Back out by the Cambridge Yacht Club, I picked up the pace and started cruising along the Charles River path. It was dusk and groups of runners were all out doing their pre-marathon tune ups. I smiled with them and with my city and with the gorgeous night and with the perfect day to come.

The skyline was sparkling and, even though I’ve taken this Exact. Same. Picture. at least a few dozen times, I pulled out my phone and snapped it again. “Lookin’ good, Boston,” I thought. “Happy Marathon Eve.”

Writing is cathartic for me. And I’ve taken the past week harder than I might have expected. So I’m writing.

The where-were-you brief: At my friend’s house, on Hereford and Newbury. I was leaning way out of the first floor window to cheer on runners when I felt the bombs go off. Then we smelled smoke, heard the sirens, saw a marathon of people running back down Hereford collide with runners still en route to the finish. I started refreshing Twitter like crazy.  Someone turned on the TV. We began ushering stray runners into the house. A cop told us to shut the windows.

Some of my medically trained friends ran to the scene. Others comforted the displaced runners with blankets, beverages and food. We checked in with our people. It was awful and confusing, but I was so, so, proud of how my friends inside and the whole city outside seemed to be responding. Truly – it felt like we all just knew that this is how you come together, this is what you do.

None of my inner circle were hurt or killed. I am forever thankful for that. But like everyone else in this truly tiny city, I’m only a connection or two away from those who lost everything. It’s impossible not to feel like this was a personal attack. Like a flap of the butterfly wings and the scene would have shuffled. It could be any one of us devastated.

Last week as the police looked for the killers, with this closeness of our small city heavy on my mind, I found myself repeating Martin Richard’s words over and over: No more hurting people. Peace. It was a loop that didn’t stop. The words just kept playing in my head.

This is my city. Running is my happy place. There is nothing, nothing more pure and innocent and near to my heart than the people who come out and cheer on Patriots Day. I’ve run two marathons and I know for a fact: normal people cannot run 26.2 miles with out the people who watch marathons. Running a marathon is a selfish endeavor and the spectators give selflessly of their time and energy and love simply to help others overcome their own self-doubt. It is beautiful. (A writer that I really like put this in a way that hit home, I’m borrowing from her to help put the idea down in words.)

Who are these evil bastards. You did NOT do this to these amazing people in this amazing city. No.

No more hurting people. Peace.

Meanwhile, I was feeling horribly, horribly guilty. Worse things than this happen all the time. Sandy Hook. Was worse. From a sheer loss of life and catastrophe of the human condition. I think Sandy Hook was worse. And that’s just the most recent. Of course I felt horrible then. But I didn’t dwell on it. I didn’t hunt for news or change my facebook banner and start using supportive hashtags. I didn’t give money. Now I was feeling so guilty and selfish for feeling so miserable and angry. Meta-guilt on the selfish anger on the deep sadness.

On Thursday night I was in DC, at a conference. Still checking Twitter every, oh, 30 to 45 seconds, when I saw that a cop had been shot at MIT.

“Oh, eff.” I tweeted. Not realizing yet that it was connected. What followed and watching the ensuing chase through twitter and the police scanner was a crazy experience in real-time news. Worthy of a blog post in and of itself. But when I finally went to sleep at 3:30 on Friday morning it seemed possible that they might, maybe, figure out who did this. Maybe we’d get some answers.

My alarm went off at 5:30 so I could send a draft of something to a colleague. I kept checking Twitter incessantly and at some point it became clear that the killers now had names. And an address. And – ohwhatinthebloodyhell – they’re my neighbors.

For the rest of Friday in DC I watched my street on the news, monitored the lock down, sent texts to neighbors and checked our building Facebook page. My favorite day, my city, my sport and now my NEIGHBORHOOD?  This seemed ridiculous. Again with the sadness and the anger and then the guilt for being selfish, because of course this isn’t about me and I’m fine and my people are fine, so stop freaking out about the fact that you’ve been living 400 feet from two murderers.  But it was like a vortex for a few days – I just wanted to know more and more about the two killers, try to understand, catch a glimpse of something, anything, that could have tipped me off or shown me a sign. I kept reading even past the point where there was anything new to read. It was all encompassing. I came down with a cold – made myself actually sick over it.

Finally, today, I let go of the guilt part.

During the moment of silence on Monday I went down to MIT and stood in the human chain for Officer Collier. I held hands with two strangers and then walked over the bridge and cried at the memorial near Boylston. I went for a long run tonight and listened to an amazing live radio discussion on WBUR. I decided that it’s pointless to feel guilty about my feelings. There are more positive things to do with these feelings.

I’m going to thank our police officers and first responders without restraint. I’m going mourn deeply for the lives lost. I’m going to try to understand other people, where before I might have just written them off. I’m going to cheer for the injured as they learn to walk and run again. I’m going to do my darndest to get a number and run Boston next year and I’m going to turn right on Hereford and left on Boylston and cross the finish line with a giant grin on my face and I’m going to hug the living daylights out of the first spectator I see.

We’re one Boston and we’re one human kind.

No more hurting people. Peace.

]]> http://turninguptheawesome.com/2013/04/24/marathon/feed/ 6 jacquiamiller 2013-04-15 18.33.39 photo (3) http://turninguptheawesome.com/2013/03/16/dawn-revisited/ http://turninguptheawesome.com/2013/03/16/dawn-revisited/#comments Sat, 16 Mar 2013 22:56:42 +0000 jacquiamiller http://turninguptheawesome.com/?p=1476 ]]>

Dawn Revisited

By Rita Dove

Imagine you wake up
with a second chance: The blue jay
hawks his pretty wares
and the oak still stands, spreading
glorious shade. If you don’t look back,

the future never happens.
How good to rise in sunlight,
in the prodigal smell of biscuits-
eggs and sausage on the grill.
The whole sky is yours

to write on, blown open
to a blank page. Come on,
Shake a leg! You’ll never know
who’s down there, frying those eggs,
if you don’t get up and see.

 

In love with this poem. Via Somerville neighbors, The Old Try

Dawn Revisited…

This is a paraphrase of how I answered my phone quite frequently at SXSW last week. You may, from the outside, imagine that Frank is a close personal friend. He is not. He’s just some dude, driving a car. I hit a button (Uber or Sidecar) on my phone and Frank’s name, number, car make and model and rating from previous customers pop up. Moments later, Frank arrives, takes us where the group needs to go. Jovial conversation and happy returns abound. Magical.

I love this interaction. And, I love Frank. Well, maybe not Frank, persay. But I love what Frank stands for. This interaction embodies how technology can put a problem and a solution into the same place at the same time, while removing the barriers to a transaction and creating a personal relationship.  It feels simultaneously futuristic and obvious.

A point of reference: in The Atlantic, Rebecca J. Rosen reviews a paper from the journal New Media and Society called “Wikipedia and encyclopedic production”. The authors argue that, “[…] when it comes to the method by which Wikipedia was assembled — amateur, obsessive collaborators augmenting earlier work bit by bit — Wikipedia’s not as revolutionary as it’s cracked up to be.”

Wikipedia is at its’ core pretty similar to the collaborative, accretive processes by which knowledge was collected and catalogued for thousands of years. Throughout history, Rosen writes (1), ‘obsessive compliers’ have collected knowledge and built on each other’s works not dissimilarly to our modern day Wikipedians (see my homeboy Pliny the Elder’s 37 volume Natural History). Rosen extends the observations in this paper beyond just the encyclopedia:

In fact, this seems to be true of so many of the Internet’s “innovations”: Blogs look like 18th- and 19th-century publishers more than they do The New York Times or The Washington Post; small crafters selling their wares on Etsy look more like earlier markets than the 20th century’s big chains. We have a tendency to reach for the most recent historical examples as our benchmarks, but when you take a longer view, you see that we haven’t so much as broken with the past as repeated it.

-  R. Rosen,”What if the great Wikipedia revolution was actually a reversion?”, The Atlantic, January 2013

My favorite recent technology fosters what I’m going to call “micro-connections”, meaning instances where you can have a one-to-one, first-name interaction with someone whose needs and motivations align with yours. These kinds of tools ‘take us back’ by enabling personal interactions between people (2). These business models thrive by providing the kind of services, features and interactions that make each customer feel loved and special and part of a shared community. Yes, on the one hand technology moves us forward. But on the other hand all of these things are just helping us revert more closely back to the way humans interacted for thousands of years before the 20^th century.

Before our more recent past, people lived in villages and knew pretty much everyone, it was easy to align services and needs. But look at what happened to the world:

Source: United Nations, http://www.businessinsider.com/what-will-the-world-look-like-in-2030-2011-8?op=1, annotation added.

This is terrifying. So many needs! How do we feed and clothe and shelter all of these PEOPLE? And obvious reaction would be to commoditize the human experience. Make as many things as possible, as fast and cheaply as possible: tract housing, massive agribusiness, Walmart.

But in the last five or six or so years, it’s felt like the Internet might be trying to show us a different way. Suddenly we have the information and tools to overcome the speed and scale of modern life and remake the micro-connections that formerly characterized human existence.

In a recently TED talk (worth watching) punk rocker Amanda Palmer noted how Kickstarter has changed the music industry:

For most of human history, musicians, artists – they’ve been part of the community, connectors and openers, not untouchable stars. Celebrity is about a lot of people loving you from a distance. But the Internet and the content that we’re freely able to share on it are taking us back. It’s about a few people loving you up close and about those people being enough.

- A. Palmer, The Art of Asking, TED, March 2013

So Amanda Palmer says that it should be enough to be known and loved by a few and that the Internet can help provide those tools. And Rebecca Rosen points to the Internet’s innovations as ways to get back to a more ‘normal’ way of living where we can connect and collaborate with people who share common goals. Finally let me show you one more graph that I love.  This is the number of breweries in the US:

Source: http://www.brewersassociation.org/pages/business-tools/craft-brewing-statistics/number-of-breweries

I don’t know for a fact, but I suspect that brewing isn’t the only industry that’s becoming or has the potential to become decentralized and spawn smaller business where it’s enough, as Amanda Palmer says, “to be known and loved by a few.”

What if the 20^th century really was just an anomaly? A disconnect between the growth of human population and our ability to handle it? Maybe new technologies will help us remake the (oh my, this is cheesy) the global village and sustain a happy human existence at speed and at scale. Maybe we can actually live simultaneously in a world that is populous and fast while still finding the micro-connections that make us truly happy.

——————————

(1) She also uses the aurally and intellectually pleasing phrase ”stigmergic accumulation.” Which, well, I’ll just leave that there for you. You’re welcome.

(2) I love Uber and Sidecare because they supply names and remove monetary exchange. I love Spotify because it allows me to share music instantly with friends all over the world – like we’re all around some virtual campfire. I love Etsy and Custom Made because I can email with a maker and we can communicate about the process and nuance of a craft. I love TaskRabbit because I can ask a local where we should order BBQ and tacos.

Oracle. Being awful. This made me so irritated. Was happy to see someone (@andrewparker) noticed, and wrote something about it. via the Gong Show

A nice presentation with good advice about blog design. via Note and Point

Remember David Hammons? I freaking loved this part of art history. via Things Neatly Organized

Sometimes I wonder what is an actual ‘good’ outcome for a startup. via AVC

“Time and again, our storage formats become obsolete because we stop making the machines that read them—think about video tapes, cassettes, or floppy disks.” via National Geographic

Mmmmm, font. via the Font Feed

“There are some things you learn best in calm, and some in storm.” via but does it float

I’m not sure I’d call this minimalism. But it is fun. via Design Milk

“If my work is reductionist it’s because it doesn’t have the elements that people thought should be there. But it has other elements, that I like.” – Donald Judd. [speaking of minimalism]

I’m not there.  via Laughing Squid

“Who owns your UX philisophy?” via Brad Feld

And these two that may not seem related but I’m really trying to make time to write about why they are, actually, very related

Sriracha sauce and the Republican party 

From the Font Feed. Beck’s new album isn’t an album at all, but a bunch of sheet music so that you have to play the album yourself (You would, Beck. You would). But then this person decided to recreate the album cover with cut paper. Which is really beautiful to watch.

The good news is that some digital health companies (though still precious few tech-oriented investors, who have remained generally skittish) are beginning to brave the complexities of what might be called “real healthcare”.

Totally agree. It’s a good sign.

On that note, I realized my blog list is nicely curated to cover the spectrum from ‘hard science’ to TechCrunch (no offense, TechCrunch). This isn’t totally comprehensive, but it’s probably a decent starting point for biotech / business / digital health / tech. I’m sure I missed some and will update. And, not for nothing, posting it here will make it easier for me to email to people…

Blog List  (vaguely ordered from biotech -> digital health -> tech)

In the Pipeline: http://pipeline.corante.com/ - science!!

Wild Types: http://wildtypes.wordpress.com/ – science!

CultureLab: http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab - science.

The InVivo Blog: http://invivoblog.blogspot.com/ – biotech business.

The Medicine Show: http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper – biotech business.

Life Sci VC: http://blogs.forbes.com/brucebooth/ – biotech business.

Xconomy: http://www.xconomy.com/  – Luke Timmerman’s Monday column = great

WSJ Health: http://online.wsj.com/public/page/news-health-industry.html

Health Affairs: http://content.healthaffairs.org/ – health policy.

Life as a Healthcare CIO: http://geekdoctor.blogspot.com/ – IT.

Candid CIO: http://candidcio.com/ – IT.

Not Running a Hospital: http://runningahospital.blogspot.com/

Little Devices: http://littledevices.org/ – MIT project on design invention and policy in health

Eliza Blog: http://www.elizablog.com/

David Shaywitz: http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidshaywitz

Rock Health: http://rockhealth.com/ – digital health.

Health 2.0: http://www.health2news.com/

Fast Co. Exist: http://www.fastcoexist.com/ – I love FastCo.

Hooked: http://brodyhooked.blogspot.com/ – ethics.

Change the Ratio: http://changetheratio.tumblr.com/ – women in business.

Technology Review (Bioscience News): http://www.technologyreview.com/

MIT Media Lab: http://blog.media.mit.edu/

GigaOm: http://gigaom.com/

All Things D: http://allthingsd.com/

Venture Beat: http://venturebeat.com/

TechCrunch: http://techcrunch.com/

Everyone has a blog. These people have good ones:

A VC: http://www.avc.com/

Ben’s Blog: http://bhorowitz.com/

Feld Thoughts: http://www.feld.com/

Andrew McAfee’s Blog: http://andrewmcafee.org/

Venture Valkyrie: http://www.venturevalkyrie.com/

Seth Godin’s Blog: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/

The Grain: http://an.ton.io/

The signal to noise…: http://thesignaltonoise.com/

Twitter Lists

https://twitter.com/jacquimiller/biotech-science-health

https://twitter.com/jacquimiller/startups

Events / Classes

http://www.intelligent.ly/

http://www.xconomy.com/events/

http://rockhealth.com/events/

http://tech.co/

http://www.skillshare.com/

http://generalassemb.ly/

…and a million others. Just read Twitter.

This doesn’t include a dozen or so Google Alerts and really niche blogs that are specific to my interests. There are also some mainstream publications (like the NYT) that I don’t have on my Google Reader feed, but that I do follow on Twitter. I find that if I’m paying attention to the right niche sources, they act as a great filter and I can ignore anything in the mainstream press that doesn’t make it through the filter. I’ll try to remember to keep this updated. Definitely holler at me if you have other things to add.

I have a bunch of marketing / communications / design / art blogs, too. That’s a different post.

Oh, also I use Google Reader and I know you can export the whole thing into a file that someone can open in an RSS reader. I haven’t, however, taken the time yet to figure out how to just send someone just specific folders with out sending them all my blogs about like, organic kale chips, political satire and 16 ways to style a coral blazer. So, if I anyone knows, please tell me. How to export individual folders. Not how to style a coral blazer. I’ve got that one.

Cool, guys. Creative.

But what really made me pause was the last note in her article:

” *Note: Dirk Marketing is run by Angie Dirk, a woman. Patriarchy wouldn’t be patriarchy without women’s participation, and we wish Ms. Dirk would have had the wherewithal to do better work and demand higher standards of her clients.”

Here’s where I don’t have any answers. In 2013 when we talk about being ‘one of the boys’, I think what we really mean is being able to develop the kinds of relationships with people where you can be both casual and off-the-cuff when the situation calls for it and then be highly professional and buttoned-up when the situation calls for that.

More frequently today, thank goodness, that’s not a gender-specific ‘Boys’ Club’ but a gender-neutral ‘Peoples’ Club’ – meaning people with personality, not just some body at a desk staring at a computer screen. It’s a real skill to be able to develop those relationships and switch back and forth at will. It’s also the place where you end up being super-productive, creative and happy. (I’m lucky in that this is how the large majority of my professional experiences are and have been.)

I think, though, that it can be challenging for women to figure out the line between this kind of healthy banter and the kind of negative actions that are detrimental to the advancement of women in the workplace. With so many men still dominating a lot of businesses, I think for some women it still feels like this kind of relationship is still exclusively male, so you need to bend to misogynic attitudes if you want to play the game.

I don’t have an answer and I don’t know how to teach anyone how to find that line. But I do think it’s possible to not to freak out about things that just don’t matter while being able to put your foot down and tell it like it is when something does matter, with everyone in your life.

Maybe Ms. Dirk at this ad agency thought the ad was just ‘boys being boys’. But they weren’t acting like people and it’s an idiotic, cheap campaign. She should have called them out on that, no matter how much she wanted the contract or to maintain the relationship.

That’s why you’re getting two short Intelligent.ly class recaps in one, with a side of guacaritas. Cheers!

First. Usability Testing.

When I was a child my dad would send me off to school by saying, “Another day, another chance to excel.”

Now, before you assume I grew up in some tiger-parent-pressure-cooker, what he meant by that was only that you don’t need to wait for a soccer game or a big test to be excellent. You can kick ass whenever you want.

I bring this up not because its sound advice, but because what I learned about usability testing was kind of the same. You don’t need to be all crazy about waiting for the right time and investing in expensive tools. Just do it. There are lots of free/cheap tools. And once you start, it gets easier. So go. Test away.

Second. Getting Your Ideas Shovel Ready

On the topic of free tools. I’d never seen a wireframe program. This was revolutionary (lay off me, bro. I was a poli sci / bio major. and the internet had just been invented).

Cort set out a solid overview of how you should think about a project before bringing in engineers.  One question he brought up that made a lot of sense was, ‘What is our problem and what are the fewest things we need to solve it?’ It’s pretty easy to think about all the things you could solve, and forget about solving the one thing you set out to do. Truth be spoken. And thanks for the t-shirt. #brandlove

BONUS: Guacaritas.

Yum. Corey from @Onthebar was pouring some delicious Taneto teQuila margarita-ish cocktails.Pleasantly surprised about the number of health start-ups in attendance. Interesting discussions about how many will have a real impact vs how many are just trying to do social in the health space (that… probably… won’t work. happy to debate about it, though.) AND my cousin showed up. Surprise family reunion. The best. Great night. Thanks Intelligent.ly!

Thank you.

Happy 30th.

(Anniversary, that is. Though I might believe it if you said birthday.)