An update seems appropriate, given that’s it’s been a few months since I last wrote.
The short version: Pretty damn good. Tomorrow’s my 6-month anniversary at Shopify, and my work there’s going even better than I expected. When I started I set a goal for myself that I wanted to be the go-to guy for Penny Arcade, one of the company’s larger accounts. Now I handle them, Angry Birds, Epic Meal Time, and there’s more in the works… this on top of the day-to-day work of helping entrepreneurs from all over the world launch their businesses online. It’s pretty good stuff.
I landed my first paid gig as a stand-up comic, and did well enough that I’ve been offered another in September (details to come). Next week I’ll be doing my first gig in the US, performing at Beantown Comedy in Boston on August 23rd (if you’re in town, grab tickets here). And hey, if you want to see me sooner than that, I’m playing Cafe Deckuf this Tuesday – more info here.
And yet, there’s some stuff that I haven’t done. I don’t think I’m defined by my ability to keep up with and deliver on my commitments, but it is something I really strive to do, and frankly, I haven’t committed the time to #GenYOTT that I should have over the past few months. With that in mind, I’ve stepped down from my role in helping organize those events. I’m really proud of the community we’ve built over the past 20 months or so, and I’ve got the utmost confidence in Japman and Jen going forward. You’ll still see me at their events, but strictly in a participatory role.
So that’s me. I’m sure I’ll have more to say in the coming weeks and months – I’ve been re-evaluating a number of my commitments and this blog is one I’d like to get back into the habit of posting to regularly. As always, we’ll see how well I can stick to that, but that’s the plan.
Naturally, I carried out the latter this afternoon.
Just one brief note before we begin: I haven’t always been a Liberal voter in the past, but if you’re looking for my endorsement, they strike me as a far more democratically sound pick than the Conservatives and a far more economically sound one than the NDP. They’ve also done more to push accountability, accessibility, and transparency than any of the other parties in this campaign. So, yeah – they have my support. It’s probably slightly less effective an argument than “This May 2nd – settle for Michael Ignatieff. Leadership you can deal with if you have to.” Then again, the biggest thought running through my mind lately is that no one ever lost an election underestimating the ability of voters to think critically.
Yes, I am bitter (if not entirely surprised) that bad ideas sold with a message of fear or hope have triumphed over a more modest and balanced platform that lacks a catchy 5-word soundbite. Deal with it.
But anyways, my first idea counters the issue of uninformed voting, and I call it Question The Vote. Wherever you live in Canada, a week or two before the election, walk around your neighbourhood and at the house of anyone who’s got an election sign up, no matter the party they’re supporting, just drop a note in their mailbox saying “Seriously? You’re voting for them? Have you even LOOKED at their platform? ~Signed, a concerned neighbour”. The idea came to me when I was at my stepdad’s birthday party last week, and I got to discussing politics, and people had underlying assumptions driving their political choices that were just flat-out wrong (the idea that crime rates are on the rise when they haven’t been is the biggest one). If people are prompted to not just say “I’m voting for XXX”, but think about the specific policies and choices that drive that decision, I feel like we might get a more informed outcome.
The second idea addresses the lack of voting among youth. A lot has been made about vote mobs this election, which are great, but the problem has never been on university campuses – when you only measure among the university educated or current students, the turnout rate’s pretty comparable with the general population. What we need is a way to reach out to the people who went right into the workforce. And this is where the second idea comes into play: Creep The Vote.
This afternoon I logged on to Plentyoffish and messaged 50 young women with less than a Bachelor’s degree, asking them to vote tomorrow. Will it work? Who knows. But I looked at my own social circle and realized that with the privacy settings and everything we have on the other social networks, the number of avenues we have to directly contact people we don’t know is dwindling. Sure, we can broadcast via Twitter, but it’s not the same as one-to-one.
Maybe I’ll get told off. Maybe nothing will happen. But it was something. What are you doing to boost turnout this election?
Government should be smaller, leaner, and more efficient – there’s massive room for improvement there. I know enough public servants and have heard enough stories to know that while there’s great people doing great things in the public sector, there’s also a lot of dead weight just waiting out the end of their careers.
But something that really bugs me is that when governments and political candidates talk about finding inefficiencies in the public sector or fixing broken departments, you seldom see an in-depth conversation of what those problems are and how they plan to work with the various stakeholders to effectively solve them. It’s understandable why this doesn’t happen – it’s time-consuming, people have short attention spans, and “I’m going to find X dollars of savings” plays just as well. But it’s exceedingly difficult to determine the impact of those savings without having that conversation. Saving money by using new tools to increase productivity and reduce costs is awesome and doesn’t carry ill effects. Laying off half the fire department… probably carries more negative consequences. Choosing what to cut – and more importantly how to cut – is vital, and I don’t think it gets the attention it deserves.
No one in their right mind would trust a mechanic whose description of a car’s problem was “your engine’s all fucked up.” It concerns me that most people are happy to accept the equivalent of that from our potential political leaders.
Much like Charlie Sheen, I’m not a fan of trolls. That’s about where the similarities end.
But I wasn’t entirely sure the recent decision by TechCrunch to require Facebook authentication in order to post comments on articles was the right one, for a few reasons.
TechCrunch is in the business of providing eyeballs to advertisers. That’s how they earn money, and they seem to do it quite well, by providing well-written and informative content – you can debate how well-written/informative if you like, but that’s not really where I’m going with this.
My first impulse was to say that trolls are eyeballs too, that they generate revenue. My first impulse was to say that it’s counter-productive to take steps to shut them out, because it is, if your sole objective is to get the absolute highest possible number of pageviews. TechCrunch, despite having crappy comments, still had good content, and the overwhelming majority of its visitors could care less about the crappy comments.
But the commenters, for better or worse, are an infinitesimal component of a tech news site’s readership – hundreds of comments isn’t a huge feat when a site’s pulling millions of unique visitors. And that’s as it should be, really. HuffPo readers can spend their days bitching about how terrible things are instead of setting out to try and fix them. If you’re reading TechCrunch, you’ve probably got shit to do today.
I would be surprised to see TechCrunch’s readership go up as a result of the move. And maybe that’s how AOL will look at the change. But letting a small number of trolls run rampant for the sake of a tiny bump in revenue just isn’t worth it. More to the point, relying on anonymous comments to goose your numbers is a crutch because your audience numbers aren’t what you’d like.
Screw that. Manage your website based on how you want it to appear, and how you want people to perceive it, whether that’s 10 people or 10 million. Diluting whatever it is you do for the sake of getting a broader audience is bullshit. Pre-approve your comments to shut out the stuff you don’t want before it even has a chance to appear. I don’t give a damn what Scott Stratten says: unless you’re using a system like Facebook Comments, pre-approval is the only way to go. Indulging trolls even a little bit, by letting their comments show up for the length of time it takes to catch and delete it, is enough to keep them coming back. So don’t do it.
Yeah, this got kinda rambly, but it’s me. I didn’t compromise on content. Neither should you.
I was thinking about this earlier today.
I’ve said some pretty tasteless things on the site. To provide just one example:
- Watching this girl playing Foosball, I wonder if implants come with a pamphlet titled: How To Incorporate More Jumping Into Your Life.
You can read whatever you like into the fact that the stuff I feel most awkward/bad about almost all pertains to my dealings with the opposite sex, but the long and short of it is this: I’ve done some pretty awful and unprofessional things online. They haven’t been friend-protected, and they have bitten me in the ass more than once.
And yet, I’m still here, because the simple truth is that despite occasionally doing damage to my reputation by saying and doing some remarkably ill-advised things, the goodwill, the friendships, and the professional opportunities I’ve generated for myself by being active online outweigh the bad things a dozen times over.
This is not a difficult thing to do. Talk to people, seize opportunities to turn online connections into offline ones, and obey Wheaton’s Law. That’s it, and to tell the truth, you can even break Wheaton’s Law from time to time. It’s easy. You can make mistakes (MANY mistakes) and still get a lot out of it.
Which brings me to the point of this post: if you’ve been on Twitter for any length of time and you don’t think you’ve derived $25 worth of value from it, quit. Get off the service and do something more valuable with your time. Just about anything would qualify.
But if you’ve derived more than $25 of value from using Twitter, as I suspect just about anybody reading this has, I’d like you to strongly consider looking into Twestival. Cities all around the world are hosting tweetups to raise money for local charities. They will be fun, awesome, and benefit your community – in Ottawa we’re raising money for the Royal Ottawa Foundation. Twitter’s a free service. You’ve benefitted from it. It’s time to give back.
Buy tickets for Ottawa Twestival here, or visit the main site to find out what’s happening in your area.
I was going to write a big long-winded post, but this is all I really need to say, so here goes:
I don’t need the validation of awards or financial success to justify my appreciation of the things I like. If The King’s Speech beats The Social Network, it’s not going to make me enjoy that movie any less, and vice versa. I’ve come to terms with the fact that Twilight movies are going to make hundreds of millions of dollars, and Scott Pilgrim won’t.
I may be wrong about this but I’m pretty sure beating Eminem at the Grammys was the last thing on The Arcade Fire’s mind when they were making The Suburbs.
Enjoy whatever you enjoy, and don’t make that enjoyment contingent on box office figures, or external approval from people you’ve never met and will never meet. You should totally keep insulting famous people on the internet in real-time, though. I assure you, it never gets old.
Unlike Kirk Douglas.
My mom got me a subscription to The Economist for Christmas, but I haven’t got around to setting it up. I’m contemplating asking her to swap it for Monocle.
The short version: Cancun was good. I may do a more detailed writeup, but tales of debauchery, snark, and mayhem seem better suited for sharing over beers.
Back to Monocle, which I picked up in the airport to read in-flight. I’m not entirely certain how relevant it is to my current lifestyle, but the writing is great and the people profiled are doing cool and interesting things with their lives. It’s not so much aspirational, as I’m not sure I want to emulate their accomplishments, but I’d definitely want to emulate their lifestyle – of being dedicated to something and doing it well. Raw talent without any direction can succeed, but I’m not entirely sold on it being the better way.
Which brings me to this:
It’s copied from the cover of the issue, and I think it’s a pretty good approach, although I’m not quite there yet.
I do have a long-ish term vision for where I see myself going and I’m fairly confident in my ability to get there. While the things I’ve done haven’t gotten me to the destination yet, I feel closer now than I did 6 months ago, and far far closer than I did a year ago.
The next two kind of tie together in my case, because trends and fads are one of the things my brand stands for. I can show your business how new tools and old techniques can lead to some really interesting results. But I also do all the karaoke stuff. And the #GenYOTT stuff. And the stand-up. And spread thin might be the wrong term, but some of these things I do because I really enjoy doing them, and some I do because it seemed like it’d make a good conversation piece. It’d make a great blog post. It’ll get a bunch of retweets because I’m crapping on someone successful and disliked.
Diverse Talents, Travel, check check.
Tyrannical with details. I’ll admit I let this one slide more than I should. There’s something to be said for solving problems quickly, and I’m very good at doing just that, but the quickest path and the most durable and effective path aren’t often the same thing. I know this one isn’t going to change overnight, but it’s definitely something I’m going to focus on doing better in the coming months. Good enough isn’t, you know?
Having fun with it… yeah, I’ve got that covered.
I was excited when I woke up yesterday morning.
Not in that way. Don’t be gross.
But I was excited because, roughly 12 hours earlier, I had booked a trip to Cancun for 4 nights and I needed to get to the airport to catch my flight. I was tired as hell, but the interest and excitement I had for what I was about to do propelled me to get my ass up and moving.
I hit the snooze button – I had time to spare. But a minute or two of staring at the ceiling and I knew I wasn’t falling back asleep, so I got to it.
It’s been a long time since I felt that energized. Okay, Sunday morning.
I went to a musical cast party in Toronto for a show being produced by a good friend. It ran late. We get back to his place well after sunrise, and as much as my body felt tired, my mind/emotion/spirit/ghanas/whatever were running a hundred miles an hour.
I slept for a bit (my body really needed it), but I got up way sooner than I normally would have. I got by this past weekend on way less sleep than usual because I was energized and engaged by what I’m doing.
Too often I sleep more than my body needs, just because I’m fairly certain and comfortable that I can get everything done in the 16 hours I’ll be awake. I miss days filled to bursting. I miss pushing myself to the limit. And that, among other reasons, is why I feel really excited about the opportunity I’m taking on at Shopify.
Knowing that I’m going to be working on tasks that play to my strengths, in a company that’s in tune with my interests in technology and entrepreneurship, is absolutely exhilirating, And while I know it’s not always going to be sunshine and unicorns, the knowledge that I’m in a growing company that’s doing some really cool things… every job has shit moments, but it’s the people on your team that help you through the tough stuff and with whom you celebrate the good stuff. And Shopify has some really great people.
I’d be out of line if I didn’t take this opportunity to thank Ian Graham and Ian Capstick for their support in making this move. I wouldn’t be where I am now if not for them.
Now then, if you’ll excuse me I’m off to hit the beach. I kid. I wrote this post on the beach.
What does Ottawa lose if Ashcroft develops the Westboro convent location? Half a dozen acres of parkland. That’s not something to be taken lightly, but through mismanagement, miscommunication, and any number of other misfires, it was lost – the land is no longer owned by the city. It wasn’t stolen, it was sold – and those concerned about property tax hikes can take some small comfort in knowing that the budget could’ve been short by significantly more. Would people living in Westboro rather have paid slightly higher taxes to keep the land? Probably. Would people living in any other part of the city? Probably not. A bad call for local residents can be the economically right call for everyone else in the city.
So, when local residents floated the idea of banding together to buy the land (or at least some of it) to protect it from development… I thought that was great. There’s a saying that you don’t own the view – but here was a group of people willing to buy the view. I wasn’t sure how they planned to get the money together, but I hoped they’d figure something out.
I happened to come across their proposals today, and they’re not exactly stellar. In fact, I’d argue they represent a bunch of people grasping at anything they can to make other people pick up the tab for their indulgences. And let’s be clear – this is an indulgence. Parkland is not an essential service.
Idea 1 – Divert money from a community center planned near the Civic Hospital. If you believe that an acre and a half of grass and trees provides more value than a community center, you’re wrong. If you don’t require the services those centers provide, I can see how you might think that’s the case, but you’re wrong. I’m happy that you’re as well-off as you are, but many people aren’t, and given the choice I’m going to say that a community center might do more for them than a park will for you.
Idea 2 – Dedicate future funds to this specific project. It’s great until the next project that everyone wants to get behind comes up. Borrowing on future earnings to pay for what you want today isn’t smart. It’s popular (hence our nation’s extraordinary amount of consumer debt), but it’s not smart.
Idea 3 – Use development charges to buy back land. Hampton Iona Community Group asserts that “It will not cost the city anywhere near $3 mln to provide the needed infrastructure to service the site.” I’d love to see anything that backs that up. Between sewer, water, costs to increase transit capacity and added road maintenance… is there wiggle room between what the city charges and what it needs? Maybe. I seldom ride the 2, so if people are happy with the current service levels, then maybe this can work. If not, then it’s just another case of robbing Peter to pay Paul.
Idea 4 – Tax-Incremental Financing. Without getting into the Lansdowne debate, if the only way something gets built is if the City borrows to make it happen, and that something delivers significant economic and social benefits to the city above and beyond just increased tax revenue, then it can be worth it for the city to forego the tax revenue that property generates by borrowing to fund construction. Taxes will still be collected, but they all go towards paying down the debt incurred by construction. It’s an investment in the future. In the case of the convent, I’m not entirely certain what the ROI on 1.5 acres of parkland works out to.
Idea 5 – Community Levy. You don’t own the view unless you buy the view. Projections start at the land costing 3 million and go considerably higher. The people affected have to decide what it’s worth to them and make the call. Have they been sold out by a city hall trying to appease tax-raging suburbanites? Probably. Should the city introduce lower building height limits? Probably not – but that’s a topic for next post. Would this have been such a contentious issue if the city never amalgamated? I’m not sure – share your thoughts in the comments.
If you try to tell a woman what she can or can’t do with her body, you’re rightly called an asshole and told to mind your own damn business. As long as it falls within the constraints of the law, it’s her right. This is common sense.
If someone wants to tear down a house they’ve purchased so they can build one that’s wheelchair accessible, and you then try to get the property declared a heritage building so they can’t do that, you’re rightly called an asshole and told to mind your own damn business. As long as it falls within the constraints of the law and zoning regulations, it’s their right. This is common sense.
But if that someone is a real estate developer, and they want to build something that’s mandated by the city’s official planning documents, why do the rules suddenly change?
Why, if the South March Highlands is sacred Algonquin land, did we only first hear from the Algonquin on January 6th of this year when the plans have been in motion for a long time? I can’t find a single news story that predates this one.
If the people of Ottawa are so adamantly opposed to the idea of 12-storey condos on Richmond Road, why weren’t tighter restrictions put in the city’s official plan? It’s common knowledge that residents who live close by feel that way. Perhaps city hall took the Community Design Plan into account, but felt the city needed higher density in that area than the community would’ve liked and made a compromise? If there’s anything in writing saying that each ward gets to dictate its own terms of development, I’d love to see it, but I doubt it exists because it’s a remarkably irresponsible way to manage a growing city… even by Larry O’Brien’s standards.
For better or worse, we live in a society governed by rules and regulations, and one of those rules is that if you don’t like what someone else is doing on property they own, as long as what they’re doing falls with the rules and regulations… they have the right to do it, and if you try to retroactively change the rules when people start doing things you don’t like, then you’re being an asshole. Should the rules should be changed? Perhaps. I can think of plenty of things that I’d change given the chance, but the purpose of democracy is to ensure that as much as possible, the laws and regulations reflect the rights and the will of the majority. If I’m not in the majority on a given issue, my options are to get the majority on my side or suck it up, and speaking for myself here, straightforward arguments that can be quickly and easily be independently verified tend to work better than appeals to emotion.
Sadly, the only anti-development group in the city that seems to get this is the one working against the project I’m most looking forward to – the redevelopment of Lansdowne Park. It wasn’t Clive Doucet’s tears or impassioned and self-serving pleas from people hoping to keep their property values high that convinced me, it was people running the numbers and suggesting the city was taking on way too much financial risk for a potential upside that’s far from certain. If the contracts were based on faulty math, the city should explore its options. I still think putting condos and retail there is the right move, but if possible, they should be built on terms that fairly distribute the risks and rewards between the developers and the taxpayers.
In closing, Intensification is the longest four-letter word I’ve ever come across.