Yesterday’s Coffee and Code – the weekly gathering where I leave the home and Microsoft offices and work in a cafe where I’m very accessible – was held at Le Gourmand in the Queen/Spadina neighbourhood. We were 13 people all told, not including the passers-by who wondered about a large gathering of people with laptops and with whom we started a conversation.
For more details, see this entry in the Coffee and Code blog.
My first Coffee and Code day – a day when I work at a wifi-equipped cafe rather than my home office or the Microsoft offices in order to be very accessible – was a success. For more, check out my article on the Coffee and Code blog.
Coffee and Code is an idea I’ve been meaning to try out for some time. Every so often – perhaps once a week – I plan to work somewhere other than my home office or Microsoft’s offices but instead spend the day working in one of Toronto’s wifi-equipped cafe.
The idea is to make myself available to you, to answer your questions and talk about Microsoft, programming, the tech job market, games, accordions or whatever topic strikes your fancy. I’ll be pretty easy to spot: just look for the guy with both a laptop and an accordion.
For this inaugural Coffee and Code session, I’ll be at Urbana Coffee (1033 Bay Street, a couple of blocks north of Wellesley, at St. Joseph) from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. I’ve picked the place for a number of reasons: a central location near parking and transit, friendly staff, free wifi, power outlets aplenty, recommendations from friends and a glowing review from Torontoist. If you’re in the neighbourhood, please drop by!
Since I live and work in Toronto, I’ll be holding most of my Coffee and Code days there. However, my job does involve a fair bit of travel, and it’s quite likely that I’ll hold Coffee and Code days in other cities. Some of my coworkers are also thinking about holding their own Coffee and Code days in their own cities as well.
If you’d like to know more about upcoming Coffee and Code days, keep reading this blog, or check out Coffee and Code’s site at coffeeandcode.org.
I’m a sucker for “big idea essay” books, so while wandering around Seattle’s Pioneer Square neighbourhood, I stopped by Elliott Bay Books and picked up a couple that I’d been meaning to read:
The first was X Saves the World, Jeff Gordinier’s book inspired by his Details magazine screed Has Generation X Already Peaked? Here are the notes from the back cover:
Hi. If you’re read this far, the publisher of this book is pleased. Presumably there is something about X Saves the World that intrigues you, but you need an extra nudge. That’s what this paragraph is for. In these pages, Jeff Gordinier pursues an idea that is bold, fascinating and really entertaining. Generation X isn’t the bunch of “slackers” that you remember from way back in the early ‘90’s. Instead of squandering their hours in coffee shops and record stores for the past twenty years, Gen X has been busy…wait for it…rescuing American culture from a state of collapse! It’s true! From the way we watch moves to the way we make sense of a cracked political process to the way the whole world does business, the snarky but hardworking men and women born in the sixties and seventies are doing the quiet work of keeping America from sucking. Read the details inside this book. (Then give yourself an ironic pat on the back. You deserve it.)
The other book was The Tyranny of Dead Ideas, written by Matt Miller (who wrote The Two Percent Solution: Fixing America’s Problems in Ways Both Liberals and Conservatives Can Love).
From the book liner notes:
America is at a crossroads. In the face of global competition and rapid technological change, our economy is about to face its most severe test in nearly a century. Yet our leaders have failed to prepare us for what lies ahead because they are in the grip of a set of "dead ideas" about how a modern economy should work. They wrongly believe that
• our kids will earn more than we do
• free trade is always good, no matter who gets hurt
• employers should be responsible for health coverage
• taxes hurt the economy
• schools are a local matter
• money follows meritThese ways of thinking—dubious at best and often dead wrong—are on a collision course with economic developments that are irreversible.
Matt Miller, one of America’s most creative public-affairs thinkers, offers a unique blend of business-world acumen and public-policy vision to lay bare how this conventional wisdom holds our country back, and he introduces us to a new way of thinking—what he calls "tomorrow’s destined ideas"—that can reinvigorate our economy, our politics, and our day-to-day lives.
It is only by breaking the tyranny of dead ideas that we can move beyond the limits of today’s obsolete debates and reinvent American capitalism and democracy for the twenty-first century.
I’m going to start with X Saves the World. Have any of you read either of these books? Any comments?
Pike Place Market is just begging to be photographed. I’ll post more pictures later this week.
For the past couple of nights, we’ve ended up at Kells Irish Pub, located right by the market in Seattle’s Post Alley. We’ve made friends with Liam, their house musician. He’s been giving me a solid education in Irish folk music and I’ve been telling him about Burning Man.
Chances are we’ll end up there tonight. If you’re in the area, drop me a line, or drop by!
This article also appears in Global Nerdy.
I’m 5’11” (180cm) tall, and here’s what the legroom in United Airlines’ economy class is like once the guy in front of you has reclined his seat. He’d originally reclined his seat all the way, but I was able to talk him into doing it only halfway:
As you can see, my knees are touching the seat in front of me. If you’re 6 feet or taller, you’ll probably want to get upgraded to what United calls “Economy Plus”, where you get a little more legroom – about as much as other airlines’ economy class seats.