The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century

Hello from Seattle!

I’m here for the BarCamp Seattle conference, which took place this weekend. I had a great time, met some amazing people, had some enlightening discussions outdoors, by the water:

I also got to see a little more of the city, especially Fremont, took a tour of a distillery (and bought some bourbon of course)…

…hung out with some buskers:

…and caught up with old friends and generally got to do the sort of thing that most of us working stiffs don’t get to do.

Since joining Shopify, I’ve been to Boston to hang out with the MIT crowd, Minneapolis to discover that it’s the new hacker hipster startup Mecca, Portland to see that the dream of the nineties is still alive and Seattle (fourth time this year!) to get smarter, see old friends and enjoy that rarest of Pacific Northwest treats: a sunny day. Plus, I’m living in a nice bachelor pad in a new and different city (Ottawa) this summer, and I’m enjoying having a new and different place to call “home”.

Although I’m not rich — and hey, in switching jobs from a Fortune 50 colossus to a startup, I took a pay cut — I’m certainly living rich while not living beyond my means. To borrow a very wise quote from my friend Lee Dale, “Pay cut, but lifestyle win!”

I’m trying to see how much of the life that Ine and Catherine from Nomadz.nu, who talked about it at BarCamp Ghent in their session titled Don’t Be Rich, Live Rich. They’re doing it on a far grander scale than I, but hey, it’s inspiration, not a competition!

I’ve included their slides below:

 

At this moment, I’m the richest guy I know.

This Morning

“Are you from around here?” asked the waitress at the breakfast restaurant at Hotel Five (I like it, and will write about it soon), where I’m staying while here in Seattle, asked.

“No, I’m from Toronto,” I replied.

“I just ask because of the accordion,” she said. “It’s popping up all over the my neighbourhood. There’s a lot of really attractive women who’ve taken up the accordion there.“

“Oh reeeeeeally?” I asked. “Just out of sheer curiosity, not that I’m going to make a beeline for there as soon as I’m finished breakfast, where, uh, do you live?”

“Capitol Hill.“

“I think I have some drinking scheduled there later tonight.”

This Afternoon

“Hey,” the busker outside Pike Place Market said, “I like your accordion!”

“Thanks,” I replied. “I like yours.”

Her name is Mackenzie, and she’s got great technique and a lovely voice. The numbers I heard her play were sea-chanty and French folks songs with lyrics translated into English. If you like songs of lost love that have the same flavour as The Decemberists’ The Mariner’s Revenge Song, you just might like her repertoire.

We talked accordions and even tried each other’s on. She was stunned by how light mine was. In the accordion world, “light” is a very relative thing.

“I got it because it fits in just about every airline’s overhead compartment,” I told her. “I travel a lot.”

“Nice action, too!”

Mackenzie’s accordion has an vintage accordion feel: it reminds me of “The Chick Magnet”, an accordion with strange powers that I still have to take out of storage and get tuned. It has a nice growl to it, and I played Plush by Stone Temple Pilots on it.

“It’s a grunge accordion!” I said.

I bought the CD she was selling — she’s in a group called The Dandelion Junk Queens — and I’ll give it a listen later tonight. Here are a couple of samples I was able to find on YouTube:

This should be the official anthem of everyone who participated in the Vancouver Stanley Cup Riots.

Many people will recognize Peter Falk as the grandfather reading the story in The Princess Bride (and he was great in that), but he’ll always be Columbo and the guy behind the true “Serpentine!” gag to me. Requiescat in pace, and thanks for the inspiration when I needed it most, Lieutenant.

One of the best-known of Shopify’s nearly 14,000 stores is the Angry Birds store, where you can buy plush versions of the birds and pigs from the insanely popular videogame. Entrepreneur magazine has a story titled Anger Management, which covers Rovio (the people behind Angry Birds) and why they chose Shopify to sell their merch:

"We looked at a number of different options, but Shopify made the most sense," [Niklas Kari, head of retail] says. "We had strong recommendations from other partners, and setting up the store was easy."

The Angry Birds store opened in October 2010 with the assistance of Mark Dunkley, one of our superstar designers, who cranked out a whole store design from concept to working ecommerce site in 72 hours. Since its opening, they’ve sold 2 million plush toys.

Check out the article in Entrepreneur, and if you’re thinking of starting an online store, Shopify’s the one to go with!

This article also appears in Global Nerdy.

Don’t forget:

• Land Your Dream Job 2.0, which takes place at Mercury Lounge from 4:00 – 6:00 p.m.
• Node.JS Ottawa Pub Nite, which takes place at the Sir John A. Pub from 7:00 – 9:00 p.m.

For more details, see my earlier post on tonight’s events.

This article also appears in the Shopify Technology Blog.

This is the view from my living room window this morning. The Ottawa Chicken-Rib Cook Off starts today on Sparks Street (outside my front door!) and runs through the weekend. I hope to catch some of it tonight, because it’s my only chance — tomorrow morning, I fly to Seattle for BarCamp.