves On

The World Cup for football (soccer in the U.S.) came to its completion today with Italy winning. This has been a month of wonderful games and drama. The World Cup seems to always grow in interest to me with each one. This year I was in Europe (Innsbruck, Austria and Amsterdam, Netherlands) for the first few days of the World Cup, being hosted in Germany. It was fantastic to be in countries that get and care about football and World Cup.

It always seems that the World Cup is more of a uniting event than the Olympics. Yes, more people Watch the World Cup. In the U.S. more people went to the World Cup home page this past week than the Major League Baseball homepage. There is more deep passion and country essence displayed in and at the World Cup than any other sporting event, or make that any other event.

I was able to watch more full games than any year prior and it made it quite enjoyable. I think 1990 was the first year I watched on satellite in an Irish Bar in the Haight Ashbury. I have been hooked since.

The more I get into the World Cup the more I see the U.S. out of touch with the world and rather parochial. I know more and more in the U.S. are watching the games, which I think is a great step forward. Football is a team sport like no other as the culture is portrayed on the field and in the stands. There is strategy, teamwork, and beauty that evokes passion and pride. There is pride emanating from the Ivory Coast, Ghana, and Australia that put them on the same level as some of the powerhouse football countries. That seems like a healthy pride.

It was nice to see Germany be a great host and find it okay to be proud of a national team. It was nice to hear Germany television reporting enthusiastically about sports, well something other than Dirk Nowitzki. It seems like the fans this World Cup were rather well behaved, which is a very good sign as well.

I am going to miss World Cup, but the world still seems smaller and much more cohesive than it did a month ago. The world is made up on one people and this wee planet we call home and most of us enjoy a good game of football.

Blue Thomas

I will be off-line until late Thursday or Friday morning. Something about "The Greatest Little Engine".

Roaring Skies

There is nothing like an F18 fighter jet blasting above the house to get one checking the sky and diving into the news.

World Cup Celebration

It is that time in life's cycle where I get a wee bit distracted. It is time for World Cup. I had the wonderful fortune to be in Europe as World Cup started, but being in Amsterdam as het Oranje played was quite special. I managed to hang out with Peter at his workplace and watched. It was amazing how Amsterdam became silent then roared when the Dutch scored.

I was staying in a nice little hotel, ACH Leidse Square, near the Vondel Park and not far from Leidseplein. This made it easy to walk through one of the central location for people to aggregate during football matches, the Leidseplein. From about five blocks away I could hear the roar as a goal was scored from nearly any team. The Leidseplein was awash in many block colors of people's home or favorite national team. This is not something that the USA really gets. Football is an international sport with more viewers for the World Cup than 12 Super Bowls. World Cup connects the world and cultures, probably more closely than the Olympics. It is a pageant of color and passion for national and regional pride. There is beauty in the game of motion and dance. It is a game where size and power is not essential, but skill and cunning can level a playing field. It is a game of teams and working together.

The USA has a team in the World Cup, but it is seemingly lost on many who live in the country.

Since the 1980s I have grown to enjoy World Cup more and more. In 1998 many work meetings seemed to fall in mid-afternoon lunches at tapas restaurant bars in Washington, DC as our work was with Europeans and Latin American clients. A little wine and espresso wrapped discussions about strategy and assents of telecom markets with clients. But the main focus was the game with work interspersed. If the client's national team was doing well the work went well as they had a positive feeling about the meeting, but if their team was not doing well they focussed a little more on the meeting and a lot got done.

This summer I have the ability to catch a few games around work and share it with our international neighbors. We all wear our colors of pride and our kids learn about passion, color, dance, and sports of beauty.

Now to Sort and Respond to the Inboxes

I am back home with full Internet and full e-mail. I have much digging out to do as well as wash from 7 days on the road, which followed 2 days home and 5 days on the road.

The Microlearning conference was fantastic. I really enjoyed all the people and presentations. I will write-up a little more on the Microlearning conference and microcontent in general as well as Innsbruck and Amsterdam notes.

TechCrunch Party in Seattle

I am in Seattle next week for a few days and while there I will be heading to the TechCrunch Party on May 31st. It looks like a good event, as most TechCrunch events go. If you are around you will need to sign-up on the wiki to attend.

Memephoria

While I was responding to a friend's e-mail about another large corporation using the term folksonomy I realized that at the moment I do not care if somebody is using it correctly (often people use it to mean tagging -- not tagging that actually works or to mean a tag cloud (the things that are cute but provide little value)). I realized that on the path of a term becoming a buzz word it gets adopted by those who have a case of memephoria.

Memephoria is the state of believing that spreading the latest meme as a mantra will earn you transcendence. Memephoria does not require one to understand the term used in the meme mantra, just to use it (correctly or in-correctly).

Upcoming Conferences I am Presenting at and Attending

Okay, things have been quite busy here. But, here will be changing as I am hitting the skies a bit in the short term. This means I may be near you so reach out and we can hang out and chat. I am completely looking forward to all the places on my schedule and seeing all of the people.

XTech

I am off to Amsterdam, Netherlands (no not that other one) this week to speak at XTech. I will be presenting Developing for the Personal InfoCloud on Thursday at 11:45 in the morning.

BarCamp Amsterdam

On Saturday I will be attending BarCamp Amsterdam for part of the time.

Seattle Area

Following the Amsterdam trip I should be in the Seattle area for work. I don't have dates as of yet, but if you shoot an e-mail I will be sure and connect.

Microlearning 2006 Conference

I will be heading to Innsbruck, Austria for the Microlearning Conference and preconference (June 7). I will be talking about microcontent in the Personal InfoCloud and our ability and desire to manage it (one means of doing this is folksonomy, but will be discussing much more).

Following Innsbruck I may be in Europe a bit longer and a little farther north. I will be in Amsterdam just following the conference, but beyond that my schedule has not yet fully jelled.

WebVisions 2006

I will be heading to WebVisions 2006 in Portland, Oregon July 20th and 21st. I will be speaking on Friday the 21st about Tagging in the Real World. This will look at how people are making use of tagging (particularly tagging services) and looking at the best practices.

The Fall

In September it looks like I will be in Brighton, UK for a wonderful event. I should also be in Australia later in September for another conference.

As these events get closer, I will be letting you know.

Yes, I know I need to be publishing this information in hCal, but I have been quite busy of late. But, I am moving in that direction very soon. You can also follow what I am watching and attending in Upcoming for vanderwal.

Just Alarming

I seem to have attracted fire alarms to myself. Last Friday just as I was being introduced to speak at Yahoo! the fire alarm went off and we had to evacuate. Last night, here in the conference hotel in Long Branch, New Jersey I had just fallen asleep when the fire alarm went off. We did not have to evacuate, but rather than getting to sleep at 11:30 the night prior to speaking it was about 1:30am.

Odd Moments in the Day - Odd Moments with Technology?

Today brought an odd moment. I looked up at iChat (my IM interface) and I see my name (Thomas Vander Wal) and podcast under Jeremy's name, which means Jeremy is most likely listening to a podcast interview with me. I had never seen that before.

Now I decide to share that odd moment with Jeremy, which I did not realize would cause Jeremy to have an odd moment.

How can the world of pervasive/ubiquitous computing ever get off the ground when we give each other odd moments through our friendly stalking? By the way I prefer using stalking, where as some people like the term monitoring, but the term monitoring does not cause me to think about privacy implications that I believe we must resolve within ourself or learn to better protect our privacy.

The incident today still causes me to chuckle for a short moment then realize how open we are with things on the internet and how different that seems to be even though most of our life has been public, but to a smaller and more localized group. It also resignals that change that came with the internet (well and much of technology) is that we can not see those who can see us. In a town we know the local video store guy knows what we rent, but now Amazon knows what we bought as do those people on our friends list whom we share our purchases with so they can have some insight as what to buy. My local video store guy in San Francisco, near California and 2nd or 3rd Avenue, was amazing. He knew everything I rented in the last few months and would provide perfect recommendations. Did he use a computer to aid himself? Nope, he was just that good and his brain could keep the connection between a face and videos rented and if you liked that video. He knew my taste perfectly and was dead on with recommendations. Not only was he on with me, but most others who frequented his store. He was great recommending, but also could help people avoid movies they did not like.

Was the guy in the video store freaky? Not really, well to me. He was a person and that was his role and his job. I worked in a coffee house for a while first thing in the morning. After a couple months I knew who the first 10 customers would be and I knew about half of the orders or possible variations of what people would order. People are patterned, I could tie the person's face to that pattern for espresso coffee drink order and I could recommend something that they should try. To some this was a little disturbing, but to most is was endearing and was a bond between customer and shopkeeper as I cared enough to know what they would like and remembered them (I did not often remember their names and most of them I did not know their names), but I knew what they drank. If is the familiarity.

So, with technology as an intermediary or as the memory tool what is so freaky? Is it not seeing into somebody's eyes? Is it the magic or somebody more than 3,000 miles away knowing what you are listening to and then have the person whom you are listening to pop-up for a chat? I think it is we have collapsed space and human norms. It is also difficult to judge intent with out seeing face or eyes. I was in a back and forth recently with a friend, but could not sense their intent as it seemed like the tone was harsh (for a person whom I trust quite a bit and think of as being intensely kind and giving) and I finally had to write and ask, but it was written from a point where I was bothered by the tone. My problem was I could not see the eyes of the person and see they playfulness or gestures to know their intent was playful challenging.

While at the Information Architecture Summit a couple/few weeks ago in Vancouver a few of us went to dinner and we played werewolf (my first time playing). But, I was reminded that the eyes hold a lot of information and carry a lot of weight in non-verbal communication. I could pick the werewolf whose eyes I could see, but in two occasions the werewolf was sitting next to me and I could not see their eyes. There was one person in each of the two games whom I did think was the werewolf as their eyes were signaling similarly to people who were not telling the truth in the cultures I grew up in.

Could technology be more easily embraced if it had eyes? Should we have glancing as Matt Webb has suggested and built an application to suggest? But could we take Matt'a concept farther? Would it be helpful?

This was a long post of what was just going to be pointing out an odd moment in the day.