Station Master's Journal

Continuing on the track of posting unrelated videos, here's another great one titled "I love the whole world." One of the best commercials I have seen this year.

It isn't often that we post videos that are not related to web design, marketing or technology in any way, but this particular video caught my attention as it is quite artistic from a human motion perspective. Imagine walking into a train station where everyone was frozen in time but you.

While I have been a stalwart fan of introducing simplicity into all the websites we design, I have also been a fan of putting more effort into leading a more simple life. On that note I have recently discovered an excellent blog on how to lead a more simple life that I thought I would share. Think Simple Now is a blog dedicated to simplicity, creativity, clarity and happiness. I would highly recommend giving the posts a read through as they are both thorough and insightful.

On March 29, 2008, cities across Canada, and around the world will turn off their lights for Earth Hour, a WWF event to raise awareness about climate change and symbolize that, working together the people of the world can make a difference in the fight against climate change.

Earth Hour has grown from a single event in Sydney, Australia in 2007 to a global phenomenon that will occur across six continents and in as many as 20 cities in 2008.

Toronto was the flagship Canadian city to commemorate Earth Hour 2008 but dozens of others including Ottawa, Vancouver and Montreal have already joined!

The goal is to get thousands of businesses and individuals to participate in this historic event, so we can show the nation and the world that Canadians are leaders in addressing climate change, one of the most critical issues facing our world today.

Simple Station is doing their part - do yours too!

A very interesting clip from Seth Godin (marketing guru) on curiosity. A lot of it has to do with noise pollution - and the lack of curiosity being rewarded in the modern world.

"It is easy to underestimate how difficult it is for people to become curious. That for 7, 10, 15 years of school you are required to not be curious." - Seth Godin

Wow! It's hard to believe it has been a whole month since I last posted. February has been super busy for us. We've moved into our own design studio, which we are now in the process of renovating and we've been deluged with all kinds of new client work. I've been meaning to update our portfolio for some time but it looks like it is going to have to wait just a little while longer.

This week I've been up to the Yukon on business, leaving Nathan and Anthony to hold down the fort at home in Victoria. They've got their hands full so I'm certain they will hardly even notice that I've left. The weather up north has been quite good with most days averaging -5 to -10 degrees Celsius in Whitehorse.

On a particularly cold evening I had a chance to sit down at a good friend's birthday party and meet two truly unique Yukoner's who run Dechenla Adventure Nature Tours. After seeing photos of the lodge and surrounding area I'm hoping to find a number of solid outdoors men or women to put together a group to visit the place. The photos speak for themselves. Stunning!

We have been thinking a lot about the benefits of collaborative work spaces as we have been recently hunting for commercial office space in our home town of Victoria. Evidently it is a lot more difficult than you would think to find good commercial space at a good price - and it makes a lot of environmental and financial sense to share space with another company if you can make it work.

Earlier this week I came across a site which got me even more interested in finding collaborative workspace partners.

Jelly is casual coworking. We invite people to work from our home for the day. We provide chairs and sofas, wireless internet, and interesting people to talk to, collaborate with, and bounce ideas off of.

You bring a laptop (or whatever you need to get work done) and a friendly disposition.

www.workatjelly.com

What a novel idea! Though it wouldn’t really work well for us right now to have an open space in our homes to have people stop by, it might if we could find some good office space. We just love ideas like this that are forward thinking and innovative. Some great ideas have come from Jelly as well. CommandShift3 for starters was a product of these Jelly sessions. Finding interesting and diverse people to work with is all part of the process.