Thoughts & Deeds

It’s become a dirty world in the creative community. “Crowdsourcing” often means a business has chosen to ask all-comers to submit responses to the businesses request – be it a logo, web site design, or engineering design for NASA’s next space shuttle – with no guarantee of pay or selection of their submitted work. On one hand, it’s a great way to get the community involved in solving a problem rapidly. … more

Today’s Portland design community buzz on Twitter is the City of Portland’s decision to make a design contest out of the Portland Online website. Many of us reviewed the RFP released for project last month and found the budget lacking ($10-20k for a 140,000 page site? Right.), which may explain why they’re moving forward with a design contest. No agency worth its salt wanted to reply to such a poorly proposed project with so little funding.* I know we looked at it and decided to pass. … more

I’ve never been a fan of parades. For one, I’m only 5′2″ and can never see the floats and marching groups from behind that Really Tall Guy Who Always Stands In Front Of Me. Plus I don’t care for large crowds. But every year I make an exception for the gay pride parade, because it’s different. We’re not celebrating civic pride, we’re celebrating being ok with ourselves in spite of everything we may experience. … more

Last Friday I had the excellent opportunity to talk to interactive industry colleagues about something near and dear to my liver heart – homebrewing. I served five kinds of homebrew to warm up the crowd, then dropped an amazing 17 minutes of blabbing about beer on their unwitting ears. People were kind enough to laugh at my dorky jokes, too! What nice folks we have in Portland. … more

This isn’t a snow town. We’re more a rainy and cold sort of folk, and when the “white stuff” hits PDX we all panic a bit. Now, I’m a native lowlands northwester and never learned to drive in the snow, so I’m not sure what excuse all you transplants from the midwest and east coast have. But it’s true, in Portland all it takes is an inch of snow and you’ll be snowed in. … more

One of the wonderful things about running a creative agency is that on the rare 70 degree mid-October day you can play hookey and enjoy the sun. You can’t take a gift like this and stay inside in the Pacific Northwest. No! It’s an imperative to get outside, recharge, enjoy the weather and get some vitamin D. … more

I’ve been lucky over the years to work for companies and in offices that allow me to bring my dog to work. Portland is definitely a dog-oriented town and having pooches in the office seems like a right and not a perk for many people. At past jobs, I knew things were really going downhill when dogs were banned from the workplace; it starts with banning dogs and ends in reduced benefits or salaries and a generally demoralized culture.

One of the many great things about running my own business is that I can bring my dog to work whenever I want. Often, my one dilemma about bringing Josie – my loveable, energetic 3-year-old German Shepherd/Lab mix – is that having her at work means driving my car instead of biking. I hate driving to work, even though the parking is free. It makes me feel so lazy! And it means that Josie doesn’t always get the exercise she needs in a day, so she’s antsy under my desk all day.

A few months ago, Kathy and I wondered if we could combine biking with exercising Josie and experimented with tying her leash to my seatpost and going for a spin around the neighborhood. Success! Though that worked pretty well, it didn’t feel that safe. So we bought a Walky Dog bike attachment, which is the most amazing dog exercise gadget of all time. We started taking Josie for bike rides whenever she really needed a good dog-speed sprint. A tired dog is happy, well-behaved dog! This got me to thinking about biking to work with her, since she’d get to run three miles each way, I’d still get to bike, and we’d combine her morning walk with my morning commute. Win-win-win!

Yesterday marked our inaugural Bike n’ Bark ride to the office. It worked! Josie was a pooped pooch for a good while at the office and had a lot of fun running home. I love that I have enough bike routes options for getting to work that I can choose one that’s safe for me and the dog. I love living in a city that makes biking a priority. I love living in a dog-friendly town. And I love that people smile when they see us!

Josie and I will definitely be biking to work more often!

In the last week I’ve driven my car 53 miles, ridden my bike 31 miles, and walked roughly 10 miles. I drove to work once, to Lake Oswego for a meeting, to Powell Butte for a hike, and to Hillsboro for softball games. That’s a lot more driving than I usually do, so I’ll have to go on a serious car diet for the next few weeks. I rode my bike to work three times and took my dog, Josie, for four bike rides. I took Josie for eight walks. … more

I used to be a bus commuter. It was better than trying to drive to work in bumper-to-bumper traffic then have to pay for parking, and at least I could read while I sat (or stood) in a cramped bus. Depending on where I worked at the time, my commute took from 30 – 60 minutes each way. I sure got a lot of reading done, and met some “interesting” people along the way. I also learned a lot about patience, tolerance, and holding my breath when “Cat Pee Lady” was on the #15 bus with me yet again. … more

As a native Pacific Northwester, I know just how fleeting good weather can seem. People complain about all the rain, more rain, and also the paucity of warm sunny days. The northwest is a land of transplants from other regions, many of whom apparently believe the myth that the weather in the northwest sucks. Perhaps it’s my native webbed feet or my naturally lower body temperature, but I love it here just the way it is. … more