Stewart Marshall

Courtesy of my domain name service I was reminded this weekend that financialstoryteller.com has just turned 5 years old. So it makes sense if I actually get around to posting something to bring in the new year. As usual on a Sunday morning I was reading various things when an idea popped into my mind. Why not represent student grades as a city skyline. At the same time I discovered a new service called present.me which is what I used for what follow below. Take a look at the below and let me know what you think in the comments.

I’ve met a dozens of budding entrepreneurs over the last few years. Many of them either have or want to write a business plan. To some extent this is not surprising.

Many of the entrepreneurs are students and there is no shortage of academic courses which teach students how to write a business plan. This spans both undergraduate and postgraduate courses – most MBA programs have it as a core competency.

The problem I see is that a business plan is as much use to an entrepreneur as a chocolate teapot! Quit avoiding the issue by churning out a dead tree of static and waffle and DO something useful instead. Something like talk to an actual or potential customer.

Steve Blank captures my thoughts about this well in a recent post.

The business plan is a wonderful document for organizing and planning for existing companies to launchfollow-on products. In an existing corporation, the business plan is theexecution document for sustaining innovation.

But for startups, business plans fail to match the chaotic reality they encounter in the real world.

The reality is that startups needed anew class of management tools. Tools to help them manage the search for a repeatable and scalable business model.

Alexander Osterwalder’s 2010 book Business Model Generation is now the definitive text on Business Models.

It introduces the business model canvas – a one page picture of your business model and to a large extent your business. I’ve used it countless times over the last couple of years and learn something new every single time.

As an aside there is a new book called Business Model You which takes the original idea and applies it to your life. I made a small contribution to this book which gets my name in print. Now I need a business plan to really make this work for me!

Next week I will be running a workshop on presentation skills and pitching for our clients at SFU Venture Connection. For many entrepreneurs pitches and presentations revolve around the slides. Whilst I will be talking about slides during the workshop the real focus will be on the story.

Slides are merely a tool which should, to paraphrase Seth Godin, reinforce the story the presenter is telling, not repeat it. Many entrepreneurs struggle with the whole pitching, presenting piece. However, contrary to what many of them think, this is not because they have poor slides. It’s because they don’t know their own story.

Garr Reynolds has been talking about this for years, but his latest book gives the game away in the title! The Naked Presenter . In other words, what would your pitch/presentation be like if you didn’t have any slides? Can you still communicate your story and get the key points across?

When it comes to presentations one of the old favourites is practice practice practice. Practice is important because it really helps you learn your own story and learn it in a form which is hopefully more digestible to your audience. With the right structure you should be able to clearly tell your story. You can use the word ‘message’ for ‘story’ if the language isn’t working for you.

This means you can use your slides in a very different way. They can be used connect with your audience. Done well, this is emotional and nearly always driven by image. This is applies even when the audience has a clear expectation for slides – telling your story is going to be the most successful approach.

Ultimately, investors are looking to invest in you. Some may be impressed by your ability to deliver slides but it’s more likely they are looking for a compelling reason to buy into your story, and make it part of their own.

Whilst scanning an old blog post today I realized that I’ve been using Google Reader for over 5 years. That same post talks about the 50-60 RSS feeds I followed then. It turns out I still follow 50-60 feeds today. The list, I suspect, is somewhat different. Comparing what I followed then compared to what I follow now could be interesting if only I’d kept a note back in 2006. Be that as it may, the raw numbers do tell a story.

At any one time I like to have 50-60 sources of news and information available.  I have experimented with more from time to time, but the experiment always seems to fail. I like to pick and choose my sources, relying on serendipity to identify new content and my own instinct to make deletions.

Recently a couple of tools have popped up and surprised me. The first of these is Summify. It imports your google reader feeds as well as activity on Twitter and Facebook to deliver a short list of the top stories every few hours. The number of stories and frequency is up to you..

To my surprise and to challenge my cynicism, Summify does actually deliver stories I find interesting and want to read. Not all the time of course, but often enough. It does this without asking me to do anything. If I’m honest I would say the Summify helps me get more out of some of the more active feeds I follow and share this easily on the same three tools. Google Reader, Twitter and Facebook.

Although this doesn’t capture everything I want to read, it’s a good start. I still go off to my Reader account and look at other sources. Generally these sources don’t post as often, but give tremendous value when they do. From time to time I look at my twitter feed still, especially when it comes to my @ourbirdfeeder account but I’ve never really used Facebook for this purpose. This despite cool apps like Flipboard which present every thing is a more pleasing way.

A couple of days ago @brucesharpe mentioning Zite. This, like Summify, is another service being built in Vancouver, BC. Initially I was confused by Zite: I did not see any of the feeds I thought I followed. Then I realized that’s the point. Zite uses what I’ve specified elsewhere to find new stuff for me to read and most importantly, from new sources.

There is a thumbs up and thumbs down option which is supposed to help me help Zite improve the relevance of what it delivers. The thumbs up is always easier than down however, so not sure how this will work. I seem more willing to show my support than my disapproval. Inaction is my but dominant form of this.

It’s great that entrepreneurs are creating interesting and valuable tools around a part of my online life which has been pretty consistent for the last five years!

Over the last few months I have been reading and learning more about the business of presentations. A have a number of go-to resources, rich with ideas and suggestions. There are number of these which have struck a cord with me recently, so I thought it was time to share.

Chris Brogan is one of those A List bloggers whose output is truly amazing. So much so in fact that most of the time I can’t keep up. What I do manage is a regular scan of his posts and quick read of those that grab my attention. One such post came up a few weeks back when he did a short video interview with Nancy Duarte.

Nancy is the Principal of one of the largest design firms in Silicon Valley, Duarte Design and a very accomplished author. Her first two books slide:ology and resonate are included in my go-to resources.

As I write this post I realize I have a bunch of post-it notes in front of me with various notes. So instead of trying to figure out all my sources I would like to present a collage of presentation ideas and tips. Consider it a buffet of thoughts from which you can choose what works for you:

Often people think of the public speaker or presenter as a heroic figure. The speaker is who the audience has the expectation about, the speaker who has the responsibility to deliver. Equally as often this is enough to put the speaker off ! That’s a lot of responsibility. So try this instead. The Audience not the speaker is the hero. The job of the speaker is to mentor the audience through the STORY and ultimately take them where they want to go.

A slide deck shared without the presentation is a document.

Q&A Sessions after a presentation or speech are a golden opportunity to build and reinforce the relationship with your audience. It’s natural to breath a sigh of relief at the end of your prepared speech, but the most important part is only just beginning!

If you are nervous imagine some you love and trust is sitting in front of them and present to them.

From Nancy, Simply; Lose the cliches, emphasize Information, Designate elements – i.e. loose the clutter, Empathy for the Audience. Do you want to sit through your own presentation?

Again Nancy: STAR – Something They Always Remember. Bill Gates did this at TED by letting loose a mosquito. I did it by getting my audience to stand, put their hands to their heads and roar like a Moose! 

Lastly, don’t present Data, present Meaning. Apple did this years ago when they started talking not about gigabytes but about how many songs an iPod could hold.

There. That feels better. Maybe some of the above ideas will spark something new in how you present. If it does, come back and share your experience in the comments below!

I was introduced to Johnson’s work through his masterful storytelling at the TEDGlobal 2010. That video connected the renaissance coffee houses of London in the 17th Century to the modern day Starbucks. His story took us back to the dawn of the Space Race and Sputnik, through the Cold War and the creation of GPS to the Apple iPhone. I simply loved the way Johnson sprang a classic storytelling reveal on the audience; one I’m sure you will enjoy.

I realised Steven Johnson had far more to say about innovation than he could fit into a 17:46 minute video. This book begins capturing his ideas and encourages you to actually read those footnotes, appendices and references. If I were to take this one book as a source, it would lead me to a lifetime of reading about innovations, inventions, cultural changes and inspiration. Amazing.

So, what’s it all about? In writing this piece I found myself overwhelmed by choice. This book is about many things. Johnson pokes hard at the myth of the solitary genius and eureka moments. He uses metaphors from natural history (coral reefs) to illustrate his thoughts and then backs it up with an almost MBA style 2×2 grid analysis. Along the way there are many many stories of specific innovations which on their own are worth reading, as well as discussions of political and social dogmas!

If I were to express some kind of conclusion it would be that innovation comes not from single moments or individuals. It is far more likely to come from collaborative open networks where there is no economic motivation. It almost sounds bit too ‘twigs and nuts’: everyone working together, sharing ideas and inspiring each other to take what they have and build on it!

However, I have to agree. In my own experience much more has been achieved in the way Johnson describes than by hoarding secrets and creating conspiracies about the guy over there who is secretly trying to steal your idea! Johnson puts it best himself:

Go for a walk; cultivate hunches; write everything down, but keep your folders messy; embrace serendipity; make generative mistakes; take on multiple hobbies; frequent coffeehouses and other liquid networks; follow the links; let others build on your ideas; borrow, recycle, reinvent. Build a tangled bank. – Steven Johnson

Early last month, I gave a storytelling workshop to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) in Vancouver. Organizer Etienne Laliberté sent me the video below, from Ignite Seattle. It’s a wonderful, 5 minute ‘how-to’ on impromptu speaking — or at least giving short speeches. Scott Berkun explains that this is all about story. This in turn reminded me of Kathy Hanson‘s recent post about her Toastmasters experience.

When you start Toastmasters, the prepared speeches you give are between 5 and 10 minutes long. Ignite speeches are 5 minutes, Pecha Kucha speeches a little longer at 6 minutes 40 seconds. Impromptu toastmaster speeches (Table Topics) tend to be 2 – 3 minutes long. So Scott’s advice is very well suited. However, I am not going to stop there! I believe that formats such as Ignite and Pecha Kucha can be great  opportunities to help you improve your speaking skills.

Prevailing wisdom suggests that a short sub-10 minute speech should be made without notes and probably without slides. In Toastmasters there is a prepared speech which requires some use of slides, but successfully using audio visual technology at the same time as remembering what to say, is not easily mastered. My own Toastmaster speeches focussed very much on me, the storyteller, without any visual distractions.

I’ve attended many Vancouver Pecha Kucha and one Ignite Vancouver event. I have used variations of the format, 15 or 20 slides which auto-advance every 15 or 20 seconds in a number of workshops and also in classes for students. In the teaching mode I’ve found great example speeches which help me demonstrate how story and image can be used to get your message across. Although I do touch on presentation skills and public speaking, these are rarely the sole purpose of my own speeches. In the audience mode, such as when attending Ignite or Pecha Kucha Nights, I’ve found the entertainment side stronger.

I have suggested that the Ignite/Pecha Kucha format can be a great way to communicate ideas inside an organization like the DFO or any business. I realize now that this is all about the application of a format once you have mastered it. What I have not yet emphasized enough, is that the format can actually help you become more confident about giving presentations and public speaking.

When I first went to Pecha Kucha I was in awe of the speakers and remember thinking, “I wish I could do that!” The more times I attended, the more I noticed variations in how speakers approached the task and found that my own presentation style began to shift as my confidence grew. Later I found a lot of support for my own direction in the work of Garr Reynolds and Nancy Duarte, to name two. It looks like I will be adding Scott Berkun to that list.

What about you?

Last night my wife and I went to the cinema to see The King’s Speech. This stars Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush and covers the period immediately before and just after King George VI came to the throne. I’m not going to offer a detailed review so I will settle for one phrase: Go and see it!

Although the time and the circumstances were very different, I believe the majority of people who have done any public speaking will relate to the story. Indeed, if public speaking does trouble you, this film should be required viewing. The fears, struggles and frustrations of speaking in public are well covered as is the anger  that can come from a lack of confidence.

Personally I was reminded of my late Dad. Maybe it’s the time of year but there were two other reasons. One trivial, one more serious. The first is simply that Mr. Firth and my Dad share the same first name – that happens way less often than I would expect. The second memory was the eulogy I gave at my Dad’s cremation. Like King George VI I was giving a speech which the majority of people I suspect, thought I would struggle with. Like the King, as I spoke I became stronger. It’s not everyday I get to compare myself to a King! For that I thank the power of story and the incredible performance by Mr. Firth.

Watching the trailers of upcoming movies before the film started it struck me that too many movies seem to be about special effects. To me they  look like a montage of loud and pointless console games. The King’s Speech on the other hand, is basically about the relationship between two people. That’s it. Nothing more.

Of the two, which one do you prefer?

A couple of weeks back I attended the 2010 SFU Student Entrepreneur of the Year Competition at SFU Harbour Centre in Downtown Vancouver. This was a kick off to Global Entrepreneurship Week. Four Students pitched their businesses in an effort to win the BCIC Student Award forTechnology Entrepreneurship and the big prize of Student Entrepreneur of the Year.

This year I had the pleasure of being a spectator, having been more involved in prior years although earlier in the week I had given a workshop for the finalists on how they could pitch to the judges. It was fascinating to see how they applied my suggestions and the impact they all made on not only the judges but also the rest of a packed audience.

The finalists who presented were Kelvin Chiu from Quake Aware, Juan-Pablo Leal from Artesano, Jack Qiao from ParkKart and Jordan Gutierrez from Libreria LEO. In the end Jack Qiao picked up the Technology prize and runner up. The SFU Student Entrepreneur was Jordan Gutierrez from Libreria LEO.

Although only a spectator, I couldn’t help making lots of notes and I’m looking forward to meeting all the finalists again in the coming week or two. A couple of the Students are already Venture Connection Clients and I hope to engage with the other two quickly. The final part of the story for me will be hearing how they feel the whole thing went for them!

Below is a little video I shot of the prizes being awarded:

Social Media is often associated with the trivial aspects of life. What someone had for lunch, how many friends ‘like’ them and so forth. Whilst there is a role, some would say a super important role for the likes of Twitter and Facebook to play in our personal social lives increasingly the tools are finding more weighty applications.

This week is a case in point. There have been two significant events in the last week which illustrate this. The first was the election of Naheed Nenshi as the next Major of Calgary, the second the conviction of Russell Williams for the murder of Jessica Lloyd, Marie-France Comeau and a staggering 86 other charges.

Given the nature of these events It is important to remember that the social media aspects discussed below are put in context. In both cases, for reasons that could not be more different, social media is definitely NOT the most important aspect of the story(ies). It is true though in each case that there is a social media element which can be explored.

Starting with the Russell Williams case, the social media piece comes, unsurprisingly perhaps, from the courtroom. More specifically it comes from the gallery. In addition to the families and friends of the victims the gallery had lots of reporters. It would seem that whereas in the past there would be the scratch of a reporters pencil, now there is the almost silent typing of 140 character Twitter messages (tweets). The Williams case is not the only example as illustrated by this article from the New York Times.

I was encouraged to see the reporters exercising caution in what they were reporting. Social Media gave the public the opportunity to be in the courtroom and experiencing events as they happened. Many of the details of the case had to be aired as a matter of public record. However, blasting the horrific details all over the internet was not necessary and I’m pleased the tweets from the gallery reflected this.

Turning to the newly elected Calgary Mayor: Naheed Nenshi, social media was an important part of his election campaign. And that’s the point – it was part of the campaign. He identified, correctly as it turns out, that a big proportion of people who don’t normally vote are the same people that use Facebook, Twitter and other social media tools. By engaging them on their own turf he managed to increase voter turnout with the ultimate effect that he ended up being elected.

However, whilst Nenshi demonstrated what can be achieved in politics when social media is used well. In the UK, even the Prime Minister’s warns that twitter makes it easy for public figures to make ‘ill-advised’ comments. Sadly Gareth Compton failed to heed this and ultimately his political career paid the price. Admittedly anyone who wants to suggest publicly the stoning of another individual is asking for trouble!

The stories above demonstrate that the use of social media is quickly being absorbed into our culture. It is no longer seen as the ‘next thing’ but has arrived. Discussions have moved on from whether it can or should be used at all to discussions about the actual content it covers. In other words, the tool has stopped being the point of interest and whether it’s court cases, mayoral elections or any other serious subject this has to be a good thing!

Round 3 brings The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho from 2001 and The Naked Presenter by Garr Reynolds. Generally I don’t go in for the spiritual category that Coelho tends to fall into. This was the first of his books I read and although I have read a few more in the last 10 years I can’t say they are a ‘must read’.

Coelho wrote (in The Zahir) about the idea of a ‘favour’ bank, which seemed to me at the time, reducing good Khama to a clinical give and take transaction. Then or now this is not a view I subscribe to. In a belligerent nod to my accounting background I’ve always felt that favours should be a one sided transaction. This is one of those rare transactions with only a debit. This of course creates an imbalance, or in accounting terms an unbalanced transaction which I find ironic. Isn’t Khama all about balance?

Nonetheless The Alchemist is a good story and recommended. It is a good story, or storytelling to be more precise which took me to Garr Reynolds. He has been one of my go-to guys in terms of how to give presentations and deliver pitches ever since I borrowed a friend’s copy of Presentation Zen. In The Naked Presenter he suggests the idea that you should throw away the slides completely and, to paraphrase, tell the story. I do this in class sometimes. Too many students focus on copying down exactly what I put on my slides. If I have no slides then they are forced to pay attention to me. At least that’s the theory!

Click on any of the book covers above to be taken to the book on LibraryThing.

You can find both Paulo Coelho and Garr Reynolds on twitter by clicking on their names.

In 2001 I started the year by reading The Horizontal Instrument by Christopher Wilkins. This is a wonderful novel about a man who looses his wife to a slow disease which takes her mind before it takes her body. The man decides to honour her memory by building a perfectly accurate timepiece. In 2011 the first book of the year was The Big Burn by Timothy Egan. This is the story of the biggest forest fire in American history and how with the help of Teddy Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot it laid the foundation for much of 20^th Century American conservation and environmentalism.

In 2001 I was interested in, still am actually, time pieces, specifically wristwatches. I can’t remember how I found this wonderful little novel by Wilkins but it was a great start to the year. The Big Burn came on to my reading list after scanning through book reviews in the New York Times. This, I hasten to add, is not something I do overly often, but on reflection think I should! I do receive a weekly email newsletter from the newspaper, however as with many emails, finding time to read them doesn’t always happen.

Next up then in my reflection on 2001/2011 personal reading habits is “The Clock of the Long Now” by Stewart Brand from 2001 and “Bird Cloud: A Memoir” by Annie Proulx. The former about a special clock which will last 10,000 years and the latter about the trials and tribulations of building your own home. I don’t remember much of the Brand book, other than it scratched an itch I had at the time on reading books about clocks, watches etc. I did notice the subject of this book come up on DarrenBarefoot.com earlier this year which was fun to see.

Bird Cloud seem to connect someone who I knew was an accomplished writer, the author Annie Proulx, with a more current past time of mine, bird watching. There was too little actual bird stuff in the Proulx book, although when it did come up it was written beautifully! I should mention now before I get too far into the year a little about my approach to selecting books to read. In simple terms I refuse to have a plan and go from one thing to another for any reason. Sometimes there is a theme to a series of books I am reading, but half the time I couldn’t tell you what that theme was! As a result, writing these posts is as much a journey of discovery for me as it is for my dear reader. More in the next post!

p.s. click on any of the book covers above to be taken to the book on LibraryThing.

It’s the end of another year and with this post, hopefully the end of a gap in my writing. It is perhaps fitting then that I talk not about writing but reading. It turns out that in terms of my own reading habits, 2011 was not a vintage year. In fact it was the worst year since 2001, which is pretty close to when I started keeping official records. I am of course talking about the number of books I have read this year.

The year 2001 was the first full year I started keeping note of what I read after realizing in the second half of 2000 that I wasn’t reading enough. In 2001 I managed to read a total of 15 books. Don’t get me wrong, back then I did read magazines etc but  these 15 books I read I choose just because I wanted to not because I had to! This exceeded my self imposed goal of one book per month. I was pleased with myself.

Fast forward to 2011 and I am not pleased. I could dress it up and say that I have maintained an average exceeding 15 every year for the last decade, but that won’t do! It’s a miserable achievement which has only one redeeming aspect. It should be easy to beat in 2012!So what did I actually manage to read in 2011? Well as the numbers match up I thought it would be fun to compare 2001 and 2011 side by side. My intention is to do a little mini-series of blog posts which present a then and now of my reading habits. As a teaser I will say that there is one author who appears in both lists. An author who is Canadian!

As to the rest I encourage you to check back in the days ahead!

I will finish and publish this blog post using on WordPress. Wordtwit will publish this to my twitter stream which thanks to Twitter Widget Pro will appear back in the sidebar of my blog. Thanks to Networked Blogs the post will also appear on my Facebook page where people can comment and/or like the post. Thanks to my Feedburner RSS feed it will also appear in Google Reader for all those people who follow me there. Additionally my twitter account is connected to my LinkedIn account so the tweet announcing the post will also appear there. All of this happens once I finish writing and hit publish. I can also add Google Plus to the mix and give readers the opportunity to +1 what I’ve written.

Most of this is automatic. What isn’t automatic is writing the post in the first place! I can be as clever and complicated as I want in the use of various platforms, widgets and add-ins. I can link, embed, reference and enable all sorts of wonderful distractions, but it all comes back to something very simple. Writing.

It’s easy to get distracted by what happens behind the scenes to make something I write available to my reader(s). I still have some geeky problems I’d like to sort out, specifically around canonical URLS and the impact it has on finding my ramblings efficiently with Google (not on the Indulgency Pattern but over here). But these are a distraction in their own right. As are the various bits and pieces around web-hosting, wordpress themes and ftp.

Sitting out on the deck in the late evening sunshine, listening to the birds with a glass of wine in hand and I can finally think about what to write. Sometimes it comes out of the blue like a demon possessed and I can barely wait to get back in the house and in front of the keyboard. Other times it’s more of a production.

It’s funny how the name ‘Dawn’ seems normal, but her etymological siblings are not. For example, the only people I can think of called ‘Sunset’ are found in the colourful literature of sixties hippy culture. ‘Twilight’ is probably there too and clearly a free-spirit. Mind you, if she were my daughter I would have to give her a middle name beginning with Z.

My wife feels she is more of an ‘Elevenses’ kind of girl, although to me the name looks more like it belongs to one of Frodo’s sisters. Thinking about this further, the name ‘Noon’ has a distinctly oriental feel to it with the obvious pun that ‘High Noon’ must be a taller relative of Eastern origin.

That brings me to the refined English sound of little known musical artiste, i.e. rapper known as ‘Afternoon T.’ Hanging out where Afternoon T. practices his art is the sultry temptress known as ‘Dusk.’ There is also the delicious prospect of Afternoon T. performing a duet with Twilight Z (it works better in American)!

Outside of this of course there’s always ‘Sunshine’ and ‘Rain’ – but that’s just a cheap weather metaphor and very silly!

The other day I read about a friend who decided to build himself a mandolin this summer. A fascinating project; which reminded me of my own little project that has been permeating around my head for a while.

Over the last few years I have found myself shifting from the traditional corporate career path of a designated accountant and moving towards spending more time relating to various forms of adult learning. As I write, I have spent the last year coaching and mentoring university students in their entrepreneurial endeavors. This is something I continue to find rewarding, inspiring and enjoyable and hope this shift will continue to evolve.

Working at a University has also ignited a desire to teach. Over the past few years, I have given a number of workshops around presenting and storytelling. How you communicate your idea, your business or your own personal story has become something I love exploring. Last semester I had the opportunity to teach a class for the first time. I had taken the occasional class in the past, but this time I was the instructor with all the responsibility for marking papers and giving grades! Another area I hope will continue to develop for me.

Outside of this I have continued to volunteer as a mentor and judge in a new ventures competition. This is about to kick off again for this year and is something I still look forward to.

So, I have this mix of sharing my knowledge with others and wanting to learn more myself. In a way what I seek is to know even less than I do now. As the old proverb goes, the more I learn the more I realize there is to learn. So the less I know the more I’ve learned! The question is: Where do I head now?

I want more education. I have an undergraduate degree and a professional accounting designation. About the only thing I am sure I don’t want is a MBA. At least not in the traditional sense. I do want some form of postgraduate study, but I want to pursue this on my terms. In essence these terms are I want to choose what I study and how and where I do it.

Recently I have become aware of two trends which I believe will have an impact on my future learning. One of these is the increase in online education available. The Internet contains a wealth of education resources, both free and paid. The second trend is called Open Learning. I admit I am not fully up to speed with this yet, but it seems to be exactly what I am talking about in terms of what I want to do. I want to increase my knowledge without having to go to one specific building.

This post is my attempt at a starting point. It expresses how I feel right now and some of the things on my mind. I don’t know the direction I will take, the only thing I do know is that I am committed to the journey. This will be my own Summer, or school, project. My own personal mandolin.

The Streets of San Francisco …
An Indulgency Pattern Production …

Starring…
RightAntler

Special Guest Star …
LeftAntler

Also Starring
Members of the Public

Tonight’s Episode
Arrival

Every since I was a kid the Streets of San Francisco have been in my mind. The title sequence above is all I remember and the star with the big nose: Karl Malden. It turns out Karl was quite the man, a huge line of film credits in a long life that sadly ended age 97 only a few years ago. It turns out that he, together with his daughter, wrote his autobiography – something I will be adding to my reading list!

So why the fuss? Well it turns out this is our first trip to San Francisco proper. A few years ago we did a road trip from Vancouver and got as far as the Golden Gate Bridge. We drove across the span on Boxing Day but time prevented us from going any further and we immediately turned around. It was a beautiful day and all I can say is that in my experience the weather is beautiful here!

This time we flew with Alaska Air which was a good experience, helped by an absence of fuss and in flight wi-fi. After landing we headed for the Bart where I got the first sense of how big the city is. I rather suspect my next trip on the Canada Line in Vancouver will feel more like taking a toy train at Beaulieu or some such equivalent!

Nether the less we did seem to sit in the station for a while with the doors closed. It didn’t help that there was a growing crowd on the platform looking in at us. When the doors opened again the crowd joined us including a young couple pushing an airport kart with two huge boxes loaded on. Again we waited.

Were we on the right train? Why wasn’t it moving? A police officer had the answer. He came into the carriage with his eyes focused on the couple with the boxes. It turns out that there are signs all over the airport saying that the airport karts can not be taken from the airport – it is considered theft. The officer made the point he did not want to write a ticket for that. He also added that he had held the train in the station because of this couple and that all the other passengers on the train were imprisoned because of them! Our first San Francisco drama queen?

The couple were contrite and eventually got off the train (they had to take the kart back). The officer was kind enough to point out that once they and the kart was off the train he would release it from the station, the couple might want to take their boxes off the train sans kart as well. Whilst all of this was happening a fellow passenger was on her cellphone. It sounded like a cross between a realtime roving reporter and someone calling a hockey game as each shot, hit and penalty played out not 6 feet from where she sat.

Naturally this caused a lot of grinning and amusement amongst the other passengers that served us all well as it helped ease the memory of how long we’d been sitting there!

The Bart is rapid and soon enough we were deposited on The Streets of San Francisco. Tune in to tomorrow’s exciting episode There’s a Woodpecker in our room!

I bought a pack of rather splendid looking bacon. I cut open the packet and realized the individual pieces were too long for oven dish I wanted to use. Still nothing as trivial gets in the way of a bacon sandwich and I loaded up the dish. Safely under way, I turned my attention to the other elements of the sandwich: the sandwich bits.

I opened a new loaf of interesting looking bread and a new stick of butter. Despite being out of the fridge all day the butter was still a bit hard. So I worked it slowly onto the four slices I needed for the two sandwiches I was making. That done I grabbed the obligatory HP Sauce and as usual the first squirt delivered nothing. The second squirt of course delivered more sauce than I wanted for the entire four slices!

Having dealt with the sauce I decided to wash out the sink with the handy spray thingy. I had of course forgotten that this is a somewhat random experience. On this occasion I managed to spray water all over the four slices of bread I had carefully prepared. So I reached for the paper towels (kitchen roll to me!) to mop up the water. This was when I realized I had the only brand of paper towels which repelled water and didn’t soak it up!

The good news is the sandwiches were ultimately excellent. However just to add insult to injury I struggled through the completely useless auto-correct feature of my iPad. Just another Saturday night …

Is five years long enough to get nostalgic?

We arrived in Canada in the summer of 2005. As soon as we arrived I started taking snaps of everyday things which, as a new immigrant, struck me as different or odd. I attempted to capture my new city, even country before, as I anticipated, my eyes went native.

Each photo would get posted on this blog (or at least the predecessor to it) with the help of the then still relatively new flickr together with a very short narrative on why I’d picked the photo. In all there were over 100 of these posts over the next year or so, the time between each one taking longer and longer as I gradually went native.

In the last week or so I have started playing with a great iPhone app called instagram. This allows me to not only take a picture but also ‘treat’ it before posting it online. I can even post it automatically to Facebook, twitter ( which I didn’t do five years ago) and even flickr, something of a workflow reversal!

It’s a fun app which you can, in the social media approved language, like, follow and comment on yours and your friends instagram photo streams. I’m enjoying taking snaps again and adding an even briefer commentary and location. This last one location, is super cool as five years ago I found that frequently even a day later I couldn’t remember where I’d taken a particular shot!

Add to this that the iPhone camera is pretty much the same quality as my pocket camera and I’m feeling a little nostalgic!

Examples of my Moosehat moose-ings five years ago are below:
Moosehat’s Vancouver Moose-ings Part 102

To view my instagram feed look for rightantler in the iPhone app!

So I’ve moved (‘we’ actually!) to Bowen Island. The last place simply didn’t work out and that’s enough said. Now it’s Island life for us, be it for me, tethered to the mainland.

Tethered is a bit strong as I’m not sure thinking of BC Ferries as a leash is neither fair or accurate. After all, I get to choose when I go for a walk!

A couple of weeks in I am settling into my commute. For instance the little Island Community bus, with the same drivers who greet adults and children alike by first names (as a newby I’ve not quite reached this status yet!).

Commuting has always been a solitary affair. Everyone in their own little world, something reinforced by the countless ipod earplugs. Not for me though. I find myself bumping into people, looking to see who I recognize and even, talking to strangers!

It’s all very different and I haven’t even mentioned the dolphins! In the excitement and drama of the last few months finding time to write has been hard. As I sit on the ferry I realize that when work allows, I have the perfect solution.

Featuring Chickens, a Great Horned Owl, American Kestrel, and an undisclosed number of Snow Geese!

A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of attending the first annual Edison Bird Festival in Washington State.

I’m already looking forward to next year!

or is he my boss?

Something different this week. The following three minute recording was made outside our front door. In the trees the crows were going insane. This was not the normal shouting we hear, something was clearly upsetting them. The recording starts almost ten minutes after the commotion began. If you listen carefully you can hear the sound of a second bird, possibly an owl, hawk or eagle? Any suggestions would be very welcome! Click the link below to hear the recording.

What are the crows attacking?

Bus, ferry, bus, Skytrain, plane… And so my day started. At the crack of sparrow’s chirp. If everything went according to plan, I would be on a flight to Toronto before I’ve normally finished my first cup of coffee.

Leaving the house, I was greeted by a massive crowd. Imagine waking up and finding yourself in the middle of a big city at the busiest time of the day:

Commuters commuting, tourists touring, children being children.
Buses thrumming, trucks hissing, horns sounding.

Or, rounding a street corner and finding yourself amidst the excitement and joyous celebration after a victorious hockey game.

This is the first thing that came into my sleepy mind when I stepped outside my front door this morning. However, I live on a small island, in a forest. Beside a stream. But, the noise level was deafening! The birds were awake!

Robins greeting, warblers singing, crows just being crows.
Calling, tweeting, buzzing, squawking, shouting.

It really sounded like I had walked into a bird metropolis. A community of twitterers tweeting more energetically, more urgently, more frequently than millions of connected humans on a lazy Friday afternoon in the office before a long weekend.

It was simply wonderful.

The second thing that came to mind was my Dad. He loved the mornings. The early mornings. He used to joke it was a lot more peaceful with no-one around! What I realize of course is that was a lie. Be it a white one. There was plenty going on. There were birds, yes; also rabbits, foxes, deer, sheep and cows – to name but a few. Many of those creatures were as busy as any late overpaid executive rushing to a meeting.

Dad would enjoy the ‘silence’ as he drove the country lanes that eventually took him to market in the big city. Today, I too would end up in the big city. But long before that I enjoyed a cacophony of birdsong in the fresh air and twilight as I waited for the first bus.

It was an inspiring moment. It felt good to connect with the world around me. It felt good to connect with Dad.

The Parrots of San Francisco!! Starring cherry-headed conure … Guest Starring blue-crowned conure …Tonights Episode … I had no idea!

Had I known there were wild parrots living in San Francisco I would have made more of an effort to seek them out during a recent visit to the city. As it was they found me! Difficult to pick out in the trees they were not difficult to hear! What a wonderful noise!

First reports suggest a couple of quarantined birds escaped in the late 1980s and took up residence on Telegraph Hill in the city. By the mid 1990s the numbers were approaching 50 and today number over 300. Judging by the noise I can believe it! We overheard a taxi driver telling a fellow tourist that the residents of the adjacent tower block wanted the parrots all shot but I can find no reference to this online.

Judging by the signs under the trees it is clear that people used to feed the parrots (one lady was still attempting to do so). Signs indicated that it is some kind of Federal, City or park misdemeanor to feed the birds. Doubtless if you get caught you will be shipped to Guantanamo Bay or something (where I suspect there may be even more parrots!). Seriously though you can hear what it sounds like in the video below, although spotting an actual parrot is not so easy!

If I ever live in San Francisco I think I will investigate moving to the same condo block! In the meantime there is a Documentary film called The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill which I have added to my watch list.