Take time to appreciate Life

I caught the first episode of a new Discovery Channel series called Life last night.  It's been a long time since I've seen a nature show and it got me thinking.

I grew up with nature, and nature shows were often on at home.  My parents would prefer news (of the driest sort - like the McNeil-Lehrer News Hour on PBS) and my sister and I would want to watch a sitcom.  Nature shows were something we all enjoyed (or at least tolerated).  Couple that with my Dad being a Biology professor, and my mom a science education professor, AND growing up in North Dakota (the freakin' middle of nowhere/nature), and I've had quite a bit of exposure to the natural world.  

Now, living in Manhattan, I haven't realized how much I've missed it.  There's something profoundly therapeutic about our natural world.  Watching the premiere of Life last night, I was once again amazed at the complexity, diversity, and ingenuity that surrounds us.  Watching a tiny frog, no bigger than my fingernail climb 100ft trees to deposit its tadpoles in individually selected plants, and then feeding each of them daily as they grew is a marvel of intelligence and devotion.  Yes, I attribute these human characteristics to an animal.  Even though it may not consciously understand what it's doing, that intelligence is programmed in to its biology.

Working in high technology, there is always the latest and greatest technological achievement, the coolest thing on the market, the latest killer app.  I have a full appreciation to how much effort and work goes in to creating each of these next advancements.  Then I watch this show and am profoundly amazed at the elegance and complexity that evolution has created.  The one primary directive - your offspring must reproduce - drives everything in life.  One simple rule that has profound results.  

Watching these shows sometimes gives rise to a feeling I would describe as spiritual.  Seeing other creatures behave very similarly to ourselves - caring for their young, trying to impress a girl, playing and having fun - gives me a sense of connectedness with the world around me.  I have more compassion for the people in my life too.  If I can relate to a mudfish, then it's easier to relate to a human.

Whether you believe in God or are an atheist, we should all take some time and share in the awe and wonder at the world around us.  

Love,
Shane

Reactivation

I've been engaging in a lot of conversations and debate lately. Often they take place in Facebook comments or over a beer with friends. I've had comments deleted from Facebook when people disagree with me or are losing a debate. Conversations with friends are fleeting, and too often when discussing with one friend, I wish another was there to participate. Putting my thoughts down in my own blog will serve as a record of my viewpoints (and likely how they change over time).

I've let this blog languish for over a year, and it's high time to reactivate it. I welcome all comments and rational discourse. If you bring a viewpoint, please back it up with facts, and not wild speculation, fear, uncertainty and doubt.

Let the good times roll.

Tech Drinks IX

If you're involved in the local tech scene, you need to come to this event. It's a casual event filled with a huge cross section of entrepreneurs, developers, bloggers, writers, producers, and even a pug.

Lunasa was filled with tech people - all eager to meet and speak with new people. The Anchor Steam Christmas Ale was by far the beer of choice (my choice at least).

I'm not sure when the next TechDrinks event will be, but I'll do my best to be there.

10gen Bootcamp

10gen hosted another bootcamp last night. We had a decent turn out with attendees ranging from developers to hosting providers.

It was a big day for 10gen. Official support for Ruby and Rails was announced recently, and Jim Menard gave a great presentation on the new features. Jim's been working hard on this, and we're all excited to get some people from the community to kick it around. So - go ahead! Download the SDK and let us know what you think. We've got a Google Group and are always on IRC. Check out more docs at our Ruby Language Center.

It was great speaking with more people from the hosting provider community. They've definitely got an eye toward what Amazon and Google are doing with their cloud offerings and are concerned - not necessarily for now - but for the future. Amazon and Google's platforms are still young. Once they mature and business models and mindsets become more accustomed to the on-demand framework, they know they'll be hurting. Looking for partners like 10gen is an attractive solution since 10gen is open source which means you won't be locked in to a particular vendor.

Most of the time was spent in one on one conversations discussing 10gen and answering questions. It's a laid back atmosphere, and we tend to adapt the agenda depending on who shows up and what people are interested in. We'll help you get started with the SDK, lend a hand with your project, and have some great conversation over pizza and beer or soda.

Our next bootcamp is scheduled for January 22nd. Come on down!

Congrats to the new Organizer

Nate Westheimer came by the 10gen offices this morning and met with Jim Hirshfield, Dwight Merriman, and me.

Nate was recently elected to lead the NY Tech Meetup. With over 7500 members, this is one of the largest tech meetups in the world. Nate is promoting organization as his central theme. He recognizes that NY has a lot to offer, but the part that's lacking is the organization and connections between and within the different communities. He's assembling a league of ambassadors who will serve as communication conduits, making connections between people and groups.

This fits right in line with my philosophy and some of the community type organizing I've done in the past - establishing High Performance Computing user groups within academia and big pharma. What I've seen is that it's not the solution that's lacking, but awareness of the options out there and their applicability to people. Once you get people to realize that "hey, this is relevant to me," and get them listening to each other so they realize, "that sounds like my problem, how'd you solve that?" a dialog is opened. Then the community member begin to support one another. They begin to collaborate. They become more than the sum of their parts.

Having a cohesive (or at least communicating) community is great, but even more can be achieved when it looks out side of itself. Rare is the group that is completely self sufficient. Being able to have a focal point / distribution point for inquiries and information exchange into and out of the group and amongst its members improves that critical signal:noise ratio so that people actually pay attention & hear what those things that can add value to them. Building relationship between organizations and groups compounds the value and opens up new and innovating solutions more easily.

Looking forward to the structure Nate is proposing, it's exciting. It's simple, and it can work.

Event Report: JavaScript Holiday Party

Server side JavaScript is widely used on the 10gen platform, and I was excited to attend the Holiday Party for the NYC JavaScript Meetup. Geir presented at a recent event, and everyone there remembered him and 10gen. I met a ton of great people doing some amazing things. Ning and Kael are doing some neat things at Blankslate, as is Fabian at VisualStructure.

Rebar provided a great venue (even though it's in DUMBO) with a top quality beer selection. Thanks to Brian for the taster sample of some amazing beers (a Belgian Stout, Avery's Anniversary, Goose Island's Bourbon County Stout, and a Bourbon Barrel Scotch Ale). I also met Josh and talked about his Climate Change photography.

Event Report: Creative Commons 6th Birthday and Salon

Last night was the 6th birthday celebration for Creative Commons. As 10gen is released under open source licensing, we have similar views about the benefits that openness and collaboration can bring. There were several interesting presentations of CC licensed software.

Limebits runs using client-side JavaScript and WebDAV. They're promoting the sharing of web code - applications, games, blogs, etc. All freely copyable and extensible.

A special treat for me was to see Spot present Electric Sheep. (More specifically he presented Dreams in High Fidelity), but he talked a lot about Electric Sheep which has been my favorite screen saver for several years. It's easily the most beautiful I've seen, but that's not what makes it cool. It's actually a distributed computing app (like SETI@home) which uses genetic algorithms to formulate the next "sheep" (mathematical models). The fitness function of the algorithm is human. People vote up or down (roman style) on whether they like the sheep currently displaying during their screen saver. The higher rated sheep then breed (including cross-over and mutation) to create the next gen offspring. Scott lamented the effects of this - where the most popular sheep are fast moving, flashy, & colorful ("vegas sheep"), and are not the kind he prefers. It was great speaking with Scott after his presentation about grouping voters by their interests into 'flocks' and allowing them to develop sheep according to their own preferences (or even developing them solo).

Sarah Elizabeth Foster and company performed three songs including "Happy Birthday" for CC (which I thought was insane as it's copywritten!). I enjoyed hearing her discuss her trepedation about giving up her writes to her music as an artist. I hope it works out for her.

Michael Galpert from Aviary.com presented their software. I'm not sure how this got passed my radar, but I was very impressed with it's functionality, smoothness, and philosophy. If you're interested in graphic design, you've got to check it out. Rumor is that they're working on a CC licensed version of ProTools. That got my audiophile friends drooling. Aviary believes in education, and their site is chock full of tutorials and examples.

All in all, it was an interesting evening, and exciting to see more of the activity going on in the city.