Introspection with Juan

Got caught up on business matters with my friend and colleague Juan. During Startical 1.0, I had yet to meet him in person, but he had this lovely message for me back then. Juan and I have lived some difficult entrepreneurial struggles together, and have had shared some unconventional business travels together, so I was very curious how he would respond to the question of how he would spend one extra hour per day if he could use it however he wants:

I would use the hour for introspection, to work on my own shit, to read, to write and to learn.

Juan said he was already making time regularly to do this. He said it's easy to forget to make oneself the priority. I definitely agree. Introspection was part of a key takeaway from Startical 1.0 and is clearly a theme here once again!

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!

Search This Blog