Monday, January 31, 2011

Portlandia

Have you seen the new comedy series, Portlandia? From the show's web site, they say this: "PORTLANDIA's inhabitants include but are not limited to: the owners of a feminist book store; a militant bike messenger; an artsy couple who attach cut-outs of birds to everything ("put a bird on it!"); an organic farmer who turns out to be a cult leader; an adult hide and seek league; and a punk rock couple negotiating a "safe word" to help govern their love life."

The show is a parody of Portland, Oregon, the state's most populace city. The parody is not far from the truth. I arrived in Portland on Saturday and spent two days with Adam and Annie Fischler. Adam was a former student of mine; he graduated with a master's degree in Instructional Systems Technology (IST) from Indiana University, and for many years has done work in the area of human computer interaction design and research. In addition, Adam engages in a variety of woodworking and crafts projects; he's one of the most creative guys I know -- with a wonderful, dry sense of humor. Elizabeth Boling (former IST Department Chair and now Associate Dean for Graduate Studies in the School of Education), too, is a good friend and former professor of Adam's (they share a fondness for information architecture books). Elizabeth and I attended Adam and Annie's wedding last fall, and some years ago we spent time with Adam in his parents' beach house on the Oregon coast. Annie recently received her doctorate in English and her specialty is writing and rhetoric. Both are perfectly suited for one another.

On Saturday we toured a part of the city while hunting down a restaurant for dinner; in the end we chose not to wait in line anywhere and instead ordered a delicious pepperoni, basil, and arugula pizza and Caesar salad to take home while we watched a movie on Adam's large-screen set-up: "Man on Wire" is the film documentary of Phillipe Petit, who on August 7, 1974, walked on an illegally erected high wire secretly strung between New York's twin towers.

The following day, Sunday, Adam and I shared pastries at a local bakery and then we hiked in a state park. It was great fun walking among the moss-covered trees while we hypothesized the reasons for the popular rise of social networking systems (we discussed the evolution of language systems from ape communities as well as the economic complexities and uncertainties of our current day).

Every Sunday, Adam, Annie, and a small group of friends and family (Adam's sister and niece) gather for dinner at one of the participant's homes. Last night it was at their home and I was their guest. They cooked a wonderful Indian chili and a special slaw, complete with cornbread; it was delicious. After the guests left we watched the first episode of Downton Abbey, a PBS Masterpiece series, suggested by Justin Donaldson; I think we're now hooked!

This morning Adam and I had breakfast at Kettleman Bagels, and then we parted. Adam is a close friend -- someone who understands and lives a "big rocks" life.

Tonight I stayed in Olympia, Washington, the capitol of Washington. Tomorrow I will drive the short distance to Seattle and conclude my three week journey from Bloomington, Indiana.

The trip has both relaxed me, given me the opportunity to reconnect with past friends and students, and allowed me to mentally prepare for the tasks ahead -- the writing of a book on design pedagogy and the development of Glerb with Anoo and Vamshi. I can't wait.

And I Thought "Shasta" was Soda Pop

From San Francisco I traveled North, driving through a dense wintertime fog. I was hoping to see the great redwood forests, but I-5 was too far from the coast so I missed this part of the country. Nevertheless, at California's northern border, a spectacular view awaited me -- 14,179-foot Mount Shasta, the second highest volcano in the continental United States. Its snow-covered peak is spectacular and I could see it more than 100 miles away as I drove toward the mountain on I-5. The interstate ride included some interesting winding climbs and and 6% declines, viewing pine trees (mostly Douglas Fir) as far as the eye could see in the foothills. I knew I was no longer in "my part of the country" as every other truck was carrying huge logs to the mills.

My destination was Ashland, Oregon, about 15 miles north of the border. It's a beautiful town and famous for the Oregon Shakespearean Festival. That night I stayed in a local hotel and dined in a lively pub, enjoying a great burger and fries. What struck me immediately about the town were the people. Such a difference from the "beautiful people" of southern California, the Oregonians reminded me more of the type of people you see at the Bloomington Farmer's Market on a Saturday morning -- just nice, easy-going folk, socially and environmentally minded. You definitely recycle in Oregon!

The next morning I found a bagel shop that served "hiker bagels," the equivalent of an "everyseed" at Bloomington Bagel Company. My next stop was Corvallis, OR, but first I needed to finish a report for IU on my iPad experience last semester.

Corvallis is the home of Oregon State University. It's a quiet town, not unlike Bloomington, with an abundance of local brew pubs. Corvallis also is home for Justin and Liz Donaldson (and Ginger, their dog); unfortunately, Liz was out-of-town on business, so it was just Justin, Ginger, and me.

Justin recently graduated from Indiana University with his Ph.D. in Informatics -- the first doctorate achieved in IU's HCI (human computer interaction) Program, but he now lives and works in Corvallis. We had a lot of fun talking about my new start-up, Glerb, and speculating how events might unfold over the coming months. Justin treated me to an amazing restaurant, Big River. It's a converted warehouse serving savory food and drink. I had my first beer in over 30 years -- a dark stout. I drank half of it and then returned to my usual Diet Coke. :) The next morning we had breakfast at a local bakery and then I headed to Portland.

I just passed the 4,000 mile mark on my journey from Bloomington.

Thursday, January 27, 2011

Rachel Maddow, 2007 HCI/d IU Graduate

So when you're sleeping in strange beds every night on a three-week road trip, you sometimes have strange dreams. My latest dream is that I was talking to Rachel Maddow about her experience in the human computer interaction design program at IU -- what worked for her during the program and how it might be improved given her experience "in the business." We had a great conversation; it all made sense in dream land, including some of her suggestions for improvement. And then I woke up! [For the record, Rachel has a B.A. from Stanford University and a Doctor of Philosophy from Oxford University. She's the host of the Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC.]

Back to reality. I've been in the San Francisco Bay area for the last two days -- having a Glerb business meeting at Google Ventures and catching up with old friends and former students. I've been hosted by Christian Beck and his wife Angie in their beautiful home in Novato (just north of the city, across the Golden Gate Bridge). They have a beautiful son, Milo (almost ready to walk!), two cats and a dog; I got along with everyone. Yesterday I visited Christian's office at Autodesk and he showed me some of the detailed and highly skilled design work he is doing.

Later in the day I visited with Dane Petersen at Adaptive Path, a super cool interactive design company. And then we met again for dinner with Matt Snyder (Adobe) who happened to be in town interviewing some customers. We had a lot of fun talking about design and the questions I "asked" Rachel Maddow! Much of these conversations throughout the day confirmed the design of my new course that I'll be offering in Fall 2011 (I590: Rapid Interaction Practice); more about this later.

Again it's so good to see that former students are doing very well in their careers. Dane said that his training at IU was for "a job that will likely exist in five years." By this he meant that the typical business world is not ready for high-end experience design or even deep design thinking. Nevertheless, Dane, Matt, and Christian agreed that their IU training was excellent and important. I urged them to think of themselves as design evangelists; they can make slow but important change at this stage in their careers. "Five years from now" will happen for them soon enough!

My meeting with David Krane at Google Ventures was very good. David has been providing great guidance for getting Glerb off the ground and he has networked us into valuable contacts in Seattle and the Bay area. Vamshi Reddy, one of three Glerb co-founders, was able to join the meeting via phone, and it was helpful for David to hear about his background (as well as Anoo Padte's, our third co-founder). We hope to present David and others with our business plan soon.

I've traveled 3,300 miles so far. Next stop: Ashland, Oregon.

Sunday, January 23, 2011

Sustainable Friendships

Over the last five days as I've traveled from the Grand Canyon to Tempe, AZ to Phoenix, AZ to Los Angeles, CA, and to Santa Monica, CA. In Tempe I spent the night with Betz and Harold Frederick; they were students of mine many years ago at the University of Illinois; they are both incredible math educators and we talked non-stop about the state of education today, the problems with teaching and learning math (many teachers don't understand math), and how math might be taught through Glerb. Betz urged me to develop conceptual understanding through Glerb lessons, that it had to be more than process practice. They shared a number of important documents, but the two most important ones were the new national standards in math and an important paper by one of Harold's favorite math educators. It has been more than 20 years since I last saw Betz and Harold; at that time they were getting their PhDs from the University of Illinois. Now I was seeing them in the later years of their career. All of our lives have undergone a lot of change, yet we continue to share a deep interest in teaching and learning. Within the year we want to reconnect again--this time in Vegas!

The next day I met up with Nancy Schwartz and stayed at her home for two nights. The drive from Tempe to Phoenix is literally a few miles (Tempe is like a suburb of Phoenix, although I'm sure they don't see it that way!).  I first met Nancy in the early '90s at Mr. D's (a supermarket) salad bar in Bloomington. We engaged in some small talk and then I saw her again at the check-out lane where we talked again; she said she was beginning graduate school in a few days and I wished her well. To her surprise (and mine), she showed up in the orientation of incoming master's students in Instructional Systems Technology (IST) where I was a professor. To this day we laugh about our first encounter. Nancy went on to earn in a PhD and over the years we worked on several projects together, and she lectured in my human-computer interaction (HCI) design class for many years on the topic of HCI and dance (Nancy is a dancer too!). But eventually Nancy wanted to return to her first love--elementary school teaching, and she did so by returning to the place where she first taught many years ago, Phoenix, Arizona. Nancy moved from Bloomington to Phoenix about a year ago and bought a beautiful home nestled into the foot of a mountain. It was great to catch up with her, schmooze, laugh, and enjoy good food. But most of all, it was good to see Nancy settled and independently successful, doing something she loved--teaching algebra to 8th graders; they're lucky to have her as their teacher.

While in Phoenix, I met up with a former secretary of mine, Joan Phebus and her son John. Joan is retired now, and John is a lawyer. We worked together for many years at the Computer-based Educational Research Lab (CERL) at the University of Illinois where I directed the PLATO Education Group for many years. We recounted stories of the past and laughed throughout lunch. It was great!

On Thursday morning I left Phoenix and drove to LA. It was amazing being in 75 degree and sunny weather that week, and the drive was very nice. As I entered California, I passed the Joshua Tree National Forest and then several miles of windmills nestled in the foothills of the mountains (near Palm Springs). I spent the night with Nina (who looks like Glenn Close!) and Ed Feinstein, parents of Rafi, an undergraduate student in my I300 and I441 classes. It was a bit strange sleeping in Rafi's bedroom, but Rabbis Nina and Ed (yes, they're both rabbis) were very hospitable and filled me with stories of becoming the second female rabbi and running a major synagogue in LA.

My next was Santa Monica to spend a couple of fun-filled days with my former student and good friend Joel Miller. I first met Joel in 1988 at the University of Illinois; he worked in my group at PLATO and then we kept in close contact over the years. Joel worked at Lilly and then was hired by Amgen in California, and has lived in Santa Monica for almost five years. We had lots of fun including seeing the ocean in Malibu and eating chocolate cupcakes and skim milk! Last night we had dinner at an amazing and sexily elegant restaurant, Sur, followed by a tour through Micky's and The Abbey, both wonderful bars. Joel is great and we continue to be life-long friends.

This morning I continue my journey to Ojai, CA (pronounced "Oh-high") to meet up with my Glerb partners, Anoo and Vamshi; they're vacationing there for a couple of months before returning to Seattle the same time I get there. We'll be meeting with a group of teachers this afternoon to get some honest feedback on our ideas.

It has been a great trip so far... renewing and creating sustainable friendships along the way.

Monday, January 17, 2011

Laughing Rocks

This morning I leave the Grand Canyon for Tempe, AZ to visit my friends Betz and Harold; Betz was a student of mine a long time ago at the University of Illinois. But in this note I want to talk about "the Canyon"--the big one, the Grand one!

I've never looked a mile down into anything (other than looking out an airplane window, and that's not the same thing). John Muir once wrote, "It seems a gigantic statement for even nature to make..." and J. B. Priestly described it as "all Beethoven's nine symphonies in stone and magic light." For me, I realized that as powerful as images can be, there's no technology that replaces the human eye and the mind's comprehension of image. To stand on the Canyon's rim and to look inside -- seeing the layers of depth, each connecting further down, until you think you've reached the bottom but there's still more to go -- that is a visual experience that I've not seen replicated in other media. I'm looking at something that was carved by a retreating ice age two million years ago, exposing rocks that are 200 million to two billion years old!

What have these rocks seen? If they could talk back to us, what would they say? I've been thinking about social networking systems of late. All the chatter, self-image making, and cultural flimflam seem so meaningless at times. But what if we could converse with those that are not here or listen to those objects that we experience now but have been in existence before our time? What if the rocks could speak, what would they say to us? I was imagining the design of an interactive system that could tutor or guide our perceptions -- that past wisdom might speak to the present and even laugh at our self-absorbed ways. Might we draw perspective from a greater context than the day-to-day urgent (and yet unimportant) events of our lives? I thought of these things as I sat on the edge of the "grand abyss." I wondered. I listened.

In 1991 I saw a movie that I enjoyed very much at the time -- "Grand Canyon." You can look it up to learn about the movie, but I've always remembered one scene. One of the characters, Simon, was talking to his buddy and asking him if he ever visited the Grand Canyon. Simon said about this place that I've now experienced:

"You ever been to the Grand Canyon? Its pretty, but that's not the thing of it. You can sit on the edge of that big ol' thing and those rocks... the cliffs and rocks are so old... it took so long for that thing to get like that... and it ain't done either! It happens right there while your watching it. It's happening right now as we are sitting here in this ugly town. When you sit on the edge of that thing, you realize what a joke we people really are... what big heads we have thinking that what we do is gonna matter all that much... thinking that our time here means diddly to those rocks. Just a split second we have been here, the whole lot of us. That's a piece of time so small to even get a name. Those rocks are laughing at me right now, me and my worries... Yeah, it's real humorous, that Grand Canyon. It's laughing at me right now. You know what I felt like? I felt like a gnat that lands on the ass of a cow chewing his cud on the side of the road that you drive by doing 70 mph."

I leave now for Tempe, AZ driving 70 down the interstate...

Thursday, January 13, 2011

Diversity of the Land

I'm in Santa Fe, New Mexico right now -- 1.36 miles above sea level (7,200 feet). I'm staying as a guest in the home of Russ and Mary Roberts, dear friends of mine (and my children). They live in a magnificent home--a modern, Pueblo-style adobe structure, complete with huge ceiling beams and tiled floors. I'm staying in their guest house situated on a hillside that looks at a mountain range to the west and to the east; it's breathtaking at sunset. The air is pure and the oxygen is a bit thin; I've been drinking a LOT of water!

I am here for two days before moving to the Grand Canyon; it will be a time of rest and contemplation. Being 1,500 miles from Bloomington begins to engage my imagination. I don't know what will emerge, but my time alone affords me the opportunity to think of the challenges and opportunities before me.

Stay tuned!

Monday, January 10, 2011

Snowy Arkansas

It's the first night "on the road." After about 10 hours of uneventful driving, I find myself at the Hampton Inn in Forrest City, Arkansas. The roads are unusually icy here. I'm about an hour away from Little Rock and the Clinton Library; I'm really looking forward to that tomorrow.

Throughout my drive the news was filled with stories of the Tucson shooting on Saturday, and particularly the heated political "rhetoric" that we hear in the media these days. There were interesting conversations about mental health and firearms as well. I particularly enjoyed the conversations on POTUS radio and Pete Dominick's show in particular. We've got to do better as a country in our political discourse. What role does education play? Interaction design? These are issues for us to consider.

By the way, 20 year old Daniel Hernandez, an intern for Rep. Gabrielle Gifford, was a hero in helping to save the Congresswoman's life, providing her first aid immediately after she was shot, potentially endangering himself. But he responded with competence and action. Could any of us respond similarly?

Be well...

Marty

Sunday, January 9, 2011

On the Road: My Sabbatical Begins!

In about 8 hours I leave Bloomington, IN for Seattle, WA via car. I will travel from IN to TN, AR, OK, TX, NM, AZ, then into LA and up the coast of CA to OR and then WA, arriving in Seattle on January 31st.

On Tuesday I will visit the William J Clinton Presidential Library and Museum in Little Rock, Arkansas. Later in the week I'll be at the Grand Canyon National Park.

Along the way I will visit friends, colleagues, and former students. When I get to Seattle, I will settle down in this location. There I will live for several months. My plan is to spend some time at Adobe, Microsoft, and the University of Washington. I'll also be working with my two partners, Vamshi and Anoo, on our new company: Glerb. More about that at an appropriate time.

And I'll be writing a book on Design Pedagogy.

The car is packed. I need to get some sleep.
More later...

Marty