I was happily surprised by this as a gift recently.

For me, the intermixing of old original broadcasts with original composition music worked well as an idea. Choosing which broadcasts to include was just as important as composing the right music.

I liked how the composers framed the album around 9 pivotal moments events from 1957 (launch of sputnik) to 1972 (Apollo 17, the last Apollo departing the moon). Obviously, there was a lot of broadcasts to choose from, and I liked their choices – some of which I’d never heard before. Kennedy’s “We choose to go to the moon” speech, a homage to Valentina Tereshkova (the first female in space), Apollo 8’s “see you on the flip side” (the earthrise photo taken by Apollo 8 is still one of my favourites), and the tense interactions of all the ground + flights teams in the final seconds of descent to land of Apollo 11 (including handling the 1202, 1201 errors!).

All heady stuff and well worth a listen.

Summit is coming.

Summit is exciting. With so many people scattered around the world, this gathering of Mozillians… this summit… is a rare chance for people to get together face-to-face.

Summit is scary and stressful. It is a total change in location and routine, which can be stressful. It forces everyone into a high-volume-of-contact… not anonymous contact like a crowded street in New York… high-volume-and-intense-contact with lots of people you work with, closely or intermittently, on a shared project that we all care about passionately. It’s exciting. It’s invigorating. It’s overwhelming. In the coming days, even extrovert people will need a quiet time or two… more introverted people doubly so. Add some small factors like: jet-lag, sleep deprivation, language barriers, change-of-routine, and it’s easy for people to get frayed at the edges.

With that context, I’d like to offer the following thoughts:

• Respect of self (1): Despite all the great things going on, keep a mental track of how *you* are doing. If you are feeling stressed/overwhelmed with everything, take a few minutes to walk outside in the sunshine, read a book in your room, go for a jog in the sunshine, call family back home, go for a swim… everyone is different, so do whatever works for you. I’ve done this at every conference I attend over the years, and it really helps me recenter. It also lets me mentally process all the inputs so far, and gives me time to remind myself what is important that I still need to do when I go back in the crowd. After all, we’re all here to connect.
• Respect of self (2): Don’t quietly put up with unacceptable behavior. If a conversation or a situation is making you uncomfortable, make a mental note of it, regardless of whether it’s directed at you, or something you observe/hear being directed at someone else. Politely say “I’m starting to feel uncomfortable“.
  It may not be intended, so this is a great way to give others a chance to quickly learn, self-correct and grow (without risking offense to either party). If that doesn’t fix things, politely excuse yourself with “That’s an interesting opinion, but I have to leave now” and disengage. Some people, at Mozilla and elsewhere, enjoy trolling… but keep in mind that you don’t have to feed the trolls if you don’t want to. Nicole’s presentation is just great, I re-watch it often. If you think the situation merits it, please do let any of the Mozilla Conductors or Site Hosts know.
• Respect of others: Lively, honest, debate is a great way for smart people to quickly solve complex problems. When it works, it’s magic. True magic. And to be encouraged. Sometimes, however, these can spiral out-of-control. The difference, as far as I can tell, is respect. Don’t impose your thoughts/intentions where they are not welcome. To be clear, I’m not saying that people should stop having honest conversations, and suddenly be all super-politically-correct. Just be respectful. If you find yourself in a heated discussion with someone, and you’re not getting anywhere, try the following:
  • “Wait, wait, wait. We’re repeating ourselves here, and clearly not agreeing, so lets take pause and reset.”
  • Then wait a few seconds, and take a few deep breaths!
  • “OK, to reset context, can we assume that we both are professionals in our areas? Can we assume that we both want the best outcome for Mozilla? Agree?” (It is important to have these be asked, and answered, honestly and with “yes” from both! If you cannot even agree to this, you’ve got a different situation to resolve.)
  • Once you get a “yes”, then speaking calmly, ask “ok, so using different words, can you tell me why you care about xxxxxx? And I promise to not say *anything* until you tell me you’re finished. Then afterwards, we’ll switch, so I’ll speak without interruption, and you listen. But you first…“.
  • Listen. Take notes if it helps. Allow the other person time to pause and collect their thoughts without interruption. Literally no interrupting.
  • When they finally say they’re all done, then say “ok, here’s what I heard you say – is this correct?” and paraphrase it all back to them. Adjust for corrections and repeat if needed, but make sure to state the full end-to-end one last time after last corrections, so they clearly hear you say their entire opinion/concerns *once* perfectly, in one uncorrected pass.
  • Now, reverse roles. “ok, now it’s my turn to speak without interruption, while you listen“.
  • Make sure they can paraphrase back to you, accurately like you did for them.
  • Almost every time I do this, we instantly find that we were actually solving unrelated *different* problems… problems which just happened to overlap in one small area. No wonder we couldn’t agree! We were two smart professional people who were each actually solving very different problems. This tactic helped debug *which* problem we were each solving, and typically cleared things up right away.
• Respect of Mozilla: I didn’t create Mozilla, but I’m super glad that Mitchell, Brendan and others did years ago. Imagine for a second… if this was a organization that you had created, and nurtured over the years, how would you want yourself, and everyone else, to treat each other? With that thought in mind, go out into the great crowd and engage.

Hopefully people find these thoughts helpful. Disclaimer, this is an area I’m still working on myself, so any feedback/suggestions/improvements are very very welcome… either here or in email or (yes!) in person!

Travel safe, see (some of) you soon, and lets have a great Summit!

Respectfully
John.

ps: Some additional links I found helpful are: Bob Sutton’s No Asshole Rule and Laura Forrest’s “5 Hacks to make the most of Summit”, bsmedberg’s “Mozilla Summit: Listen Hard”… and yes, of course, I would be remiss to not include this great song:

Concise. Accurate. Perfect. Just perfect.

(credits: Looks like graphjam.com is now part of cheezburger.com empire, which confused tracking down the original author. Digging around, I found a few versions of this on different sites going back through 2011. I *think* its originally from Nathan Yau on flowingdata.com, or Garr Reynolds, posted here but if you know anything about the original author, please let me know.)

I spent the best part of 2 years on crutches after a venom bite and an unrelated fall. Thankfully, I’ve made a full recovery. With all that time on crutches, I built up some tips/tricks. Since then, whenever I see someone on the street who is obviously new-to-crutches, I strike up a casual conversation about how long I spent on crutches, empathize about the various awkward realities of crutches and generally try to be encouraging. If things feel ok, then I ask if its ok to share some tips I learned from my time on crutches. This happened recently with someone in the office, and afterwards, they encouraged me to blog this in case it is helpful to anyone reading who is also newly on crutches.

1) buy fingerless cycling gloves
Sore hands from pressure of the crutch handle is a problem. Some people prefer to pad/wrap the crutch handle, but I found this still left lots of friction / movement-under-pressure while using crutches. Over time this friction led to blisters on the palm of your hands, between your thumb and first finger – exactly the spot that you needed to press your weight on while using crutches. Painful.

Padded cycling gloves solved this problem perfectly. These are padded in exactly the right area… between the base-of-thumb and forefinger…and they’re cheap! Being fingerless, I could still type and answer my cellphone with them on. And the mesh backing kept my hands from getting too hot while wearing them indoors all the time, so I could just easily leave them on all day.

2) be aware of possible nerve damage to armpits
If you get sore hands (see above), its easy to then start resting your full weight on your armpits on the top of the crutches. Every now and then is typically ok. However, its easy to get into the habit of resting your full weight on your armpits on the crutches. Dont. Leaning your weight on your armpits on your crutches can lead to nerve damage in your armpits, which will seriously limit future use of your arms and hands.

From wikipedia, “A condition known as crutch paralysis, or crutch palsy can arise from pressure on nerves in the armpit, or axilla. Specifically, the brachial plexus in the axilla is often damaged from the pressure of a crutch…In these cases the radial is the nerve most frequently implicated; the ulnar nerve suffers next in frequency”. More details are also at  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axillary_nerve.

Instead of resting your bodyweight on your armpits on the top of your crutches, use your arms to hold up your body weight. As a fulcrum point, squeeze in your arms to pin the top of the crutch between your upperarm and ribs – without contact to your armpit. Then try to move around the room. I found my arms were not use to this much work and quickly got tired. Start with short distances. Over time, build up to longer sustained use of crutches as your arms build up strength.

On the bright side: when I finally came off crutches, my arms were in the best shape ever. And I had no nerve damage in my arms and hands!

3) buy a jogger fanny pack, specifically one that has holders for full-size water bottles.
One of my most frustrating episodes soon after being on crutches was my first attempt to “have a normal day at home”, by myself, making my own coffee and hoping to sit at the computer with my leg elevated. It was tricky to wrangle the machine/filter/coffee/water while on crutches, but the brew smelled great – and the first sip was wonderful.

Success! If I can make my own coffee, how bad can life be?! Then I realized I had no way of getting from the kitchen to the chair, on crutches, while holding my prized mug of coffee. Foiled!

Weeks later, I had a brainwave. The water bottle holders in fanny packs is the same diameter as most car coffee travel mugs. Coffee in a travel mug in a fanny pack doesn’t spill while you are on crutches.

Make coffee. Pour into travel mug. Put travel mug into fanny-pack-bottle-holder. Use crutches to get to chair. Sit. Drink coffee from travel mug. Rejoice.

ps: While you have this fanny pack, you might as well also pack it with:

• house keys
• powerbars
• cellphone
• tissues

Thats it. Hope those hints help someone out there… and of course, if you have other tips or hints, please email me or add them to comments below.

take care
John.

I rarely go to the movies, and even more rarely do any movie reviews on this blog, especially in an area I know little about. However, after seeing this in movie in 3D at a local theater recently, I still cant get it out of my head.

Luscious imagery. Great choreography. And a soundtrack I eventually had to buy and keep looping around and around… I’m still listening to it right now, weeks later.

Very different. Hope you enjoy!

More details about Pina Bausch here on wikipedia.