Technolust: Garmin Forerunner 405

I’ve been a very bad runner of late. Brooke and I started running to keep fit back in 2003, and for the first few years, I was motivated. One of the tools that helped me was a great heart-rate monitor watch I bought from Sports Instruments. That watch is now on its last legs, and it’s time for some new gadgetry to help get me back on track, so to speak.

I’d always loved the Garmin Forerunner series of GPS-enabled watches, but they were enormous and ugly, and often didn’t work in the city, where tall buildings interfered with their ability to pick up a signal. I kept telling myself that when they got smaller and more capable, I’d pick one up. I believe that day is now at hand. Behold the Forerunner 405:

Garmin Forerunner 405

This thing will do everything: track distance, time, map routes, even heart-rate (on one model). Best of all, it can upload its data to the web, where you can analyze it or compare yourself with others on Garmin’s new Connect community.

This is exactly the sort of tech geekery that gets me excited and motivated to exercise more. There are only two notes of caution here. One is that there won’t be any Mac support for the 405 until November 2008. The other is that Apple has long been rumoured to be working on a much fuller implementation of the Nike + iPod kit. While it’s doubtful that Apple could build something as sophisticated as the Forerunner (though it would play music!), I might still try to wait a while. Although I’m sure I could use Windows under Parallels for a few months to sync my data with my iMac, there could be some potential hiccups.

Don’t be surprised if I go out and buy one this weekend, though!

CaseCamp 7 Report

Tonight, I attended CaseCamp for the first time. Inspired by the original BarCamp “unconference,” CaseCamp is a marketing event where people present case studies and lessons learned, and the crowd can comment and ask questions. Pioneered right here in Toronto in 2006 by Eli Singer, the event is now in its seventh iteration, and has been wildly successful. Perhaps it’s become a victim of its own success.

Before I continue, I want to recognize all the hard work done by Eli and his group of volunteers and sponsors. But now that I’ve made that disclaimer, I’d have to say that I came away slightly disappointed this evening. Part of it is my own fault. Today was a very long day for me. I was up at 6:00am to travel to a financial services conference being held in the far northeast of the city. My journey by transit was an hour each way. I was only able to attend half the day because I had to get back to my office for a 90-minute conference call with a “social media platform” (ie. blog software) vendor, whose sales representative seemed incredibly unprepared, not to mention tacitly unconvinced by the product he was selling. So as I headed over to Circa night club, I was already feeling pretty exhausted. Nevertheless, navigating a crowd of close to 500 people in a night club setting where the music was turned way up was not conducive to any kind of networking for me. Call me old and crotchety, I don’t care.

The actual case studies were enjoyable, and I took some notes that I think will be useful. But the large setting (with haphazardly arranged plastic patio chairs) made it difficult to find a seat. And the size of the crowd made it difficult to hear all the questions. Overall, I’d divide my complaint into two:

  1. The venue was unsuitable: A night club might seem like a “cool” place to hold a business function, but not if the music drowns out attempts at conversation. As well, their inexperience putting on “conference” type events showed, with poorly-arranged seating.
  2. There were simply too many people: Close to 500 people is unmanageable for this type of event. Even had I been a bit less tired, I still don’t think I could have managed to introduce myself to many people in a crowd of that size. I recognized about a dozen names on the wiki signup page, and thought I’d have no trouble finding some people I knew. I was wrong.

I was hoping that CaseCamp would be similar to another “unconference” event that I attend as often as I can, Third Tuesday. Though more narrowly focused on public relations practitioners, the events (at least in Toronto) are held at a pub with a function room. The volume of music is much lower, the vibe is more laid back, and you actually sit around tables to listen to speakers. In this way, you can introduce yourself to the people around you first, and continue the conversations there afterward. Most importantly, the number of people hasn’t (so far) exceeded 100. I believe that this is a key issue. While online social networks can scale significantly, in the real world this isn’t possible. Groups larger than 100-150 become difficult to navigate. I certainly felt that way tonight.

What I’d like to see for the next CaseCamp is a “soft” cap of 150 attendees. After that, another group should be created and another venue found for the next 150. In this way, there is value for everyone. If that means featuring different cases at each, then so be it. Presenters could be rotated for the next event if necessary. As well, this makes finding venues a bit easier and certainly less expensive.

Part of tonight’s CaseCamp schedule was the afterparty, in which 5 DJs would spin tunes for the campers to dance to after all the case studies had been presented. People were invited to join from a few other events taking place tonight, such as StartupCamp and CopyCamp. I’m glad that the organizers extended the invitation to these others, and I’m sure they’re leveraging the very expensive rental of Circa night club, but honestly, the last thing I want to do at 9:00pm on a Tuesday night is dance, especially after a 15-hour day.

In conclusion, I think the exploding popularity of the event has even caught the organizers by surprise, and I’m sure that some of these thoughts might be crossing their minds as well. I very much enjoy the concept of CaseCamp and will look forward to seeing what the next one looks like. For any of you who were there tonight, first of all, sorry we didn’t get to talk! Secondly, what are some of your impressions of the evening?

RSS Woes

UPDATE: All fixed now. Pay no mind.

My friend Neil just let me know that my RSS feed is, in his parlance, “borked.” The problem is that it seems to have happened just over a month ago, at the confluence of a few different events. First, I added the Disqus plugin, changing my entire commenting system. Second, I upgraded to WordPress 2.5. And last, but not least, I was the target of a Distributed Denial of Service attack, seemingly as part of a strange hacker SEO contest.

So, as brilliant as I am (!), I’m having a hard time figuring out what’s happening. The feeds all validate fine, it’s just that they’re completely empty.

My feeling is that the culprit might be the upgrade, since a few other people have experienced this over on the WordPress forums (or is that fora?). But no one seems to have a definitive answer as to how to fix it.

Any suggestions? Of course, anyone subscribed to my feed won’t actually see this, but I’m hoping there are at least a few of you still coming to look at the pretty pictures.

Why Can’t Working Be More Like Dating?

I’ve been thinking about the wonderful world of work again, and the more I think about the way we “get” our jobs, the more bizarre it seems. We go to a meeting where someone asks us about our skills and about what other jobs we’ve had, and then, based on that, and more than likely also on how we look, dress, smell and shake hands, they hire us. Or they don’t. It’s akin to getting married after the first date.

I’m worried that making that sort of commitment after such a one-sided and inadequate evaluation is hurting both parties. Although the good interviewers encourage you to ask questions about the company during your interview, most of us aren’t as well-prepared as we might be. How do you ask questions about a place you’ve just seen for the first time? Also, most people aren’t that comfortable asking about things like what operating system do they have to use, or whether they can ever work from home, or take a “sick” day when they’re not sick. Many people are even too afraid to ask about salary and benefits, desperately hoping that the interviewer will volunteer that information. The good ones do, but that doesn’t mean they can anticipate the other questions you might have. Like the ones that won’t pop into your head until you’ve been working there for six months.

Why can’t working be more like dating? Why can’t there be a process of gradually getting to know each other to decide whether you like each other, and only then to commit?

I’ve been a big fan of something called “informational interviewing” for many years now. Basically, it’s just a fancy name for contacting someone at a company you’re interested in and taking them out for lunch, coffee or a beer. One of my big discoveries is that there are all kinds of jobs in all kinds of interesting companies out there, but you’d never read about them in the want ads. Some of these jobs have strange titles, or none at all. Some of the jobs don’t even exist yet.

Something great happens when two people meet on an equal footing in a non-threatening space. Even better if some intoxicants are involved (but not too many!). These are NOT job interviews; they’re more like job dates. You’re not even required to meet with the person actually capable of hiring. Just someone who can be honest about where they work, about what they and their company do, and about what it feels like to be there for eight (or more) hours a day.

Region 2 Bargains Arrive

It figures that I received a package from Amazon UK today with a whole bunch of Region 2 DVDs that I bought on sale. You see, I’m in the thick of HotDocs, reviewing a bunch of films over at my film blog Toronto Screen Shots. Nevertheless, I can’t wait to check these out over the next few weeks:

If that weren’t enough, a screener for Julian Schnabel’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly arrived this week, too, which I’ve been eager to see. Brooke is reading the book right now and raving about it.

I think the sale might be on for a while yet, especially on the Artificial Eye releases. If you have a region-free DVD player, these are some great deals.