Fall is definitely in the air here - low 60’s, breezy, trees can’t decide whether to be green or red/yellow. I’m right next to Betty Crocker Blvd, so life is ok. Here ’til Thursday AM doing a creative workshop with the makers of the world’s most perfect cereal: Cheerios.
I’d get one of these and put an empty bottle in it just so I could look at it. All of them are terribly cool.
Shot at right taken on Sept 17 from Normandy France. Check out the 100% size image for perspective on how big our giant fireball in the sky is. According to this post, the ISS circles the earth in 90 minutes. 90 minutes! Earth is 25,000 miles in circumference at the surface. The ISS is 218+/- miles above the earth’s surface. Since I failed calculus, I posted a note for the other geeks to calculate how fast that thing is moving. Somehow, I don’t think “really fucking FAST” is a scientific measure.
Over 20 years ago I was just graduating from college with a degree in psychology. Few classes I took had a lasting influence on me, but one was called Science and the Arts. It was crosslisted between the physics and art departments at UNC Chapel Hill. My undisclosed fascination with both was finally something real that someone else knew about! We covered things in that class like the shape of the cells in the wood is what makes stradivarius violins special, and a lot of spatial things, such as architecture.
What struck me most was the connection I wanted to make between design (architectural especially) and psychology. I saw a lot of overlap between what comes in through our senses when we experience spaces. High ceilings make us feel small and public; indirect light relaxes us; certain colors soothe or agitate us; temperatures make us sleepy or want to move to another space. I found all those connections amazing. Read the rest of this entry »
I just tried this reading speed increaser tool with this text cut & pasted in:
If you look at products and services traditionally, nobody thought through the idea in the early twentieth century. Let’s say Ford Motor Company. Ford didn’t look through the idea of creating a brand, but he intuitively created a brand. Very often brands are created by people who aren’t aware that they are doing just that. Every activity has a functional basis, you buy it on the base of its price, its quality and service. It also has an emotional content. Sometimes this emotional content is very deliberately and very carefully created. And sometimes this emotional content emerges in a very implicit rather natural way, from the personality of the people who run the business. The answer to your question therefore is, that virtually every product or service is both functional and emotional in content, so brands exist.
Then I went back and read the original paragraph - the difference was very evident. I did much more backtracing reading the paragraph straight than through the spreeder interface. So maybe I’ll be able to get therough those Harry Potter books one day after all…nah. Gimme the movies. 
Inaki and Lee talking at the post keynote speaker reception. Phone cameras suck, but I’m glad I followed my gut and caught this one in something other than my own memory.
Deborah will be blogging live during the conference to try to capture the atmosphere. I’m glad she was able to kick in at a time when many of us are running on adrenaline; she’s fresh, so it’s gonna be good.
Call me crazy, but it sure seems buzzy here. Here’s the SparkConblog I set up.
Today we have a final run-through of our workshop agenda & practice session with facilitators. We’re also entering in all the scholarship nominations and doing a final confirmation email blast to registrants. Tomorrow our Mayor introduces our Keynote speaker and we kick this thing off. Read the rest of this entry »
San Jose finished dead last in an annual ranking of US technology hubs. Guess who’s first? Just goes to show affordable housing is directly tied to a region’s economic robustness. I’m hoping this topic comes up loud & clear during the SparkCon workshops.
