St. Louis Arch

I was in St. Louis two weeks ago visiting my son and speaking to a class at Washington University on entrepreneurship. We did a bit of sightseeing and went to the Arch. It's a challenge to photograph an iconic monument in a unique way - a quick search on Flickr will reveal over 83,000 photos of the arch that people have bothered to tag.

I'm happy with what I was able to get. These are four of the ~140 shots I took - including views from the top that never seem to work as well as really being there.

These first two are abstacts based on the curve of the arch. Most people who shoot similar angles tend not to turn them 'sideways.'

This third photo is a typical angle, but I like the contrast between the sides of the arch, the sky and clouds. Thank you polarizing filter.

In this final image I teased the arch, hiding behind the trees rather than laying it out there.

NAMM 2011 Photos

The annual pilgrimage to NAMM has passed on by, my favorite pix have been up on Flickr for a couple weeks, and now finally the website gets them.

It was especially fun noticing Alan Parsons on the exhibit floor selling his new "Art & Science of Sound Recording" DVD set. If you want to meet real Guitar Gods and other Rock Heroes, NAMM is a great place to do it, but it usually involves standing in long autograph lines in one of their sponsors' booths. If you wanted to meet Alan, a simple "hi" worked well; he was selling his own product and was happy to talk about it without the long line.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="This photographer looked like a pro, so I paid attention to what he was doing. After he was done I took a quick shot from the same position - Yikes! Alan Parsons staring right over Alan Parsons' head. I hope that isn't what he was really planning."][/caption]

There isn't too much that's more fun than Barenaked Ladies in concert, and they did a long set in the Taylor Guitars suite. Taylor consistently provides a great show with a mix of established and new talent in their suite. The room only holds a few hundred people standing so it feels intimate even if you're in the back of the room. And where else can you noodle around on some of the world's best guitars in between sets?

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="A couple of Ladies having a great time on stage."][/caption]

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Kevin Hearn of Barenaked Ladies"][/caption]

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="333" caption="Ed Robertson of Barenaked Ladies"][/caption]

I blogged about Night Ranger last year, and they delivered again in 2011. I'll admit that I didn't miss the Nuge sitting in with them for a Damn Yankees set.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Jack and Joel of Night Ranger"][/caption]

This is a band that still rocks hard. They are all lead singers and incredible musicians. But nothing says Rock 'n' Roll like knowing how to fling your hair, and Joel Hoekstra is a master.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="If you're going to shred, use your head."][/caption]

My Real Life Social Network

Facebook isn't useful to me, and I don't think it's just a generational thing.

I want to connect to my friends and colleagues, I'm interested in what they're doing. I think I can share things that they'd be interested in, too. But Facebook's limited methods for organizing relationships don't give me any useful granularity, so I just assume anyone can read anything I post. A general "I'm in LA tonight, anyone want to meet for dinner?" would hit a much broader audience than I'd actually be interested in dining with. (Sorry, 'friends.')

In trying to understand this better, I came across Paul Adam's presentation, "The Real Life Social Network" (highly recommended and embedded below). Based on research he's done at Google, Paul outlines how we group our real-life relationships and how we interact with people based on how strong our ties are.

I considered mapping out my own social network by hand to better understand it. Luckily, LinkedIn just announced a tool to map my professional contacts, and TouchGraph takes a visually equivalent approach with Facebook. As shown below, the two maps look very similar after a bit of arranging and unified custom color coding.


My Facebook Graph


I have four major networks (PDI/DreamWorks, the Visual Effects community, the Venture Capital community, and Carnegie Mellon), all related to my working life. There are smaller groups of family, non-work friends and some random individuals.

My PDI and Visual Effects groups are tightly meshed, understandably, but outside of those there is very little overlap. I proceed cautiously when I intermix them - most commonly I am connecting my CMU students with my professional contacts.

On LinkedIn I have 402 connections and on Facebook I have 304. I'll cop to the fact that I've connected with people I don't really know that well, and I'd even agree that least 200 of my contacts are way out on the fringe. That isn't visible here, though - neither graph represents how close my personal ties are to each person - information which LinkedIn and Facebook don't really have. Many of the orbiting lonely people in my Facebook graph would actually be very close to me. That information would alter these graphs radically, making them much more revealing and useful.

I understand my social network a bit better now, but my communications problem remains unsolved - I'd like to be able to message just one group, or message just those people closest to me across groups, and I'd like to be the recipient of the same targeted and filtered information flow. For now, much of that continues on in email.

The Real Life Social Network v2

View more documents from Paul Adams.

Vision and BHAGs

In the class I’m teaching at CMU on entrepreneurship we talked about setting a long term vision for your company. I used Jim Collin’s research as a framework for the discussion, in particular setting a Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG) and having a vivid description of what life will be like when that goal is met (See Building Your Company’s Vision). Among other qualities a good BHAG should be inspiring and take 10 to 30 years to accomplish.

Of course this got me thinking about PDI’s vision of making fully animated feature films. We set that as a specific goal somewhere around 1984, a good decade before it was possible. It served as an invaluable beacon for all the decisions we would subsequently make – doing character animation, continuing to produce our own short films, expanding into film effects work, and on and on. It also kept us from veering off track with opportunities to sell our software or do work for non-entertainment clients. It was a big, hairy, audacious goal even without an acronym for it.

The problem with a BHAG is once you’ve done it, then what? And that in fact is one of the reasons I ended up leaving PDI/DreamWorks.

For my class I tried to find inspiring example BHAGs from animation and effects companies. That effort fell flat. Even from DreamWorks and Pixar. They all basically said “We’re going to keep doing what we’re doing,” but with much more flowery language.

So I set out to determine what the BHAG is that I would set if I was running an animation company today, and it came really fast. Simply put: “Integrate our characters into people’s lives.” Granted, it’s a bit more obscure than “Make fully animated feature films,” so let me paint the ‘vivid description’: Ten or twenty years from now mobile devices as we know them will be non-existent. Instead you’ll be connected via some sort of head’s up augmented reality display. Maybe it’s a pair of glasses with little monitors in them, or maybe they are using a laser to paint on the back of your retina, or perhaps we’ll all have jacks on the backs of our skulls – it doesn’t matter to me, I’m just sure it’s going to happen. That display and adjoining audio input will be projecting information all over our environment. But you don’t want a Terminator-style view of streams of data in front of you, you don’t want web pages popping up or maps overlaid or floating arrows and words. You just want a companion to deal with all that for you. When you need driving directions you want to follow him down the street. Lost in the mall? He’ll take you where you need to go for what you want, and negotiate the best deal for you ahead of time. Reservations? Tickets? Check out payments? Just have your concierge buddy take care of it. This goes on and on with new ways to interface with your social network, read a book, watch a movie, experience music, create art…

What would this company do today to work towards that BHAG? Here’s a few things I’d start with:

• Interactive games with the characters.  Focus specifically on realtime 3D even though that’s not the trend right now. Small and fast to create, the point is to learn and iterate quickly. The characters should have to display some level of independent intelligence, not just avatars for the player.


• Augmented Reality apps – develop deep AR chops for putting characters in real environments. Again, lots of small projects that get released to an audience. Maybe games, but I’d probably focus more on “practical apps” to help people solve problems or get information. These should also be mobile to develop skills in working with an unpredictable environment.


• APIs, APIs, APIs. Use everyone else’s APIs. Google, Google Maps, Facebook, Foursquare, Twitter, etc. There are tons of companies out there with useful data you can start to take advantage of. What kind of fun app can be created with your characters that use more than one of these APIs? Build a zillion of those.


• Start building relationships with companies and research institutions working on all the harder problems, like the hardware side. Do projects with them.

The point of all of this work is not to build that company today, but to have all the talent and tools necessary to be ready for the market when it does exist. And if you do it right you'll be building a product catalog and loyal customers along the way.

BTW, If you know of a great BHAG from an animation or effects company please forward it on – I’d love to know it.

Waffle Dogs

Ironically, I saw this recipe on TV while I was working out at the gym.

Just a few easy steps!

1. Fry up a batch of breakfast sausage.


2. Skewer them.


3. Dip them in waffle batter.


4. Deep fry.


5. Sprinkle with powdered sugar.


6. Dip in syrup.

Yum.

New Softbox

Kevin posed for me on Christmas as I was trying out my new 28" Westcott Apollo softbox. There are four pictures from the series up on Flickr, I included two here.

In the first one, above, I tried something new with the cropping. I used a square aspect ratio, and put Kevin's right eye in the center of the screen. The rule of thirds came into play, though, as the bright portion of his face fills the center third of the image, with darkness in the outside thirds. This combination puts his face off center but the balance feels right.

Black and white conversion was done in Lightroom 3.

Why I Drive a Porsche

Why I Drive a Porsche

This is me on Christmas when I was 3 1/2 with my first car - a rear engine topless sporty model. I have vague memories of this fantastic vehicle, but I am sure that the early impressions from this experience branded me for life.

Years later, as an adult, I pined for a Porsche 911 Cabriolet - a sporty rear engine convertible. And that is what I drive now, though mine is black.

I love my Porsche. It's a 1997 vintage, coming up on 100,000 miles, and I'm planning to keep it forever.

Somehow though, I imagine a red convertible Tesla would bring me full loop - after all, my first car was electric!