Personal Growth

My paperwork went through today, so I can finally say it in public without fear of jinxing myself… I am proud and very excited to say that I’m officially joining the MIT Media Lab as a visiting scholar, through the Center for Civic Media.  I’ve been coming here for the weekly lunches and research me...

This past week, I spent some time cutting a hole in the wall in between our kitchen and our family room. It’s a project we’ve been talking about for a long time, and we considered lots of different ways of doing it before we actually got down to it. We were concerned about the cost,… Continue readin...

Two weeks ago, we were joined by the newest member of the fam: Brieza.  Brieza weighed in at a respectable 8 lbs 9 oz and has been busy sleeping away her days since.  So far, having 2 kids hasn’t been as overwhelming as some people suggested it might be, but I’m sure we’re just still… Continue readi...

As part of my goals for 2011, I’m trying to blog more regularly — once a week, right here, to be precise.  As I mentioned, I don’t quite have the rhythm down yet.  This is evidenced by the fact that I’m sitting in bed at 11:30pm on Sunday night writing this half-assed post, just so… Continue reading

I love the new year.  It’s a so nice to have a time where a) pretty much everyone takes a break for a few weeks and b) you get to magically clean the slate and start fresh.  Rest, and a new start. Awesome. For the past few years, I’ve been writing down my goals for… Continue reading

Last week, I mentioned an article called The Making of the Corporate Athlete (originally published in 2001 in the Harvard Business Review).  If you haven’t read it, you should — it’s a short read.  Long story short: successful athletes take a “whole body” approach to optimizing their performance, an...

Last month, I attended the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council’s annual unconference.  My favorite session, by far, was Bill Warner‘s “Building a Startup from the Heart”. I found Bill’s approach to be inspiring, and immediately went home to incorporate his ideas into some OpenPlans materials...

I love seeing people write to their future selves. Here’s a note I came across in my very own inbox today, no doubt jotted down on my iPhone while I was half-drunk at a party. Drake. Neon Indian Groove shark – friends playlist    Darius.  Radius radius Brother “Radius radius” is my favorite part.  I...

Most of the action is happening on my Tumblog these days.  For some reason I can’t stop posting there, and I can’t start here… Continue reading

This week, we’re on vacation in Cape Cod with my wife’s family.  They’ve been renting the same tiny cabin by the beach for the past 35 years, and coming here is pretty much the highlight of our summer each year.  Last summer, we brought Theo here when he was just three weeks old.  This morning,… Con...

This morning, I drove from Boston to Cape Cod, alone with my thoughts except for Theo sleeping in the back seat.  Once we were out of the city and smoothly on the highway, I got to thinking about work, and things really started clicking.  I found myself reaching for my iPhone to record voice memos… ...

I’ve been thinking a lot about fitness lately, mostly spurred on by the great stuff coming out of Clay Johnson’s new blog, InfoVegan. Clay has been drawing a parallel between physical obesity and information obesity, and has been diving deep on what it means to have a “healthy information diet.”  It...

I spend a fair amount of time thinking about LifeHacking.  Getting my inbox filters just right so I can get to “inbox double-zero,” syncing my iPhone and my Google Calendar, setting up ssh keys in all the right places, etc. But something I’m still not that good at is “LifePruning,” that is, the cont...

One of the toughest things I’ve encountered, as I attend meetings, speak on panels, do interviews, and go to conferences, is that you never quite know what the tone of the room will be like until you get there.  In other words, there are always a ton of different approaches you can take to a… Contin...

Today, Theo took his first ever bite of solid food.  I get all welled up looking at pictures of him while I’m at work. Continue reading

I get way too much spam in my inbox, even just counting things I’ve signed up for myself.  Most of it I delete, but today’s email from CoTweet stood out, and is worth mentioning. A while back I signed up for CoTweet, just to check it out — nutshell: CoTweet lets you collaboratively monitor and… Cont...

During Theo’s morning nap today, I updated this blog’s theme.   I’m going to attempt to start using the blog more regulalry, as sort of an “open lab notebook,” and (in the true spirit of procrastination) figured I’d start by updating the theme. So here it is; I’ve ditched by previous Undesign for mo...

I’ve been attending a lot of events lately, and one thing that keeps coming up for me is that the multi-day conference / workshop format is a bit broken. My main beef: by day two (or god forbid, day three) the audience has petered out and whatever energy was there on day one has been… Continue readi...

Today, I got my first dose of Twitter smack down, as my account was suspended along with a bunch of others following yesterday’s Gov 2.0 Expo.  Ouch!  Well, at least I’m in good company. As one of the commenters on the Tech Crunch article noted, a situation like this is definitely a bit of a… Contin...

Introducing the newest member of the clan: Theo.  It’s now been nearly two weeks since Theo joined us, and it’s been pretty amazing (and tiring) thus far.  I’ve been intentionally keeping him off of the public intertubes, but figured one cute “hello, world” shot was safe enough.  I am enjoying every...