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I was up this morning at about 6.30. Darned sunlight. But I collapsed at about 10.30 last night, so no biggie.
I'd decided that I wanted to get out and about before the day's festivities began, to walk across the bridge. That's the William R. Bennett Bridge, which goes across Okanagan Lake.
The road is very busy. No surprise, it's the only west-east route in 25 miles in either direction. Which gives a good indication of how big the lake is. It's about 50 miles from north tip to south tip.
But, it's not that wide. At least not here. A plaque on the far side says this is where native tribes crossed the lake, waiting for low tide, then swimming a few hundred feet. (The bridge is between one-third and one-half a mile long.)
Anywho, it was a nice walk. To the south, the lake stretches out long and wide. To the north, Kelowna itself stretches out, and I could see it in front of Knox Mountain, which we climbed yesterday.
And it was back to the room before 8am.
My plan is for continued morning explorations, to get some peace and quiet, to earn some steps, and to rejuvenate my introvertedness at the start of the day.
The heart of the day was taken up with the beginning of the Blockstream offsite. This was mainly icebreaker stuff. An introduction to the company, a "bus stop" business exercise to determine the attitudes of people toward specific questions, blockchain pictionary, and then some breakouts for work products for the week.
The blockchain pictionary was very humorous even though I feel horribly unable to draw that sort of thing. I guessed "51% attack", "Bob", and sort of "satoshi" and successfully drew "Circle" and "Freicoin", but failed to draw "Alice".
Alice was pretty funny. She's one of the standard names used for case studies. The other is Bob. So I drew a girl and then a guy. And after that I stumbled for a while. I thought about Alice in Wonderland, but couldn't imagine drawing a smoking centipede. Maybe I could have managed a Queen of Hearts and a rabbit in a suitcoat. Or it might have looked like squiggly lines. I finally decided to draw a briefcase ("case", someone got that) and I tried a magnifying glass for study ("magnifying glass" they got, finally), but it was just a lost cause.
The particularly funny bit was that another person got up later and drew a girl and I shouted "Bob". And it was right.
I would not have managed Freicoin, but someone had earlier drawn altcoin (a circle with a slash afterward), and I just used that same symbol and kept motioning when people guessed various altcoins. Freicoin was like #6 or so. If I'd known that it was pronounced fry-coin I could have drawn the magnifying glass that earlier people had kept guessing was a pan. As was, I couldn't figure out how to draw "free" without being able to use dollar signs.
(I'm really awful at drawing. Me use words.)
The bus-stop exercise was conducted out at the park that's right across from our hotels and that was nice. Fortunately I had sun screen in my backpack after yesterday's hike without.
I'd previously noted that there were a few homeless in the park. (Nothing like certain horrible parks in Berkeley.) But they were much more aggressive, especially when we were conducting our exercise. They kept circling around the group, like predators looking to snatch away the weak (or maybe just the backpacks that were piled up). One of the staff members kept keeping himself between us and them.
There also seems to be a group of aggressive homeless just down the street, entirely blocking one of the side street sidewalks. Not entirely pleasant.
To a certain extent I'm finding my place at this off-site, which probably makes it trickier for me than for most of the attendees. I'm a contractor for Blockstream, which means I'm more part-time than part-time. I've worked with them on some major tech writing, and the results have been well received. But I've worked with three different groups doing different things.
So, between the one and the other I don't necessarily have a natural place in the Blockstream ecosystem.
To a certain extent, it doesn't matter, because I (and Blockstream) can get a lot of benefit from my presence here just by my learning as much as I can about the company and its technology. Then when someone next reaches out to me for tech writing or editing I'll be that much better informed. So for example today I learned some great details about a project I'd only been vaguely familiar with, thanks to a 15 minute overview.
And getting to know all the people will be helpful too.
But as K. could tell you (as she watches me work on various projects every night, except for the days when I forcibly put it aside to go do something), I'm not one to sit on my hands. So I'd like to be useful while here too, and that seems quite possible as the object is to actually do some things.
So I've telling everyone I know here that my writing skills are available this week. And hopefully work will evolve naturally.
And, in fact, plans are to have a working dinner shortly, to talk about some work I can help with.
I'd decided that I wanted to get out and about before the day's festivities began, to walk across the bridge. That's the William R. Bennett Bridge, which goes across Okanagan Lake.
The road is very busy. No surprise, it's the only west-east route in 25 miles in either direction. Which gives a good indication of how big the lake is. It's about 50 miles from north tip to south tip.
But, it's not that wide. At least not here. A plaque on the far side says this is where native tribes crossed the lake, waiting for low tide, then swimming a few hundred feet. (The bridge is between one-third and one-half a mile long.)
Anywho, it was a nice walk. To the south, the lake stretches out long and wide. To the north, Kelowna itself stretches out, and I could see it in front of Knox Mountain, which we climbed yesterday.
And it was back to the room before 8am.
My plan is for continued morning explorations, to get some peace and quiet, to earn some steps, and to rejuvenate my introvertedness at the start of the day.
The heart of the day was taken up with the beginning of the Blockstream offsite. This was mainly icebreaker stuff. An introduction to the company, a "bus stop" business exercise to determine the attitudes of people toward specific questions, blockchain pictionary, and then some breakouts for work products for the week.
The blockchain pictionary was very humorous even though I feel horribly unable to draw that sort of thing. I guessed "51% attack", "Bob", and sort of "satoshi" and successfully drew "Circle" and "Freicoin", but failed to draw "Alice".
Alice was pretty funny. She's one of the standard names used for case studies. The other is Bob. So I drew a girl and then a guy. And after that I stumbled for a while. I thought about Alice in Wonderland, but couldn't imagine drawing a smoking centipede. Maybe I could have managed a Queen of Hearts and a rabbit in a suitcoat. Or it might have looked like squiggly lines. I finally decided to draw a briefcase ("case", someone got that) and I tried a magnifying glass for study ("magnifying glass" they got, finally), but it was just a lost cause.
The particularly funny bit was that another person got up later and drew a girl and I shouted "Bob". And it was right.
I would not have managed Freicoin, but someone had earlier drawn altcoin (a circle with a slash afterward), and I just used that same symbol and kept motioning when people guessed various altcoins. Freicoin was like #6 or so. If I'd known that it was pronounced fry-coin I could have drawn the magnifying glass that earlier people had kept guessing was a pan. As was, I couldn't figure out how to draw "free" without being able to use dollar signs.
(I'm really awful at drawing. Me use words.)
The bus-stop exercise was conducted out at the park that's right across from our hotels and that was nice. Fortunately I had sun screen in my backpack after yesterday's hike without.
I'd previously noted that there were a few homeless in the park. (Nothing like certain horrible parks in Berkeley.) But they were much more aggressive, especially when we were conducting our exercise. They kept circling around the group, like predators looking to snatch away the weak (or maybe just the backpacks that were piled up). One of the staff members kept keeping himself between us and them.
There also seems to be a group of aggressive homeless just down the street, entirely blocking one of the side street sidewalks. Not entirely pleasant.
To a certain extent I'm finding my place at this off-site, which probably makes it trickier for me than for most of the attendees. I'm a contractor for Blockstream, which means I'm more part-time than part-time. I've worked with them on some major tech writing, and the results have been well received. But I've worked with three different groups doing different things.
So, between the one and the other I don't necessarily have a natural place in the Blockstream ecosystem.
To a certain extent, it doesn't matter, because I (and Blockstream) can get a lot of benefit from my presence here just by my learning as much as I can about the company and its technology. Then when someone next reaches out to me for tech writing or editing I'll be that much better informed. So for example today I learned some great details about a project I'd only been vaguely familiar with, thanks to a 15 minute overview.
And getting to know all the people will be helpful too.
But as K. could tell you (as she watches me work on various projects every night, except for the days when I forcibly put it aside to go do something), I'm not one to sit on my hands. So I'd like to be useful while here too, and that seems quite possible as the object is to actually do some things.
So I've telling everyone I know here that my writing skills are available this week. And hopefully work will evolve naturally.
And, in fact, plans are to have a working dinner shortly, to talk about some work I can help with.