Sharing Tradition

My colleague Camille from reelyActive joined me in decorating my Christmas tree. It will be her first holidays in Canada, and I was glad she accepted my invitation to share in the tradition passed on to me.

Better yet, my American friend Will, a central figure in Startical 1.0, drove up to join me too. The timing just worked out great. And I'm glad Camille and Will got to meet and exchange stories and ideas. They set up the (Incan) nativity scene under my tree, with Caganer in the baxkground (a great reminder of my 2016 work trip to Catalunya - look up Caganer for a laugh about Christmas traditions!).

We ate a great meal together, prepared by Will. And then celebrated the first Advent, another tradition from childhood that I'm glad to keep alive. I got to introduce the pair to stollen and schokoladen lebkuchen and other delicious treats that I grew up on.

Too often my weekends represent an opportunity to catch up on work, generally in relative isolation. This afternoon and evening reminded me how enriching it is to enjoy spontaneous social relations, as well as to share traditions. I couldn't have imagined a better start to my 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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