Wanderlust : February 2011
Sorry for the month delay in blog entries but it’s been a non-stop rollercoaster of travel and events.
Here is the shortlist of what happened in after the last blog entry and a few important things happening this month:
WordPress DC Town Hall with founder Matt Mullenweg
1.31.2001 – Washington, DC
This event happened at Fathom Creative, down the road from CDG Interactive. It was well attended and the sponsor even got an internet stream for online viewing and questions. Matt was really relaxed, calm guest who talked about how WordPress was started (at the heart, WordPress started as a image gallery) and answered plenty of questions about it, running a business, some things in the works/future as well as what could be better. I asked about how it was doing in the mobile world and got the surprising answer (700% in two years! – with apps in almost every mobile platform).
IxDA Interaction 11
2.9-12.2011 – Boulder, CO
Decided to arrive early to this conference (third time for me) to relax in Boulder and get to a workshop for the first time. However, I fell ill Tuesday morning and spent the following 24-48 hours in bed. Missed the workshop but attended the full conference. I even got to attend an after-party on the first night (it was definitely an experience, especially the music and its location inside the Boulder Theatre). This conference was well attended and did not disappoint, concluding with the keynote speech from Bruce Sterling (design critic as well as sci-fi writer).
All the keynotes as well as the individual lightning lectures were all interesting in one way or another. However, the tone, in my perspective as a developer, was different in that were was more of a focus internally than the last two years. Whereas I was more in sync in the last two (especially with mobile coming up big during this duration), this was more internal than anything else.
- Related stories – http://www.ixda.org/interaction/
- For related keynotes/lightning lectures – http://www.ixda.org/resources
One of new additions to this conference was a day for design-related activities. In my case, it was geocaching, where I spend a few hours in the streets of Boulder playing hide-and-go-seek for hidden treasures. (Thankfully, I was well by then!)
I will be doing a CDG blog entry on my geocaching adventure later on this month.
Oh, BTW…it snowed 3-5” and went from single digits (Tuesday) to 60s (Sunday) in one week.
You thought DC had crazy weather!
Nixon in China
2/19-20, 2011 – NYC, NY
I packed bags again the following weekend, for a trip to NYC for The Met’s presentation of John Adams’ 1987 opera Nixon in China. I last heard this opera on CD a decade ago in college but the performance did not disappoint. Well sung by all the performers and John Adams (who conducted his own work) got a standing ovation.
What was interesting about the opera, apart from the music, was the whole scenery. As a person who grew up during the last glimmer of the Cold War, some of the scenes were familiar from all the news broadcasts during this time (you know, when you only had TV and print). The opening scene of the Nixons stepping out of the plane matched the videotape footage to a point where it was eerie. Of course, the big irony, particularly those in the audience, is how much has changed in the almost 30 years that meeting. As a point, during a scene in the second act, Pat Nixon was presented with a jade elephant. The official near her remarked "We can make hundreds of them cheaply!", which was followed with laughter (with a tinge of irony) from the audience.
The second act ended with the agitprop play (the music the basis for a Adams’ stand-alone work The Chairman Dance), which really reminds someone of my age about the old Socialist/Communist displays in the 80’s, or more recently, in North Korea. Of course, the big irony is that so much of that change would start two years later.
Leaving memory lane, I spent a quiet following day listening to three Shostakovich quartet (11th, 12th, and 15th) and Beethoven’s Grosse Fugue, Op. 133 at Bargemusic with the St.Petersburg Quartet. Back home on Monday (President’s Day).
And that was my month of February.
Will be returning to NYC for two concerts:
- March 26 – NY Philharmonic/Avery Fisher Hall for Bartok’s 1st Piano Concerto
— I will be able to say that I have heard all three concertos live – 3rd in DC/NSO (2005) and 2nd in Boston/BSO (2007) - April 16 – Met Opera for Berg’s Wozzeck
— Heard Berg’s other opera Lulu last year
Hopefully, things will slightly quieter further in the year.
Later (multiple crossing of digits…)
