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.

I’m not sure if it’s ADD, a quarter-life crisis, or something in between, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned from the events of the past 24 hours, it’s the value of novelty and spontaneity in my life, and how far I’ve let myself get away from that.

2010 was not a year where I accomplished major life goals. It was a year where I laid a lot of groundwork for some potentially very cool things I’ll be pursuing in 2011… but to say that 2010 was a great year for me would be, at best, disingenuous. I had a steady relationship for the first time this year… and while we’re no longer together, Katherine reaffirmed my philosophy that it’s worth waiting for someone you really click with before diving into something serious. She’s an amazing woman and I was incredibly lucky to have her in my life.

I think back to the night we first met, and the conditions that were present to make that a great night. Why was I confident and not grumpy? Were things going particularly well in my life at the time? Not really. Was it the shoes? I love that pair of Lacostes to death, but probably not. Was it having just seen Toy Story 3? Unlikely – puffy eyes from crying don’t exactly scream handsome.

My roommate and a couple friends of his decided to go to Patty Boland’s and I was going to meet up with them there. It wasn’t a big group – 4 or 5 people, half of whom I knew. Just a brief side note about that bar – nothing says “we take care of our staff” like a $4.25 cover charge and a tip jar.

So, I’m at Patty’s with a few people I know, and I really thrive in situations like that, where I can quickly and easily scale my level of extroversion. I can meet new people, I can chat with existing friends, I can hit the dancefloor… it just kinda works. And thinking back to my time in Toronto, nights spent in the piano room at the Madison fall into almost the exact same pattern. So when I’m in that comfortable environment, and I notice someone I follow on Twitter checking into the bar on Foursquare? Of course I’m going to say hi to him, and introduce myself to the ladies he’s at the bar with. And who knows, maybe I’ll really hit it off with one of them and ask her out for Oh So Good because it’s scientifically the best first date you can have and why defy science?

The goal isn’t, and wasn’t, to have fleeting hookups with women I’d never see again. That’s not to say things have never gone that way, but on any given night… the goal is always to find and develop something new that’s going to last. Something that’s going to make life better for all parties involved. Sometimes it’s good conversation, sometimes it’s intimacy, sometimes it’s both and sometimes it’s neither. The point is that it’s something great and wonderful and worth seeking out, but it doesn’t come out of thin air – it typically only happens when you’re already in a good mood and enjoying your night. Maximize the odds of being in that sweet spot and you maximize your odds of having a great time.

Despite what NPH says, this isn’t as simple as not being sad anymore and being awesome instead. There’s always going to be factors outside your control, and you absolutely can’t force them. You can be feeling like a million bucks, but if your friends don’t feel like going out, you’re wasting your time and money if you go alone – other people will assume there’s something wrong with you and act accordingly. At the same time, no one wants to try breaching that big group of people who all know each other because no one wants to look dumb in front of that many people if they screw it up. People engage in so much social vetting consciously and subconsciously, that if you don’t ensure you’re going out into a situation where you’re going to be at your best… you’re risking a crappy night. And I’m not sure that I’ve been taking steps to ensure that kind of quality environment lately.

I feel like I’m at my best when I’m in a small group of people I know, in an environment where a bunch of similar small groups are assembled and mingling is encouraged, not just by virtue of the occasion but the layout. Booths, overly loud music, overcrowding… doesn’t help. Tables that can be pushed together and rearranged, music your can hear yourself think over, limiting capacity to a sane number… does.

Maybe bars in Ottawa need to hire better designers. Maybe I need to broaden my social horizons. But thinking back to the spontaneity I exercised yesterday afternoon? When I realized that anything I did in Ottawa was likely to end up feeling like a compromise, and that hopping on a bus to Toronto was the right call if I wanted to have an absolutely fantastic New Years Eve? That I had to start making calls to see if I could track down a couch immediately?

That’s the kind of thing I need to do more of in 2011, because I  had a great time – huge thanks go out to everyone who made it possible. Weekend getaways to Toronto may not be the most feasible exercise, but they’re absolutely in the vein of what I plan to do a lot more of this year.

Happy New Year.

The proliferation of Groupon knockoffs over the past few months has been impressive, if not particularly surprising. LivingSocial. Koopon. TeamBuy. Wagjag. Kahoot. FabFind. And probably half a dozen others. They all have the same business model, the same irritatingly cute copy on the deal descriptions, and no matter what their founders tell you, they have no real differentiating hook to make you choose one over another… if you’re a consumer.

I like innovation. I want to support innovation. And frankly, not one of these companies could be called particularly innovative. But I’m glad they exist.

Groupon and its ilk don’t sell to customers so much as they sell customers, and their inventory acquisition cost is pretty low. It doesn’t take a huge ad spend to convince people to sign up for crazy deals, and if you provide a referral bonus, your existing customers will do much of the work for you. The challenge for these companies is in recruiting businesses to give away monster discounts… and already in Ottawa we’re seeing that start to dry up. Recycling of clients isn’t uncommon.

What’s also surprisingly uncommon is any kind of strategy to turn these super low-cost clients into any kind of recurring business. I’ve taken advantage of a few deals, and never once had it suggested that I twitpic my meal, or check into a store on Foursquare. Those two things alone won’t make a huge difference, but I’m surprised places aren’t doing more – as if taking a loss on a huge influx of customers is enough to help you achieve profitability. It’s not.

In 2011, I think we’re going to see a lot more competition for vendors, and I think that’s a really good thing. Right now the defacto standard deal is a minimum of 50% off, with the revenue being split 50/50 between the deal site and the vendor. If we start to see players in the sector adjust that to a 60/40 split for the vendor, or even better… we’re going to see higher quality vendors start to take advantage of these services.

And I think that’s a win for the customer.

It’s a little tricky, because I was really impressed with how big some of the ideas in this movie are. On the other hand, it doesn’t exactly handle them with grace and elegance.

First off, the visuals and soundtrack are every bit as good as you’d expect. The writing and acting… not so much. I recommend seeing it, but I wouldn’t call it a great movie by any stretch.

A friend of mine complained on the way out, about how some aspects of the movie were total crap, how there was no real-world analogue to the idea of ISOs… and that’s when it struck me that they really needed to do a better job explaining things.

Fair warning: Here there be spoilers.

The idea of code spontaneously coming out of an orderly and well-defined system… doesn’t really translate in the real-world. The term “isomorphic algorithm” is pretty much just techno-babble. You can make incredibly complex AI that’ll emulate some of those behaviours, that “learns” as far as we define the word, but outside of its defined purpose, it’s probably not going to serve much purpose. Bots aren’t going to turn around on you in the middle of a game of TF2 and ask if their frequent demise undermines the meaning of death by making it into something that can be skipped over with two clicks of the mouse. Your MP3 alarm clock software isn’t going to start composing symphonies. For better or worse, the singularity is still a ways off.

But outside your computer – within the world of people who interact with computers on a daily basis – that kind of emergent behaviour and spontaneous idea generation can happen all the time, especially if the right conditions are in place to facilitate it. And it’s in that context that I think the movie’s messaging on open vs. closed progams, of creativity and spontaneity vs. tight control… rings a lot more true.

Now, admittedly, I’m pretty biased in that it’s my job to manage many of the day-to-day operations at a coworking space, so I see these kinds of things all the time. But because I’ve seen that first-hand, I feel like I can articulate these ideas a hell of a lot better than the movie did, so here goes:

Open-source isn’t so easy to define as “give all your software away for free and never make any money!” and closed-source vendors aren’t all so evil as to keep issuing “new” software with no updates or improvements (insert your own Madden joke here). That being said, developers of all stripes who have access to a collaborative work environment filled with people who have complementary skills… can be a huge thing. Tightly controlled and sealed off workplaces don’t provide employees the opportunity to share their successes and challenges, and reduce the amount of external recognition and assistance, respectively, that they can get. No one needs to give away business models or their company’s secret sauce to discuss problems they’re having with a certain bit of code, or to help others in a similar fashion. And, as everyone’s problems become easier to solve, everyone in the ecosystem benefits from the ability to more quickly resolve issues.

It’s the whole being more than the sum of its parts, and in the context of The Grid, it’s a great analogue for ISOs, illustrating why there’s a lot to be said for flexibility and openness… even if the movie doesn’t quite do the best job of explaining it.

It was a sudden decision to nuke my Twitter account this weekend, but one I had been considering for a while.

I feel that I haven’t been as inclusive and accessible as I should be, and I’ve compounded the problem by surrounding myself with people who reinforced that behaviour. A few thoughts:

- There are more than zero people in my social sphere who I really don’t like. People who I think are idiots that know how to work a megaphone, and while I can be civil with them, I don’t enjoy their company. I don’t think that enjoying my social life should have to be predicated on spending time with people whose company I don’t enjoy. Sometimes them’s the breaks, but there’s no reason not to try and deal with it by adjusting things to better suit my needs.

- The benefit I always sold people on with Twitter was that it provided a great means for expanding your social circle, for getting out and meeting new people. I haven’t experienced that much – or at all – lately. The social scene in this city is broken – har har – in the sense that it’s often very insular, separated into silos that don’t often come together. Those silos can get big, so big that they scare off new arrivals. More needs to be done to cross the streams, and I’ve got a couple ideas to help make that happen… which I plan to be working on in the New Year. If you want to help, email me.

- At the same time that I’m criticizing the community in this city for not being more inclusive, it’s only fair to myself to point out that I’m not the most accessible person. As much as anyone who knows me realizes that I’ve got a hundred different interests and passions pulling me in a hundred different directions… it might be a little off-putting to have content on karaoke, politics, events I’m running, all mixed together with a generous helping of dick jokes and drunk tweets. I can do everything all at once, but the outcome isn’t satisfactory for me – and I’m guessing it’s not satisfactory for others. So, at least until I can get to a point where I think it’s beneficial to have it all out there, I’m splitting my tweets into two categories:

@BrianAlkerton – Love/Politics/Tech/Events. Rated PG… usually. If you want to get in touch – this is the way to go.

@BriansBadIdeas – Drinking, cussing, snark at the expense of random people making bad choices. Private with extremely limited access. I need to have somewhere I can be completely unfiltered, but the list of people I trust with that level of access is pretty short. If you’d like to read it, feel free to request access – but don’t take it personally if I decline.

Over the next couple weeks I’m probably going to spool up pretty slowly until I get my footing back. I’ve gotta see if this is something I can make work for me on my terms.

And this blog – this poor, neglected blog – I’m going to get back into posting on a regular basis. Something I’ve mostly stayed away from here is purely personal writing, and I think I’m going to get back into doing that. Not everything has to be in the context of Gen Y professionals, although things occasionally will be.

More as it happens.

The Good: I’m not his biggest fan for reasons I’ll get into later, but I don’t feel any dread or dismay at the prospect of Jim Watson becoming mayor of Ottawa. I’m very confident that he’ll do a capable and competent job of running the city over the next 4 years, or less, I guess. Not that I ever really understood that line of criticism… if someone’s no longer happy in any job, it’s not productive to force them into continuing. Anyways, there’s nothing too bad in his platform, and I think he’ll do a good job implementing as much of it as he can.

The Bad: I’m a little concerned by the general consensus that Jim’s the right mayor for Ottawa… and what that says about our city. Ottawa has a reputation as a sleepy government town, and I’m not sure that the election of a cautious-but-capable mayor is going to change that. This isn’t to say that his challengers were right for the job. Larry O’Brien and Clive Doucet both had plenty of faults. And it’s not to suggest that there aren’t great people in Ottawa, there are, and I consider many of them friends. But having grown up here, and over the past year since I moved back after living in cities like Toronto and Boston, I get the impression that the majority of people here just go through the paces until they grow old and die, and more damning, they’re not particularly motivated to change that status quo. It’d be nice if traffic was lighter and utility costs were lower, but we can’t have tall buildings casting shadows so intensification is a no-go. It’d be nice if we had LRT in 4 years rather than 8, but we’ve already thrown out so many plans, let’s just go with what we have. This isn’t an “I’m right, and most people are wrong” sort of thing – it’s more like “I’ve got my views, you’ve got yours, and maybe we aren’t a great fit for one another.” And if my mindset is at all representative of other young professionals, I think there might be reason to be concerned about the longer-term implications for this city. Ottawa isn’t going to turn into a retirement community with a median age in the 60s overnight, or ever, but given the choice between cities like Ottawa, Calgary, Vancouver, and Toronto, I don’t know many people my age for whom Ottawa would be the first choice. Should that make people worried? Should it be a priority to take on bold projects that inspire civic pride, or just to capably manage things so that the status quo can be comfortably maintained? If Monday’s results suggest where the majority of the city stands, it’ll be interesting to see how things go when the recession ends and employers other than the public service start aggressively pursuing young talent.

The Ugly: This is kind of a funny story. On election day, a whole bunch of anonymous and fairly new Twitter accounts starting smearing Jim Watson on the #OTTVote hashtag. You can find an example here – there were others using photographs from old news stories as avatars, and a little detective work (thanks Tineye!) made it immediately apparent that they were fake, full of crap, and not to be taken seriously, so I called them out. Particularly fun was one who accused Watson staffers of taking down O’Brien signs, but who said couldn’t take a picture on their Blackberry because they were driving. When I pointed out that they were tweeting these accusations from an iPhone, they made their account private. Eventually it died out, but it definitely put a sour taste on the day, the unfortunate downside of internet anonymity. That evening, a friend had asked for volunteers to help out with Rogers’ election coverage, so I offered to cover O’Brien headquarters. I thought it’d be interesting to go to that kind of event when the candidate had already thrown in the towel with his public statements. Almost all of the people I met there were decent, friendly, and accommodating, which I think we need to remember more often – regardless of our disagreements, we all have a responsibility to work together on making this city a better place. Then one of the accounts slagging Watson called me a fag. A few minutes later, a couple guys in their early 20s started giving me a hard time, telling me not to be there, asking how much Watson was paying me to be here, blocking my ability to get footage of the event, and so on. At a certain point, I realized it wasn’t worth the trouble to stay. For better or worse, Larry was mayor of the city for 4 years, and you don’t disrespect that by causing a scene as his concession party, even if they were in the wrong. And besides, whoever those cowards are, their guy lost. The words “suck it up, princess” leap to mind.

Let’s get one thing straight: I was slagging girls on LiveJournal way before Zuckerberg did.

This isn’t something I’m proud of (you should never be proud of hurting people’s feelings), but every time a story hits the news about some kid getting expelled or suspended for something they wrote on their blog or facebook or myspace I think to myself that I was ahead of the curve.

So when I was watching The Social Network, and their rendition of the fall of 2003 included that, The White Stripes’ “Ball and Biscuit”, crappy parties thrown by AEPi, and the line “you’re going to go through life thinking that girls don’t like you because you’re a geek. And I want you to know, from the bottom of my heart, that that won’t be true. It’ll be because you’re an asshole.” I just about applauded in the theatre because of how much it resonated with me. The last movie I saw that clicked with me on so many levels was (500) Days Of Summer.

The rest of the movie… eh, not so much. It was good, but it’s a little hard for me to personally relate to the story of a guy who’s worth over 6 billion dollars (depending on the actual value of Facebook, which is another question for another post). A guy who has a crazy idea in his dormroom and starts pursuing it aggressively… that I can connect with.

Or at least, I should’ve been able to.

Fall 2004. Podcasting is slowly taking off. I’m listening to Adam Curry, Michael Geoghegan, Leo Laporte… even submitting a podcast or two of my own, which I recorded on the crappiest computer microphone you’ve ever seen.

One afternoon, spurred on by having seen Primer, the first few episodes of Lost, and the boredom of my globalization class, I came up with an idea – a personal podcast that wasn’t. A few weeks of daily podcasts to build a listenership, and then we gradually start slipping the weird and occult stuff in in the background. Once it became clear that we weren’t producing a real podcast but just telling a good yarn, we could jump around with different timelines and narrators to keep things interesting. There’d be murder and mayhem and sex and it’d be relatively easy to keep it low-budget because we’d be doing it all without video – YouTube didn’t exist yet, there was no way to cheaply distribute huge amounts of video, and I didn’t have the energy/budget to do something that big. Nor was there a cheap way to distribute audio. RSS enclosures made it possible for people to subscribe to a podcast, but the data still had to be stored and served. And I was a university student seriously considering dropping out to become a plumber.

In retrospect, I had more than enough wiggle room on my student loans to make it happen – a couple thousand bucks would’ve been enough to buy decent recording equipment and hosting several times over. But I was so scared of it blowing up in my face that I never pursued it seriously. I never got the hosting or the equipment, I never started breaking down the plot I had sketched out into episodes that needed to be scripted, I never started casting drama majors to take on the different roles I had in mind. Looking back I can think of a dozen more reasons why it wouldn’t have taken off – but because I never did anything at all on it, a year and a half later when Lonelygirl came around not a single person said, “Hey, this is kinda like that podcast that guy did a while back… what was his name again?”

The point is this: if you try something and fail, the experience you gain from that failure has value. Boomer Esiason doesn’t have a Super Bowl ring but they still bring him in as a commentator every Sunday. If you don’t try, you won’t fail but you won’t succeed either, and no one will think of you when they want to pursue something similar to your idea.

So, if you’re reading this, and you have a crazy idea, please try and make it happen. Even if it doesn’t work out, you’ll be better for having tried.

It ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it.

~Bananarama

I first wrote this a couple weeks ago. I wasn’t 100% happy with it, so I gave it a little time to ferment in my brain. Here’s the revised version.

To a certain extent that Bananarama quote reassures me, because the things that I do, I do in a pretty awesome way. I make quick friends. I’m pretty well-respected by most of the people I deal with in my day-to-day life. When I was in Seattle I blended right in with a group of really cool people who collectively have accomplished some pretty amazing things over the past 15 years.

I have not accomplished anything similarly amazing. I’ve done some amazing things (skydiving in the Swiss Alps, drinking with D-List celebrities, getting my BA framed with a copy of the program from Evil Dead: The Musical… okay, 2 out of 3 ain’t bad) and I’m pretty good at relating the stories of those experiences, but I haven’t started a company and seen it grow, go public, and make a ton of money. I haven’t worked on cool marketing campaigns that I can point to, things that will demonstrate that I kick ass not only personally, but professionally. Unlike a lot of people my age, a car loan and mortgage… just aren’t things I have the prerequisite cash flow to do.

This isn’t to say that I wince when everyone orders another round. I get by just fine. And I’m not so deluded to think that I need these things to be defined as a success. But I do think about all the people who’ve told me over the past 6-8 years that I’m going to do quite well for myself, I look at my peers who are already there now, and I wonder when it’s going to start happening for me.

I don’t know if I’d be so quick to criticize the public service (as I’m known to do) if they had hired me on to make a disgusting amount of money during training, and even more than that once the job itself began. If the only thing stopping me from selling out was the other party not buying, I probably don’t really have any moral high ground.

But here’s the thing – okay, three things – and here’s where I hopefully can turn this into something positive. I’ve noticed the following every time I get all insecure like this:

• I’m usually the youngest guy in the room. I have time.
• I’m working right now for a startup that 1) does amazing work; 2) provides me with a level of creative freedom that I’ve never had before; and 3) is on an upward trajectory. I have opportunities to experiment and do cool work.
• I surround myself with friends so successful and so talented they intimidate me, and a girlfriend who makes me wake up every morning wanting to be a better man. I have more motivation than the internet has cats.

As much as our parents coddled us, often to our detriment, looking back at the past generation it becomes fairly apparent that while not everyone got a mansion and a sports car, as long as there was opportunity and motivation, given enough time things more or less worked out for our parents. I have all three.

I think I’m going to do okay.

“It ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it.”

~Bananarama

So, I’ll start on a high note: this year, like every year, PAX delivered some pretty transcendent moments, stuff that I’ll never forget for the rest of my life. I’ll be uploading video at some point, but there’s something crazy beautiful about 2500 people in a concert hall all singing a song in unison. No loud instruments interfering, just human voices. It was, as the song goes, a triumph.

Also, the karaoke scene in Seattle is stellar, and while I laid down the old classics, I actually discovered a great new song to add to my repertoire. I’m really happy about that.

Okay, now for the ugly part: most of the people at PAX are giant losers, seemingly incapable of using either social skills or deodorant. There is a reason the words nerd and geek have negative connotations, and it’s because we have some serious fucking shortcomings as a tribe. As much as there’s been a move towards geek empowerment, as much as we’re telling people it’s okay to be crazy passionate about WoW and D&D and Wil Wheaton, geeks everywhere are taking that as validation that they’re doing everything right and don’t need to change.

And most of us do need to change. Holy shit do we ever. The problems we face have nothing to do with the things we’re interested in, but with how we express that interest. While I had some wonderful interactions with smart and interesting people while at PAX, and I thoroughly enjoyed the content of the panels, concerts, and the Expo Hall, those great moments were diminished a great deal by a large percentage of the attendees being inconsiderate, unpleasant, and borderline antisocial. A few examples I witnessed first-hand this weekend:

Fanboyism. Most people can’t buy every console every generation, so we make the choices we have to make, in a way that feels right for us. Being a dedicated Xbox 360 owner doesn’t mean the PS3 has to fail for me to feel I made the right decision. Success isn’t a zero sum game, and the idea that popularity means something must be good is clearly horseshit given that Justin Bieber and Twilight make so much money. Talking shit about the decisions others make? To their faces? When said decisions have no bearing on your ability to enjoy the things you have? You’re being a dick.

People wanting to be a hero at the Rock Band stage: So some people who wanted to play a song have asked you to drum or play guitar. Great! Know your limits. If you remember that gaming is about HAVING FUN, you can take an easier difficulty and focus on rocking out and engaging the crowd. But you’re at a gaming convention, so you’ve got to demonstrate that you’re a big man by playing on Expert, racking up a massive score that no one will pay attention to, much less remember, except you can’t even do that, and in doing so, you fuck over the people who invited you up on stage. You’re being a dick.

For the record, this happened to me and my friend six (SIX!) times over the course of the show. After the first two, we made a point of asking anyone who came up if they were any good, encouraged them to lower the difficulty and crank up the performance… yeah, it still happened 4 more times.

People who are apathetic about everything: I’m playing Battlestar Galactica with you, and I’m doing something that completely fucks over your entire team. If you protest (as you should, given what I’m doing), you can raise enough doubt about my intentions that I might not pull it off. But you just say “whatever”, and effectively throw the game for your team. You’re being a dick.

Ironically, mention Wheaton’s Law to any of these guys and they know it by heart – “Don’t Be A Dick!”

Paul Graham wrote a great post on this a long time ago – the idea that, at least in high school, most nerds decide that they’d rather throw their energy into being smart than being popular, if forced to choose. And let’s not kid around, in the long term that’s the right choice. However, you can’t make it through life without some basic social skills – humility, humor, hygiene, being supportive of others, not taking yourself too seriously. I fear that the geek empowerment movement has given geeks the idea that they’re perfect the way they are. If they have social skills, they are: they’re being themselves, enjoying life, and doing so in a way that doesn’t hurt others. But if they don’t, they’re likely harboring inferiority complexes from high school and now feel that they have free license to do whatever they want because geeks are awesome!

None of these things ruined the show for me, but we have to acknowledge as a tribe that the human id doesn’t subscribe to Wheaton’s Law. If you let it get out of control, it’ll turn you into a raging asshole. And the social development our peers had in high school… we didn’t, in most cases. But it’s vital that we have it, and that we learn how to play nicely with others, because we don’t exist in a vacuum. To suggest otherwise is just foolish.

This is getting long, so I’ll end by saying I’ve got at least one more post that’ll tie into this central theme. It’ll touch on my personal insecurities regarding my career, and why I feel that my current job is beyond perfect for me.