I’ve felt for a long time that education is the most important vehicle for social change. I mean, really how else does anything actually get done? You’ve got to have some kick ass teachers along the way, or you’re gonna be a vegetable. And vegetabledom happens to entire societies. Watch out.
So I’m a little depressed that I don’t get to work directly in the education sector anymore — I used to have a great time working on educational evaluation projects, and for a time I was a mentor. Now I’m a full time geek staring at an LCD, and I don’t so much ever get the thrill of seeing kids make the grand connections. (read: manipulating young minds, bwah ha ha.)
Anyway, just watched a great TED video from Dave Eggers. Give it 20 minutes and tell me if you don’t want to sign up to be a volunteer. It’s a hilarious talk anyway, even if you hate kids.
SCENE: Atlas coffeeshop on 20th and Alabama, right now
ME: *clickety clickety
GUY #0: (in hushed tones) … “So we’ve got these great new offices in San Mateo and a great team, I really think you’d be super interested in working with us. Kaleb says you’re just ACE and that’s all I need to know. This coffee IS the interview. … We need someone ACE for this infrastructure cause we’re planning on tens maybe HUNDREDS of thousands of users. Fast.”
GUY #1: … “You know, I just turned down an offer at Facebook even though it sounds a little exciting on account of the options.”
GUY #0: “Well, we’ve got this designer and she’s great. Asian. And, you know.”
Guy #1: “hot.”
Guy # 0: “Yeah, hot.”
Guy #1: ” Yeah so anyway I told them, sure I’d love to be a facebook engineer, but you know I think this stage of my life is about INNER pleasures. My accountant said I made 175 this year just managing what I have.”
Guy #0: “We can’t match that. But don’t you want to feel empowered, on a smaller team? You don’t want to retire at 40, do you? Six hour days — no problem.”
Guy #1: ” I think I’m going to open a holistic spa.”
Since this seems to be the advice that I’ve been giving to pretty much all of the geek + activisty folks that I know, I figured it bears repeating here: Move to San Francisco. Now.
There have been really great conferences like An Event Apart and CompostModern, green socialite stuff and Green Fest, a great cycling scene, gorgeous coastline, sustainable agriculture galore, municipal freaking composting, local beer/coffee/chocolate/veggies/everything, the legendary queer scene, the legendary political art scene, an awesome, active AIGA chapter, killer public transport, a hilarious mix of psychedelic and high-tech history… It’s all been even more incredible than I’d hoped. This city is just completely alive and thriving with all kinds of brilliant geeky people doing Good Things. … You should come, really.
I got here sometime in the summer for a new job doing design/programming/research at this fantastic little UX shop. It was completely serendipitous how I got the job, but that’s a better story told in a bar than a blog. I’ve got a little studio off of 24th Street in the Mission, which is about as wonderful as city living can be, if you ask me.
Best of all, when I moved I got rid of my damned phone and car, two of my least favorite things in the world. :)
For the last month I’ve been working intensely on a complete rewrite of a research tool called Ethnio. Ethnio is intended to make online user experience research cheaper and easier, and I’m pretty damn happy with the progress that we’ve made. I’ll post a link as soon as we’re out of private beta.
I’ve been spending most of my day’s working with a few geniuses at Pivotal Labs down on Market Street (including rails expert josh susser.) I love being around people that are much smarter than I am; it makes learning impossible to avoid. And this happens positively all the time in SF. Seriously, I’m in a Valencia street coffeshop now and I could probably ask the guy sitting next to me for help with the code I’m working on.
I’ll be posting some more technical things here soon from my Ruby on Rails adventures, as well as some of the incredible graphic design stuff that I’ve been stumbling onto lately. I’m hoping to get back into blogging more now that things have calmed down with the move and with the beta release of Ethnio. But regardless, really, you should do yourself a favor and figure out how to uproot yourself for California. Come by get a beer and a burrito sometime, won’t you?