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shannon_aThe raindrops are occasional at first, as I walk along the Hudson River. But then, as I turn toward Central Park, they become more determined.
It's raining in New York.
Eleven Hours Earlier.
I wake up from a blessedly good night of sleep. Fitbit says that my sleep was still pretty disturbed, which I have to attribute to the FDR parkway thrumming away a hundred feet from my bedroom window, but I fell asleep within minutes of going to bed at 11.30 last night, and so when I wake up a few minutes before my Fitbit vibrates at 7am I've had a pretty full night's sleep.
Then it's up and very quickly out the door. And once again we're cabbing across the city.
Microsoft is hosting the ID2020 Design Workshop in the Microsoft building. The security here is better than the UN. There, we told someone a name, got an ID, then walked in. Here they actually require picture ID.
We're each issued a visitor's pass, much like at the UN. This time, though it's a functional pass. We insert it into a gate to get further into the building.
Just past the gate, we walk into an elevator. The door closes behind us, and we realize there are no buttons.
Which isn't ominous at all.
Our badges are magic, you see. When we went through the security gate, our badges told the elevator what floor we were going to. It then went straight to that floor.
*cough*SKYNET*cough*
This is my second design shop, and I'm pleased to find that I feel totally at home. I've been working with computer security since college, and in the last couple of years I've done considerable research (alongside writing and editing) about the current state of the industry.
I also know a number of the people at the workshop, because they were at the one in November. And I also know Chris' style for running this.
In the early parts of the day, I do a few report-outs — on the paper I lead-authored, on how we've been accomplishing our plans, on the editing process, and on the interesting lessons for programmers from ID2020.
I get a few compliments on the last bit, which pleases me, because I wrote it up late last night after a long day. The cleverness and ingenuity came from the ID2020 speakers, but I'm happy I was able to cull out seven notes of particular interest.
We start the core of the day with a fun exercise: everyone writes about where identity will be in 15 years. I later feel unimaginative because I take a pragmatic view of how I think a global identity could really be constructed. Many other people take imaginative flights of fancy which are in some cases awe-inspiring.
We then gather in groups and each group tries to consolidate what we have into a coherent vision, while simultaneously noting disagreements.
The results are too abstract, but the results aren't really the purpose. The point is in some ways an ice breaker: we learn who our fellows are. But the bigger point is probably to think imaginatively about identity, to map out the breakpoints, to define our terms, and generally to come to terms with the entire space. And here I think it was quite successful.
And it was kind of fun too.
I'm out helping to arrange lunch when the discussion starts about what topics people are going to be working on today and tomorrow. The idea is that everyone is going to break up into groups and each group is going to produce either a white paper or a spec. That's the design part of the design workshop.
Things seem a little chaotic. Some people are standing to the sides of the rooms with signs listing potential topics. Some people are milling around, then heading to those groups. Others are sitting around.
Still, it mostly seems to work. Several groups come together and seem enthusiastic. Some are a little too big and some are a little too small, but maybe it's better to have everyone into their groups so quickly.
The one problem is M., who no one picked.
However his problem is my solution, because I worry what I'll do during the group work part of these sessions. I offer to help him work on his project, and he agrees. So for the next few hours in the afternoon I talk with him about ideas, offer several of my own, and we fill out an outline while also writing down a lot of brainstorming ideas.
I have some concerns about if we'll get far enough tomorrow, but I'm hopeful.
When we clear the space up in the evening, the concern is making sure that our piles of paper don't get thrown out by a janitor. Because they look like trash, but they're actually something we want to record.
S., our great graphic facilitator, asks if I speak Spanish, because she wants to make a sign that says, "Don't throw this away." I tell her my Spanish is about 25 years rusty, but then I go to Google translate and look it up.
If I'm ever using Google translate for anything real, I then translate it backward, to make sure I have something halfway decent. This time I reverse my first translation and get, "Don't shoot this". Not exactly what I was planning.
Second try gets "no lo coloque en la basura, por favor", which I can tell isn't very good Spanish. (I think "lo" is the wrong word to use.)
But it's close enough.
Afterward, I walk the city a bit. The plan was just to walk three miles home, but I end up doing about twice that.
First I walk toward the center of Times Square. I hadn't realized it was a whole neighborhood. As I go, the neon lights increase, as do the number of theaters. I also hadn't realized that Broadway and Times Square intersected.
From afar, I've just seen New York in little bite-sized bits, and never known how they all went together. Now I'm starting to learn.
As it turns out I never make it to quite the center of Times Square. I'm actually confused by the lack of squares, as I expected a big open space, like Union Square in SF. When I get back to the apartment I see that the center of things is really where Broadway crosses 7th Ave, so I'm going to try again, after walking Broadway from 42nd to 47th Street, which is apparently now a Pedestrian Plaza.
(Maybe tomorrow; I may or may not be carrying a bunch of those identity stories we wrote today.)
Then I walk out toward the Hudson. There's a path alongside it, and it's OK. Too often, it's quite far from the water, blocked by fences. But I have a nice walk out to the river at Pier 84 and can look up and down the waterway.
I'm actually more impressed by the cycleway that runs alongside the pedestrian path. It's fully protected (by a median) and two-directional.
The bicyclists that I saw heading up the east side of Manhattan yesterday seemed like daredevils, weaving in and out of traffic. This instead seems like the sort of route I'd enjoy.
It's also quite gloomy as I walk, and that turns into full rain as I turn toward Central Park.
No problem, I brought an umbrella.
I actually looked at the weather reports in Berkeley, and saw that rain was forecast for this Saturday. It was one of the things that reminded me how darned amazing the internet was.
Twenty years ago, you might have been able to get that information on the Weather Channel. Painfully as you waited for them to scroll through the whole country.
Thirty years ago: nada.
At the entrance to Central Park I get a chicken gyro from a street vendor. I've been seeing vendors all through the city, but most don't post their prices, and I'm not willing to get potentially bilked.
But this vendor does. I just have to wait a second for him to get into his food stand, because he's also running the hot dog stand next door.
I tell him not to make it spicy, and he agrees.
However, when I get the pita, it's not what I expect. I expect a really rich, creamy gyro sauce, and what I get instead is kind of an acrid sauce. It's yellow instead of white. It tastes very foreign.
I like it, mostly.
But I hope I don't regret it.
I eat the pita as I walk through Central Park.
And I love the Park.
Not far in, there's a playground with a huge rock looming over it, and I gleefully climb up it. This was perhaps not the best choice, because it's getting slick with the rain. But I manage not to kill myself on the way down.
I thought it was a unique landscape feature, but it turns out that the Park is full of big rocks. I really mean big rocks. There are people standing on them, walking around them, and sitting on. They're all over.
I am amused to discover that the lawns in Central Park are all in jail. They have fences around them. There are entrances, so that people can enjoy the lawns, but the Park keepers roll them closed at dusk.
They're all open when I enter the Park, and closed by the time I leave.
The walk is great. The landscape is very pedestrian friendly and very attractive.
There are trees all around but also plenty of walking space.
I get to the mall, and at the start find a statue of William Shakespeare. I want to take a selfie for K's amusement, but there's just no way in the rain.
I walk up the mall and see many other statues, alongside lines and lines of benches, all with shiny metal plagues on them — sometimes in memory of people, sometimes just listing names, sometimes just listing romances.
I finally turn east at 79th, to head out of the Park.
It's a bit of a walk to get there, but then I'm home.
Another long day in New York.
It's 8pm when I arrive home, 8.5 miles of walking under my belt (shoes) for the day.
It's raining in New York.
Eleven Hours Earlier.
I wake up from a blessedly good night of sleep. Fitbit says that my sleep was still pretty disturbed, which I have to attribute to the FDR parkway thrumming away a hundred feet from my bedroom window, but I fell asleep within minutes of going to bed at 11.30 last night, and so when I wake up a few minutes before my Fitbit vibrates at 7am I've had a pretty full night's sleep.
Then it's up and very quickly out the door. And once again we're cabbing across the city.
Microsoft is hosting the ID2020 Design Workshop in the Microsoft building. The security here is better than the UN. There, we told someone a name, got an ID, then walked in. Here they actually require picture ID.
We're each issued a visitor's pass, much like at the UN. This time, though it's a functional pass. We insert it into a gate to get further into the building.
Just past the gate, we walk into an elevator. The door closes behind us, and we realize there are no buttons.
Which isn't ominous at all.
Our badges are magic, you see. When we went through the security gate, our badges told the elevator what floor we were going to. It then went straight to that floor.
*cough*SKYNET*cough*
This is my second design shop, and I'm pleased to find that I feel totally at home. I've been working with computer security since college, and in the last couple of years I've done considerable research (alongside writing and editing) about the current state of the industry.
I also know a number of the people at the workshop, because they were at the one in November. And I also know Chris' style for running this.
In the early parts of the day, I do a few report-outs — on the paper I lead-authored, on how we've been accomplishing our plans, on the editing process, and on the interesting lessons for programmers from ID2020.
I get a few compliments on the last bit, which pleases me, because I wrote it up late last night after a long day. The cleverness and ingenuity came from the ID2020 speakers, but I'm happy I was able to cull out seven notes of particular interest.
We start the core of the day with a fun exercise: everyone writes about where identity will be in 15 years. I later feel unimaginative because I take a pragmatic view of how I think a global identity could really be constructed. Many other people take imaginative flights of fancy which are in some cases awe-inspiring.
We then gather in groups and each group tries to consolidate what we have into a coherent vision, while simultaneously noting disagreements.
The results are too abstract, but the results aren't really the purpose. The point is in some ways an ice breaker: we learn who our fellows are. But the bigger point is probably to think imaginatively about identity, to map out the breakpoints, to define our terms, and generally to come to terms with the entire space. And here I think it was quite successful.
And it was kind of fun too.
I'm out helping to arrange lunch when the discussion starts about what topics people are going to be working on today and tomorrow. The idea is that everyone is going to break up into groups and each group is going to produce either a white paper or a spec. That's the design part of the design workshop.
Things seem a little chaotic. Some people are standing to the sides of the rooms with signs listing potential topics. Some people are milling around, then heading to those groups. Others are sitting around.
Still, it mostly seems to work. Several groups come together and seem enthusiastic. Some are a little too big and some are a little too small, but maybe it's better to have everyone into their groups so quickly.
The one problem is M., who no one picked.
However his problem is my solution, because I worry what I'll do during the group work part of these sessions. I offer to help him work on his project, and he agrees. So for the next few hours in the afternoon I talk with him about ideas, offer several of my own, and we fill out an outline while also writing down a lot of brainstorming ideas.
I have some concerns about if we'll get far enough tomorrow, but I'm hopeful.
When we clear the space up in the evening, the concern is making sure that our piles of paper don't get thrown out by a janitor. Because they look like trash, but they're actually something we want to record.
S., our great graphic facilitator, asks if I speak Spanish, because she wants to make a sign that says, "Don't throw this away." I tell her my Spanish is about 25 years rusty, but then I go to Google translate and look it up.
If I'm ever using Google translate for anything real, I then translate it backward, to make sure I have something halfway decent. This time I reverse my first translation and get, "Don't shoot this". Not exactly what I was planning.
Second try gets "no lo coloque en la basura, por favor", which I can tell isn't very good Spanish. (I think "lo" is the wrong word to use.)
But it's close enough.
Afterward, I walk the city a bit. The plan was just to walk three miles home, but I end up doing about twice that.
First I walk toward the center of Times Square. I hadn't realized it was a whole neighborhood. As I go, the neon lights increase, as do the number of theaters. I also hadn't realized that Broadway and Times Square intersected.
From afar, I've just seen New York in little bite-sized bits, and never known how they all went together. Now I'm starting to learn.
As it turns out I never make it to quite the center of Times Square. I'm actually confused by the lack of squares, as I expected a big open space, like Union Square in SF. When I get back to the apartment I see that the center of things is really where Broadway crosses 7th Ave, so I'm going to try again, after walking Broadway from 42nd to 47th Street, which is apparently now a Pedestrian Plaza.
(Maybe tomorrow; I may or may not be carrying a bunch of those identity stories we wrote today.)
Then I walk out toward the Hudson. There's a path alongside it, and it's OK. Too often, it's quite far from the water, blocked by fences. But I have a nice walk out to the river at Pier 84 and can look up and down the waterway.
I'm actually more impressed by the cycleway that runs alongside the pedestrian path. It's fully protected (by a median) and two-directional.
The bicyclists that I saw heading up the east side of Manhattan yesterday seemed like daredevils, weaving in and out of traffic. This instead seems like the sort of route I'd enjoy.
It's also quite gloomy as I walk, and that turns into full rain as I turn toward Central Park.
No problem, I brought an umbrella.
I actually looked at the weather reports in Berkeley, and saw that rain was forecast for this Saturday. It was one of the things that reminded me how darned amazing the internet was.
Twenty years ago, you might have been able to get that information on the Weather Channel. Painfully as you waited for them to scroll through the whole country.
Thirty years ago: nada.
At the entrance to Central Park I get a chicken gyro from a street vendor. I've been seeing vendors all through the city, but most don't post their prices, and I'm not willing to get potentially bilked.
But this vendor does. I just have to wait a second for him to get into his food stand, because he's also running the hot dog stand next door.
I tell him not to make it spicy, and he agrees.
However, when I get the pita, it's not what I expect. I expect a really rich, creamy gyro sauce, and what I get instead is kind of an acrid sauce. It's yellow instead of white. It tastes very foreign.
I like it, mostly.
But I hope I don't regret it.
I eat the pita as I walk through Central Park.
And I love the Park.
Not far in, there's a playground with a huge rock looming over it, and I gleefully climb up it. This was perhaps not the best choice, because it's getting slick with the rain. But I manage not to kill myself on the way down.
I thought it was a unique landscape feature, but it turns out that the Park is full of big rocks. I really mean big rocks. There are people standing on them, walking around them, and sitting on. They're all over.
I am amused to discover that the lawns in Central Park are all in jail. They have fences around them. There are entrances, so that people can enjoy the lawns, but the Park keepers roll them closed at dusk.
They're all open when I enter the Park, and closed by the time I leave.
The walk is great. The landscape is very pedestrian friendly and very attractive.
There are trees all around but also plenty of walking space.
I get to the mall, and at the start find a statue of William Shakespeare. I want to take a selfie for K's amusement, but there's just no way in the rain.
I walk up the mall and see many other statues, alongside lines and lines of benches, all with shiny metal plagues on them — sometimes in memory of people, sometimes just listing names, sometimes just listing romances.
I finally turn east at 79th, to head out of the Park.
It's a bit of a walk to get there, but then I'm home.
Another long day in New York.
It's 8pm when I arrive home, 8.5 miles of walking under my belt (shoes) for the day.
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Date: 2016-05-22 09:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-05-23 02:12 am (UTC)