Discussing Startical with Cynthia

A few months ago, while walking my dog, someone stopped me and asked if I would be open to a spontaneous interview in which I'd answer a question selected by the previous interviewee. Today, I sat down for coffee with that person, Cynthia, to ask her a few questions about how to capture and share discussions and interactions as part of Startical.

One of the ideas that came up was to ask fellow entrepreneurs a simple yet revealing question, such as:

If you had one extra hour per day, just for you, how would you spend that time?

I tested that on the team over lunch and the responses were:

Read (as a way to have time by oneself)
Read (for much the same reason as above)
Get outside and explore/visit

Cynthia's own answer was "sleep". I like the idea of asking such a question and noting the response and will definitely test it out further in the context of Startical!

Reminiscing about last year's epic rail journey

Last year today I embarked on an epic rail journey from Montreal to Chicago via Vancouver and Seattle. This time of the year is pretty much the only time I can completely escape startup life (and Internet connectivity), and a year ago I seized the opportunity to do something I'd been dreaming of since childhood: take "The Canadian" across Canada. Sat down with a beer and watched my videos from that trip (see playlists below) which brought back very fond memories not only of the trip itself, but also of Startical 1.0 which involved a similarly ridiculous Montreal to San Francisco rail journey. The playlists: "The Canadian" - Toronto to Vancouver by rail "The Empire Builder" - Seattle to Chicago by rail Also reminds me of my Rails and Reels: History, Infrastructure and the IoT blog post from 2013, just after we had become "World's Best Startup". Somehow rail journeys bring out the philosopher in me...

Office painting continued

There was fugly wallpaper on BOTH of those walls... ...the last to (soon) be painted white. Only just today realised that our new office, which is on the corner of Sherbrooke and Parc streets (Parc is French for Park) could cheekily be called PARC. XEROX PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) is effectively the birthplace of much of the core technologies we continue to use today (tablet computers, graphical user interfaces, mice, object-oriented programming...). See this reelyActive blog post . I've been calling the office Sharc to date, but PARC is not only awesome, but also fitting since the intent is to use it as a living lab and showcase of all the emerging tech we have developed and continue to develop. It may seem silly, but this is the highlight of my day and unbelievably motivating!

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