So, here I am, working at the office, and we’re all sending instant messages across the room instead of actually talking to each other. Real geeks, huh? Maybe, but I think the phenomenon may have as much to do with maintaining productivity-enhancing silence in an open-concept office.
Archive
One Saturday evening in August, my phone rang.
- “Hey, where are you?”
- “Um, chilling at home…”
- “You’re not coming to the loft party???”
- “Er, yeah, was supposed to go but I’m soooo tired…”
- “Man, we hardly see you anymore! Did I say something to piss you off?”
- “No no no no, not at all! I just haven’t had much time or energy to spare lately.”
The past few weeks have been a blur. I’ve been living in startupland, that exciting mythic country that is the workplace equivalent to partying in NYC: it’s a 24/7 adventure that is super-energizing and super-demanding all at the same time.
You see, I have become the voice of The Code Kitchen. Which means, among other things, that I have been dedicating more time lately to The Code Kitchen’s blog than my musings here…
J’adore lire les missives hebdos de mon ami Nicolas Cournoyer du Piknik Électronik, même si dernièrement je n’ai pas souvent eu le temps d’y aller faire mon tour le dimanche.
Cette sémaine il fait le « top ten » bilan du « bitchage » au Piknic. Hilare :
Cette semaine, on se sent un peu bitch, voici le Top 10 des demandes stupides et commentaires insignifiants entendus au Piknic…
1) Comment vous faites pour défaire la statue à chaque semaine? ( ???, lâche la drogue ma grande!)
2) J’ai mes disques dans mon char, j’peux-tu jouer? (dans ton char, tu peux jouer)
3) Penses-tu que je peux coucher avec la fille des hot-dog? (Ben voyons donc !)
4) Aille heu… le dj y peux-tu mettre du psy-trance? (heu NON)
5) J’ai perdu mon bracelet en dansant… (yeah right)
6) Il me reste 2$, j’peux-tu avoir une demie bière? ( nice try, mais non!)
7) Chu super bon au tam tam, j’peux-tu m’installer en avant du dj booth (non, mais tu peux t’installer sur le Mont-Royal par exemple!)
Vous auriez pas trouvé mon gloss par hasard la semaine passée? (ah oui, pis ton g-string aussi!)
9) J’me suis apporté une bavette, est-ce que je peux utiliser votre BBQ ?! (Pas de problème le gros, installe-toi !)
10) Non, mais cé quoi ça s’t’affaire-là. Vous pensez pas à la nature avec votre maudit boum boum, vous dérangez les marmottes, les oiseaux pis les plantes !!!! (Iiiiiicchhhhhh !)
Lunch yesterday at Daylight Factory. Delicious!!! Great little hidden patio too.
If you haven’t checked out Stars’ Do You Trust Your Friends? album featuring covers of their songs, you really should. The second track by The Dears is all sunshine and wind in your hair.
I’ve been freelancing regularly with District, a new creative/interactive shop that is being launched within Bell Web Solutions (which since January 1st has absorbed Cesart and the team of people I have been working with). Yours truly is helping to craft District’s brand and communications materials. Anyhow, I have a desk in their new space at 700 Wellington, which is a welcome change from the home office:
Facebook is like a friend who camps out in your living room for ever, but who you like so much you can’t bear to kick them out.
Need I say more?
So this is a new category created with attention-deficit types (you) and time-challenged bloggers (me) in mind. It’s a quick(er) brain-dump format. Which means that I might actually post more often. We’ll see.
Please hold, I have to leap off a building
- [Ring-ring]
- Hello?
- Hey Tom, it’s Duncan. Got a minute?
- I’m about to jump off a 7-story building. Can I call you back tonight?
Hopping aboard Porter
I’m heading to Toronto for a meeting this week and we’re flying Porter. I’m curious to check it out. Especially since they are billing themselves as “North America’s premium short-haul carrier.” Incidentally, the Porter branding was done by Winkreative, which is headed by Wallpaper magazine founder Tyler Brûlé. I wonder if Porter is innovative enough to include carbon offsets in their ticket price…
Closing Pandora’s box
I got an email from Pandora today, the online music discovery service created by the Music Genome Project. Citing international licensing constraints, they’re forced to restrict streaming audio from Pandora for most countries outside of the U.S. So, as of May 16th, Pandora will be blocked to listeners from Canada. Why? Mostly because, as founder Tim Westergren stated in the email, “there is no global licensing organization to enable any webcaster to legitimately offer its service around the world.”
If you’ve spent any time wandering up and down Duluth Street, you’ve probably spotted what you thought was a deserted store with a bright turquoise-green interior, frozen in time. The story is a little more complicated than that.
77 rue Duluth was owned by a certain Mr. Gillman, who was a fixture of the neighbourhood for many, many years. He supplied local businesses with wholesale goods and sundry sweets until a couple of years ago, when his health took a turn for the worse. He recently passed away and now his space is being transformed, but his memory lives on.
The new owner, Binky Holleran, will install the second incarnation of her Fuschia café in the space, but not before celebrating it with artistic interventions and a documentary about P. Gillman’s life (if you knew Mr. Gillman and have some memories to share, she invites you to drop by Fuschia Wednesday to Saturday between noon and seven, or drop a note in the mail slot). To help raise funds for this heritage do-gooding, Binky is hosting an auction of the curios left behind, such as the beautifully-package vintage Noxema product pictured below.
A couple of weeks ago, Montreal artist Sarah Wendt performed a contemporary dance piece/living installation of sorts to celebrate the space. After her final performance, there was a fund-raising event with music, of which I snapped a few photos (with my ISO-challenged camera). Click on the pics below for the respective photo sets. Il y a aussi un super compte-rendu écrit de la soirée, et de l’histoire derrière tout ça, ici.
For those who are wondering if I’m still in the land of the living, this entry is for you.
There’s been a lot going on lately, and my blogging appears to have suffered for it. It’s all been good, of course. Let’s see, where do I begin?
I’ve spent a lot of time so far this year out West, mostly in and around San Francisco. What started off as an unlimited flight pass for a couple of months has turned into a life-changing series of events. The first leg of my pass took me to San Francisco for a visit to Macworld, motivated purely by curiosity. Neither the tech-heads I met there nor the ever-humourless US customs and immigration officers were buying any of it: they all thought I was down there looking for work. (Ha! Truth is, I’ve had more work that I can handle lately and I really love Montreal.) While in California, I agreed to collaborate on an early-stage startup project based there. I had heard that there was a tech startup conference happening a couple of weeks later in Quebec City, so I went to check it out.
At the conference in Quebec City, I discovered after looking through the bios of attendees that one of my clients, François Lane from Mastodonte Communications, was also there. Since we had never met in person, I sat down beside him at lunch and introduced myself. One thing led to another, and a few days later we were meeting in Montreal to discuss how we could work more closely together. Since then, I have been actively collaborating with François on a weekly basis. A long-time entrepreneur in the Quebec market, he has recently decided to go international–where English, for better or worse, is often the common language. The first fruit of that effort is a white label email marketing application that we have christened Cake. François is sponsoring the One Degree website this month, so we’ve got a little teaser campaign going.
But life is not all work and no play. Oh, no–far from it! I spent Easter doing the tourist thing in San Francisco with a couple other Montrealers who’ve been bit by the wanderlust bug. It was my third time in the Bay Area in as many months, but this was the first occasion I had to really do any sightseeing. I’ve been to BC a couple of times so far this year too, spending time in Vancouver with friends, in Nelson visiting my folks, and in Victoria visting my sister, nieces, nephew, and a couple old friends from high school. I also tagged along with the Mutek crew to their gig in Washington, DC in February, which was great fun and a truly amazing evening of stellar performances. I stayed with a friend I had met at the Mutek festival a few years back, as a matter of fact.
So given that all of this has been going on in addition to my usual freelance workload, you will pardon me if I have been slow to return emails, phone messages and the like. There doesn’t seem to be enough time in the day…
A few days ago, my friend Tom Comet from Circus Orange produced a stunt for Virgin Mobile that saw Sir Richard Branson, the billionaire owner of Virgin, suspended in a prison cell 50 feet above Yonge-Dundas Square in downtown Toronto. They exploded the cell, opening the walls, and Branson climbed down successfully making his “escape.”
What’s all the fuss about? Well, in case you hadn’t heard, Canada is now only the second country in the world to feature full phone number portability. Which means that you can switch wireless companies, turn your home number into a wireless number or your wireless number into a landline. All of which should reduce prices and put features and innovation on the rise… I’m hoping that finally I will be able to get a true unlimited data service from a wireless provider that won’t cost a small fortune.
More photos here.
[Français ci-bas]
On March 23rd, I’ll be celebrating my 35th birthday. Since it’s a big one in my books and 2007 is shaping up to be a milestone year for me, I decided to do something special. So… I reserved the SAT for a party with friends, clients, acquaintances and readers of my blog! RSVP with your full name and the number of people coming with you (your friends are my friends!) by leaving a comment below or via email. Hope to see you there!
Here’s the deets:
Friday, March 23 from 9 pm - 3 am
@ The SAT, 1195 Blvd St-Laurent
$10 cover includes a drink
DJs
21:00 - 23:00 Slim Jim (Laïka)
23:00 - 01:00 Ernesto Ferreyra (Mutek)
01:00 - 03:00 Baya (Archipel) & Olivié
VJs (on six screens!)
Clandestine (Bureau officiel / Mutek)
Cinétik (Epsilonlab)
In the meantime, you can download a mix from Baya here.
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Ce 23 mars, je fête mes 35 ans. Comme c’est un chiffre qui me semble important et que cette année s’annonce comme une année marquante pour moi, j’ai décidé d’en faire un événement. Bref, j’ai réservé la SAT pour une soirée en compagnie d’ami(e)s, client(e)s, connaissances et lecteurs et lectrices de mon blogue ! RSVP en laissant vos noms complets et le nombre de personnes qui vous accompagne [vos ami(e)s sont mes ami(e)s !], soit en laissant un commentaire ci-bas, soit par courriel. En espérant vous y voir !
Voici les détails :
Vendredi 23 mars de 21h à 03h
@ La SAT, 1195 Blvd St-Laurent
L’entrée de 10 $ inclut un verre
DJs
21:00 - 23:00 Slim Jim (Laïka)
23:00 - 01:00 Ernesto (Mutek)
01:00 - 03:00 Baya (Archipel) & Olivié
VJs (sur six écrans !)
Clandestine (Bureau officiel / Mutek)
Cinétik (Epsilonlab)
En attendant la soirée, vous pouvez télécharger un mix de Baya ici.