The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century

I’m sending out wishes for a safe and happy 4th of July from here in America’s drainpipe for weirdos all my American and Americanophile friends, family, and readers. Happy Independence Day, everyone!

Video from Tampa Bay Business Journal

On Thursday, Anitra and I went to the 2016 edition of  Ignite Tampa Bay, the sixth gathering where people from the Tampa Bay Area gathered to see presentations in the Ignite format, which has these constraints:

• Each speaker is limited to exactly 5 minutes for his or her presentation.
• Each presentation is accompanies by 20 slides, no more, no less.
• The speaker has no control over when the slides advance; they automatically advance every 15 seconds.

Ignite Tampa Bay has always been an interesting evening, and this year was no exception. There’s a piece in Tampa Bay Business Journal covering the three of the 20 presentations that were directly related to business in Tampa Bay, but no one else seems to have covered the other presentations and the opening talk — so I did. I took notes throughout the evening on my iPad, and after fixing and fleshing them out (and dealing with what “autocucumber” did to some of my fast and furious typing), I’ve posted them below for your enlightenment and enjoyment.

Opening talk: Nathan Schwagler, Founding Co-Director, Dali Museum Innovation Labs

The Dali Museum, where Schwagler works.

“This goes much better if you laugh at the jokes,” quipped Schwagler, after which he welcomed us to FetishCon 2016, which got a laugh.

He told the audience about his trip from St. Pete to Ybor City, which wasn’t made easy by a traffic jam on the causeway and the fact that his car had no air conditioning. In spite of an unpleasant trip, he said that he still arrived in Ybor City a smile on his face, because he was glad to be with the creative, passionate, and involved people participating in Ignite Tampa.

Much of his talk was meant to encourage us to see things in new creative ways. He started with a slide showing one of the larger pieces at the Dali Museum, Gala Contemplating the Mediterranean Sea Which at Twenty Meters Becomes the Portrait of Abraham Lincoln (Homage to Rothko):

This is my favorite work on display at the Dali Museum. If you stand close to the piece, you see a somewhat surreal portrait of Salvador Dali’s wife Gala looking at the Mediterranean Sea as the sun, which doubles as the image of Christ, shines overhead. From a distance, or if you squint, the image morphs into a 121-pixel icon depicting the head of Abraham Lincoln. You can find out more about this painting and how it was inspired by Scientific American on the Dali Museum site. What you see in the painting depends on how you look at it.

The next thing he showed the audience was this image of a wheelbarrow:

He pointed out that while its design may seem “wrong”, there are cases where such a design would be useful. First, you don’t lift the handles on this wheelbarrow; you push down on them instead. This would be well-suited for moving heavy loads with precise steering, such as on skyscraper construction projects, where you might have to push a wheelbarrow while walking down an I-beam. Given the right circumstances, the “wrong” solution is actually the right one.

He then asked the audience to close their eyes and form a mental picture of Death Valley. He then showed this photo of a superbloom in Death Valley:

Even though Death Valley is the hottest, driest desert in North America, it experiences heavy rain every ten years or so, which leads to a super bloom like the one pictured above. Given the right conditions, even the biggest apparent wasteland is a bed of flowers waiting to happen.

He encouraged the audience to:

• Learn in new ways, just as they did by looking at Dali’s painting differently
• Think in new ways, just as they did with the wheelbarrow
• Imagine new possibilities, just as they did with Death Valley

Schwagler saved the best story for last: a “Christmas miracle” story for creatives.

A friend had given him a set of Thomas the Tank Engine toys in a bag to give to his son. His son opened the bag of toys on Christmas morning, and mixed in with the toys was a wooden lion. The son took a fascination with the wooden lion and brought it to the kitchen, where they had a lion fridge magnet. He tried to stick the wooden lion to the fridge to match the other lion, but being made of wood, it simply feel to the floor. He tried and tried again.

“It’s not going to work,” said Schwagler to his son. “It’s not a magnet; it’s not going to stick.”

Schwagler proceeded to make coffee, and a short while later, he felt a tug from his son. He turned around and saw that his son had rearranged the other fridge magnets so that they held the wooden lion to the fridge.

That’s when Schwagler realized that he’d just done the opposite of what he does every day: encourage people to find creative solutions. His son, on the other hand, was doing just that. “It’s too easy to forget that new things can happen too.”

Bee Sting: John Foster

• I’m an entrepreneur, and have been my entire life
• I struggle with work-life balance, but I do have hobbies
• My beer brewing hobby led to making mead, which in turn got me interested in bees
• Maybe you think of bees as pests, but they’re incredibly important to this planets ecosystem
• The 2.4 million honey bee colonies in the U.S. contribute $15 billion to its crop production
• Bees have been disappearing for quite some time, and researchers trying to figure it out for past 15 years
• You’ve probably heard of colony collapse disorder, which has been on the rise
• The biggest threat to food supply is loss of honey bees
• Estimates of how much of food crops are pollinated by bees go as high as 70%
  • While that figure is debated, it really doesn’t matter
  • Demand and quality of food supply makes honeybee loss an important issue
• Honeybees are the canary in the coal mine
• We have come to depend on their contributions
• We do to bend the curve of honeybee loss, but it will take a personal solution
• It’s too easy to blame corporate America, but we as consumers also shoulder the blame; corporations and industry are responding to our wants
• One thing we can do is plant flowers that bees need! [Throws packets of wildflower seeds to the audience]

How Coworking in a Library is Like a Silent Disco: Ramesh Sambasivan

• Remember in grade school, there was always one disruptive kid in class? That was me
• What comes to mind when you think of a public library? “Shhhh!”
• Recently, I’ve been gathering friends from tech world and setting up CoderDojos in public libraries
  • [CoderDojos are volunteer-run programming clubs where kids learn programming]
• At CoderDojos, you hear kids squealing in delight
• Will still a sanctuary for mindful work, some libraries allow upbeat celebrations of local innovation
• Libraries have so many guidelines; for example, you can take bananas through security line at airport, but not the library!
• There’s a fine line between just smiling at strangers at the library and being “the creepy guy”
• I’m trying to change the culture of how grown ups use the library
• I went to libraries in the Tampa Bay Area and across the country
• Each library has its culture and characteristics, but the common thread is that people work there, and get stuff done
• Libraries are a good workplace for entrepreneurs who aren’t yet ready for incubators
• Libraries are good for silent coworking, smiles permitted
• Many people at libraries work with headphones, but I’d like to see a little more socializing. How do we get people to drop their headphones?
  • I understand the need for headphones: “I want to work in the flow”
• Libraries are changing: Now they have yoga and coworking, and eventually, I expect we’ll have silent discos!
• [Worth reading: Sambasivan’s LinkedIn article, How To Organize a Coding Club For Kids and Youth at Your Local Public Library – A Checklist.]

How We’re Beating Childhood Cancer with Computers: Kyle Matthews

Photo by Brenda Young. Click to see the source.

• For past 7 years, I’ve been trying to change what neuroblastoma means for a family
• There’s a shift in the way we treat cancer: it uses genomics to look at how cancer mutates, with the goal of specifically attack cancer cells
• Chemotherapy is terrible; it attacks all cells, cancerous or not, and is rough on the patient
• The human genome project was completed in 2003, and in 2010, there was enough data from it to use in cancer treatment
• We opened new trial to use the data
• The project requires a lot of computer power to crunch all that data
• We partnered with Dell to get faster computers
  • With Dell’s computers, we can take deeper looks at genomic data
  • It used to take 2 full months to do test, with Dell’s computers 2 weeks
• Using FDA-approved drugs (that are typically used to treat other ailments) to treat cancers based on data
• It’s a precision medicine initiative
• My son Exra was diagnosed with neuroblastoma; he died
• Remember, at the end of all these treatments is a kid
• These are big problems that were moving the needle on, but the stakes are too high
• For more information, see BeatNB.org
• [Worth reading: the NMTRC site and its PEDS-PLAN (PEDiatric Precision Laboratory Advanced Neuroblastoma therapy) page]

Bread: A Love Affair: Steve Lazaridis

• I would wager to say that everyone in this room loves bread
• I remember bread from a meal with my wife 30 years ago
• When I was a kid, our family moved to Greece, and we’d go to the bakery every day for a loaf of freshly-baked bread
• 40% of American families eat meals together fewer than 4 times a week
• The American family dinner has died, and we don’t know why
• We just chose convenience
• We opened a restaurant after moving back to the U.S., and working there, I ;earned the importance of making a good meal
• I wanted to learn how to make bread and took it up
• The first time we made bread, we dipped it into everything we had
• I once brought bread to a birthday party where I didn’t know anyone. Thanks to the bread, by I knew everyone there by the end
• Bread is a great conversation starter. “It’s the appetizer no one expects!”
• Friends ask me to teach them how to make bread, and some of them have started baking. We share recipes and sourdough starters
• It’s not really about feeding people, but starting conversations. When we eat bread, we talk
• I’m building community through food; bread has allowed me to form my own community
• Bread brings people together
• This talk is not about baking bread, but breaking bread
• It’s about how you can make small dents in your community
• I want to bring back the lost art of the family dinner
• We all have something to bring to the table; find what your something is, and share it with your community
• [Worth reading: The Importance of Eating Together]

Community Makers: Lisa Kirchner

• When I was a kid, our family moved every year
• In order to make new friends in these new places, I told stories. But not by saying them, by typing them up on folded paper and handing them to people
• Later, I got into yoga to meet people. It required me to learn from my students
• I started a storytelling show: Keep St. Pete Lit
• I never had any interest in Jodi Picoult until I saw her speak
• Seeing her made me realize that I needed to learn to get onstage and learn how to tell a story
• I went to The Moth: competitive storytelling events in NYC
• Audiences make great editors! I couldn’t find a publisher until I changed my work to work onstage
• It’s because I was looking to connect with my audiences. It’s a strategy used by great leaders, such as Martin Luther King
• You know how I make it look easy? I work hard at it
• Connection is what makes for change
• The lesson of Jericho is that impermeable communities fail. You need to be able to connect
• Gandhi built microcommunities with his adversaries. “If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change.”
• In intergenerational communities, there’s a benefit: the older members are healthier, and the younger people learn more
• Diverse companies are 45% more likely to report that their firm’s market share grew over the previous year [and 70% likelier to report that the firm captured a new market].

Healing with Nutrition and Natural Therapies: Sean Stringer

• I have a patient, Mike. He’s 44, weighs 284 pounds, has diabetes, and was depressed that he would orphan his daughter
• We know from quantum physics that everything is energy and everything has a frequency
• We use this to be able to send virtual signals
• Health is all about maintaining balance. If you’re in balance, you’re healthier. If you’re out of balance, you’re sick
• I had to get a baseline for Mike — get all sorts of readings and try to find what would balance his body
• “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food”
• [Mention of epigenetics — wasn’t able to get a complete note here]
• It’s your choice: big pharma or farmer?
• Water can store energy frequencies
• We’ve discovered a treatment by injecting lab mice with water that was treated with energy frequencies of medicine
• Start investing in yourself, in your health!
• It’s my mission to educate people about alternative therapies
• There are technologies out there that help you restore balance in your health
• Visit my site at BodyMindDoc.com

One Thing That Matters: Marc Ensign

• [Showing a photo of him as a geeky kid on an Apple II computer] When I was around 6 or 7, I had a feeling that I was going to do something extraordinary with my life
• I always carried it with me, and I carried it out to world
• I’ve performed on Broadway, recorded with Grammy-nominated musicians, written books, and started my own marketing firm, but I felt that I had failed anyway
• I couldn’t point to one thing that I considered a success
• I felt that I didn’t matter, and saw life through that lens
• So I did what any rational person would do: pack up my family and run away, from New Jersey to Florida
• I started an unsuccessful blog about SEO. I think it had 2 readers and I was both of them.
• I changed my voice and got more visitors to my blog; about 1000 a day
• One day, a reader sent me a picture of what looked like a car buried in snow, and my name was written in the snow
• It came from a guy who’d quit his job and worked on a glacier preservation project
• He wrote me a letter: telling me “What you are doing does matter. At least to me. What you wrote a year and a half ago still rings in my head encourages me to keep going.”
• It became clear to me that the photo was of a glacier, not a car covered in snow
• You don’t have to walk across the country or build a school to do something that matters. Do one thing that matters for you, your family, your community, the world, or the internet. That’s how you change the world

The Millennial Problem: Carl Vervisch

• When you type “Why are millennials” into Google and look at the auto-suggestions, you’ll see a lot of bad stuff

• I don’t take pictures of food, that’s not what food is for
• I don’t take pictures of myself, that’s what strangers are for
• I’m not like the millennials you hear about
• Or maybe I am, which is why I’m claiming I’m not like them. Am I pushing away from their sinking ship and claiming a moral victory? That might explain my hipster moustache
• Do millennials lack the loyalty that my dad’s generation had? The lesson we learned was that loyalty to company was rewarded with corporate mugging
• Are millennials entitled in the workplace? Maybe it’s just that they want to take charge because they’re dying to make a difference, stand up for who they are, and face the challenge they were born to take on
• Why can’t put down their damned phones? Maybe it’s because it’s amazing computing power that’s never been seen before in the world, with access to a world of knowledge and communication, in their hand.
• I’m not just a millennial, but the the cofounder of a company where 17 of them work
• They’re dedicated, passionate, hungry, and when I fall, they don’t just catch me, they hold me up higher
• The real question should be: Why are millennials so hopeful in the face of certain defeat?
• [Worth reading: Q&A with Carl Vervisch, President and Creative Director of Social Forces and my article, Why Millennials suck (okay, not really)]

Bill Carlson: Cuba

• The first U.S. – Cuba mission took place in 1528, when an expedition from Cuba landed here in Tampa Bay right where present-day St. Petersburg is.
• Vicente Ybor, after whom this part of town is named, came here and started the cigar industry
• The Cuban Hero, Jose Marti — Cuba’s George Washington — gave many speeches in Tampa, gave most important speech in 1893
• We need to revive Cuba in a big way, and reignite the entrepreneurial spirit in Cuba
• The Tampa chamber went in 2013
• Went there in December 2014 to promote entrepreneurial trade
• There are 11 million people in Cuba. Imagine 11 million people that don’t have the household goods you take for granted at home
• Things have already improved for many Cubans. Many have gone from an income of $25 a month to $2000 to $3000 a month.
• The IT sector in Cuba is growing rapidly
• You can see a great exhibit of Cuban art at the Morean Arts Center
• You should follow the Jose Marti Trail
• In 1930, a fledgling airline came to Tampa Bay, wanting to build a waterplane hub with links to the Caribbean and Cuba. Tampa said “no”, worried about the noise. That airline became Pan Am. Let’s not pass up the Cuban opportunity again!
• [Worth reading: Tampa and Cuba connected through time and Tampa bypassed in approved U.S. flights to Cuba]

Trust — The Main Ingredient for Flight: Jason Fraley

• When you get on an airplane, you sign a trust contract with a lot of people you never met.
• You’re trusting the the pilot and mechanics are competent, the plane is maintained, and that there’s actually a seat waiting for you
• If we build on trust, we can start to do some amazing things
• We’re a group of acrobats from St. Pete, and we rely on trust

• Trust is:
  • Confidence that you can do something
  • Control, which we pass to each other seamlessly, knowing when to give it and take it back
  • Compassion: When learning a new skill, sometimes it’s scary. We use compassion to attack that fear together
  • Communication: When we do our acrobatics, we communicate with our bodies
• Join us! We’re @bonestackers on Twitter
• [Worth reading: The Bonestackers site]

The Power of Smile: Rich Castellano

• I do facial plastic reconstruction, and I travel the country teaching people to teach doctors about the process
• There is no surgery as good as mother nature’s facelift: the smile
• When we think of people, we don’t remember the words they say, but how they make us feel
• I’m the Smile Doctor, and I’m here to present my smile prescription
• We live longer when we smile more. We stay married longer when we smile more.
• Smiling is a tool that helps you to become a better nonverbal communicator
• I conduct smile audit, where you score people on how much they smile
• Smile scores are predictive of people’s relationships
• When you are around people with high smile scores, you do better
• Are we good communicators? Do we make people smile?
• That what good customer service is: Did you make your customer smile?
• [Worth watching: Ron Gutman’s TED talk, The Hidden Power of Smiling]

Next Wave of Open Source: Jacob Redding

• Open source is software where the source code is made available so you can see how it works and make changes to it to suit your needs
• What makes it work? Freedom, liberty
• There are four freedoms of open source software:
  • The freedom to run the program for any purpose
  • The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish.
  • The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor.
  • The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements (and modified versions in general) to the public, so that the whole community benefits.
• With open source, it’s more like building a program with pre-existing building blocks
• It allows you to customize and fix software, and even innovate
• Open source is ubiquitous: every day, you’re benefiting from open source software, whether you realize it or not
• Open source has problems that we need to solve
• Perhaps you’ve heard of the Heartbleed bug:
  • It was a seious vulnerability in a key piece of software called SSL, which is used all over the internet for secure communications
  • Part of its cause was that only $2000 a year was set aside to pay developers to work on it, making it a low priority
  • We need to find ways to fund the open source projects that we all depend on
• I’ve come here to ask you for a few things:
  • If you’re a user, businessperson, or cretive, I want your ideas
  • If you’re software developer: I want you to become an open source software developer
  • Going open source typically gives developers a 20% to 30% pay raise because their source code is out there and potential employers can really see what they can do
• The economic models for open source are not yet figured out
• [Worth reading: InfoWorld’s article, The Rise and Rise of Open Source]

Connecting the Podcast Community via a Documentary: Niel J. Guilarte

• Who here knows what a podcast is? It wasn’t that long ago when I discovered podcasts
• Wanted to showcase podcasting by doing a documentary
• We went around Florida and interviewed a lot of interesting people doing podcasts, asking them “What is your message?”
• One example — Lee Silverstein: diagnosed with illness, he uses his podcast to inspire people
• It became clear to me that there’s more to podcasting than simply someone getting in front of a mic and talking
• I saw another world that I didn’t know existed
• This is a community that has a “family” feel, with a heartfelt story in the background of every podcast: emotion, compassion, education, entertainment

[Worth checking out: the trailer for his documentary, The Messengers: A Podcast Documentary…]

How 3 Letters Changed Our Life: Sandra Scott

• We have struggled to get pregnant
• It took months to find a doctor
• I didn’t like the first one, who kept referring to my husband’s testicles as “the boys”
• We then went to Reproductive Medicine Group, whom we liked, and they suggested that we use IVF — in vitro fertilization — to get pregnant
• Insurance did not cover anything after diagnosis. The cost is $12,000, and that’s before before medicine
• Only 15 states have mandate to cover IVF, and Florida isn’t one of them
• There’s no dipping your toe in the infertility world
• In our first attempt, we got one embryo, and it didn’t make it
• I felt so much anger at money spent for nothing
• We tried one more egg retrieval, which resulted in 4 frozen embryos of high quality
• We were finally crying tears of joy
• The process afterwards was painful: 12 weeks of lower back injections
• It’s stressful, and tested our relationship. Waiting for results is hell
• Resolve.org was a help
• People will often say the wrong things — the worst was “Why don’t you just sleep with someone else, because it would be cheaper and less invasive?”
• If you know someone going through this, just be supportive
• 1 in 8 couples have trouble getting pregnant or sustaining a pregnancy
• If you’re one of these 1 in 8, don’t be ashamed by your story, but share it! It will inspire others
• By the way, we are totally pregnant…with twins!

A (Very) Brief Introduction to Cognitive Science: Todd Allen Joseph

• I have two small children growing up in an increasingly dysfunctional world
• Reason takes a back seat to ideology
• We spend over a trillion dollars a year on education in this country, yet the people making decisions on how this money is spent don’t have a background in cognitive science
• It’s the science of mental processes, the study of how human process information, language, perception, and what hinders and helps memory
• One major problem we face today is confirmation bias and belief perseverance
• This comes from the way we learn: statistical learning. Everything you experience is encoded in your brain’s neural structure, brain makes mental model of world based on this
• What we learn gets sorted out in a process called consoldation. It happens while you’re asleep, which means if you want to learn better, get more sleep
• Our brains form schemes, which are organizations of thought based on our experiences. No two people have same experiences, and thus no two people have the same schemes
• We know that memory can be reconstructed, and people are prone to inclusion errors and false memories. People can create memories or details of events that never happened
• Example: Ronald Cotton and Jennifer Thompson [From the Innocence Project: Ronald Cotton was exonerated in 1995, after spending over 10 years in prison for crimes he did not commit. His convictions were based largely on an eyewitness misidentification made by one of the victims, Jennifer Thompson-Cannino. Cotton and Thompson-Cannino are now good friends and leading advocates for eyewitness identification reform.]
• [Worth reading: Joseph’s Cognitive Psychology Resources page]

The Future of Religion: Joran Oppelt

• When we choose not to talk about the diversity that defines us, we become more polar, repressed, and intolerant
• Religious belief is an identity, similar to political identity or sexual identity
• It isn’t just “believer” and “non-believer”, but occupies a spectrum: fundamentalist on one end to progressive on the other
• The problem with religion today is not holy wars, but the fact that progressives get along better with progressives in other faiths that with the fundamentalists in their own faith.
• There is a rich diversity in all these traditions, but we end up creating cardboard cutout flat stereotypes insteads
• Religion has refused to evolve. Religion needs to be disruptive and revolutionized
• Most doctrine still divides us from ourselves, each other, and nature
• What does modern spirituality look like? It’s people with a highly attuned bullshit detector, who turn to things that work for them: ecology, environment, volunteering, neighborhood, and a spirituality speaks to their soul without the need for a chaperone. It’s not a spirit of “either or”, but of “with and”
• We need science and spirituality
• We need something that captures the salvation of Christianity, the study of Judaism, the mindfulness of Buddhism, the submission of Islam
• We’re still writing sacred texts today that show the world through a spiritual lens, and they include Star Wars and Harry Potter
• The best scripture is the one you write every. Our meditation is our relationship
• [Worth reading: Oppelt’s posts on Integral Church’s blog]

Back to the Future – Tampa’s Streetcar Neighborhoods Can Save Us: Brian Willis

• There’s a big misconception about Tampa Bay — that it’s separate from rail and mix use development
• We were built to be a streetcar and rail-compatible area
• The place we now know as University of Tampa was not just a hotel, but a terminus for Henry Plant’s rail network
• Safety Harbor had compact, walkable urban rail grids built around rail system
• Lutz and Citrus Park [presently car commuter suburbs] were built around rail lines
• You could take rail line from Lutz to Tampa via a system that was 59 miles of rail cars
• Tampa’s original form was the streetcar suburb, but we tore it all up and replaced it with the automobile, which is worse. The more roads you build, the more traffic you create
• We can go back to the future
• Tampa’s compact blocks make it rail friendly
• Urbanism values walkability, connectivity, and mixed-use public space
• Go to Curtis Hixon Park and Tampa Riverwalk, once places that nobody went to and are now places to be. They show how high equality public space pays dividends
• We need good transit; we’re a community the size of Rhode Island
• In our future, there may not be flying cars, but there will be better transit
• [Worth reading: The Tampa Rail Community site, TampaBayTrains.com, and CityLab’s article, Mixed-Use Neightborhoods May Be Safer, Too]

Tampa Bay, the Next Dubai of the Americas: Sven Boermeester

Photo by Brenda Young. Click to see the source.

• I came to Tampa Bay and to marry Christina (and her dog, Max)
• Before Tampa, I lived in Dubai, which grew from nothing into a world city in just 20 years
• Dubai got its start when a sheikh cashed out of the oil business and used $2 billion to build 5 strategic landmarks:
  • Airport
  • Highway
  • Seaport
  • World Trade Center
  • Burj Khalifa
• It’s a city where people of 120 nationalities are collaborating and living in harmony
• Dubai’s second growth came from the formation of the smart city
• It came from the realization that Dubai was not competing with just the region, but the world
• They created free zones: mini cities for different industries, with collaboration centers, where 500 competitors would share a common space. It fostered relationships and collaborations.
• I see Tampa as a Dubai waiting to happen. The stars have aligned, and the tipping point is here:
  • We’re spending $1 billion on doubling the size of the airport. The capacity of the combined Tampa and Orlando airports will be about the same as Dubai’s
  • At 5,000 acres, Tampa’s port is the largest in Florida, and it’s expected to quadruple in size
  • You see industry clusters forming in Tampa, just as they did in Dubai: beer, franchise restaurants, and home shopping, to name a few
  • The new Panama Canal just opened, and that’s going to be a game changer for us [if we do it right]
  • Cuba also just opened, and that’s a market of 12 million people just 300 miles away
• And the lifesstyle here is great! I tell my friends in Dubai that you can eat pork sandwiches and drink beer at the beach, and they don’t believe it
• Jeff Vinik is our sheikh!

Why You Should Write a Book: Eli Gonzales

Photo by Brenda Young. Click to see the source.

• I’m a best-selling ghost writer, and I’m here to tell you that maybe you should write a book!
• This world is ruled by dead people: men and women who wrote their ideas down and passed the knowledge down to generations to follow
• They are the laws we abide by, the truths we tell. A book is the single best invention
• Tyler Durden was wrong, mom was right. You are a unique snowflake!
• Some of the best stories will never be told, because people thought “Who am I to write a book?”
• How well do you know the story of your grandparents? Your great grandparents? Are you going to let someone else write your legacy?
• I’ve been teaching seniors how to write a memoir that people care about
• What’s your book gonna be about? Whatever that crazy thing you’re thinking about is, write about that! It doesn’t have to be a best seller
• If you’re a business owner, the credibility you get from a book is better than any Google ranking
• Writers block doesn’t exist, only writers who aren’t prepared
  • Write an outline, and fill it in when inspiration strikes
• The goal isn’t to live forever, to create something that will
• [Worth reading: 7 Reasons Writing a Book makes You a Badass]

How to Crush that Little Voice in Your Head Saying “Quit”: Sean Davis

• In my sophomore year, I weighed 130 pounds. I went up to to 199 pounds (but fit) by senior year
• I did a lot of cycling, won races and championships
• Me and my wife Stephanie are now into climbing
• I read Peak Performance, and recommend it. One thing I learned from it is that you cannot brute force the voice in your head into submission
• I calm down through visualization and relaxation, letting me exceed what I can do. It help you get in your head the things that matter the most to you, what motivates you and drives you
• Do that, then write them down, make them concrete
• For 20 to 30 minutes every day, lie down, pick a spot on your ceiling, look at it, and feel yourself  start to relax
• Take intensity and internalize it
• Remember, your brain will break before your body does
• You have to make it intense and train your brain and body to relax. Visualize the most intense workouts you’ve ever done, then do them, and keep going
• Let go, feel the training flow through you
• [Worth reading: See how it’s done — 6 lessons on visualization]

July 1st is Canada Day, Canada’s national holiday. It was on July 1, 1867 when three colonies, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and what was then the Province of Canada (now Ontario and Quebec) were brought together into a single country, the Dominion of Canada, part of the British Empire. July 1st went by the name Dominion Day until 1982, when the Canadian constitution was partriated, and it’s been called Canada Day ever since.

It’s a holiday in the country of my citizenship, so I won’t make you read about Canada. How about a couple of nice videos instead?

This one’s not even 24 hours old as of this writing — it’s a comedy piece called How to be a Canadian, by IFHT Films:

And flashing back to the Vancouver Olympics in 2010, here’s Tom Brokaw explaining Canada for an American audience:

And let’s not forget that Canada’s the home of the best damned political ad ever, made by Wyatt Scott. He didn’t win, but he at least avoided ending up in last place (that honor went to the Marxist-Leninist party):

If I told you that the largest immigrant group in the UK were the targets of the wrath of triumphant British nationalists in the days after Brexit, you wouldn’t be surprised. But you might be surprised if I told you that this minority looked like this…

…and this:

“With an estimated headcount of 850,000,” writes Adam Taylor for the Washington Post, “Polish citizens are the largest group of foreign citizens in the country.”

Poland joined in the EU in 2004, when 10 countries were added to the union. Polish citizens gained the ability to move to and work in any EU member, which included the UK (in case you forgot, the UK is the combination of England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, but not the Republic of Ireland). Since then, about 2 million Poles have emigrated to EU countries like Germany and Ireland, but many headed for the UK.

Slide from a presentation on human migration. Click to see the source.

Along with this diaspora came the derogatory term “Polish Plumber”. First used — quite unsurprisingly — by the editor of Charlie Hebdo, it encapsulates concerns about the cheap labor suddenly unleashed upon Europe with the sudden addition of many eastern Europeans to the market. The stereotype isn’t all that different from the North American one about dark-skinned people undercutting the prices charged by dyed-in-the-wool locals. The use of the term “Polish Plumber” is widespread enough to have earned it a Wikipedia entry.

“They took err jerbs!” isn’t a battle cry that’s limited to the U.S.; it’s used in the UK as well. Consider this ad by UKIP (the UK Independence Party, whose leader, human trash fire Nigel Farage, you may have seen in the news lately):

This ad was controversial for a number of reasons, including the fact that the unemployed worker in the ad is an Irish actor. Remember, American friends, he’s Irish, not British. There’s a difference:

A number of Polish families in Cambridgeshire found these racist laminated cards in their mailboxes recently, written in both English and Polish:

The Polish community center in Hammersmith was hit with xenophobic graffiti:

Immigrants from Poland aren’t the only victims of this white-on-white pile-on:

…and the bigotry isn’t even limited to a specific country of white people anymore, but a whole damned continent:

I’m afraid it’s going to get worse before it gets better.

If you’re looking for something interesting to do in Tampa this Thursday, may I suggest attending Ignite Tampa Bay? You’ll see interesting presentations given in a very interesting way.

The Ignite format’s motto is “Enlighten us, but make it quick!” It takes your standard speaker-and-audience formula and adds some interesting constraints:

• Each speaker is limited to exactly 5 minutes for his or her presentation.
• Each presentation is accompanies by 20 slides, no more, no less.
• The speaker has no control over when the slides advance; they automatically advance every 15 seconds.

The five minute limit forces speakers to whittle their presentations down to the essential points they’re trying to make, and the auto-advancing slides make it necessary to practice, practice, practice.

Want to see an example of an Ignite presentation? How about mine from last year’s event, in which I explain in five minutes why the existence of Florida Man and Florida Woman is a good thing:

This year’s speakers and presentations are:

• Rich Castellano: The Power of Smile
• Aria Mia Loberti: How to Gain Superpowers
• Niel J. Guilarte: Connecting the Podcast Community via a Documentary.
• Jacob Redding: Next Wave of Open Source
• Marc Ensign: One thing that Matters
• Lisa Kirchner: Community Makers Make Change
• Steve Lazaridis: Bread
• Joran Oppelt: The Future of Religion
• Sean Davis: How You Can Learn to Crush That Little Voice Inside Your Head Saying…
• Todd Allen Joseph: A (Very) Brief Introduction to Cognitive Science
• Sandra Scott: How 3 Letters Changed Our Life
• Carl Vervisch: The Millennial Problem
• Ramesh Sambasivan: How Coworking in a Library is Like a Silent Disco
• Kyle Matthews: How We’re Beating Childhood Cancer with Computers
• Brian Willis: Back to the Future – Tampa’s Streetcar Neighborhoods Can Save Us
• Sven Boemeester: Tampa Bay the Next Dubai of the Americas
• John Foster: Bee Sting
• Jason Fraley: Trust – the main ingredient for flight
• Bill Carlson: Cuba
• Dr. Sean Stringer: Healing with Nutrition and Natural Therapies

The remaining tickets for Ignite Tampa Bay are general admission tickets, which set you back $19.50 a person ($17.50 plus a $2.00 processing fee). They’re available online here.

The details

• The event: Ignite Tampa Bay 2016
• When: Thursday, June 30th, 6:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.
• Where: The Cuban Club, 2010 North Avenida Republica de Cuba (East Palm Avenue and North 14th Street), Ybor City
• How much: $19.50 per person, tickets available online
• Food and drink: They typically have beer, wine, and soft drinks

We know that it’s the little niceties that make life better:

Photo by Erinn Day.

If I want a breakfast bourbon, then by damn, I’m gonna have me a breakfast bourbon.

Englewood, Florida.

The menu above is for Zeke’s Uptown Bar and Grill, located in a relaxed little town called Englewood, just south of Accordion Bay. Here’s what they have to say about themselves in the “Our Schtick” section of their website:

We cut our own meats, make our own sauces, use the highest quality ingredients and do our darndest to provide you with an exceptional value. We’re casual for sure, but we’re not a fast food service.

Our menu items are complex, all items are prepared fresh to order and take skill, love and some time to cook. We hope you will come to relax, take time to unwind with friends and enjoy the layers of flavor we will deliver to your table.

Remember, it’s Englewood — there’s nothing to rush to. The beach isn’t going anywhere and the fish will bite when they’re ready.Isn’t that one of the many reason’s we’ve picked this slow moving, friendly Old Florida village to call home?

I’m going to have to pay a visit to Zeke’s the next time I’m down their way, and by damn, I’m having me a nice breakfast drink.

Yesterday, a new and potentially scene-changing Tampa Meetup group convened for the first time: the Tampa Company Culture Meetup, which I attended with Anitra and our friend Shelley.

Organized by Saxon Baum and Taylor Wallace, co-founders of the startup WeVue, it’s a gathering of Accordion Bay people who are interested in building good cultures in the companies where they work. I attended the meetup and “worked the room”; I found that the attendees by and large were the sort of folks who actively involve themselves in their companies and communities. Among the crowd were local Agile community leaders Jessica Wolfe and Ed Martin, as well as Tampa Bay WaVE entrepreneur-in-residence and all-round super-mentor Kenneth Ervin Young.

The event took place at CoWork Ybor, a coworking space attached to the Blind Tiger Café (which itself is a cafe attached to a clothing store) located in Ybor City, a historic warehouse neighborhood turned entertainment district. Not coincidentally, the meetup’s featured speaker was Roberto Torres, CEO of the Blind Tiger Cafe, CoWork Ybor, and Black and Denim, and he gave an informal talk on how he came to understand that company culture can help drive business success.

Roberto started by talking about his start in the business world as an accountant. “It’s not creative work,” he said, “In accounting, if you get creative, you go to jail.” He said that accounting burns out a lot of people, citing its high rate of churn, especially in the area of auditing. A lot of it has to do with the fact that as an auditor, you’re often seen as an “angel of death”, who “inflicts pain” and whom “everyone detests”.

His first exposure to the power of company culture to transform the work experience was when he worked for a company that imported its business culture from its parent company in the Netherlands. That firm took a greater interest in employee well-being by taking pains to create a comfortable work environment and sense of belonging, foster mentoring, a sense of community, and work-life balance within the organization, and provide perks like free food.

He also learned from Zappos’ “company culture tour” (which I took during my days at Microsoft; it’s worth taking, and a refreshing change from the rest of Las Vegas), where he saw their “wild and crazy” day-to-day operations first hand, and saw how employees who were truly engaged with a company produce more, contribute more, and even provide their company with some of its best ideas. He took that concept and ran with it at Blind Tiger; “For instance, half of our menu is employee-suggested.”

Roberto said that the company culture at Blind Tiger has three rules:

1. Strive to make the best coffee
2. Treat coworkers and customers with a smile
3. Have fun

His approach is best described as “the opposite of Starbucks”, which is largely about throughput, and where employees are by and large interchangeable cogs in a larger machine. Blind Tiger’s approach is to create relationships with its customers; he says “Every time there’s an opportunity to talk with a customer is an opportunity to create a brand ambassador”.

“When customers come in, they’re coming in to fulfill a basic Maslow need. They’re thirsty, they’re hungry,” ha said. Blind Tiger’s employees fill that need at first, but then establish connections with the customers to fulfill needs higher up on the hierarchy. The goal is to surpass people’s expectations, which is a tricky one — he cited the quote “expectations are premeditated resentments”.

In order to have employees who are fully engaged, he uses a number of approaches:

• “Hire slow, fire fast,” a lesson he learned from the managing director of the Ciccio Restaurant Group, a local commercial and critical success story.
• Not hiring seasonal workers: He wants people who are more committed. He prefers people who are “college-educated and looking to gain experiences”. I’m looking for coffee geeks with a strong sense of purpose.”
• Trying to figure out who employee candidates are and what they want to be. He asks them “What do you want to be doing in five years” and requires cover letters in employee applications, which is typical for white collar office jobs, but unusual in the world of baristas.
• Asking prospective employees “On a scale of 1 to 10, how weird are you?”. The answer, he says, is quite helpful in making hiring decisions.

He takes a strong interest in the well-being of his employees, as his concern is to “make companies that aren’t just stepping stones, but chapters in someone’s life.” To that end, he tries to make the work experience at Blind Tiger a great one, expose his crew to different activities and positive experiences, bring healthy food to team meetings, and encourage them to do those little things that make life better (“I do tell them to get 8 hours of sleep”).

As for his involvement in the running of Blind Tiger, Roberto says that he’s not involved in the day-to-day operations, but provides direction. He’s got a manager and assistant manager to take on those tasks, but he says “I wash dishes”.

The meetup ended with a round-the-room session where everyone introduced themselves, telling us what they did for work and what they’d like to see at future Company Culture meetups, followed by more informal socializing.

Keep an eye on the Tampa Company Culture Meetup page — I’ve got a hunch that this will be an active and interesting group. My thanks to Saxon, Taylor, and Roberto for making it happen!