A Cinco de Mayo Recipe for Good Times

Want a recipe for a great evening?

1. Get some warm weather
2. Find some cool people
3. Go to a nice place
   
4. Pick an interesting topic to discuss
5. Hope for some serendipity

Last night met all the above criteria.

1. After a couple of weeks of (by California standards) crappy weather, the sky cleared and the temperature warmed up last night.
2. Brent and I met up with Randy Emelo and Brian LaComb, of Triple Creek Associates for dinner.
3. We went to Santana Row - the best place in San Jose for atmosphere on a nice night.
4. We had an outstanding conversation around mentoring and some of the best practices that Triple Creek is implementing. I left with a brain full of ideas, and more questions than I came with (always a good thing).
5. It turned out to be Cinco de Mayo. I should have known that, but didn't. Still, it was a happy surprise.  We had drinks outside, listening to music and enjoying an energy that you don't usually see on a Tuesday night.

I highly recommend that you visit Triple Creeks website and visit the resources section.

Randy writes a great newsletter and is very generous with podcasts, as well.

They are good people doing some great work, so check them out!

Book Review: Kicked, Bitten, and Scratched

I reviewed Amy Sutherland's "What Shamu Taught me about Life, Love, and Marriage" in a previous post.
An enjoyable, quick read - it was a no-brainer to add "Kicked, Bitten, and Scratched" to my reading list.

I love reading 'behind-the-scenes' articles and books. 

I'm fascinated by processes - always wanting to see a well-made "making-0f" documentary on a DVD.

"Kicked" is exactly that. 

Amy Sutherland spends a year at the Exotic Animal Training and Management (EATM) program in Southern California, where she tracks students and subjects through all the highs and lows you would expect in any school - but where the students are more passionate about learning than most of us were in college and the subjects can literally kill you.

Sutherland disappears, simply observing and reporting the events of the year. This is not her story, which is a great choice, as there are plenty of stories here to be told already.

It's been a long time since I picked up a book that I literally couldn't put down.

If you're interested in animals, interested in learning, or just like a good story: pick up "Kicked, Bitten, and Scratched".

Book Review: Dancing in the Mind Field by Kary Mullis

I've got a week off from my Masters program... which means I get to pick my own reading!

Surprising even myself, I choose to dig into Nobel Prize winner Kary Mullis' "Dancing Naked in the Mind Field". 

I found it in a used book store and was hooked after reading the chapter "The Attack of the Loxosceles Reclusae" a hilariously off color recounting of his reaction to a series of spider bites.

The whole book fits this profile - funny, clever, and surprising at every turn. Science should never be boring, but sadly, it usually is.

Well, fortunately, Kary isn't a geek in a white coat. Let me rephrase that... he is a geek in a white coat, but he's also much more.

His childhood stories of launching rockets to see if the frog astronauts come back, of mixing random chemicals to see how they react (often badly), his fascination with bodies (particularly female ones)... these are all stories from my youth (and the youth of a million American males like me).

One of my favorite books is Michael Crichton's (yes, the Michael Crichton of ER and Jurassic Park) "Travels" - an autobiographical journey into what's possible, if not explainable, in this world. I had always hoped for "Travels 2", but Crichton died a few years back. 

Fortunately, it looks like Mullis wrote it for him (and me).

Here's one of my favorite straightforward rants from the book:

The temperature of the earth is due to the size and shape of the orbit that it follows around the sun, the angle that its rotational axis is tilted to its orbit, the length of its days, the radioactive decay and residual gravitational heat deep below the crust, and the elements that were here from the beginning, and God knows what else, but not us.

We are a thin layer of moss on a huge rock. We are a little biologic phenomenon that makes words and thoughts and babies, but we don't even tickle the soles of the feet of our planet.

I don't have to agree with all his opinions to enjoy all his stories.

Here's an article about him, if you're interested.

Graffiti Practice!!

Ever want to be a graffiti artist, but don't have the balls to actually deface public property?

If that description fits you, today is your lucky day!

Fakeproject Corporation (what a great name...) has a free downloadable coloring book for aspiring graffiti artists.

Practice tagging without getting tagged!

*This is one of my favorite graffiti images of all time. It's a painting of Musashi Miyamoto (as portrayed by actor Mifune Toshiro). This was on the retaining wall for the train tracks at Sakuragicho Station in Yokohama, Japan - a particularly fertile location for graffiti.

Crappy Presentations...

I work with some of the smartest people on planet earth, and yet...

And yet, the presentations that I have to sit through can only be described as torture. Well, not for everyone. Most people just look away and tend to their computer or blackberry.

But for anyone who makes an effort to stick through the presentation, it's somewhat akin to that scene in Clockwork Orange where Malcolm McDowell gets his brain pummeled with degenerate images.

Wait... did I say 'somewhat akin'? Umm, no - it's exactly like that. Or worse?

Please don't do that to anyone, I beg you.

Buy slide:ology, Presentation Zen, and Beyond Bullet Points -  and then practice their theories.

Promise me... please?

Don't Believe Everything You Read...

Here's something I had never seen before... at least not in the US.

I was driving down El Camino Real (the Kings Highway, but that's another story) to my workshop in Los Altos last week. I knew that the Residence Inn was near the junction at San Antonio Road, at 4460 El Camino Real (click to enlarge the image).

When I crossed San Antonio, however, I saw that I was in the 2600 block... Look at the San Antonio Inn. The address is 2650.

"What? Twenty more blocks?" I said, with a few f-bombs mixed in...

Then I came to my senses, and did a lap of the block, finding my destination.

Not only is one side of El Camino Real in the 2600 block, while the other side is in the 4400 block - both sides are EVEN!!

Hmmm... don't see that everyday, do ya?

Once again, though, I learned the value of trusting my instincts, rather than following the signs.

14 Books on my Reading List

My reading list has grown dramatically, as I picked up a load of treasure at my two favorite used bookstores - Recycle Bookstore in San Jose & Bookbuyers in Mountain View. 

Here's what I picked up:

• The Practical Guide to Information Design by Ronnie Lipton
  A great looking textbook on information design.
• Understanding USA by Richard Saul Wurman
  I'm a big Wurman fan. This book has a lot of ugly graphics, but it certainly inspires new ideas.
• A Designer's Research Manual by Jen & Ken Visocky O'Grady
  The methodology looks a lot like IDEO's. That's a good thing...
• The Deming Dimension by Henry Neave
  Looks like a great summary of Deming's principles.
• Visual Literacy by Richard & Judith Wilde
  A book full of interesting graphic exercises. I'll try some of these in a workshop.
• Dancing Naked in the Mind Field by Kerry Mullis
  Any Nobel winning scientist who's not afraid to drop the f-bomb is okay with me.
• Frank Lloyd Wright by America Architects
  A nice short photo book that contains all the Wright buildings we've visited.
• The Essential Frank Lloyd Wright: Critical Writings on Architecture by Frank Lloyd Wright
  I love Wright's onery nature. This will be the first one in the pile that I read. I started it last night.
• improv wisdom by Patricia Ryan Madson
  A book that encourages us to 'wing it' is worth reading.
• Practical Charting Techniques by Spear
  Looks like most of the principles that Tufte and Few are preaching today were already documented by Spear in 1969.
• Made to Stick by Chip & Dan Heath
  Yeah, I know... I should have already read this one... but I haven't.
• An Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore
  Bought this so I have some of Al's graphics available in my presentation class.
• The Serpents of Paradise by Edward Abbey
  One of my favorite authors (with Twain, Steinbeck, and Paul Theroux). I already have this, but couldn't pass up a hard-cover first edition.
• Mindset by Carol Dweck
  Once again, a book I've read, but picked up in hardcover.