Month: August 2013

My 10,000th day alive is a reminder to make excuses for elaborate festivities

You have to take every opportunity to celebrate that you can.

In June, I crossed the 10,000th day of my life — June 10th to be exact. In August, after two years of living together, my good friend Patrick, who also crossed a similar mark, was moving out of my home.

To celebrate, he and I had a weekend of celebration. We joked it was our roommate bucket list.

On Friday night, we had a trashy liquor party, where we had more than 20 people over to drink the leftover booze we’ve had in our home for years.

On Saturday, after brunch, chess in the park, basketball, pizza and the Phillies at the Piazza, a mini bar crawl, ending with city-wide specials at the Handle Bar and gambling at Sugarhouse Casino, all while wearing suits of course.

Then, on Sunday, we played paintball.

Check out our full itinerary here.

What became clear was that this was an act of merrymaking by way of any excuse to actually do the thing.

Lifehacks for living in Philly (and probably other cities too)

[Thanks for the love r/Philadelphia and Zagat and Reddit again]

Update: I presented some of my favorite hacks at Ignite Philly. Watch the presentation below and find the slides here:

Any city worth its existence has enough culture that exists there that small quirks exist that can help you get by.

In my short nine years living in Philadelphia, a few lifehacks have become pretty common to me but are perhaps worth sharing.

Here are a bunch. I’d love to hear yours:

Continue reading Lifehacks for living in Philly (and probably other cities too)

Philly Geek Awards 2013 presenting [VIDEO]

For the third time, I was granted the great honor to present an award at the Philly Geek Awards this past Saturday.

I put together some wrap coverage of the event here. Find previous presenting here.

Watch my presentation below (thanks SACM!).

Continue reading Philly Geek Awards 2013 presenting [VIDEO]

Are you experimenting, focusing or executing?

bullseye

If you are leading an organization, it seems there are three main speeds you should be going.

  1. Experimenting — new ideas, creative thought, innovation
  2. Focusing — paring down the projects and efforts to get to our clear mission
  3. Executing — moving forward toward that mission

The trouble seems to come when we’re trying to do all of them — or none of them — at the same time. That’s when we get distracted and lose our way.

Staying focused on one of those speeds at a time is more than difficult enough. Now think about being able to cycle through them in the life of an organization when you know you either need new ideas or to find a focus or to make good on that mission. That takes remarkable leadership.

Best of Philly and Best of Baltimore honoree: Technical.ly

Both Technically Philly and Technically Baltimore were honored in the prestigious annual ‘Best of’ lists from their respective city magazines this year. It’s really validating and rewarding to get nods in two different cities from prestigious city magazines.

Continue reading Best of Philly and Best of Baltimore honoree: Technical.ly

The Path Between the Seas: how the Panama Canal was constructed

mccullough-panama

The classic, National Book Award-winning 1977 historical narrative by David McCullough on the Panama Canal’s construction called the Path Between the Seas was perfect reading material leading into, during and after my 10-day trip to the Central American country.

In large scale projects, preparing to do the work is often more important than doing the work. That was likely the biggest lesson I drew from the book, which chronicled a failed attempt by a consortium of French government and business leaders to build a sea-level canal and then a painful but ultimately successful American attempt that used locks and came at the heels of advancements in understanding how to deal with yellow fever.

I also drastically underestimated the magnitude the Panama Canal represented as an engineering and public health campaign. My previous ignorance to this period of human history is embarrassing.

As I often do when I read a book of relevance to leadership and history, I share my notes here.

Continue reading The Path Between the Seas: how the Panama Canal was constructed

Experiments are hard to transition: a Philly public media example

newsworks

Organization-wide experiments can often be tougher to launch than learn from or reorient around. Once staff is brought on and workflows established, changing anything may be more challenging than ever launching the project to start. That’s when bold leadership is most needed.

That’s been on my mind recently when I’ve thought about the wonderful progress that has come with NewsWorks.org, the online news home for WHYY, the Philadelphia region’s public media outfit. Let’s look at its three-year history and its future and use it as an example for being bold enough to experiment and then knowing when to act on that experiment.

[Full Disclosure: I have friendships and close relationships with nearly a dozen people at WHYY and also sit on their community advisory board, but, while surely that insight informs my perspective, these conclusions are my own and don’t incorporate anything more than what is already public.]

Continue reading Experiments are hard to transition: a Philly public media example

What if we instituted *maximum* ages for legislative office?

oldpeople

When we’re younger, we’re better at fresh thinking. When we’re older, we’re better at contextual thinking. So why don’t we operate our world like we know that?

A struggling economy-backed entrepreneurship craze and a fast-paced period of consumer technology advancement have conspired to create an age that celebrates youth. But while I find being in my 20s beneficial in fitting into this era, I still find many of my peers struggling to break through what amounts to intern syndrome — being passed over for leadership roles in existing organizations and institutions because they don’t look the part.

Similarly, the stories of people near retirement losing their jobs, sometimes simply because they seem the most expendable are heart-wrenching. It seems we could be a lot savvier about age.

Continue reading What if we instituted *maximum* ages for legislative office?