Nikolaus Stiefel

A holiday memory from childhood is putting my boots in the entrance the night of December 5th before bed, and waking up to (hopefully) find chocolates, cookies and citrus fruits in them the next morning. This is a celebration of Nikolaustag (Saint Nicholas Day) which has many interesting regional traditions.

I decided to surprise my startup colleagues with cookies in their boots which were conveniently located, according to tradition, in an entrance before we headed out together for lunch. Had they been naughty rather than nice, Krampus or Knecht Ruprecht may have instead placed a stick in their boots for their parents (or boss?) to beat them with. Yes, that really was the darker side of the tradition although I only know of anecdotal accounts from the previous generation of this actually being carried out!

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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