A Good Week
I had a good week.
Jack's YMCA Youth-league basketball team needed a coach and I volunteered. "Coach Schneeman" has echoes to my youth and I feel a bit of a connection there. More importantly, the connection between Jack and I strengthens at every practice, every game. Two Saturdays ago saw the first game and we play weekly for the next several weeks. I find coaching 6-8 year olds closer to herding cats than playing basketball. Still, I enjoy it and endeavor to teach the value of passing and team work.
On Wednesday, I attended the inaugural Ignite Austin event downtown at The Phoenix. The Ignite series of speaker events sit under the larger O'Reilly Media umbrella. The tagline alternates between "20 slides, 5 minutes, what would you say?" and "Entertain us. Enlighten Us. But Make it Snappy". Speakers are given five minutes and 20 slides that auto advance. The topics ranged broadly: "How to Open a Beer with Almost Anything", "Style, not Rules", "The Etymology of Curse Words" and "Is the Smart Grid the next Internet?" and several others. I actually submitted a proposal ("Funny Money: Strange Currencies through the Ages") but Ignite had a full dance card by the time I screwed up the courage to submit.
I found the topics fun, interesting and mostly entertaining. Running unexpectedly into my good friends (Frank and Adam R) formed the highlight of my evening, but winning the paper airplane contest came a close 2nd:
(mildly dismayed at seeing my graying hair and realizing that the camera really does add 10 pounds that I can't afford)
Winning gained me a pass to the South by Southwest Interactive conference in Austin in March. Should be fun.
And I'm working on my submission for the next Ignite Austin event. "Funny Money" is likely a good presentation, but I think "How to start a babysitting co-op and take over the world" will work better.
Downside to Ignite? I'm now using Twitter. Sigh. I thought I could remain blissfully clueless, but the Ignite people use Twitter to keep people informed. I now have to determine a strategy to balance Facebook and Twitter. Upside? A germ of an idea to marry Sitegeister technology with Twitter. Stay tuned.
Friday saw me presenting (via video conference) to the CEO of where I work. Five of us in Austin, one of him in San Jose, me doing the bulk of the speaking. The CEO came to Austin in November and through down a challenge. Interested, I answered the challenge and sort of took a leadership position. This meeting presented the initial efforts. Turns out we sort of missed the mark from the CEO's perspective, but we can hit it soon and hopefully turn the Austin office into a nice little innovation engine.
A new week begins. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Posted at 10:02AM Jan 18, 2010 by schnee in General | Comments[1]
The facebook/ twitter trade-off isn't too bad, there are facebook apps like 'selective twitter' that lets you post to either or both quite easily.
The twitter API is also simple to play with and you can do interesting things. Plus API development status gets you the 100,000 updates per hour advantage over the rest of the world :)
http://www.fivecomputers.com/2009/04/what-did-you-say.html
Posted by Gordon McGregor on January 18, 2010 at 10:12 AM CST #