heathervescent

Points Along a Line

These things, these beginnings we think we create. These edifices we think we have invented - are not our inventions. Something came before us. Something caused, created us. And it is the us that has created this thing. It is a beginning for us, we are but a vessel for these things, these ideas, to manifest. But we are not responsible - and yet utterly responsible for making it happen.

It takes a village to raise a child.
Everything in this world is because of the way the world is.
Nothing can be taken out of this world and looked at objectively. Objective is a different point of view.

But it is still a point along a line. In a matrix of many points on many lines. Mostly you are bound to which points on which lines. Sometimes though, you can move from a point or a line to another. But you must be willing to abandon everything that has brought you to the point/line from which you wish to move.

Some (geek) events coming up

What's on my calendar? The usual mix of tech and alt events in LA and beyond.

• Kirk is hosting the Nov Community Buildrs on Thursday. I've never been able to make one, although I like the concept and encouraged Kirk to start this up when we talked during the summer. I actually think I'm gonna leave this event alone, because I'm working on creating another new community that happens on Thursdays closer to my hood, and branching away from the geek/tech scene. I'm talking about Aikido. I get tired of being only in my brain, so I've been getting back into practicing aikido and helping get the local shusekai dojo going. I've got some plans for other body/movement classes I'm gonna organize in 2008.
• Irina is throwing the Winnies this Friday at CineSpace. I love the idea behind the event, so I'm going and might give or receive an award.
• Then Saturday night A+D wrangled me into doing a last minute BootieLA performance. Me and my posse will be performing alongside my fav DJs on stage starting just after midnight!
• Then I'm off to Mountain View for the Internet Identity Workshop until the 5th. Ask a Ninja is doing their live thing for the ask a ninja day. I don't think I'll make it to that.
• And then it's December. Santarchy in LA (on the 8th) and SF on the 15th. December Geek Dinner, tbd. Machine Project's Fry. Open Space Facilitation training back up in the East Bay and I'm trying to make it to NYC to see Neilalien, Joe, Dame Darcy, Steve and some other folks I am forgetting at the moment.
• Finally, it's back to Cambria to close out the year. 2007 - opened and closed.

Wow - 2007 - lots happened. Lots changed. Lots was accomplished. I didn't get my 40 days in the desert. But I was extremely successful at pimping and promoting - my main goal of this year. I already know what my main challenges for 2008 are. To get over myself and do these three things I hate doing. If I do those things, then my face will be on a cover (again) soon and I'll have jetted off on another trajectory - or more likely I'll be following several threads all at once. But before we go off on that ride, let's get through the rest of the year.

Texas and Cormic McCarthy

I just got back from seeing the Cohen's Bro new movie - No Country for Old Men. I always think the Cohen bro movies are different from what they turn out to be. I had no idea what this one was about, what story would it tell, what was the style. I knew nothing, my mind was zen blank as the lights dimmed and the screen came to life.

A story unfurled. Wide beautiful shots of desert scrubland. A desert I didn't recognize. It was Texas. Some scenes reminded me of my desert trips, minus the dead bloated bodies and drug deals gone awry. (I did once dream of that life, in a country on a border far far from North America.) As the story continued, wide shots, spare dialog, characters that were not Hollywood beautiful, perfect, but interesting and a delight to look at, to watch unfold. Who was this like? What was this like? Fellini came to mind.

Scenes took place. Guns and mayhem, and surprise and ingenuity. And then there were post action come across the scenes, which reminded me of the Bashar and the last 4 chapters in Book 5 of the Dune Series. (I remember you Bashar. I remember you from that summer in Des Moines, when I was 19 and had not yet read Hyperion and learned of the Shrike. You are not just the Bashar Teg, but inspiration for other characters in stories, myths that I love.)

Until the final credits this was just another movie, until, until, I saw it was based on a Cormac McCarthy novel. Then everything fell into place. I should have know. The movie perfectly caught the difficulty, challenge and utter sensual delight of a Cormac McC novel. They are hard, rough, bitter fruits - nuanced and faceted. I went home and picked pages to read aloud from Blood Meridian. I remembered the story. I remembered who gave it to me. (Alfonso, your other name.) And I remember what I learned from that time. The love of the desert and compete and utter ruthlessness.

Hawt! An n9593 on Ice

Andrew Maskin put an n93 on ice for the NYC mobile barcamp.

If you missed the MobileBarcampLA, check out the recap here. There's also a google group you can join. My favorite items were:

• One World. No Borders. 3 Billion Connected People. Claim Your Piece. - David Harper
  Dave Harper, CEO of Winksite, a suite of tools to immediately create and support mobile communities, gave an hour-long session sharing his experience on what it takes to scale mobile applications to 189+ countries and over 5 million hits per month. After providing tips and tricks on mobile advertising and mobile SEO, Dave showed and explained QR Codes and their real-world applications using a plethora of examples. People got really excited about this and again, ideas were bounced back and forth and were discussed far beyond the session.

• halfbaked.com - Entrepreneurial Improv - Alexis Rondeau
  Each team selected 2 random words and got 20 minutes to come up with - and pitch - the next mobile killer application! Besides having the very nice side-effect of making people play and interact, the resulting mobile startup ideas ranged from outrageous ("Zombie Hook-up") to VC-fundable ("Car Watch"). After every team presented their startups' product, revenue model, marketing plan, tagline and logo the most promising one was selected. The winning team was completely speechless when we gave each of them either an N95 or an N800. The unpacking of the boxes ensued immediately and everyone was flocking around the devices. In total we gave away 10 devices in this session (including the very cool panel of judges).

• MegaPhone Demo and discussion - Dan Albritton
  Dan Albritton from playmegaphone.com gave the first workshop in the morning showcasing their mobile real-time multiplayer game engine. MegaPhone is an interactive installation where any cellphone becomes a game-controller by placing a phonecall. Within 1 Minute Dan had the crowd punching their phone-keypads ("Peow-peow!P-p-p-eow!") to score and shouting into their mics ("Grabgrab! Grabgrabgrab! Grab!") to reach the Top 10 of the game. After an overview of the underlying technology and showcases, the group went into a long conversation on creating new applications of the project.
• (recap bullets written by Andy Maskin, Source)

And the In N Out Burger truck in the parking lot. And I don't even like In n Out. ;) I also enjoyed the 1-2am drive around Hollywood to Santa Monica, where we QR tagged In n Out on Sunset, saw a car go over the cliff on Mulholland, looked at the lights of the Valley and Basin from the hills and drove like a race car driver taking the freeway curves at an increasing speed utilizing centrifugal force with the top down.

Now that's a day in the life of LA.

Home Again, Home Again

Whew, it's good to be home. This past 10 day exile from the city of Angels was a hard one. Hard not because of the people and traveling (although those had their moments), but hard because I have turned into a hard-core SoCal Angelino. You know how you can recognize New Yorkers anywhere by their accent and NYC attitude? (I don't mean that in a negative way, you often know a NYer when you see em.) And the most hard core can't imagine living anywhere else? Well, if you apply it to heathervescent you'll need to swap out NYC for LA. I used to love traveling the world, seeing other cultures, play being a native when I was a tourist. I studied 5 languages because I wanted to communicate with anyone and understand culture from the insides. Now I don't care if I ever leave California. There is no other place in the world I would rather be (except maybe Brazil - actually naaahh.)

In the past year, as the LA geek scene has exploded, several different people have asked  me why I don't extend my event/activities to other cities. I certainly believe there are opportunities in other locals - tech scenes are exploding in "second" and "third" tier tech cities all over the world. I considered building a world empire for about 5 minutes and then I realized that was a boy-ego-mustkeepupwithNerd2point0geekscene thought. I don't care about building an empire across the world (at least not in the geek scene). And when I think about what I am passionate about - it's technology and Los Angeles. So although I pause and wonder if I am passing up a huge opportunity for some kind of "domination", I stay true to myself, my passions and my authenticity and stay focused on the city I love. The city that inspires me. The city that drives me crazy and fills me with possibilities. A city that only rivals NYC and Mexico City in the Northern Hemisphere and with world peers of Shanghai, Sao Paolo, Mumbai, Tokyo and Seoul. A city close enough to nature that I can disappear off the grid, deep into hardcore desert in 4 hours. Or if I have only 1 hour, I can drive to the top of a mountain and look out across the basin, shivering in snow depending on the month. I don't need to leave LA, because I have the whole world right here - and I'm living smack in the middle of it.

Who are you? Online?

If you're the least bit interested about how integrated identity is going to pan out online - I suggest you head to the Internet Identity Workshop - B in Mountain View the first week of December. Most of the conversation is about making identity platforms work with each other (like OpenID, Higgens, CardSpace, SAML, Liberty Alliance, etc, etc), but there are lots of other fascinating topics. I'm specifically interested on how people use identities online (well, I know how people use identities online) but how the technology facilitates or makes it difficult for people to have single or multiple identities online.

Unlike the real world (meatspace) there is no corporeal body to anchor you online (unless you create one). This online anchor is most often a website,sometimes a blog, and rarely incorporates the various personalities one has. So I'm going to watch, learn and think about this online anchor for your (and mine) online identities.

Reviewing the technology, gives me lots of ideas for fleshing out, using and extending your/mine/my clients online brands. I believe we are at the tip of the iceberg on this. And of course, I expect to find methods of enlightenment and self-actualization buried in the technology.

The Best of all Possible Worlds

I've taken a bit of a blogging hiatus. It wasn't planned, I just wasn't inspired to write much. I've been working on some things, reviewing others, trying out personas, roles, possibilities. And I've been traveling. I'm sitting in the Houston airport right now. It's been a rainy several days. I'm here celebrating the boyfriend's grandparents 65th wedding anniversary. The party was last night, and I have to say, I was excited to come and see his family again.

His grandmother, Fanny, told me a story from when they were first married, and Louie was an Army officer. She would follow him around in an old Packard. This was quite a feat because of the war gas rationing and she had to travel long distances. She didn't often have gas stamps for the gas. So she'd roll up, tell em she was the wife of an Army officer and she didn't have any gas stamps and they'd have to give the gas to her. She told me she was never refused. What really caught me about this story was her attitude when she started out - "I didn't think about how I would have to do it or how I couldn't do it. I just did it."

I found this attitude so refreshing. Especially in an 80+ year old great-grandmother.

It's an attitude that's important - that makes us alive. It's doing what we must, to have the life, to do the things, we most desire to do. It's living as if there is no other choice. A good friend of mine reminds me of a quote along this path:

"Aut viam inveniam aut faciam" (I will either find a way or make one.)

Which path do you make your way?

Nov G33k D1nner

Geek Dinner - Tomorrow night - (Tuesday)
8pm
El Coyote on Beverly
Special Guests
RSVP

Inspiration

Brian Johnson who started Zaadz a couple years ago is again working on his own site: ThinkArete. It's got some good stuff and big ideas.

1 Hour, a million miles away

One hour from Long Beach is a completely different world. Shrouded in fog, the city of Avalon. (Begin Brian Ferry soundtrack now.) I had heard about Catalina from friends, family and full of mystery from the map. The boyfriend and I were looking for an overnight trip different from our desert excursions - and he surprised me with Catalina.

We packed our bags, drove to Long Beach and caught the 1 hour ferry. It was a cool foggy day, and as we left port the Queen Mary was a ghostly reflection. Huge container transport trucks appeared from the fog. Flocks of black birds skimmed the oceantop in modified V formation. Two seats back a reality TV "star" and his camera crew attempted to wax poetic and failed. I was jacked up on surprise and Donald Trump.

As the island became visible I kept calling it Mysterious Island after one of my favorite childhood movies. S wondered if they had a movie theatre that only showed King Kong.

The place was practically empty. I guess that's what you get when you go off season during the week. I actually love going off-season. I hate being a tourist. I don't like crowds and I want to feel like what it is for the locals. :)

Avalon reminded me of a cross between the Caribbean Island towns and Ouro Preto, in Belo Horizonte Brazil. Little Golf carts everywhere. A completely walkable town. We stopped by the old time photo shop and had our photos taken. We wandered around the waterfront. We hung out on the balcony of our Victorian Hotel. We toured around the island. We went underwater. We learned about the history of Catalina. I breathed deeply the cool ocean air. I wore my sneakers and ski jacket.

As we came back to the mainland yesterday I felt like we had been gone for more than 24 hours. I felt completely refreshed, relaxed and reset. I felt like my adventurous, nothing can get in the way between me and my dream life. And I felt inspired and passionate to do the things I love doing.

Thanks magical isle, La Catalina - Avalon.