John Winsor

Seen on the Street

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The Art of Coffee

Anything, done extrodinarily well, can stain the status of art.

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In Deep

Last night I had a chance to go to the In Deep World Premier at the Boulder Theater. It had been awhile since I'd been to a ski movie at a theater. And, this was the first time that Charlie and Harry have been old enough to come. The boys at MSP did a great job capturing big mountain skiing at it's finest. And, the tribute to Shane McConkey was wonderful.

In Deep reminded me, it's all about soul. I'm stoked.

The Age of Soloing Has Begun

I love to solo things. And, that includes climbing. Lot’s people think I’m crazy. But soloing is one of the few times in life that I’m in control. Alive. It’s all up to me. No one else. Right now, I’m sitting here 800 feet above the ground in the middle of the vast sea of rock that is the 1st Flatiron, here in Boulder. With only a pair of climbing shoes to aid my progress. No rope. No protection. Every move becomes critical. It’s an action that has big consequences if not performed properly. There’s no other place I’d rather be. Every time I step up to a rock face to solo I’m scared. Yet, it is this fear that hones my attention and liberates me from the subjectivity of everyday life.

Today, digital technology has made it possible for us to do almost anything from anywhere. No longer do we need to work in a factory to make something. Look at Rep Rap. Likewise, companies no longer need to aggregate a lot of people in one place to get work done. Crowdsourcing is shifting this paradigm. The very nature of work and even our relationships with each other are changing.

We are entering an age of soloing.

How will you solo? Will you start a business? Will you create the next Twitter? Will you write a book? Will you start a blog? Will you do what you truly love?

In this new age of soloing we all have to step off the ground and start a solo journey, fighting fear yet finding new joy.

Are you ready?

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Rep Rap Shifts the Paradigm

RepRap from Adrian Bowyer on Vimeo.

What are the consequences of a 3D desktop printer that can reproduce itself? Amazing.

Baked In Update #2: 20 Review Copies Available

The production of Baked In is rounding the final corner. We're getting excited about our big kickoff party in NYC on September 23rd.

A couple of months ago I asked people if they wanted to get involved and review the book. The response has been great. We're willing to hand out 20 more review copies. Send me a note, tweet me, or leave a comment with your email address and how you'd like to review the book. On Monday we'll select the winners and will send out digital copies of the book along with timing and use instructions.

Thanks again for all of the support and help.

How Will You Survive the Digital Tsunami?

As many of you know, we've been experimenting with all sorts of new social media tools including crowdsourcing and co-creation, that have been coming at us all like a digital tsunami. There's been quite a reaction. Last night, Alex wrote a great post offering his perspective on some of these issues. It's worth a read. Here's an excerpt:

We recently crowdsourced a logo design for Brammo. They are a brilliant bunch of folks making electric motorcycles. We received over seven hundred submissions which I think blew everybody’s mind involved. But when I think about myself as a young designer who had to make up fake projects to work on anything remotely as cool as motorcycle company logo it makes sense. The idea that I could have access and an even playing field -- plus I could make 950 dollars more than the lady who designed the Nike logo -- would have had me designing in my sleep.

Some designers are obviously frightened by the current spectacle that is crowdsourcing, but as an optimist I think it will work out. I see several possible scenarios. The first is that this young micro-economy that is crowdsourcing evolves in the same way the off-line economy evolved. The designers with the most success begin to create tiers and depending on which tier the customers engage, the prices and fee structure changes with the level of quality. My guess is this will happen and different communities will develop different rules. Another and more radical change would be if the model followed more of what happened in Hollywood with scriptwriters.

As I wrote in BusinessWeek a few months ago: "The question for creative agencies is whether they can wake up, react to what's going on, engage the crowd, and make themselves a part of the new reality."

This is not a new question that is exclusive to the creative industries but is a question that every business must answer.

Are you ready for the digital tsunami? What will do you to survive?

A Blast From the Past: In-Security

Jessica Rosenberg pointed me to a very nice post on her blog today. It inspired me to repost this post that I wrote 3 1/2 years ago. With all of the uncertainty that seems to be surrounding us these days, these words seem to still hold true.

Thanks, Jessica.

A friend, Pete Takeda, just passed along the Preface to his upcoming book about a recent trip he did the Indian Himalayan mountains to retrace the steps of a CIA covert operation in the 1950's above 20,000 feet. It's destined to be a great story.

To begin the Preface Pete used a Helen Keller quote to set the tone:

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of man as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is a daring adventure or nothing.

Keller's words reminded me of the security we try to find in our relationships, whether it's someone we live with, work with or even a customer. Many times we gloss over the signs of change or danger, lured by a false sense of security. Every once and a while, before we realize that something is wrong, the paradigm has shifted. The relationship has soured.

Isn't it better to realize that a relationship with anyone is tenuous, at best. Any relationship needs to be tended to regularly. Instead of taking it for granted, it needs to be explored constantly. When thinking about this need to explore a relationship in a deeper way I am often taken back to the words of the poet Ranier Marie Rilke:

Only someone who is ready for everything, who doesn't exclude any experience, even the most incomprehensible, will himself sound the depths of his own being. For if we imagine this being of the individual as a larger or smaller room, it is obvious that most people come to know only one corner of their room, one spot near the window, one narrow strip on which they keep walking back and forth.

In this way they have a certain security. And yet how much more human is the dangerous insecurity that drives those prisoners in Poe's stories to feel out the shapes of their horrible dungeons and not be strangers to the unspeakable terror of their cells. We, however, are not prisoners. No traps or snares have been set around us, and there is nothing that should frighten or upset us.

We have been put into life as into the element we most accord with, and we have, moreover, through thousands of years of adaptation, come to resemble this life so greatly that when we hold still, through a fortunate mimicry we can hardly be differentiated from everything around us. We have no reason to harbor any mistrust against our world, for it is not against us.

If it has terrors, they are our terrors; if it has abysses, these abysses belong to us; if there are dangers, we must try to love them. And if only we arrange our life in accordance with the principle which tells us that we must always trust in the difficult, then what now appears to us as the most alien will become our most intimate and trusted experience.

How could we forget those ancient myths that stand at the beginning of all races, the myths about dragons that at the last moment are transformed into princesses? Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence’ something helpless that needs our love.

Can we all act with more beauty and courage?

Independance Pass

It's all down hill from here.
 
 
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Tennessee Pass

Three down, one to go.
 
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