It’s funny how things happen. how some sort of invisible hand shows you different paths and helps guide you. Not holding your hand or necessarily giving you direction, but rather illuminating things around you. Giving you perspective. Giving you insight. It doesn’t matter what you do or don’t believe in. It doesn’t matter what school of thought you come from. it may be a diving being. It may just be coincidence. It may be a situation that you created yourself.  It doesn’t matter. What does matter is that it happens. So right now, I sit here, writing. But not on a computer like I usually do. Rahter, I’m using the good old pencil and paper, something I haven’t done in a long time. Not the using a pencil thing, but just writing for the sake of writing. For myself (and OK, maybe for the blog)

The events of the past week or so have reminded me of the world that is out there. Of the world away from Twitter and Facebook. Away from IM clients and email. The world where I see with my own eyes rather than through photos taken by others. The world where I hear what’s being said rather than see it on a screen. There’s something to be said for that. And you know what? I miss it too. Yeah, i’m always active online, but it’s when those interactions translate into real life that I smile. Online, we’re simply avatars, sending each other messages in the form of data. Simple ASCII code. Bits and bytes. Really just a string of 1′s and 0′s converted into information that we can see. But can we truly understand it? Yes, there are those who can write so well it’s almost as if they’re speaking to you right there. Almost as if you can pull the emotion and vocal cutes and inflections out of it. But it’s still only almost. A voice recording gets you closer. but you’re still missing something. It’s only when you’re there in person that you get the whole thing. And unless you’re a great actor (or the other person isn’t observant enough), you can’t get away with anything. You, if you realize it or not, are being genuine. The words you say, the sound and tone of your voice, and the way you stand and move all add up to truly convey your meaning and intention.

Now what really got me onto this topic? what was that spark (which I feel I’ve been missing for a while)? A few simple words that Mitch Albom was told by Albert Lewis, his old Rabbi, when he asked what the secret of happiness was: “Be satisfied. Be grateful. For what you have. For the love you receive. And for what God has given you.” (From Albom’s book Have a Little Faith).

But it’s not what we physically own, or the seats in society we fill, that should make us happy. Those are merely reminders o fthe things that should make us happy. They are, in this case, almost symbolic. The moment you forget this and strive only to get more, that happiness becomes something that is no longer truly attainable. Why not? Because there will always be something with more or who is “better”. But none of that really matters if you can find true happiness, which is something that never comes with a price tag.

“What profits a man if he gains the whole world, but loses his soul?” - Mitch Albom, Have A Little Faith

I think this is one thing that a lot of people forget in today’s world. We’re all so busy going out there, trying to get more, while lamenting about the past and things we cannot change. We’re all so caught up about the future of our jobs, the economy, and our future health, and as a consequence, we forget about the now. We forget to appreciate what we have, especially the little things, instead of constantly worrying about what’s coming up. I’m by no means saying that we shouldn’t worry about tomorrow or forget about yesterday. Both are extremely important. I’m just saying that we should never forget about today. About the moment we’re currently in, and all the things we’re fortunate to have. For example, when was the last time you just went out to enjoy the outdoors? The last time you went for a walk without destination or without a purpose other than just to go for a relaxing stroll? When was the last time you chat with a stranger without wanting anything from them except their company for that moment? When was the last time you did something just because it made you smile from deep inside your heart?

This past weekend, I had the opportunity to go shoot at Make It! Vancouver, held at the Croatian Cultural Centre. It was an awesome gathering of designers, showcasing and selling their goods, from clothing, to jewelery and accessories, to gifts and art. But it wasn’t one of those boring craft shows that many people envision when you throw out that term. It was fun, and really appealed to people of all ages and backgrounds (and the occasional pet too =D). It was great to see all the different things that people had made and to see all the great that are out there. Whether it was fuzzy monster drums (that were a hit with young and old alike), cool little vivariums in various jars and pitchers, or beautiful handmade jewelery, there was something cool at every booth, and something for everyone. There was even the creator of the chocolate dress that some of you have read/heard about (Read the Vancouver Sun article here). My personal favourites were Herrohachi (Facebook, Twitter, Shop), The Tiny Fig (Facebook, Twitter, Website), and Hug and Kiss Designs (Website). Yelp was also there with their 100% win rate wheel of Yelptasticness and tons of swag. =D It was definitely the best craft show I’ve ever been to.  If you didn’t get a chance to check it out this time, you should definitely check out the next show in November, which I’m already looking forward to (Details here). And you can find the photos I took there on my flickr.

And oh yeah, I got this awesome shirt from Herrohachi (this photo will have to suffice for now as I don’t have one of me actually wearing it yet, I’ll upload one when I get one).

You have been warned.

So it’s just under 2 months to go until the Ride to Conquer Cancer (read more about my story here), and I’ve raised $1112.10. That’s 44.5% of how much I need to raise in order to ride ($2500), and 34.8% of my goal ($3200). Let’s do a little break down of my donors so far:

• Those $1112.10 has come from 36 donors, which makes an average donation of approximately $31 per donor.
• Most common donation amount: $20
• Most interesting donation amount: $20.10 (given in honour of this year)

Now those goals may seem like a lot to some people, but it’s all about strength in numbers. Every little donation counts and it adds up. For example:

• If everyone single one of my friends on Facebook donated $10, I would have almost $10,000.
• If everyone single one of my twitter followers donated $10, I would have $2,860.

All the money that I raise goes directly to the BC Cancer Foundation. All the riders have paid registration fees to cover the costs of the events. So please, donate and help us work towards beating cancer. Tell your family, friends, coworkers, company, tweeps, and just anyone you know and ask them to donate. Any donation is greatly appreciated, whether it’s $10, $50, $100, or more.  You can donate online via credit card here at my personal page, or if you would rather donate via cheque, please email me at hjue87@gmail.com and we can figure out the easiest way to get you a physical pledge form. Thank you very much in advance on behalf of all cancer fighters, survivors, and supporters out there!

**EDIT** You don’t need to be in Vancouver, or even Canada to support this! It doesn’t matter who you are, where you’re from, or what do you! Support this great cause! Every dollar, be it CAD, USD, or otherwise counts!

When I walk around with my D90 on photowalks, or shooting at events, I often get into conversations with people about photography. The conversation usually, 9 times out of 10, goes into how I must get some great shots because I have a nice camera and that they’ll never be able to get shots as good with a point-and-shoot. False. I have actually seen a lot of amazing shots taken with point-and-shoot cameras, some of which are better than anything I could shoot right now. Even with my fancy schmancy equipment.

The one thing that I’ve read on almost every photography site that I frequent that I can’t stress enough is that it’s not the camera, it’s what’s behind the camera. I even need to remind myself about this at times, especially when I’m around other photographers (regardless of skill level) who have nicer equipment than me. The nicer gear, in my opinion, merely makes it easier to get those better shots. It’s really the “eye” and ability of the photographer to frame the shot and set it up well (and partially to be in the right spot at the right time.) Now is this an ability that you’re born with? I don’t think so. It’s something that anyone and everyone can develop with practice and time (if you’ve read Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, you know what I mean.) People may have advantages with their equipment and background (eg: a painter will have a head start.), but with practice, combined with constructive feedback from others, anyone can develop that “eye” for photography. You can develop the ability to see what will make a good shot, and learn how to frame it for maximum effect.

Take me for example, I’m not naturally talented in visual arts. Just take a look at my early photos and my drawings. So really there can only be one way that I’m able to get the shots that I do, practice and experience. I’ve only been shooting for about three and a half months now, and I feel like I’m getting some good shots here and there. However, in those three and half months, I’ve taken a basic photography class, been out shooting an average of 2-3 days a week (I took pictures nearly every day during the Olympics and have been out shooting at least a little bit nearly every day this month), and taken thousands of photos (even if you count the series of shots taken of the same scene to try to get one that turns out well as a single photo). I have tried to never leave my camera at home so I never miss an opportunity to shoot. I’ve looked for events to shoot at and taken advantage of the weather to go for spontaneous photowalks. When I walk around I consciously look at things and think about how to make a good shot out of them. As a result, I’ve had a lot of practice and a lot of opportunity to get more experience. I try new things, new angles, new ways of looking at things to try to get better shots. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, and I learn from it. Then I take what I’ve learned and practice it in order to add it to my repertoire and skill set. I actually learn more from the bad shot that I take than from the good ones. I’ll look at them and figure out what I could have done to get a better shot.

So what do you think? Do you think that what I’ve said is true and that people can develop the ability to become a good photographer (artist, musician, etc.)? Or do you think that people are born with innate talent and we’re pretty much destined to be good a something from the moment we’re born? And then there’s what this whole topic really boils down to: nature or nurture? Leave a comment on your thoughts and vote in the poll!

This sign at Go Fish says it all. We're not robots, we're humans. So don't make yourself work like one. Be patient and kind to yourself (and others). Take the time to relax.

So on last night, I went to a Flamenco/Live Music Tweetup at Kino Cafe. Was a fun and relaxing couple of hours with great music, dancers, and company. I had posted this event on both Facebook and Twitter to see if any of my other friends wanted to go, but the response was generally the same. “Don’t you have exams?” “How do you have that much free time?” Well, yes I do have exams starting next Monday, and I’ve started studying already. And I have “so much” free time (a couple of hours at night, c’mon) because I’ve been getting up early and doing work all day anyways. But the answers to these questions aren’t really the important part. It’s the fact that so many people think that we always need to be working. That even the smallest break is going to ruin us. Even though our lives seem to demand a constant state of working, we all need to relax and take a break every now and then. We’re not robots. Even if we have an exam or major deadline coming up in a week, we need to have sometime to unwind. When we’re all wound up and stressed, we don’t perform as well as when we’re even a little bit more relaxed. In addition to a drop in performance, our health suffers. It’s been proven in studies, and we’ve all felt the symptoms of being stressed. So why don’t we all take the time, regardless of how long it is, to just unwind a little bit and just enjoy life? Whether it’s going on a photowalk, or enjoying some live music with friends (as is in my case), or simply just sitting outside and soaking in the world around us, we’ve all got our ways of relaxing. Sometimes all we really need to lighten that load and brighten up our day is just 5 minutes.

So how do you relax and unwind?

Note: That final post from the F5 Expo on Malcolm Gladwell’s keynote is coming soon. I apologize for the delay, but I just haven’t been able to hit my stride with that post and I don’t want to put up something that I’ve forced rather than just let flow for you guys to all read. Thanks for understanding.

Kris Krug @ F5 Expo

The highlight of these discussions was with Kris Krug (@kk). I actually got in touch with Kris the night before the expo when I simply tweeted that I was going to be covering the event. Kris replied and asked me what I was covering and offered to do an interview with me. I managed to find Kris when he wasn’t busy during the expo and was able to sit down with him and just ask him a few questions. Here’s a transcript of the interview. I’ve edited it slightly for ease of reading,

HJ: So I’m here with Kris Krug, @kk on Twitter, coming by to talk about a few things about social media. When I was tweeting with you last night, you were talking about how social media is the future of all media, so what do you think about magazines, newspapers, and traditional radio. Do you think that they’re going to fall by the wayside? Or do you think that they’re still going to fill a smaller niche in the background?

KK: I think that in general, business models that rely on a scarcity or a control of information are going to fail. So, right now, I got some newspaper. You pay for a newspaper, you get it. So, that’s based on the you can only get the news here, this is very valuable and you pay for it. So when I say that the future of social media is the future of all media, I mean to say that newspapers and magazines, and even broadcast mediums, that don’t re-architect themselves from a newspaper delivery and service, to a media company essentially, are going to fail. So we can look at other places and see this. Like the music industry. It used to be about shipping CDs and how many CDs and product you could ship, and then the value of that dropped to zero because people could download it off the internet right? And so they started re-architecting themselves, such that music and the bands are still what they’re selling, but the way that they make their money is different. So apply this back over to newspapers. Newspapers that stay a newspaper and rely on subscription sales and ad sales, and things like this,  are probably going to struggle. Ones that reinvent themselves as a media company and start to engage and build an audience will probably continue on in the future, but I think they’re not going to look much like they look now.

HJ: Do you think people reading the news is going to change, with the fact that with twitter a lot of  people get the headlines and pick and chose, where as with radio, magazines, and newspaper, you kind of have to read a little bit of everything? Do you think that people are going to be a little bit, I guess, more focused on what they read, or do you think people are going to go and be able to soak in a little bit of everything?

KK: So I think that people’s human nature hasn’t changed at all. I think human nature is the same. So what you saw emerge was, in the old world, overwhelming amount of news. It got filtered up through editor-in-chiefs and gatekeepers. Kind of told you a bit of  story and selected and curated for you the news and stuff you were presented with. Well really we see that now today as well, there are certain highly engaged cultural curators and taste makers who suck in thousands of RSS feeds and parse it all and apply their own judgement, taste, and discretion to it and then  spit back own their own feed of highly distilled content. Are you interested in hip-hop culture in Vancouver? You gotta follow this guy because he curates the world of Vancouver’s hip-hop culture into a stream of stuff. That’s not that much that different than a sports editor or a finance editor, or something like that. So I view what’s taking place as a dis-intermediation and upheaval of traditional higher hierarchy, but the human nature is fundamentally the same. I can’t listen to every band in the world. I position myself close to first order musical taste makers who tell me what’s good right? And I can’t follow every social media story in the world, so I find 2 or 3 guys who I know who are highly engaged in doing that and I listen to those guys. So thats the newspaper of the future, the mix-and-match Google homepage where it’s like these two bloggers who represent my community, my block in Gastown, giving me their news. And then this other guy who writes for sports illustrated, but he’s an activist, so he writes about activist athletes from sports perspectives. So I’m curating my own newspaper here together through other people’s tastes.

HJ: So how you feel that social media is changing how people interact with each other when it’s actually in person. I know Malcolm Gladwell has talked about this several times in his interviews in the past, but how do you feel about it? Do you think with the younger generations, it’s going to be an issue? Or do you think it’s not going to be as big of a problem as some people are making it out to be? The interpersonal skills that is.

KK: These are the kinds of questions that i think about alot, so i want to step back from “Is Twitter [messing] up interpersonal human communication?” and look back  as technology has changed, the phone, the televsion, we’ve stepped farhter and farther from the face-to-face, oral cultures of our past, and i think that there are tradeoffs. i think we gain the ability to instantaneously reach a network around the world of people, but maybe we give up other things. I think there’s tradeoffs for sure. I’m a bit (?????), I think that the medium is the message. What i mean specifically about that in this context is that when you’re sitting back sucking tweets all day, maybe the format you’re being delievered the tweets in is as important as the payload of that particular tweet. We’re staying headlines and soundbites are more important than substance or context. and so those are the more subtle biases that a particular medium has towards the type of conversation that takes place there. But I think the most important thing is for us to continue to develop our media literacy skills as individuals and as a society, and continue to ask ourselves,  ”Who are we? Who are we becoming? Do we like the way we’re becoming?” and to self correct. There was no beta test. We are the beta test. It’s not like they ran this social media experiment in a laboratory and optimized the results and came back and implemented it in the world. No. You’re the lab rat. I’m the lab rat. So it’s important for us to keep evaluating what does this all mean.

HJ: On a similar note, I know that I am getting a little bit jaded with all these invitations to charity functions and things like that. Do you think that people are getting a little jaded just because there are so many of these mass Facebook invites or mass tweets about events that are happening, but there’s no personal connection compared to someone just telling you about it?

KK: Again, I’m almost like close your eyes and go on this visualization with me. The landscape has changed. Before, a charity would fund raise through a 3rd party source, and these people were experts and were able to uniquely touch their donors and constituencies in a certain way. Dis-intermediation, power(?) hierarchy upheaval. The landscape’s changed. Union Gospel Mission can now via the internet and fund raise directly to their constituent base without the kind of lag and process with more ability to do AB testing and different things like that. I think that as happens in a land grab, new frontier type of environment, people are just coming and putting up shop because they can, but we don’t have best practices. We don’t have industry standards. We’re all looking to each other. Even with this interview and events like this, it’s like “Hey dude, tell me what it’s like out there for you and what’s working for you, and what do you see on the horizon.” So it’s this process of, we’re literally creating the future of how charity fund raise, how they talk to their donors and  constituents, how news is delivered and consumed. Even, generated and reported, how it’s sourced. All these things are like, it’s like its trying to say that internet really changes everything. Throwing everything in a bag, shaking it up, and dump it out, and that’s what you got. We’re putting it back together as I see it. Yeah, we’re a little ways into that, but that’s what I see going on.

We continued to talk a little bit more after that about tips he has for bloggers and photographers, but that’s for another post.

So through these few interviews, and just listening to what the speakers had to say, I’ve come to see the future of social media as something that inevitably going to be an important part of everyone’s life. Now, what function it serves and exactly how important is still to be seen. After all, social media has been around for a while now, but it is still incredibly young and only recently has begun to hit mainstream culture. What do you think about social media and its future? What are your answers to the questions I had asked? Leave a comment, start a discussion. Just because F5 Expo is over, doesn’t mean the discussion has to sit on the back burner.

Stay tuned for part 3 of my report on the F5 Expo. Don’t miss it, as I’ll be discussing Malcolm Gladwell’s keynote speech. If there’s something you’d especially like to hear my opinion on, just leave me comment.

*EDIT*
Here’s the audio for the above portion of the interview.
Interview with Kris Krug @ F5 Expo

Yesterday, at the Vancouver Convention Centre, a diverse group of social media enthusiasts, business people, and gurus came together for the F5 Expo. A combination of trade show (the “Idea Zoo”), panel discussions, which included such individuals as Brian Wong (@brian_wong), Kris Krug (@kk), and Ryan Holmes (@HootSuite), workshops, and keynote speeches by Tod Maffin and Malcolm Gladwell, the Expo was a great place for people from all levels of social media to learn more about it and how to effectively use it. Over the next couple of days, I’ll be putting up a series of posts covering the various panels, speeches, and interviews that I had with people, culminating with Malcolm Gladwell’s keynote speech.

Tod Maffin (@todmaffin) was a leading CEO of a tech company that was worth millions during Web 1.0. With a personal networth of millions of dollars (on paper, as he stresses), he led the busy and successful life that many people strive to have at some point in their life. But somewhere in his 16 hour days of running his successful publicly traded company and hosting a national radio show on CBC Radio One on technology, it all came crashing down. (Source) Being so successful, one would expect him to talk about his secrets to success in the era of Web 1.0. Guess what, he didn’t. Rather, he talked about something that most of us don’t really think about on a day to day basis: being overworked and overstressed, and just “Taking Crazy Back.”

“Multitasking Doesn’t Exist”

He started by discussing (and dispelling) what we all believe to be an essential skill to have: multitasking. We all pride ourselves on being to do several things, and being able to put 100% of our focus/brainpower towards each of those things. However, if we’re doing 3 different things, we’re actually splitting our focus and mental capacity into thirds. He brought up the example of talking on the phone while driving. He refers to a study that took three groups of drivers and sent them on the same route. The control group was told to drive quietly, while the second group held a phone conversation without a hands free system, and the third group help the same conversation, but with handsfree devices.  Now from what we’ve been told and what legislation has seemed to tell us, we would think that the second group would have performed the worst, the third group better, and the control group the best. Wrong. Well partially at least. It turns out the second and third groups performed equally poorly. So it’s not the action of holding the cell phone, but simply having a conversation and holding our brains somewhere else. This is even true when you’re talking with someone who is sitting in your car. According to studies, that when you’re driving and simply having a conversation with someone, you’re operating with a BAC of 0.08. You’re legally intoxicated. He showed this fun video that very simply shows how we’re not all the multitasking masters that we claim to be, and that we really can’t completely focus on more than one thing at a time. (As a side note, I love how this was done as a cyclist awareness campaign. Also, I admit, I’ve been guilty of “multitasking” while writing this post.)

He proceeded to talk about how we’ve all become “technocrazy”, with our multiple phones and email addresses. Many of us have a phone for work, a cell phone, a home phone. Then add on a work email, family email, junk/spam/signup email, a social media email, etc.  We multitask in our every day lives, with having multiple methods of contact and we continue to do it to ourselves. But somehow, we never seem to realize that multitasking doesn’t actually work. Now, the definition of insanity used in the AA 12 step program is “Insanity is the process of doing the same thing over and over, but expecting the different results.”

“We stopped being human beings. Nowadays we’re human doings.”

Taking a step back in time, Tod began to look at how working life has drastically changed. Back in the day, working individuals would work 8 hour days, answering their phones, and sending replies to letters and such. Afterwards, they would go home and spend time with their families. So how is that different today, you may be asking. Well, with technology allowing us to complete these tasks in a fraction of the time it used to take, Tod estimates that we could probably complete the same amount of quality work in a 5 and a half hour work day, a shorter 9-2:30 day. Technology really has given us more time in our days. But Tod poses the question, what do we all decide to do with that time? “It’s like the ads say, they do give us more time, these devices. The problem is with us, is what we choose to do with that time. We end up working more.” As Tod put it, where we used to have absenteeism, we now have presenteeism. People will continue to goto work even if they’re ill or simply just need time to recover.

I’ve noticed this everywhere, every one is hustling and bustling about trying to make use of all the time they have in the day. People are afraid to just stop and soak in the world around them. People are afraid that if they stop moving, even for a split second, they’re on the road to failure. People are afraid to just be. “Why do we feel the need to keep ourselves so connected? So busy? Always tweeting?” At this point, Tod asked how many people had tweeted since he started talking (This was about 20 minutes into his talk), and a quarter of the room raised their hands. I’m guilty of always doing as well a lot of the time. I often get restless when I’m not busy and I feel the need to find something to do. My photography has really helped with this though. When I go out on photowalks, I’ll just stop and sit and soak in everything around me. I will make the effort to just stop, put down the camera, and just enjoy the world.

“Something has to give.”

Tod also spoke as to his experience, and his own personal life changing experience that changed him into the man he now. As his success continued to rocket beyond all expectations and his networth grew to just under $10 million, on paper as Tod stresses, he teetered closer to and ultimately resulting in a complete nervous breakdown and alcoholism. This was Tod’s personal tipping point. Maybe one of the biggest things that Tod learned during this time can be embodied in this this simple question “Have you asked anyone for help?” He realized that in business world, asking for help is a sign of weakness and is looked down upon. Perhaps the thing that makes Tod’s talk so powerful is that he isn’t one of those individuals you see on pedestals who have overcome all obstacles with relative ease. Tod is human. Tod is like one of us. The fact that he continues to struggle with his inner demons, makes him someone everyone can connect to.

“Crazy gets things done.”

Tod ended with a piece of wisdom that I have been trying to utilize more myself: use your gut. With a background in biomedical engineering and now going through an accounting program, I’ve trained to rationalize everything through a set of formulas and measurable metrics. I’m trying to break out of that shell, trying to find that balance between doing things on my gut, and thinking things through. I’ve seen it work, even with going to F5. I heard about it, and I just felt like it would be a good thing for me to do. And did it turn out to be a great experience. What did some of my friends think? They thought I was crazy. But as Tod Maffin summed up at the end of his talk, it’s those crazy people and crazy ideas that get things done. It doesn’t necessarily need to be something big. It doesn’t necessarily need to be something that changes the world. It doesn’t need to be something that everyone sees. You just need to be crazy and change things in your own realm, in your own world. Don’t just be another face in the crowd.

I’ll leave you with this old Apple ad that Tod showed at the end of his talk. Remember to check back in over the next couple of days for more posts on the F5 Expo. Follow me on twitter @hjue87 for updates and say hi!