Very busy day at work.. I was glad when late afternoon rolled around. Id reserved some time to go work on bens crazy stampmobile. ( You can see it by googling “wired stampmobile”) He’s building it to call attention to the terrible impact that money – particularly corporate money – has on politics. You can see the thing in action by Googling “wired stampmobile” . It s a beautiful rube goldberg like contraption that takes a persons dollar and takes it on a an amazing roller coaster ride of dips and twirls .. Then stamps it with a slogan.. Like ” this money is not for bribing politicians” before giving it back to you.
The machine was built by a guy in California.. While the mechanics are beautiful and ingenious, the control electronics are not… So friends colin. Seth and john are working with me to redo them. We’ve made great progress.. But its not finished yet.. Hope to get there soon… Its been fun working on such a a cool concept. And, to my mind.. Such a. Good cause..
On my way home to Vermont after a really fun and useful work meeting in Raleigh. As I’ve said several time this week.. it was great seeing old friends and meeting so many new folks… .. One thing that did keep happening though was that I kept getting lost.. Not just in all the acronyms that were flying around.. I kept getting physically lost. For some reason my iphone navigation cant find the IBM address.. It’s demonstrated that to me on several previous trips.. ..This time, like last time, I spent 20 minutes exploring the north carolina country side in an attempt to find the ibm site.. which is huge by the way.. Then.. after dinner, I came out of the building and spent another 20 minutes searching for my car… I of coarse had not committed the location. make, or model to memory.. I vaguely remember it having four wheels.. or something like that.. I ended up walking through a small woods and magically found it right before giving up…. Then today.. I got totally lost again on sight trying to find friend Jim for a meeting.. I think it’s like some sort of Heisenberg uncertainty principle at qwork.. It seems I etiher know where I am.. or where I’m supposed to be.. .. but never both at the same time..
It keeps life interesting !
One great thing that happened today is that I finally got to meet my admin and friend Uduak face to face for the first time
11 pm and I’m just getting back to my hotel room. I left here at 7am.I’m at at a several day work face to face meeting. The content has been great. So many smart people, so many ideas.. Better than the content has been the contact. As i said yesterday, its been really good… And useful re-connecting with many old friends/colleagues at both a technical and personal level.. Its also been really, fun and useful meeting new people in my adopted organization. My favorite thing, however, has been meeting folks I’ve been working with on a monthly, weekly or even daily basis face to face for the first time. I work with folks from all over the world that I’ve . Never met.. There’s just something powerful about sitting across from that same person over a beer, cup of coffee or mountain dew. I cant really put my finger on why its so valuable.. But it is.. The information bandwidth is certainly higher.. But it something more.. Somehow you. Really Grok someone better after sharing the same air with them, i guess…
Grok.. Now theres a word i haven’t used in a long time.. Its from a robert heinlen scifi book called strange in a strange land.. It means to really understand something or soemone at a new level .. You Grok ?
Greetings from RTP. I’m at a very cool work meeting with a ton of folks ice known forever and a ton of people I’ve never met. I sat in the back of the room all day staring at the backs of people’s heads..
.. And very intelligent heads they were . This is a new group for me. Many new people, new concepts, new priorities . It was exciting and hiking. Humbling because it makes me realize how much I don’t know.
I had some really good technical conversations and met some cool new folks today. Hopefully more of the same tomorrow .
