Category Archives: Life

Our Trip to Iceland

Rachel and I spent four days in Iceland and I wanted to share our experiences and photos.

March 19, 2014

We flew out from Boston at 7:30 PM Eastern and arrived in Keflavik around 7 AM GMT. The funniest thing we learned upon arrival was you then simply go and buy duty-free alcohol with (literally) everyone from your flight, attendants included. Everything in Iceland is amazingly expensive so you buy things as cheaply as you can.

After picking up our rental car and GPS we drove the 50 KM or so along the coast to Reykjavik. Over 2/3 of the country’s population lives in the city and even at rush hour, there’s really not much traffic.

Once we arrived at our hotel, Hótel ÓÐINSVÉ, we parked on the street and checked in. Since our room wasn’t ready at 8 in the morning we headed over to Reykjavík Roasters for a quick “pick me up” and a light morning snack. At this point Rachel suggested we grab our swim suits and find a nearby pool to do as the locals do. We walked a few blocks (everything is only a few blocks away) to Sundhöll Reykjavíkur and took a shower, changed out of our “airplane” clothes and enjoyed the hot, geothermal water.

We then grabbed lunch at one of the most famous restaurants in Iceland, Bæjarins beztu — it’s a hot dog stand with delicious lamb-based links, a sweet mustard, and crunchy fried onions. From there we spent time walking around town and visited the capital’s park and lake, Tjörnin, which includes some of the few trees in the country.

Around 2 or 3 PM we were getting really tired and napped. After a few hours of rest we walked a few blocks (again) to likely the country’s best Indian restaurant, Austur India Fjelagid. We had a great meal to end the day, all thanks to the recommendation from Andrew’s inside.co travel guide.

March 20, 2014

The next morning we woke up refreshed and without much jet lag. We gathered all our materials, maps, and guides, and planned our route around the Golden Circle. After enjoying a European-style breakfast buffet (with fresh salmon) at the restaurant connected to the hotel we hit the road.

We drove about an hour or so and arrived at þingvellir National Park. We didn’t spend a lot of time wandering here as it was quite cold and windy, but the landscape and lake was quite dramatic.

Our route then led us to Geysir, one of the first documented geysers. This is actually the site where Europeans have traveled for hundreds of years to witness the natural phenomenon. We saw the Strokkur geyser erupt a few times while we were there and is the most commonly photographed (and mis-attributed) geyser in the area. The Great Geysir only erupts a few times each day.

From there we continued on to Gullfoss, a huge waterfall and one of the most popular attractions in Iceland.

The cliffs drop down in two stages creating a dramatic view. We were able to hike up along side it and also down into the canyon a bit. It was so icy that the trails were actually quite dangerous.

By now it was a little past lunch time and we took advantage of one of the best tips we received: in the morning fill up a thermos with hot water (its free and plentiful), stop at a gas station along the highway, buy instant noodles, and have a meal on-the-go as you sightsee. It worked out perfectly. Thanks, Sonya!

We circled down south to continue the circle and arrived at Kerið, a large volcanic crater.

It was formed after lava emptied from the chamber and the earth fall in on itself. It was an interesting sight to see and think about how it was formed.

On our way back up north towards Reykjavik we noticed a lot of steam near the ocean. As we drove up and over a pass we also saw a marker for the Hellisheiði Geothermal Power Plant which had an an exhibition. We decided to take an afternoon detour and go learn about Iceland’s primary source of energy.

This is the newest and largest plants on the island and the facilities are awesome. The literature and exhibition itself was very informative, as well. I’d highly recommend this stop.

We arrived back in town and had some dinner at The Laundromat Café. We learned that, yes, even the simplest meal is going to cost us about $20 per person. On the bright side, there’s no additional tip so its worked into the cost.

That evening, around 7 PM we met up with a large tour group to head out on a northern lights trip. All said, we had about 8 large tour busses driving out into the country (actually, right back past Hellisheiði where we were just a few hours ago). The evening started out cloudy so we stayed inside at a large event hall and went outside to check every so often. The clouds started to clear and we could start to see some green cloud-like whisps over the mountains. To the naked eye the lights looked like hazy green streaks slowly moving along the sky. The weather and clouds dampened the effect but we saw them! Some folks with time-lapse cameras and tripods snagged some awesome photos. After piling back on the busses and driving back, we made it to the hotel by 1:30 AM.

March 21, 2014

Our second “full day” had a pretty fun agenda: head south, hike a glacier, visit a waterfall, then visit another waterfall and go behind it. So, we packed our warm clothes, full ski jackets and pants, long underwear, hiking boots, YakTrax, and headed out.

We drove further south along the coast where it was warmer, but a bit windy. The drive towards the mountain range was a bit ominous but the landscape was dramatic. From the ocean the cliffs shot straight up and the wind brought snow all the way down from the peaks and volcanic range high above.

On our way to the glacier, we stopped to take a picture of Eyjafjallajökull, the volcano that erupted in 2012.

We arrived at Solheimajokull and it was extremely windy. It was coming down hard and fast from the high peaks and nearly blew us over. As we got onto the glacier we hiked with YakTrax and stayed on the paths the local tour guides use to bring groups on.

Hiking on the glacier was a fun experience. It’s such a big area of ice, it was awesome to look down and realize the canyon carved out below us, all the way to the ocean, was formed by what we were standing on.

Since Solheimajokull was the furthest destination for the day, we turned back around to head back towards Reykjavik and snacked on some candy to tide us over until after our next adventures.

With just a few minutes of driving we arrived at the Skógafoss waterfall.

We hiked up the stairs (seen in the background) and stood high above the waterfall and ocean below.

On our way back down, we ducked off onto a dirt path that threw us right in front of the waterfall. It was a dramatic sight. We were so close to the front of the fall the mist formed icicles all around us.

We then stood down beneath the fall. The rocks were a sheet of ice which made walking a challenge. We, and a number of other photographers, were able to snag some excellent photos, though.

Next we drove back towards the Seljalandsfoss waterfalls. Plural because the dramatic cliffs receive water from the peaks high above and the water falls off them all over the place. This specific waterfall is unique because the cave behind it has hallowed out so far back and wide you can hike up next to it and walk behind it.

We decided to take the path less traveled and hike up beside the waterfall. The wind was so strong it literally blew the water on top of us. Instead of turning back and coming around the other side, we scurried down the rocks (again, YakTrax and waterproof jackets and pants were used here) and spent some time, quite literally, under the waterfall itself.

After laughing about the whole experience and being quite pleased with our adventure, we took a few photos, went back to the car, stripped down and drove off with our instant noodles in-hand.

As we headed back and neared Hellisheiði again, we found ourselves in instant whiteout conditions. The dramatic passes and landscape mean you can be down on a dry road with grassy landscape and then climb a few hundred feet to be socked into a windy, snowy, cloud. Having driven over Vail Pass in Colorado, it was not unfamiliar territory. Fortunately this is quite literally one of two ways back to Reykjavik and the plows were out in full force, as well.

After putting all our clothes on all the radiators, we decided to try what seemed like a kitschy restaurant called “Lebowski Bar” for dinner. This was, as you might imagine, a bar dedicated to The Big Lebowski and specialized in hamburgers and “white russians” (in milkshake form). We actually really enjoyed it (who doesn’t love The Dude?!) and thank Sonya again for the recommendation.

March 22, 2014

Our last day in Iceland was also a day of dramatic extremes: in-water massages at Blue Lagoon and trying to buy gas at a gas station. These two were the least stressful to most stressful things I think we encountered in the whole trip.

As we left our hotel and drove back towards the airport in the morning we stopped at Blue Lagoon as we had a 1 PM in-water massage.

The Blue Lagoon (Bláa lónið) is truly blue because of bacteria in the water that reflect the color blue. It was fairly surreal. The land also produces silica mud which, when applied to your face, has some sort of benefit?

After our amazing in-water massages, where we laid on a foam mattress and had a warm blanket draped over us, we showered and changed into our travel clothes. We filled up the rental car with gas (kinda, what a struggle) and dropped it off at the airport. We saw that a direct flight back to Denver was leaving around the same time so we saw what it would cost to change our flight. The answer was $2,000.

We flew back to Boston and landed around 6:30 PM. Nothing says “screw you” like going through US Border Patrol. While I understand the need for security, I wish returning to my own country was not the least welcoming and unfriendly experience when traveling.

We checked into our hotel, ordered room service, fell asleep, then woke up a few hours later and flew home to Denver the next morning at 7 AM. After throwing bags and bags of clothes in the laundry we looked back over our photos and remembered one of the best trips we’ve had together in a while.

Link

On February 22, 2014 I will be skiing on “Team Breck” at Hope on the Slopes in Breckenridge. Hope on the Slopes, Ski & Ride for a Cure is a fundraising event for skiers and boarders, held at ski areas around the country. Proceeds benefit the American Cancer Society (ACS), and support their mission to eliminate cancer as a major health problem through prevention, saving lives, and diminishing suffering from cancer through research, education, advocacy and service.

Cancer has affected my family and, more recently, a friend. If you’d like to donate towards my team please feel free to use this link.

The End of Chapter 1: my fond farewell to Crowd Favorite

15 Replies

I don’t think I’ve shared this much about “what I do for work” with many folks. So here we go…

Chapter 1: Alex King and Crowd Favorite¹

I met Alex a few times at various tech events in the area (BarCamp Denver in 2006, Startup Weekend in 2007). We both became familiar with each other through these events were able to keep in touch loosely through our respective blogs (he’s always been a big deal in the WordPress industry).

When Alex moved the Crowd Favorite office to downtown Denver I asked to grab lunch since I was also working downtown. Coincidentally, he was about a year into Crowd Favorite and looking to bring in some help as the team and projects grew. I was also looking to find a great way to get into the internet industry.

I started working for Alex in July 2008 as an account manager supporting incoming requests from existing maintenance and support clients. Given my technical background, I also started working on exploring incoming projects, gathering their requirements, preparing estimates, and handing them off to our project manager. At some point along the way it made sense for me to take on and manage some of the projects myself. At that point I realized I lived and breathed the entire consulting client lifecycle: business acquisition, through project launch, and into ongoing support and maintenance.

In 2009 Charlie Hoehn asked me to share my thoughts on ‘the power of having a personal blog’ for his book “Recession-Proof Graduate” and I wrote: “I went from a no-name blogger to a trusted source, which ultimately landed my dream job.”

What I did at Crowd Favorite was a dream job and continued to be, even as the business and my role evolved. After years of practicing “do what you think is best” and then receiving immediate feedback from Alex, I felt like I really understood how he wanted to run his business. I’ve seen some folks get frustrated with receiving constant feedback on their actions (and inactions) but I saw each email from Alex as free knowledge. I tried to absorb everything and ask clarifying questions which allowed me to grow my understanding and responsibilities. My “Alex King bootcamp” was an amazing learning experience.

Having learned Alex’s ways and preferences, the business’ and industry’s technologies and processes, and mixing in my own experiences and knowledge: there became a point in 2012 where he and I felt like I had a good handle on most of the day-to-day happenings. We hired another project manager (bringing the total to three) to help with my clients and allow me to help with more of the business and take some responsibilities off of Alex.

Unfortunately, this was put to the test earlier this year when Alex had to take a sudden medical leave. To the entire team’s credit, everything at Crowd Favorite kept humming along just fine. I’d say my involvement within the organization during this period is one of the things I’m most proud of.

Chapter 2

I was part of the Crowd Favorite team and helped (and watched) it grow, change, and improve over the past five-and-a-half years. I took on a lot of responsibility in the past year or so and cemented a lot of thoughts about providing excellent client service, successful project management, selling products and services, managing a team, and even running a business (everything from negotiating contracts to hiring employees).

But now I’m looking to do some travel, learn new things, and explore different technologies and industries.

Derek Sivers, founder of CD Baby, put it succinctly: “I realized that the bigger learning and growing challenge for me was letting go, not staying on.”

Kevin Kelly also shared an interesting perspective: “Stewart Brand, who is now 69, has been arranging his life in blocks of 5 years. Five years is what he says any project worth doing will take. From moment of inception to the last good-riddance, a book, a campaign, a new job, a start-up will take 5 years to play through.” Five years is also approximately 10,000 working hours, a milestone Malcolm Gladwell touted as being requisite to becoming “great” at anything.

In the few months after deciding to move along, I had some excellent conversations and ultimately re-discovered a software company in California that I truly believe in. Next week, I will be joining the Enterprise team at GitHub and spending time traveling to and from San Francisco (more on that later).

TTFN

This is not a sudden development. I’ve actually been documenting and handing-off my involvement and responsibilities (to identify potential gaps) and explicitly sharing tacit knowledge with the Crowd Favorite team since early September.

More recently, I’ve also done my best (in addition to everyone else) to provide as much background and detail about the team, its projects, clients, philosophies and processes to the folks at VeloMedia (who recently acquired Crowd Favorite). I’m excited for the expertise and leadership these guys and gals bring to Crowd Favorite and look forward to what the future holds. They’ve asked me to continue to lend my thoughts to them and the project management team (for continuity) and I said I’d be more than happy to.

“I gotta go now. I’ve got a lotta bouncin’ to do! Hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo! T-T-F-N: ta-ta for now!”

That all said, I owe a big “thank you” to the patient clients, interesting prospects, friends of the company, and everyone else I’ve worked with these past few years. It’s been a pleasure.

Most importantly, I owe everything to the entire team at Crowd Favorite (new, old and alumni). I’ve learned a lot, enjoyed the experiences, and have you all to thank for who I am and where I am today.

I’m excited because I know there are great things coming for both myself and Crowd Favorite. If you’d like to follow along, you always find more over there at Crowd Favorite’s blog and here on my own.

I held plenty of good jobs before I joined Crowd Favorite, but none of them truly feel like chapters in my “career story”; they were more like an Introduction. ↩

Second Annual Denver Brewery Tour Weekend

Preferred Contact Methods

2 Replies

Social etiquette often trails technological advances. You see it today when a group of friends are out to dinner and many are looking down at their smartphones. That’s obviously not an ideal social situation but no precise norms or allowances have been defined as the introduction of the always-connected device itself is still new.

I’ve been struggling lately with: how to locate, interact, coordinate, and communicate with people.

While at the same time balancing: timeliness of response required, perceived appropriateness of a communication method, ease of method, and sender’s and receiver’s own workflow.

Available Methods

We have a number of ways to get in touch with each other, find out whereabouts, ask questions, etc. Including, but not limited to:

SMS / MMS / iMessage messages
Email
Phone call
Video-based call
Instant messaging
Social network messaging
Location-based services (Find My Friends, foursquare)
Third-party (“tell Joe X”)
Calendaring (share a schedule, meeting invitations)
Chat rooms
Portals or ticketing systems

Each of these then diverge further into personal and work versions of each, social networks each have different stated uses, and so on.

Limitations

Because of all these methods exist, there are equally as many preferences and good / bad ways to talk to, coordinate with, and function amongst fellow humans:

Some of these methods aren’t available to individuals at all times (via a mobile device or otherwise)
Others can be available (via an application) but may not be installed or open at the right time
Notifications may not be fine-tuned to allow for timely responses (or disabled entirely, because of that)
Individuals may choose unstated methods they prefer to receive at different intervals (X during the day, Y at night)
Methods and preferences vary per person, all for good reason

So What?

I feel like I’m making this overly complicated and saying what we’re already aware of, but I want to make some points clear:

Timely communication (in warranted situations) may go undelivered. For example: did John get my SMS message stating I’ll be late? He’s at his desk in the office and has no mobile service and it would have been better if I sent him an email.
Opportunities may get overlooked entirely. similarly, if I don’t check LinkedIn but once a month but you send me a timely job prospect and then forget about it, it’s now my fault
The balance of power in some exchanges may favor one side (sender or receiver) if these preferences go unstated. For example, if Mary has a very busy schedule but I am more flexible, how can I take burden from her and put it on me to pick a good time or location to meet?
Social mistakes become easier and can strain relationships. I may send a non-important Twitter direct message to Steve late at night but his mobile phone alerts may allow it to wake up him and his wife with a vibration or noise alert.

Some of this is mitigated with better planning, but with the always-on and available nature of life (a separate discussion), expectations shift. Some can be simply stated outwardly (“I don’t check my email often, send me an SMS message when you’re going to be in town”), but as our business and personal social networks grow and preferences change this puts a burden on remembering (sometimes outdated) information.

Now all of this is to say that this is just how working with humans always has been and likely always will be. (Joe likes to chat with the neighbor on their front yards when he walks his dog, but Mary likes to call Jill and come over for tea.) But, with technology the challenges will likely grow, the consequences and challenges may as well, and is there any reason the tools we’ve created can’t also help solve the problems they’ve introduced?

For what its worth: I just experienced this trying to connect with friends (old and new) when visiting San Francisco. If I broadcast a note stating I will be in town via Twitter, I likely will get, but not guarantee, responses to arrive via Twitter (whether or not that’s either party’s preferred method of choice). Is email a better way to coordinate a days-away meal than a back-and-forth volley of messages? Should some of the conversation then move to SMS / iMessage when more immediate responses are required? Is sending messages to ask how far away you are any better than checking your location on Find My Friends?

Apply the same to business interactions: assuming email is the de-facto contact method of choice, when is it appropriate to make an introduction via a Facebook message? Which client can I send an SMS message to in order to get an immediate response (or vice versa)? Is it rude to decline a phone call conversation if you know it’d be better to hash out details through written instant messaging?

Link

I continue to contribute guest posts over at the Breck Connection blog and my latest is about the upcoming Craft Spirits Festival to be held in Breckenridge next weekend. Go check it out!

I’m bummed that I can’t make it myself (I’ll be in Maine at Monktoberfest, so, I still win) but would encourage anyone interested in imbibing to check it out.

Three things taught incorrectly in business school

4 Replies

Having graduated college nearly six years now its interesting to look back at some of my underlying assumptions and teachings. There are three that I think anyone would agree are consistently applied at schools all over the United States (and perhaps the world) and I find myself disagreeing with them more and more lately.

Business success is achieved through gaining market share

Nearly every class (accounting, finance, marketing, management) assumed that gaining market share was one of the primary goals of doing business. You couldn’t be successful if you only had 1% of the market. Yet, Apple aimed for 1% of the mobile phone market and has ended up somewhere around 10%, claiming nearly all of the profits in the industry (alongside Samsung). They didn’t need a majority and they didn’t even aim high, yet they’ve changed the world and the industry as we know it.

Market share is important in some businesses, but not all. The world is smaller than it was 30 years ago and we have more knowledge, more choice, and products and services are more accessible to more people now. Solving interesting problems, maximizing profits, giving back to the community are also worthy primary goals.

Corporations are created to maximize stockholder value

Nearly every course revolved around public corporations. Which means we learned a lot about stock prices, options, voting rights, legal contracts and so on. I now start to realize, we were also taught a primary goal of a company is to maximize stockholder value. In many cases, stocks are a great way to incentivize management and employees. They’re also a great way to raise money to catapult a company to a new level. But, in most of those cases the idea on the surface is to enrich someone else.

I feel this detracts from one of the main reasons you’re in business: the customer. You create widgets to solve a need for a customer. But we treat that as a means to an end: creating a huge company with tons of stockholders that demand the price to go up. If they start to distract from the creation of good widgets there may be side effects: cheaper quality, externalities such as added pollution, worse customer service, reduced employee retention, and so on.

Sustainability comes last

The final semester of our college careers — after many of us already have a job lined up, after grades fade away — we were mandated to take a course on ethics and sustainability. We were taught how important it is to be ethical and do the right thing (and what does ethics mean?). We learned ways to build sustainable businesses through case studies and explored theory around doing the right thing. Though, it was as if, after three or four years, we were unfairly asked to reapply all the things we just learned (gain market share, maximize stockholder value) with a new filter that largely contradicted those points.

The Patagonia’s and Apple’s of the world were interesting to explore, but it would’ve been more useful to see them upfront and realize how to build sustainable and ethical business practices throughout our college semesters, not as an afterthought near the end.

I think this is important to step back and think about, critically, because these assumptions have been the foundation for many decisions and approaches to my (and many others’, I’m sure) first few years of “work”. I can’t help but think this is why we see a lot of the issues led by greed: predatory lending, the mortgage crisis, bank collapses, aluminum price fixing, labor issues, and so on.

There’s a place for these lessons but I think they’ve overlooked the virtues and values so many of us espouse.

Time flies. It’s already been two years since Rachel and I tied the knot at the Denver Botanic Gardens. In the past year, we’ve had a lot of fun adventures together: visiting New Orleans for the first time, camping a few times (and forgetting most of the supplies once), hiked Hanging Lake, watched the new Arrested Development episodes (loose seal!), painted fat penguins with friends, planted a vegetable garden, skied at Steamboat for the first time, nordic skied for the first (and last?) time, cheered on the CU Buffs in person for the first time in years, started golf lessons, played in a bowling league (really?), helped friends move, had an appendix removed, enjoyed opening night of The Book of Mormon, visited the Dominican Republic and Lake Powell with respective families, installed flagstone (and removed sod by hand, sorry). It’s been a great year!

Here’s to many more, Rachel…