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 that I'd been working on (e.g., a new page on our website describing our transportation business -- you can now see Bill's "beliefs / people / intentions" pattern loosely reflected). I won't try to reiterate Bill's big ideas, because that has been done (here is a good overview, and here's a video of Bill's Ted X talk).  Both are worth a read / watch. Since then, one takeaway has really stuck with me: the idea of speaking from the heart. A fairly large part of my job is talking & writing about what we do; to funders, clients, partners, students, the press, etc.  I believe in our mission, and think that we have done and continue to do good work.  At this point, I can speak pretty easily about it, and do my best to weave our complex mission and activities into a (reasonably) cohesive story. But I realized that I don't always speak from the heart as much as I should or could.  It's hard to describe, but it's a difference you can feel -- when I think of speaking from the heart, I feel the focus moving from my head down to my belly.  To the place where you just know the things you're talking about, and why they're important.  You aren't  nervous or worried about getting it right.  To use Bill's language, speaking from the heart brings you back to feeling the connection your people, your beliefs, and your intentions (the feeling reminds me of the notion of the Ideal Performance State, as described in The Making of the Corporate Athlete which is also worth a read). When I think back on the times when I haven't been happy with how I've performed in a speaking gig, I can usually trace it back to being too much in my head and not enough in my heart/belly.  For instance, in September we announced Civic Commons at the Gov 2.0 Summit.  I did a small part of of the announcement, which went fine, but I didn't consider it an A+ performance (and got endless shit from Clay Johnson about it).  According to my wife, who watched the video (I didn't), it was a B; not completely embarrassing, but not particularly great either.  Fine.  Afterward, I realized that I had gotten too far into the weeds -- was too much in my head and not enough in my heart.  Tired, uninspired.  If I were to do it over, I would have focused on the core ideas about why we believed the project was important and why we were part of it. Speaking from the heart gives you energy and confidence.  It gets you back to the real reason why you're involved and why you care.  It's powerful and easy at the same time.  It's an idea that I will keep with me.  

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 can't wait to discover what it means, after I do a little googling.

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, he and I took a walk along the harbor in Provincetown at low tide -- he thinks of each beached boat as a giant bucket, just waiting to be filled with sand. The problem is, whenever we're on vacation, I have a hard time finding the right balance between "unplugging" and staying engaged with the real world.  One the one hand, I want to remain connected with work and friends, on the other, I just want to tune out, relax, and be with the people I'm with.  Inevitably, I end up fighting the struggle each day, carving out some time for the important stuff at work, and forcing myself (with limited success) not to stress about it too much the rest of the time.  It's tough, and to some extent I feel like I achieve the worst of both worlds: neither able to fully enjoy my break, nor be fully present for important happenings at the office. This has become more of an issue as technology has evolved.  Here at the cabin there's never been any phone or TV.  Then there were cell phones.  Next, internet down the road at the town library. Then, iPhone and blackberries.  Now, this year we have a mobile broadband connection for our laptops, so we're as connected as we can be.  For certain things, it's great: we watched the World Cup final online last weekend, and yesterday my father-in-law did an interview via Skype, which saved him a day-long trip up to Maine.  But, work email and things to do are now within arms reach at all times. I suppose the vacation case is just a microcosm of the larger question of how to balance real-world face time with online time.  Fred Wilson, one of my favorite bloggers, covers this topic frequently, and I'm really amazed the extent to which he's able to stay engaged with the networked world without driving his family crazy.  In our case, the family is only semi-digitally integrated; it's just not part of our culture to always be connected.  Maybe getting an iPad would push that culture change in a good way. Lastly, I think it also comes back to information fitness -- using online (all?) time to do the most important and productive things, and not just consume endlessly as you might in a less online constrained environment.  And of course, one of these days I'll be able to plan ahead enough so that everything is under control at the office and I don't have to worry about anything.  But I'm sure if I did that, I'd find reasons to plug back in...

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 that I'd been working on (e.g., a new page on our website describing our transportation business -- you can now see Bill's "beliefs / people / intentions" pattern loosely reflected). I won't try to reiterate Bill's big ideas, because that has been done (here is a good overview, and here's a video of Bill's Ted X talk).  Both are worth a read / watch. Since then, one takeaway has really stuck with me: the idea of speaking from the heart. A fairly large part of my job is talking & writing about what we do; to funders, clients, partners, students, the press, etc.  I believe in our mission, and think that we have done and continue to do good work.  At this point, I can speak pretty easily about it, and do my best to weave our complex mission and activities into a (reasonably) cohesive story. But I realized that I don't always speak from the heart as much as I should or could.  It's hard to describe, but it's a difference you can feel -- when I think of speaking from the heart, I feel the focus moving from my head down to my belly.  To the place where you just know the things you're talking about, and why they're important.  You aren't  nervous or worried about getting it right.  To use Bill's language, speaking from the heart brings you back to feeling the connection your people, your beliefs, and your intentions (the feeling reminds me of the notion of the Ideal Performance State, as described in The Making of the Corporate Athlete which is also worth a read). When I think back on the times when I haven't been happy with how I've performed in a speaking gig, I can usually trace it back to being too much in my head and not enough in my heart/belly.  For instance, in September we announced Civic Commons at the Gov 2.0 Summit.  I did a small part of of the announcement, which went fine, but I didn't consider it an A+ performance (and got endless shit from Clay Johnson about it).  According to my wife, who watched the video (I didn't), it was a B; not completely embarrassing, but not particularly great either.  Fine.  Afterward, I realized that I had gotten too far into the weeds -- was too much in my head and not enough in my heart.  Tired, uninspired.  If I were to do it over, I would have focused on the core ideas about why we believed the project was important and why we were part of it. Speaking from the heart gives you energy and confidence.  It gets you back to the real reason why you're involved and why you care.  It's powerful and easy at the same time.  It's an idea that I will keep with me.  

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 can't wait to discover what it means, after I do a little googling.

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, he and I took a walk along the harbor in Provincetown at low tide -- he thinks of each beached boat as a giant bucket, just waiting to be filled with sand. The problem is, whenever we're on vacation, I have a hard time finding the right balance between "unplugging" and staying engaged with the real world.  One the one hand, I want to remain connected with work and friends, on the other, I just want to tune out, relax, and be with the people I'm with.  Inevitably, I end up fighting the struggle each day, carving out some time for the important stuff at work, and forcing myself (with limited success) not to stress about it too much the rest of the time.  It's tough, and to some extent I feel like I achieve the worst of both worlds: neither able to fully enjoy my break, nor be fully present for important happenings at the office. This has become more of an issue as technology has evolved.  Here at the cabin there's never been any phone or TV.  Then there were cell phones.  Next, internet down the road at the town library. Then, iPhone and blackberries.  Now, this year we have a mobile broadband connection for our laptops, so we're as connected as we can be.  For certain things, it's great: we watched the World Cup final online last weekend, and yesterday my father-in-law did an interview via Skype, which saved him a day-long trip up to Maine.  But, work email and things to do are now within arms reach at all times. I suppose the vacation case is just a microcosm of the larger question of how to balance real-world face time with online time.  Fred Wilson, one of my favorite bloggers, covers this topic frequently, and I'm really amazed the extent to which he's able to stay engaged with the networked world without driving his family crazy.  In our case, the family is only semi-digitally integrated; it's just not part of our culture to always be connected.  Maybe getting an iPad would push that culture change in a good way. Lastly, I think it also comes back to information fitness -- using online (all?) time to do the most important and productive things, and not just consume endlessly as you might in a less online constrained environment.  And of course, one of these days I'll be able to plan ahead enough so that everything is under control at the office and I don't have to worry about anything.  But I'm sure if I did that, I'd find reasons to plug back in...