Tennis is crazy.
We spend our lives rereading and rewatching and relistening and relearning. We eat the same things over and over. We end up loving people who remind us of other people. We perform these rituals, this spacetime origami, because the basic fact of our n-dimensional existence is this: Most things can be recalled and some things can be revisited but precious little can be relived.
do new things. make good things. experience life, stop trying to box it up.
Yesterday I attended alldaybuffet’s The Feast Salon and was quite inspired by all aspects of the event.
First – The space: MEET at the Apartment.
Located at 101 Crosby Street, Meet is a highly stylized loft created to provide an intimate space to hold events and business meetings. It is “intuitively outfitted with idea-generating essentials,” and is really just beautiful. What a great concept, and a comfortable, hip place to hang.The speakers:
Noah Brier discussed LikeMind, a concept he and Piers Fawkes of PFSK created out of the desire to just meet and converse with people. Likemind facilitates the meeting of like minded people over coffee and conversation in the morning. It has grown from its inception in New York in 2006, to a global entity, with meetings in over 65 cities across the world. Perhaps I’ll give the next NY one a go.Steve Larosiliere spoke about his non-profit organization, Stoked Mentoring . Stoked is great. It’s a mentoring program that helps at risk youth through the use of action sports including skate, surf, and snow. As a mentor, you join your mentee in learning how to either snowboard, surf, or skate over the course of the year. They’ve also grown to include programs focusing on graphic design and sports photography. I admire that Steve found a way to combine the hobbies he loves with his passion for helping at risk youth. In his talk, he advocated two things. One - a book called No More Prisons, which I just ordered. And two - a mentor with whom to just kick it twice a month and from whom to learn. I’ve got to get me one of those.
Perry Chen spoke about Kickstarter, a new platform for funding new start-up ventures. To demonstrate the site, he showed us Allison Weiss’ video, soliticing donations in return for “cool stuff” in order to help her make a new EP. It reminded me of Kiva, but more of a pledging system for personal creative art-focused projects. On the site, one can raise money to build an i-Phone app, print a book, start an art project, and even empower women in Rwanda. Looks like it has the potential to be a very powerful platform.
The food: I think the delicious chocolates were from SweetRiot, though I can’t be sure..
The guests: I met quite a few diverse people with varying jobs – photographers, web developers, founders of non-profit organizations. Overall an inspiring and refreshing evening.
this is the 2nd event @ MEET that i haven’t been able to make it to. first was a CreativeMorning and now this. i purchased a ticket but the whole car situation meant i had to get katie her car back after work on monday instead of heading into manhattan. one day i’ll make it.
People will also believe that they understand something when they don’t really understand it. Have you ever left a meeting where everyone seemed to be in agreement, yet their later actions made it clear that they didn’t agree after all? It’s common to see nodding heads in a room when people don’t agree – they think they agree but in reality they don’t. This is because when an explanation is sufficiently vague, people are free to believe what they want to believe. Politicians often use this rhetorical principle to great effect. Words like “freedom, justice and fairness” mean different things to different people. Vague explanations are common in business, and they can give the illusion of agreement. But they don’t get results.
in my address book, adding their emails, websites, etc, so i could sync across mobileme, import to google voice, etc, etc. and this dude whose vCard i have.. has 5 phone numbers! okay i have 4 phone numbers but 5 is just pushing it jratlee!
haha sorry man! i’m on par with you now and only have 4. got rid of the land line you prob have in there. i’ll shoot you a note w/ the ones you can keep.
DSC_4258 (via tmd)
i’m always at home behind a lens. i miss it a lot.
this was during #biro_nup, after the pictures we had just checked-in to the hotel and were on our way to the reception. i was bringing tom’s D300 for him. elevator doors closing, i decided to catch myself.
fast forward a week, life decided i was having too much fun and broke my toy. i was taking colleagues through manhattan out to long island for a client event. i almost wish i was stuck in traffic on my way home now instead of waiting for state farm to call me back.
of course, it’s raining again. w/ no whip, not sure how my weekend is going to pan out.
Word of mouth is a byproduct of a remarkable culture.
this is the beginning and the end. it has to start somewhere. if you don’t have it - find it, create it, foster it. there is no shortcut here. if you can’t take the heat, get out of the fucking kitchen.
…the display informs drivers that the lights are synchronized and lets them know the proper speed they must maintain in order to avoid having to stop for a red light. (via What if a speed limit sign told you the most efficient speed to drive? « Nudge blog)
throughout my childhood, my mother would figure this out on her own driving the many roads in our town. i’ve adopted it and can properly reach speeds that are necessary to minimize stoppage. sort of like a real world back to the future.
Increasingly the choice of whether to adopt, or opt-in to a technology is one of whether to opt-out of society.
For me, experimentation is not about the technology. In an ever-changing technological landscape, where today’s platforms are not tomorrow’s platforms, the key seems to be that any one of these spaces can use a dose of humanity and art and culture.
