To Kellan, On Occasion of your First Birthday

Posted on May 14, 2012
Filed Under Wicked Little Critta! | Leave a Comment

Dear Kellan,

Kellan, a few minutes old

When you were just a few minutes old

Shortly after your brother was born, I wrote his birth story - but I haven’t written much about yours. Your arrival was … unexpected: It was the day after your Mamma’s last day of work – she was taking the last month of her pregnancy off to enjoy herself  and prepare us for your arrival, a good five weeks before your supposed birthday. Your Mamma and I were out on a date to celebrate her last day. Liam was staying over at his friend Luke’s place. We had a really nice dinner at l’Abattoir, then came home. In the middle of the night, Your Mamma woke me  up because her water had broken – this was very unexpected because you weren’t due for another 5 weeks or so. On the flip-side, you couldn’t have picked a better night: Liam was taken care of so we didn’t have to wake him up to go to the hospital.

We went to St. Paul’s hospital, where your Mamma works, and then waited. And waited. The doctors decided to induce labour, as it wasn’t starting on its own. But the first time they hooked up the IV, it wasn’t working, so none of the drugs were actually being used, which caused some additional delay – by this time it was coming to be mid-day on May 14th, many, many hours after we first arrived. Finally, they fixed the IV, and labour began. It only took a couple of hours until you arrived:

We were very excited to meet you – but it was clear that you were having troubles breathing. Mamma, after a few quick cuddles with you, handed you to the nurses and you were whisked away to the NICU. You had it extra good because that’s where your Mamma works, so everyone knew her, and knew how to take really good care of you. The St. Paul’s NICU is a good place, but they didn’t have all the stuff you needed to help you breathe, and so after a few days, you were taken to the Children’s Hospital NICU.

Peeking out

There, you lived in an incubator for the next 12 days. Mamma spent virtually all day, every day with you. Your Nanna came out to meet you and help us get your brother to & from school. I came to visit after work every day. This was, I’m not kidding you, a really hard time. You seemed to be slowly getting better, but it was hard to tell and you were just so little, surrounded by such big, loud machines.

But your Mamma was a great advocate with you, and knew just what to ask for and when to push, so you got great care. And because your Mamma is literally a pro at taking care of little babies, you came home much earlier than you probably would have if you had different parents.

Much like when Liam was born, we weren’t fully prepared for your arrival – there was still lots of things to get and do and whatnot. But we were so happy you were home. You were so very, very tiny. And those first few months at home you were very very difficult. You weren’t a big fan of sleeping, and you were so tiny that you had trouble eating. I had taken to calling you some pretty unflattering nicknames in private because it was sometimes so hard. You would cry and cry and cry and we didn’t know why. We tried everything. I would hold you and rock you in my arms and sing every song I knew to get you to go to sleep. And your Mama, she deserves a medal because during the week, when I had to work, she tried so hard to let me sleep so that I could get up and go to work. Then on the weekends I’d try to let her sleep. But you know what Kellan? I think I failed more often than not at first. You were so different from your brother even then.

Then one day, things got a lot better. I’m not sure when, exactly, or how old you were – I think you were about 5 months (4 months, adjusted) when you started sleeping “through the night” (by which I mean you slept for more than 2-3 hours at a time). And napping. And generally being a much happier camper. And you started growing, and growing and growing. We went from being worried about how small you were to worried that you were too big! You had your first halloween. We dressed you as a little dragon, but you didn’t seem too impressed:

Our Sad Little Dragon

Our Sad Little Dragon

And then there was the helmet. Because you came so early, and spent so much time hooked up to machines, your head was a little misshapen. Not grotesque-gargoyle misshapen (although I did like to call you my little gargoyle), but enough that we decided to get you a helmet to help correct this. There was much deliberation about it, weighing the pros and cons. And then it came, and you wore it fore about 2 months until we couldn’t take it anymore: your head was so vastly better than before, it that short time; it made you so unhappy; and worse, there didn’t seem to be any real science backing the use of the helmet, or any long-term studies about potential side-effects.

Kellan in his helmet

You, wearing your head-shaping helmet

Since December, you’ve been growing like mad. Now at a year old, you’re happily crawling about in clothes labelled for 18months & 24-months: you’re big! And you’re happy. You love the cats, particularly Twitch, who is infinitely patient with you because you love to chase him and pet him and climb all over him:

Kellan Loves Twitch

You love the kitty so much!

What I think I love most about getting to know you is seeing just different you are from your older brother, and such a wonderful little boy all your own. Your eyes, which likely haven’t settled on a colour yet, seem to be headed into the hazel/green/grey palate, much like your Mamma’s, unlike Liam’s whose were as blue as the sky from day one. You’re not quick to smile or laugh, but when you do, they’re great big smiles and huge belly laughs. You are a baby on a mission! Sitting still and carefully examining things is for chumps! You learned to crawl for a reason and you like to crawl a lot. I suspect that one day, very soon, when you figure this whole walking thing out, it’ll be even more crazy trying to keep up with you. Your love your big brother and just want to follow him wherever he is. Fortunately, you have an amazing older brother who loves to play with you, and will look out for you. You are loud! You like to talk, a lot, and tell us in no uncertain terms when you’re unhappy. At home this is ok. But, little bear, you need to learn to travel better. See, we love to travel. And we got spoiled by Liam who was a great traveller from day one. But plane rides with you are much less fun so far. Because you can’t crawl wherever you like on a plane and darn it you just want to move! But we’ve still been places. You’ve been to LA already.

You, your big brother & your Dad in LA

You, your big brother & your Dad in LA

My first year with you has been so amazing, little bear! I can’t wait for us all to discover what comes next.

An Easter Vignette

Posted on April 8, 2012
Filed Under Random Thoughts | Leave a Comment

The boy was tall for his age – he stood out more as the woman laid down the ground rules as dozens of younger, smaller children all milled around excitedly waiting for the whistle to be blown. And when it did the children surged forward, some led by parents, some tugging eagerly on their parents’ hands, some simply running full tilt to the furthest point. And there were eggs everywhere. On chairs, tables, bookshelves, keyboards, the floor, ledges, under hedges, in every nook and cranny. In many cases adults ran around picking up the eggs, dropping them into their child’s basket. And it started with such promise – almost immediately he found an egg, left alone after the crush had rushed through the opening.

But his luck turned. At every turn, he went to where the mob gathered, but he was a polite boy, and said “excuse me” and waited for his turn to look while the smaller children pushed him aside and pushed through and took the glory. The act was repeated over and over again – inside at the book shelves, outside in the hedgerow, on the playground, under the slide, amongst the rocks. At each instance, he came up empty-handed, while the smaller children filled their baskets.

But not all was lost, for he knew at home that he had his own basket, already full, awaiting him, that he did not have to compete for, that he had filled at his leisure that very morning. And the lone chocolate egg he had found was added to his bounty, then slowly, carefully savored over several minutes – letting it melt slowly in his mouth rather than simply chewing, reveling as the sun-softened chocolate melted in his hands, coating his lips and cheeks and chin.

 

An Adaptive Image Technique: Thinking out loud

Posted on March 22, 2012
Filed Under Projects, Random Thoughts, Web Development | Leave a Comment

I’ve been playing a lot with responsive layouts, and the inevitable bugbear of adaptive images for responsive designs. Ethan Marcotte’s Fluid Images is what I’ve been playing with most, particularly via Matt Wilcox’s Adaptive Images script, and dreaming of the <picture> solution proposed by Mat Marquis. But and so, I’ve been doodling and fooling around with some ways of doing this, and have now come up with something that I like. I’m worried it’s actually terrible, but I’ve played with it enough that I’d like some feedback now.

I’ve come up with a a CSS3-only solution to adaptive images. For those who just want to see the example, go ahead. You can view source for all the details. The 3-col/2-col content is purely presentational.

To do this technique, I have an image tag, like so:

<img id="image1" src="/transparent.png" data-src="/fishing.jpg" alt="Man fishing on a log" />

That displays a 1 x 1 px transparent image. The data-src attribute is there to show the “true” source. In the CSS, I make use of the background-image property to provide media-query-attentive backgrounds & sizing.

The default declaration is:

#image1 {
background: url('/images/responsive/fishing-small.jpg') top center no-repeat;
width:100%;
max-height:67px;}

This is the “small device” version of the image. using media queries, I can also load in an hd/retina version for those devices:

@media only screen and (-webkit-device-pixel-ratio:2) {
#image1 {
background-image: url('/images/responsive/fishing-small.jpg')
}
}

I also can provide a mid-size version, a mid-size hd/retina version and a desktop version (or an infinite number of variations based on media queries).

@media only screen and (-webkit-device-pixel-ratio:2) and (min-width: 600px) {
#image1 {
background-image: url('/images/responsive/fishing-mid-retina.jpg')
}
}

To provide some fallback for IE users, I’ve included an IE-specific style:

<!--[if lt IE 9]>
<style>
#image1 {background-image: url('/images/responsive/fishing');width:100%;}
</style>
endif]-->

I like to start “mobile first” and use media-queries to “grow out” from there, but I could just as easily start with the largest version and work in – in which case the IE workaround wouldn’t be necessary.

Some of my thoughts on this technique

I’m hoping for feedback on this for the world at large – as I said, I’m thinking out loud about this – it seems like a workable solution, so your feedback, thoughts, critique would be very much appreciated before I go do anything silly like use this in a client’s project.

Eastside Mural Tour project: a critique

Posted on March 21, 2012
Filed Under Events & Culture, Random Thoughts, Travel, Web Culture & Links | 1 Comment

I want to preface this by saying I love the idea of the Eastside Mural Tour project, for so many reasons: I love Vancouver’s art, particularly the hidden, surprising art. I love graffiti art. I’m a fan of community projects, and projects that celebrate them. I’m also particularly interested in the idea of digitally curated physical objects, and finding new ways to help travel, explore, learn about communities online. That being said, I’m really disappointed with this project – they’ve missed some really simple points that I feel are critical. If you’re a developer on this project, please don’t think I’m shitting all over you for no reason: if you’ll let me, I would gladly pitch in to help.

All that out of the way, here’s the misses:

  1. The site doesn’t really work on Mobile. Load the front-page: the interactive map is done in flash. The site itself isn’t optimized in any way for a mobile experience: but this is a site destined to be used by someone on a device; most likely as their doing their tours.
  2. The most prominent links are to PDFs of the tours; the big, colourful buttons on the right side. However, hidden at top at HTML versions of the descriptions, which actually contain descriptions of the art!
  3. On these HTML pages, there’s no Map of the location. Nor is there any “next stop/previous stop” links to guide my usage of this. Nor do these HTML pages contain the dial-in directions that the PDFs do
  4. The PDFs are not styled in any way, nor do they contain any of the useful descriptions of the stops on the tour – instead, they simply contain titles of the art, in a format that appear to be links, but if they are, did not work for me in any way.
  5. This one strikes me as particularly egregious: The PDFs contain an image of a Google map that contains all the stops on the tour. So someone clearly spent some time building the geo-coded tour – why not embed that map?
  6. No social: Why not at least propose a couple of hashtags for the project, per tour, maybe per site. Pull in comments/photos from Instagram, Twitter, Foursquare to let the community participate in this beautiful project, in this art. Pinwheel is brand new, but given Caterina‘s local origins, they might be very interested in participating.
  7. Data: I couldn’t find these mural’s in Vancouver’s Data set (though maybe I just failed in my search), but why not, given you clearly have all the geo-data for these murals, release that data for others to remix?

There other, smaller quibbles, but those top 5 strike me as major faults that we should fix. The last simply betrays my personal bias towards open data, and in particular, location data.

There’s also some other ways this same sort of tour could be made. There’s a site, MapTales, that exists solely to create these sorts of self-guided tours. I don’t think it should replace the current site, but providing links to another interface would be a nice way to share these tours out in a well-designed, contemporary way. Bringing up Pinwheel again, all of these stops could exist in there. I don’t think they have the idea of “tours” currently, but by creating a hashtag, locating these places, this could open up the ability to extend & comment on by the pinwheel community. I’d also recommend creating “places” in Foursquare for each of the stops on the tours, let people check in there – or at least easily geolocate photos taken there in such a way that the project itself can re-use them.

This project is sub-titled “murals and the spirit of collaboration”, and yet feels so far from being a project that the digital community can collaborate in right now. Let’s fix it.

Editorial Aside

This brings up all sorts of thoughts around the ongoing failure to provide super-easy tools, widgets, add-ons, etc that projects like this could easily make use of. Even most plugins, themes & mapping tools still require programming knowledge to configure and drop into sites. This world of digitally-curated, real-world spaces is really just beginning. We need to find/build better tools for the average person to expose their localities, their stories in a way that works for all.

Clearing line-breaks in SQL Server text fields

Posted on March 20, 2012
Filed Under Random Thoughts, Web Development | Leave a Comment

I was recently doing a data export for a client that included a bunch of ostensibly plain-text data fields that include any number of tabs, carriage returns and line feeds that were mucking up the csv file. And oh, how I fought that data to make it look nice. It was many, many hours past when it should have occurred to me that I finally thought to clean up the fields on export, NOT during import. Such is the problem with tunnel visions.

Anyway, for future reference, and easy way to clean up fields to simply replace the offending characters, using something along the following lines:


SELECT replace([field],char(10),'[replacementchar]') FROM [table]

So, I wanted to replace line feeds (char(10)) and carriage returns (char(13)), so I doubled that to:


SELECT replace(replace([field],char(10),' '),char(13),' ') FROM [table]

And it all worked beautifully. I’m writing & storing it here on the hopes if I run into this again, it’ll be googleable.

Comics

Posted on March 16, 2012
Filed Under Books, Comics, Magazines, Events & Culture, Random Thoughts | 3 Comments

I buy comics. A fair amount of comics. I’ve drastically cut back my spending these past couple of years, but the fact remains is that nearly every week of the year, I’m buying 3 or 4 issues. And they make me happy. Every few weeks, for the past 15 years, ever since I moved to Vancouver, I head down to Golden Age Collectibles on Granville st. There, they’ve put aside the comics I collect in a “saver”. When new series come out, I add those to my list. This is an incredible way to shop. Comic shop sales-people have a bad rep (see: The Simpsons, Big Bang Theory), but in my experience, they’re some of the nicest retailers I know: they get  customer service. If an author or artist I like has a new book coming out, I’ll often find the first issue of that series in my saver even though I didn’t ask for it, because they think I might like it. When I lived in Toronto, I went to the Silver Snail, using the same saver system.

I used to buy physical music. But I started ordering CDs online as soon as Amazon delivered to Canada, and never looked back. I never had a single local supplier of music. & when digital music became a viable option for me, I mostly stopped ordering CDs at all, and never looked back.

I used to buy physical books. A lot of books. When I first moved in with Leah, I believe the boxes of books were more in both weight & volume than the rest of my possessions combined. & I tried to support local, indie booksellers. But in the end, I started ordering online because it was easier. But I didn’t have a single source for books ever since Bollum‘s at Granville and Georgia closed, and so I never looked back. & now I only buy digital books – mostly Kindle, but the occasional iBook thrown in for good measure.

And while I’m bummed about the loss of bookstores & music stores, I never had a connection to any of them. I started reading some digital comics when I got the first iPad. The app sucked, the interface wasn’t great. But you could tell this was where things were going. But now with the new iPad (3), the retina display means that comics could potentially look as good, or better, on screen than they do in print. And there’s no storage issue. I have boxes & boxes of comics, stored in the basement that I don’t know what to do with. Sometimes I go and re-read old series. I hope someday Liam or Kellan might like to. But I don’t want to keep adding to the pile, particularly as I move to a new place where storage is at something of a premium.

And so, I’m likely going to start subscribing to a lot of the series I like digitally. Sure, I’m locking in to some DRM scheme, but I’m ok with that. The convenience of digital subscriptions current outweighs my dislike. But I’ll  be sad about not going to buy comics from my local. I’ll miss their recommendations. And I’ll be sad if/when they close. I don’t know how much the memorabilia/collectable trading card portion of the store brings to their bottom line. But I think the time is coming, in the very near future, where I won’t be buying physical comics anymore.

And I’m sad about that. & I suspect that I’ll miss an ephemeral, but important part of my cultural landscape in a way that I didn’t with books or music.

Reducing Aural & visual notification clutter

Posted on March 5, 2012
Filed Under Random Thoughts | 1 Comment

I, like many of us, am constantly bombarded by small interruptions that not only negatively affect my productivity, but often can affect my mood. From my phone, it’s notifications: iMessage, twitter, games, hockey scores, email. On my computer,it’s alerts: new email, Skype, iChat, file transfer, etc.

I usually keep my phone on silent mode, which by default makes it buzz for all of these updates – once for most notifications, twice for SMS. I decided recently to turn off the vibrate on silent. And you know what, it’s great. I don’t’ find the visual alert bothersome – most of the time my phone’s on my desk, or in a dock, so I can at a glance see if something’s important. But if I’m focussed on something else, I can ignore it completely. The notifications centre is always there to review what I’ve missed, on my schedule. But whenever my phone buzzed, that would distract me & I’d lose my concentration. I’ve felt so much better since turning off vibrate.

Likewise, on the computer, I’ve turned off all aural notifications – not beeps or rings on Skype, or iChat. Where possible, I’ve also made the visual clues more subtle: rather than bouncing the icon in the dock, just show an alert there – a star or a number, or whatever the app’s settings are. Again – this lets me know that there’s something there, but it’s not an aural, or even much of visual distraction. Particularly during my witching hour of the post-lunch sleepies from 1 – 3 pm, I find this change has in particular immensely helped my ability to stay focussed on my tasks at hand.

Of course, there’s some irony in that while working, I am usually listening to music – which I know a lot of people find distracting in and of itself. For me, however, music is sort of like a white-noise machine: It blocks out the other, less predictable noises of the traffic outside, my office neighbours’ phone conversations, my staff’s discussions. It even blocks out the pesky, critical voices in my own head a lot of the time, which is really great. Plus, music enables the sublime: that moment that you fix the bug right as the track reaches the crescendo, or you’re racing for a deadline and some great techno, whose bpm perfectly matches the speed of your fingers on the keyboard, or late in the day when you need a pick me up and some random, terribly catchy pop tunes comes on and you can sing along and get that important pick-me up.

London Calling

Posted on February 20, 2012
Filed Under Music, Random Thoughts | Leave a Comment

London Calling

London Calling

I don’t know if I stole it from my brother, or inherited it when he outgrew it or if it was a gift. But when I was a kid, I had a tshirt. I ratty, thread-bare tshirt that had the iconic album cover image from The Clash’s London Calling on the front. I’m pretty sure I didn’t know who The Clash were or what they sounded like but I knew I loved that shirt. The abandonment of smashing a guitar spoke to me. I was a reserved, ultra-shy kid. I could never in a million years imagine doing such a thing. But I loved it.

Growing up, music was important in my family. We had a quality stereo, with good speakers. It sat in 1 corner of the living room. The unit was home-built, cobbled together from some bricks and wood boards. The bottom shelf was storage for our LPs. The second shelf held the amplifier and the cassette-player. There was  half-shelf on top of that, which was cassette storage on the left. & the crown jewel: the record player. I’ve no idea if it was a particularly good player, but the sound that came from those speakers when listening to an LP was sublime. We had a stiff-cushioned couch that was perfect for building forts (or a tunnel) out of. I would put on an album – the Beatles, or Cat Stevens or something else from my parents’ collection, which tended heavily to singer-songwriterly & classical, and sit in the semi-darkness of my fort, dreaming of the wide world outside my windows, listening to the record player, bursting forth from my fort when it was time to change sides of the LP. It my memories these were always solo pursuits, but I think the truth is more that I was so lost in my world that I was oblivious to the rest of my family around me.

Much as the tshirt that preceded it, I don’t know if I stole the album from my brother’s collection, or if it was a gift – I’m certain I didn’t buy it. But it was the first gate-folded double-LP I can remember. There was some water damage, in the bottom-centre corner, and the cardboard had sponged out & torn slightly. The sleeve, yellowed & made brittle with age or use, of LP 1 had torn, and someone had taped it back together with cello tape. The album cover had that slightly musty smell of damp cardboard that I will eternally associate with good music. I’d pull the disc out of the sleeve carefully, so as to not further damage it – sleeves were always really important to me, despite their almost by-design replaceable nature. I’d lift the plastic lid up off the record player, situate the disc on the centre spindle, gently place the needle-arm at the start. Then always, always, turned it UP. The initial crackle and pop, and Oh, that opening riff. Snarling, choppy guitars howling scratchily out of the speakers. Then the surprisingly musical singing from Joe Strummer, London Calling. Heaven.

I don’t know how many times I’ve listened to London Calling. I’m by no means a good guitarist but I can play every song straight through. I know every lyric. Our LP had a scratch in the middle of Death or Glory - the first “just another story” was never sung, just bounced over. I’ve since bought this album on Cassette, CD & ripped it to FLAC, but in my mind’s heart, these digital versions are what’s wrong, not the scratchy version on my album.

I don’t own a record player right now. The convenience of the digital library, accessible anywhere, instantly being able to play any tune is just too hard to compete against. But digital music doesn’t have the soul of an LP. They say scent-memory is particularly strong. And it’s true. For many of my favourite music from when I was a kid, I have an olfactory response of the musty smell of the cardboard LP covers they lived in, the hot-dust smell of a record that had been played on repeat for too long. Liam won’t have that. When he wants a song, he’ll find it on our digital library, on on YouTube. There’s an inconvenience in flipping through stacks of LPs, but there’s also a joy of browsing too – how often did I put on something entirely different because my fingers happened to pause on that LP while searching for another one all together?

 

A million dollars isn’t cool, you know what’s cool?

Posted on February 12, 2012
Filed Under Random Thoughts, Running a Business | 4 Comments

There’s been a lot of chatter locally about startups, startup culture and startup support in Vancouver. (See: Boris, Jesse, Allen, the twitters of @kaler & @igorskee for a quick round up). I’ve also been chatting a bit with Lauren about work-life, and recently caught up with my former boss Jason, where we chatted a bit about how we’ve come to define success.

With all the conversation about startups, I find myself wondering what makes a startup a startup. Must a startup be a product company? What about a Drupal-theming company? My company, Pencilneck Software is sort of a hybrid: We’ve built products – internally, our CMS is now on version 5. I’ve installed it on well over 250 clients’ websites; the newsletter module, before we retired it, sent some 10 million enewsletters. Our eCommerce module has processed upwards of $3 million in sales for our clients; Some 10,000 people have registered for events via our event registration module. 50,000 news articles & blog posts have been published in our News module. (Aside: Man do I love being able to quickly pull aggregate data)

We also build products for other people. But we call ourselves a service company, because the reason we keep getting work is for that: we provide a service – custom code, done right – to a wide variety of people. Also: we’re 9 years old. We’re self-funded and have never not been profitable. We’re now international (well, offices in Vancouver & Dallas). But we face a lot of the same challenges that start ups seem to face: where’s the talent? where’s the money coming from? who’s our audience? Where’s the space? Who can we talk to? Where’s the time?

We started like many startups do: I was employed at another company, but was under-utilized. I had an idea of how to do something differently. I met Jeff, and we combined our forces at started Pencilneck. Initially, we rented space from my former employers. Then we shared space with another small company. Then we got our own office in Yaletown (& man, did I ever feel like I had made it when that happened).

A Somewhat lengthy personal digression

Now I admit I’m not the best member of the local startup scene. I don’t go to events. I don’t blog much about company culture. I don’t look outwards that much. But the very reason why I don’t do all that is what I feel is missing from a lot of this recent chatter: About 6 years ago, I decided that growing big, getting bought, getting rich wasn’t what I wanted. This decision coincided, not even remotely coincidentally, with the birth of my first child. And suddenly that weekend’s worth of work to push out that latest revision just seemed pointless. And squeezing in that extra deliverable for the client this week by pulling a few late nights wasn’t worth missing Liam splashing around in the tub.

When I first told my business partner that I wanted to work only 4 days a week, we had a huge argument – only a few weeks before, we were both still working 60, 70 hour weeks, doing stellar work. But our corporate culture had come to expect and depend on this. & this wasn’t unusual – most of my friends were working similarly. And then Liam was born and I took a couple of weeks off. When I came back though, not only did I no longer want to work weekends, I didn’t want to work evenings. I wanted to leave work at work and come home and be present for my family. Given that I was the main production engine (our partnership has always been Jeff on the sales &  UX end, me on the technical end), this had some dire consequences. And it was rough. But we made it work. And I started working only 4 days a week, which has been amazing.

& Back to the Subject At Hand

The title of the post is of course lifted from The Social Network - you’re probably already thinking the answer is “a billion dollars”. But no. You know what’s cool? Living your life. Enjoying it. Spending time with family & friends. Making money is good, but if you’re good enough, you don’t need to be wildly successful and get bought and make millions. You can make enough and relax and chill and be happy. You can’t build a silicon-valley-style successful startup without being a selfish asshole willing to sacrifice everyone around you. Harsh? Sure. Hyperbolic? You bet. But somewhat true. Because that sort of success takes time. All your time. Whether it’s time at the desk coding, refining your product. Time travelling to sell your product. Time online to support or promote your product, nothing can reduce that time. And that’s time away from everything & everyone else. And maybe that’s a trade you’re willing to make – but you can’t say it’s not a selfish one. Every interview I’ve ever watched with a successful founder talks about their passion for the project and the crazy things they’ve done.

What this all has to do with Vancouver’s startup scene

A common thread amongst all the commentary linked to above is finding the special sauce that will encourage a startup culture here. I think a mistake across them all is to think that we need a startup culture that resembles the American startup culture at all. I’ll admit a personal bias to the lean startup model, but more than that, I bias to the Vancouver model: laid back, just as interested in what’s outside and around as what’s happening in town, and to beat a dead horse just a little more, sustainably. Vancouver’s got a decent number of tech firms that not only have done great work, but have been around for an astonishingly long time. Not only that, but we’re all interwoven. Vancouver’s web-tech community is quite small. My company is built on the idea of partnerships – we don’t do design, so we partner with design firms. Other’s just do strategy. Some just do hosting. And in my experience, we all hire each other as needed. I’ve worked in partnership with at least a score of local companies to either provide expertise or pull theirs as I need it. And you know what’s so great about this? By handing off work as needed, I get to continue a nice lifestyle and get to contribute to theirs too.

Coworking spaces are ideal for the small or solo company. Incubators are great too. So are mentors and advisors. But maybe let’s not teach a culture based on getting big, getting bought, getting out. Maybe let’s teach a culture of being a sustainable business: You want to grow an idea, and need funding? Do something to fund it – trade services, sell something. Hootsuite may be a freemium model, but it grew out of Invoke - a successful firm who could likely afford to fund it – particularly if they built it to solve a problem on a project, or internal use. There’s also the “practice makes perfect” idea to follow: if you want to make money, practice it. Find a business model. Companies that succeed without a business model are few and far between. Get one and get one quick.

There is room in a world of sustainable startups for funders – we’ve always used client work to fund projects, but once, for a particularly out-there idea, we got BDC funding. What I liked about it was that it was a loan - we didn’t have to give up ownership or control to get it. But I could imagine a scenario where taking funding would be beneficial to allow focus. But let’s look at small-batch funding models that enable focus, not massive burn rates.That suits Vancouver more too – we’re a small city with small amounts of capital. Funding a few people for 3 months doesn’t cost that much  - let’s say $20K – and 3 months should be about enough time to get pretty much anything software-related at least demonstrably functional, if not complete. If it isn’t, you’ve probably suffered feature creep. Or don’t have enough focus. You only need to do one thing  well to launch and start making money. I don’t want to sound like I’m shitting all over Jesse (who’s done way more to foster a community and more importantly, exchange, than I ever will) or Boris (who’s arguments around the #MadeInVan and #WeAreYVR at right on point), but I think the focus on funding & acquisition is off a little. There’s more important things. The Mayor’s Greenest City initiative is about green tech, but it’s also about lifestyle: cycling, walking, transit, healthy eating, locavores. Let’s encourage a start up culture that reflects our city, where lifestyle is equally important. When I was first starting Pencilneck, the so-called triple-bottom line was a popular measurement: social, environmental, economic should be equally weighted. Our start up culture, what we want to promote and produce locally might do well to reflect that more.

 

 

A funny thing happened on the way to the forum

Posted on February 8, 2012
Filed Under Random Thoughts | Leave a Comment

This past Sunday night, Liam came into our room at about 2am, having thrown up all over his bed and the floor. He spent Monday pretty pukey still. On Tuesday afternoon, I started feeling unwell – mostly gastro-intestinal distress. I had put it down to a bad lunch at Ramen Jinya, which has happened before, but apparently not. By the evening I had a serious case of the chills – I simply could not get warm, so at about 10 I went to bed, bundled in PJs and socks and sweaters, under the duvet, and still cold.

However, around 12:30am or so, I woke up, stupidly hot and thirsty. I wandered out to the kitchen to get a drink of water. I remember getting the glass, pouring the water – and then nothing else. I apparently put down my glass, took a couple of steps towards bed, and collapsed on the floor – face first.

I came to with Leah crouched over me, my mouth throbbing, me lying in a small pool of blood on the floor. My right-front-tooth was lying on the floor in front me, and part of my left-front tooth was loose in my mouth. Everything hurt.

Leah called 911, and an ambulance came to get me, taking me to VGH. There, because I’ve had previous fainting episodes, they hooked up me up to EKG monitors, made me stay lying down and sent me for both chest X-rays and a CT scan (both of which I had last time too), to see if they could identify a reason for my light-headedness (I get this sometimes – mostly relating to being dehydrated/low blood sugar). Of course, being that I’m sick, I spend the night chilly and sickly, in pain. I didn’t understand why, but because of whatever they were looking for in the scans, they wouldn’t give me pain meds.

Finally, this morning around 6am, I got a consult with a dentist, who also didn’t tell me anything useful, then she sent me home. I still hadn’t heard anything from any doctor about the results at all, which felt weird.

It turns out I shouldn’t have been discharged then – but it wasn’t  a big deal. This morning the doctor who initially saw me called to refer me to the Cardiology clinic for more investigation (which I’ve also already been to with no results). In the interim, I’m to rest, avoid strenuous activity & driving.

Right now, my face still really hurts, and I really upset that my mouth is so ugly – I like to smile, as you may know, but with 1 chipped snaggle tooth, 1 missing tooth and swollen/torn gums, it’s a mess. & I have some pricey dental bills in the near future.

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