connecting*the*dots

Check out the full set.

I had stopped shooting once I came across the funnel cake (luckily for my arteries, I didn’t have any cash), but then I turned to check out the parade and low and behold, there was an effigy of George W. Bush in a make-shift jail cell float, pulled by a United For Peace truck with a sign that read, “Impeach Bush for his Crimes Against Humanity.”

That received the loudest cheer of the day — even more than the HS girls doing the tootsie roll.

From cronic’d neighbors wishing MLK a happy birthday to High School marching bands to revved up hot rods to funnel cake… Mmm, funnel cake.

For those of you who couldn’t make it, enjoy!

John Smith and I met last Friday afternoon, as I worked out of The Press (Wine Cafe) across the street from my home/office. We rapped about driving in NYC, women, music… dude was just real and at times, a riot.

I think I caught him in the above photo thinking about whether or not he could retain his manhood while drinking beer from a frosty glass. That entire conversation killed me, because as he vociferously defended the mechanics of the bottle and the presentation of “guy” it projected, he had a slice of lime swirling around in his beer bottle.

Heh.

Meeting cool locals like John isn’t the only new thing happening across the street. The spot has quickly become both my office of choice for calls & non-design intensive work (the WiFi connection is really strong) and my default lunch spot (Turkey Panini, chips and a coke, gracias). And while I wasn’t quite digging the music much before, the vibe has begun to shift a bit.

First of all, the live shows — what I’ve caught at least — have been damn good.

They had a solo, acoustic act a few weeks ago; the guy moved smoothly from Stevie Wonder to Mark Cohn to Neil Young and sounded amazing. Last week, I stumbled in on the Thursday night show and people were cuttin’ up the rug by the sofas. And this past Thursday, I swear the senior member of the jazz quartet couldn’t have been any older than 24… and their improv was as sick as their flow was tight.

Greensboro talent representing.

My only real complaint of the day to day experience — the CD rotation — has changed a bit as well. I just don’t know if Mike and Aaron know about it.

I’ve been slipping the staff mixed CD’s with jazz, hip-hop and electronica, shifting the vibe a bit from the afternoon elevator jazz we’ve had to endure this past month. The vibe is definitely still jazzy, but there’s now some freshness to the mix. I’m hoping that down the road, the guys invest in some form of a jukebox solution, something that customers can influence at no cost.

Until then, it’s all good.

Mike and Aaron opened up a few weeks back, after months of building and prepping the corner of MLK and Gorrel. I’ve wanted to write about them since, as their general manager, Stephanie, fed Lucy treats each day as we passed on our walk, but I’ve been way too busy.

Yep, blogger bought off by dot biscuits.

But with free WiFi, comfy couches, good and decent-priced food, a relaxed atmosphere and local artwork adorning the walls, you really can’t go wrong spending time over there. I’m not a wine fan, but from what Angela tells me, they have a choice selection. And oh yeah, the Ganache Chocolate Cake is ridiculous.

My only criticism so far (they got rid of the canned fresh fruit) is the background music rotation; it leans too much in the Kenny G direction for my tastes (I’m much more of a Mingus, Miles, Thelonious kinda guy). Thursday night is live Jazz night, so we’ll see where this evolves…

Check ‘em out and wish them well, as they’re Southside’s first foray into the restaurant / bar / nightclub world.

Where the magic happens

Aaron on opening day

My third office (counting The Green Bean)

As I strolled home from having coffee downtown this afternoon, I paused before crossing Arlington at MLK, as two cars were already there — one a single woman in an SUV, the other a police car with a male officer driving and a female officer riding shotgun.

After eyeballing both drivers and getting the vibe back that neither were in much of a rush, I continued across the walkway.

Big mistake.

The female cop all of a sudden started screaming and pointing at me (I thought behind me at first, I couldn’t hear her), so I picked up my gate and — after landing safely on the other curb — turned around to see what the problem was. Greensboro’s finest then rolls down her window and yells, with attitude:

“You may not be in a hurry, but we have to be somewhere! Move!!”

Before I knew it they were gone, hanging a right and flying down MLK into the distance. I looked over to the SUV driver — thinking maybe she was thinking the same thing as me — but she just shrugged her shoulders and slowly turned in the opposite direction.

Cops. In a rush. No turn signal. No siren. No nothing, except for a frantic, bitchy scream of authority… in my neighborhood.

I didn’t even have enough time to give her the obligatory Jersey response of “fuck you.”

BarCampRDU came and went this past weekend and I completely missed out. With the stress of moving into the new house, completing my proposal work and working on the number of scattered projects I’m on, I just couldn’t find time to make the trip. But truth be told, as much as I wanted to check out the BarCamp experience, I was much more amped about spending some quality time with the Bonnie and Clyde of Web 2.0 themselves: Chris Messina and Tara Hunt.

We stumbled into connecting last year through one of my posts, followed up by chatting a bit via email and Skype and eventually met in person in a group lunch at SXSW in March. Since I couldn’t make it to Raleigh, I pinged Chris late last week with an offer to crash at my spot if they needed a place to stay. Low and behold, they did.

(shot at Finnegans, before we realized they didn’t serve breakfast and split to Jimmy’s Corner Cafe)

So… what do you do with a couple of uber-progressive, multi-tasking, San Fran geeks in Greensboro, NC with 18 hours on your hands? Keep it simple, stupid; beer, grub and talk shop.

Once they arrived and got settled in, we ended up walking downtown, settling in on MCouls rooftop and chatting about our latest geek ventures over Fish ‘n Chips and pints of Guinness (Tara, you’ve got to get the Guinness tolerance up).

Even though we all share a bunch of the same philosophies regarding business, marketing and technology, it’s still kinda amazing how much overlap our latest ventures have with one another. Both Citizen Agency and dotmatrixproject are efforts to:

• support our passionate desires to consult, design and build technology independent of a full-time gig
• work smarter (not necessarily harder) with great clients and interesting projects
• network with loosely connected, brilliant talent instead of building a salaried bench
• using collaborative blogging to generate credibility, trust and thinktank-like conversations — across our own teams and with the community of folks that participate in the resulting discourse

I’d like to say something grand, like, it’s the sign of how we can all work in the future, but I know that’s not true… at least not yet. Major props to Chris and Tara on that front though, as they believe 1000% in documenting their every success, failure and step along the way with the hope that their efforts can provide building blocks for others on a similar journey.

I completely share that philosophy and enthusiasm, but aside from transparent blogging, I’ve yet to implement it in tangible ways across my everyday (note to self: do that).

We ended the evening with a pretty intense conversation about geo-specific social networking, the digital divide and citizen media, or to be more specific, The People, Yes.

In a nutshell, Chris and I started off with slightly different perspectives of community. The concept of a geo-specific network didn’t seem to register with his quixotic stare, but I think we both nudged a bit closer to each other’s thinking by the end of the conversation. I’m all about working with people who’ve been there and done that, but I’d like for the majority of the grass-roots work and business and technology development to run through the people in this community.

Tara seemed to get my desire to work specifically with the people of Greensboro to build out a Greensboro-specific social network — as the more we work together as a community, the more we’ll come together as a community. Essentially, I want to start local and focus on the needs and strengths of the entire community of Greensboro to flesh the project out.

I mean, who knows what nuggets we’ll find in these fields and streams and underpasses and buildings?

In any event, I’m sure it wasn’t the last conversation we’ll have on the project. Both Tara and Chris are revolutionary thinkers, with their heads constantly spinning about with progressive ways to use technology to help us work, play and function better with one another. I’m only in the embryonic stage with The People, Yes, so I’m looking forward to many more chances to imbibe and share knowledge and perspective.

This weekend came and went way too fast.

It’s move in day.

Man, check out the colors in the room the former owners left me for an office:

Can you picture getting any work done in that hot mess? I wanted to get them to paint it, but the market is so hot for property in downtown Greensboro I had to suck up the cost or risk losing the property. No biggie. Thanks to master painter Jay Ovittore, all the painting is finished (and looks great).

I’m about to go get the U-Haul. If you need to get in touch with me over the next few days, try my cell phone, as cable (and Vonage) won’t be up until Monday afternoon.

w00t!

The closing is in just over a month. A big shout to Ed for introducing me to the neighborhood and walking me through.