Web development

Sephone

I head to a place called Sephone for around 40 hours each week. A majority of my time is doing custom work for area businesses that I unfortunately can rarely share, but my favorite part of the job is what I like to call our content products. These applications and services give people the ability to control their own sites without having to call us up to make changes.

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been really fortunate to have some time to devote to our best-known products, datAvenger and datAvenger lite, and we’ve released a new version of both this week. (I posted about the datAvenger release on our blog.) I’ve also been able to write a podcast management service called SephoneCast that I’m excited to see in use pretty soon.

thinglobe

A couple of weeks ago I released thinglobe.com, a geo-based service for user-generated media. Quite simply it maps where videos, photos, and thoughts were created on a map. I have a ton of stuff that I want to do with it, and as of now I’d call it my flagship project by far. I’m really, really excited to see where it leads, and it’s just a cool service that I like to use myself.

Microreviewer

A week before thinglobe came out I coded up microreviewer.com, a service for giving short (very short) reviews of local businesses via Twitter. Microreviewer was, in short, a way for me to try a few things out, and I’m quite happy just letting it sit for a while. I’d rather focus my attention on other projects (thinglobe).

Collage

And no, I haven’t forgotten about Collage and justinrussell.com. I’d love to switch Collage over to run off of a service like FriendFeed at some point, and the very preliminary stages of a justinrussell.com redesign are in the works. That’s pretty much it for now, though.

Photography

justinrussell.com/photography

I recently released version 2.0 of justinrussell.com/photography, my photography portfolio site (and the winner of the “Did You Know There Was a 1.0″ award). jr/photo has a couple of purposes. First, I have a link to send to people who ask if they can see some of my photos. Second, it boosts my confidence that I occasionally take good photos. Third, it’s a home base for my photography no matter where it ends up going in the future.

But really, if you want to see what I consider to be my best photos, head there. It’s also the home to the snazzy new justinrussell brand logo.

Pine Tree Photography

Remember Pine Tree Photography? PTP is my showcase site for nature and landscape photography. I have big plans (really big, actually) for PTP, but frankly they’re just not on the top of the list right now. At some point I want to build it up, but it’s just not there right now. Still, it’s a good place to explore some of my best photos in my most popular genre as of yet.

flickr.com/justinrussell

In order to make use of the $25/year I pay to Yahoo! for Flickr, I occasionally post photos there as well. To be honest I haven’t taken that many photos lately, but when I do the best ones will most likely end up on Flickr.

Writing

Another New World

Another New World is my passion about technology put into words; you just wouldn’t know it by the frequency of the posts. Out of all of my projects, I’d really like to devote more time to ANW, but I’m just now getting back into a writing mood. (Doing code for forty or more hours a week is sort of draining when it comes to text on a computer screen.) I really hope this picks back up.

Two Cents and a Thousand Words

I’m sort of unsure about the future of Two Cents; everything seems to be covered pretty well by other services (Twitter, individual blogs), so the posts here won’t be very frequent. If you want to stay in touch, I’d really recommend Collage instead.

The Small Steps Podcast

Small Steps is at a standstill. I love doing it, but the interest I was hoping for just wasn’t there. Also, there are a number of other podcasts doing the same kind of thing really well; I’d rather not reinvent the wheel. Search around; there are some great podcasts out there!

Thanks for sticking around. With the new stars of the top three (jr/photo, thinglobe, and Another New World), I’m really looking forward to the future. Be sure to let me know what you think about the current status, too!

I’m Justin. I graduated from the University of Maine in 2005 with a major in new media and minors in computer science and psychology. I’m currently employed at Sephone Internet Solutions, a Web design and development company in downtown Bangor, Maine.

One of my weaknesses is that I’ve always been interested in too many things. In addition to Web development, I spend quite a bit of time doing nature and event photography around Maine (as seen on Flickr or Pine Tree Photography, my gallery site). There’s also a lot of evidence around the Web of small projects I’ve started and all-but-abandoned due to my struggle with Application-ADD.

I love having good conversations. I love people who are passionate about what they do and people who try to make the world better. I have a wide variety of focus topics, but a few always rise to the top:

• User-generated content / Metcalfe’s law
• Location- and time-based content
• Uses of today’s emerging technologies in tomorrow’s mainstream
• Organization of complex data in understandable ways
• Development and applications of creativity

Want to get a little better feel for who I am? Check out my Twitterstream or Collage, my aggregated collection of posts from around the Web. You can also always get in touch with me by e-mailing mail (at) justinrussell [dot] com. If you see me, feel free to say hi!

Project flow as a bathtub

I work for a services company. We deal with clients every day, in a lot of different ways. With that said, I have a great appreciation for the people who manage to schedule and budget the work that comes in while managing expectations and making everything just work. It’s one of those things that you never notice if it’s working correctly, but it’s really obvious if it gets out of whack (overflow).

After some discussions among the development team, I realized that the projects that stress me out the most are the ones where no visible progress is being made. These are the toughest types: the bug reports and feature requests come in at a race that (sometimes greatly) exceeds the amount of work that is being done on the project. In other words, the hardest projects are those that after six or eight hours of work, you don’t feel as though you’ve accomplished anything; you may even feel as though you’ve lost ground.

In project flow, it’s important to make sure the bathtub does not overflow with a continuous stream of new work that can’t be accomplished in a reasonable amount of time.

One possible remedy is to break down a large project into a few (or many) feature milestones. The ability to complete a feature in itself is much easier than completing a whole project. Another is to enforce a rule that a project must have clear objectives or boundaries within a certain phase; any additional features will be moved to a later release.

Information consumption as a bathtub

I follow a lot of people, read a lot of information, and listen to (and watch) a lot of podcasts. It’s simply overwhelming at times. I’ve been attempting over the last few days to reach RSS Zero, a modified version of Merlin Mann’s wonderful Inbox Zero system. (Inbox Zero will hopefully follow RSS Zero.) I’ve made some progress, but I’m still a long walk from the end of the tunnel.

Here’s the simple truth: there’s only so much time in a day. If you’re downloading more than 24 hours worth of content in a day, you won’t be able to listen to it all. Your information bathtub will overflow.

In information consumption, it’s important to make sure the bathtub does not overflow with an incoming stream of content that takes up more time than you physically have to consume it.

The solution may be the dreaded (or heralded) “Mark All as Read” button. Don’t worry. It’s OK. You can also reassess your feeds, podcasts, e-mail subscriptions, and everything else that flows into your readers each day.

Good luck! Now it’s back to tending my own tub.

Here’s a fairly complete list of the events that pop up each year on my calendar. The year links lead to media I’ve created. I’ve been doing “lifetime” traditions for as long as I can remember.

• Downtown Countdown (January 1, started in 2006: 2006 2007 2008)
  I (literally) start off the new year in downtown Bangor as a beach ball is thrown off the side of a building. Yes, that’s how we do holidays in Maine.
• Gifford’s opening (mid-March, started in 2007: 2007)
  One of the first sure signs of an oncoming spring is the opening of the Gifford’s Ice Cream stands around Maine. Nothing beats one or two hundred people waiting in line to get (free) ice cream in a nine-degree wind chill as it starts to snow.
• Winter/spring sunrise trip (winter/spring, started in 2004: 2004 2005 2007)
  Each year I take one weekend and head down to southern Maine. I spend Saturday night in a hotel and wake up early enough to catch the sunrise at either Portland Head Light or Old Orchard Beach. Sure it’s cold. Sure the lighthouse is covered with snow and the beach with ice. Does that stop me? Of course not. To be honest, it’s really refreshing to have a place all to yourself with crisp winter air as the sun rises over the Atlantic.
• Mount Battie hike (mid-April, lifetime: 2002 2004 2006)
  My mother has been making the trek up the side of Mount Battie in Camden since she was a child. The tradition was passed down to me early on, and we spend a weekend day each April hiking the side of Battie. I even have a custom-made walking stick for the occasion.
• Dance concerts (late April and mid-December, started in 2004: 2006 2007)
  It should not be a surprise to anyone that I’m a huge fan of dance performances, both for their creativity and the photo opportunities. It’s a great way to welcome in the holiday season or welcome in the summer.
• Independence Day fireworks (July 4, lifetime: 2006 2007)
  My parents and I would always scope out a spot on the hill on the corner of Exchange and Hancock Streets in downtown Bangor when Dad worked at United Bank. Our old spot may now be a construction site, but we still find a place to watch the fireworks over the Penobscot River each year.
• Whale watching (mid-August, lifetime: 2002 2006)
  Mom and I (along with an occasional special guest) head down to Bar Harbor each summer to head out on a Bar Harbor Whale Watch boat into Frenchman’s Bay and the Gulf of Maine. Over the years we’ve seen sunfish, dolphins, right whales, minkes, and humpbacks. Cruising out into the open sea at 35 MPH is worth the chill you cover up with warm layers of clothing. (Why do so many traditions have to do with being cold?)
• American Folk Festival (late August, started in 2003: 2006 2007)
  The AFF is Bangor’s best event, and I’ve attended in 2003, 2005, 2006, and 2007. There’s a good chance you’ll find me running from stage to stage at the yearly three-day music festival. Starting last year, you might also see me volunteering. (You may also spot me eating blooming onions, hot wings from Governor’s, lemonade, donuts, peanut butter cake from River Driver’s, and more.) I’ve discovered some great bands at the Festivals, and it’s been the home to some of my best-ever photos.
• Apple picking (mid-September, lifetime: 2003 2005 2006)
  Right around the start of school each year, my parents and I would head to Winterport to pick our own apples. Lately we’ve continued the tradition in Dixmont, filling up a bucket full of Macintoshes.
• Thanksgiving cornbread (late November, started in 2005)
  When I found my own apartment, I wanted to bring something to the table (literally) for our Thanksgiving trips to each of my grandparents’ houses. I settled on the Homesteader Cornbread at Allrecipes.com. It’s gotten rave reviews each year.
• 30holidays (November 26 through December 25, started in 2006: 2006 2007)
  For two years now, I’ve spent late November through Christmas taking one holiday or winter-related photo each day. I’ve yet to make a complete set, but it’s still a great way to get in the holiday spirit.
• Christmas tree (early December, lifetime: 2002 2005 2006 2007)
  Christmas is in the air as my parents and I head out to Piper Mountain Christmas Tree Farm in Newburgh to choose and cut our Christmas tree. Out of all of the yearly traditions, this may be the most important one; I’ve trudged through snow with strep to have a say in tree selection in the past. When the tree has been chosen, the real fun begins: hot apple cider and donuts in the Piper Mountain gift shop.
• Holiday baking (mid-December, lifetime)
  Although it’s been tougher to schedule since I left the nest, Mom and I always make time to do some holiday cooking each year. The menu doesn’t change that much from year to year: cinnamon rolls, mint-filled sandwich cookies, brownies with mint and hard chocolate toppings, mulled cider, and chocolate bread pudding.
• South Paris and the elk farm (December 24, started in 2005: 2006 2007)
  Who says the Web can’t lead to new friendships? I met Melody online in 2003, I think. After learning that her parents lived in Maine, we started a Christmas Eve tradition in the form of a visit to a local western Maine elk farm. I explained the rest of the story - including the Route 2 Christmas carol sing-along - in a blog post last year.

What are your yearly traditions?

I realize that I’ve been in another one of my blog posting slumps lately. It’s not intentional; I’ve just been trying to figure out which direction I want to pursue now. Over the last few months it’s become clear to me that my next project shouldn’t be a new service, community site, or anything like that; it has to be a place where I can express everything that’s taking up space in my brain.

The problem(s) with Web development

I was doing Web development before I was even connected to the Internet in 1996. I’ve been doing it as my primary occupation for just about five years. The problem with Web development is that it takes quite a bit of time to finish the process that starts with an idea and ends with a new site. There’s brainstorming, design, development, testing, and marketing. To be completely honest, I just don’t have the time.

Even if you discount the time factor, there’s something even more dangerous: Application-ADD. I’m as guilty of this condition as any developer. The forgotten part of the development cycle is the maintenance it takes to sustain and grow a site. By the time you’ve gotten to that point, you often have a new “next big thing” idea. In fact, I’ve had somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 “next big thing” ideas since I started doing Web development. I’ve completed about five of them, but I haven’t followed through. I’m just starting to understand the merits of realizing that they just won’t all be done. (It reduces my stress level quite a bit.)

But wait! I do Web development as a full-time job. When doing Web development in a client-based setting, your time is spent fulfilling the wishes of other people; often those wishes don’t align well with what you think would be best or most effective for them. Application-based development is a bit different. As one of three developers responsible for Hula, our e-commerce product, I had a fairly large amount of input into the features and overall decision-making process for the product.

And finally, there’s burnout. After forty (or more) hours of doing development a week, I often don’t feel up to the task of sitting down and wrangling PHP for 10, 20, or 40 more. I think Google’s 20-percent time rule is one of the biggest business innovations in decades, and it obviously has very rewarding benefits (see Gmail, Google News, Orkut, and others for example). Unfortunately, not all businesses have the ability to incorporate a similar program.

Passion

I read a lot about passion. It seems to be a underlying theme of the current tech boom (and our generation as a whole).

Web development isn’t my passion. I don’t wake up with a “Eureka!” moment in the middle of the night wondering if a certain CSS or PHP trick would solve a nagging problem. My passion is helping people understand what technology enables us to do, and it’s inspiring people to move forward into a new and better world. We have the ability to do so much. The difficult part is moving there.

A lot of people tell me that I’m a quiet person. That’s true, to a point: I enjoy listening to others and thinking a lot more than I enjoy talking. If we’re talking about something I’m passionate about, though, you’ll have a very difficult time getting me to shut up. When I’m passionate about something, I’m anything but quiet.

Something new for me

It would seem, then, that I should talk about topics that interest me more often. How do I combine these all into a single focus?

I found the answer in other blogs. I’ve read Boing Boing for as long as any other blog. Recently I’ve been a somewhat religious reader of John Gruber’s Daring Fireball. The answer was another blog. Writing reduces the time from idea to product, and it’s also a purer way of expressing my thoughts. I really just love writing in general (as evidenced by this post).

Tonight I’m launching Another New World, a blog about how we’ve reached today and what we need to think about before we can reach tomorrow. It will be a combination of essays and links to related information, and it will be the closest representation to date of what takes up space in the ever-changing landscape of my mind.

I invite you to check it out and, as always, tell me what you think.

I don’t enjoy talking about politics in the course of normal discussion. The simple reason is because people are often so closed-minded when it comes to debatable issues that they very seldom open their minds enough to risk a change of opinion.

As I see it, there are just too many facets of government to be able to know everything about everything. I’ve developed a set of beliefs based on my past experience, but I like to think that I’m open enough to able to change my opinion if a better set of beliefs is presented to me.

Abortion is the perfect example for me. I’m pro-choice. Laura, one of my best friends, is most definitely not. For the past couple of years, we’ve had an ongoing e-mail conversation covering just about every detail of the topic: what we believe, why we believe it, what we believe should be done. After really diving into the discussion, I realized that although our views of the subject appear to differ quite a bit at the surface, there are really only one or two differences in our beliefs… the most notable of which being the point at which life actually begins.

In the end I believe real progress on political issues will only be achieved with a through, heartfelt conversation over the differences people have on any given topic. There are a lot of smart people in the world, and not all of them share the same views. In other words, there’s a very good chance that there are some very good reasons why people disagree with you on any given topic. Shouldn’t we all invest a little time to hear why others feel the way they do?

In 2004 I thought of an idea for a site that would act as sort of a political MySpace… a place where candidates for any race could sign up for a page, list their thoughts on issues, and allow people to find the best candidate. Facebook has done something like it, but I had wanted to open it up to anyone from presidential candidates to local sheriffs or school board members. I was quite honestly tired of not knowing what any of the local candidates on the ballot really believed. In rethinking my idea, I think I’d also want to open up a sort of issues garden: a place where people could go to thoughtfully supply the reasoning for their personal beliefs without attacks on the other side of the issue.

Obama said something that resonated with me during his little overflow rally this afternoon. It’s actually the first line in this video:

For those of you on dialup:

I will listen to you even when we disagree. We’re not going to agree all the time.

There needs to be less talking and more listening in politics. Maybe that’s what would get me interested in it again.

I don’t want to be just another person spouting off my political thoughts until November. Instead, I want to start a little mini-project to cause you to rethink some of the beliefs you may have. I’ll occasionally write a blog or a Twitter post marked “Politics Unusual” (and they’ll be in Collage, of course); these will be things that I believe will either strengthen your beliefs or cause you to reconsider them. If you have any thoughts for me, let me know.

This month’s Wired cover story features Sarah Silverman helping readers understand why so many parts of the world suck. I’m always impressed by their stories; they’re topical, fun, and really comprehensive. This month’s issue also includes the paper version of the iPhone story, so I thought I’d flip through and see which pictures they decided to use and how they decided to lay the story out. (I’m a bit of a page layout geek, too.)

Not surprisingly, I was interrupted on my way to the story by a stupid pack of magazine subscription cards stuffed annoyingly into the middle of a story. On the facing page I noticed Sarah out of the corner of my eye. I looked down, and she was surrounded on a couch by a plethora of the very same Wired subscription cards I now held in my hands. I cracked a smile, and I couldn’t help but shake my head and whisper to myself, “There’s no way.” I read the segment of the “Why things suck” story on the page underneath the cards:

“You know all the subscription cards cluttering up this issue of Wired? Well, um… sorry … The worst part about ‘em? They cover up some really good stories.”

I think my jaw dropped at that point. I’m not an expert on magazine design, but they either had to choose that page for the placement of the cards or lay out the issue so that the story would appear at that spot. They addressed an annoyance about the medium and had some fun with it.

I wanted to cancel Wired because each issue takes me about two hours to read and I have a pile of about twenty unread magazines collecting in my bedroom. I literally enjoy the magazine too much. Needless to say, the pile will continue to grow thanks in large part to that little stunt they pulled this month.

How’s that for marketing?

First you have to understand why I still do Web development. Although I have some pretty strong complaints and annoyances with this line of work, the fact is that I like to help people. Above all else, I like to help people. I like helping people understand this new world. I like seeing their face when they say, “You can actually do that?” I tell stories to try to make people understand what makes me excited about it all. And while Web development isn’t the closest match to my real technology interest, it’s a fairly secure way to have some sort of anchor in this world that I adore (and it’s something that I’d like to believe I’m fairly good at). I also like it because it’s a fairly reliable 9-5 job (although that sometimes doesn’t happen). The set schedule allows me to spend my non-work time exploring this space even further, trying new things, and being creative in ways that I just can’t while I’m doing business sites.

So why do I do it in Maine?

I am within a two-hour drive of what I believe to be the best national park in the country, a great city, and one of the best mountains in the East (and within three of one of the coolest areas in the world). We have some of the best people in the world here. We’re independent, we’re opinionated, and we do things our own way. We have snow, we have heat, we have rain, and we have thunder. It’s laid back. I honestly believe there’s no other place in the world that can match the place I am right now.

What happens if you combine the two? I have the chance to help the businesses I’ve grown up watching, visiting, and paying. It’s a way of saying thanks, and it’s a way to let other people know about the businesses that I love.

My final point is this: I do not do what I do where I do it for the money. It’s true that I could be making a lot more dough in the middle of a city, or if I tweaked my job a bit to become more specialized. Instead, I do it so that I can be proud of the work that I do. I do it so that I can enjoy the work that I do. The combination of those two serve as the barometer of my happiness; if I am enjoying work and am proud of it, I’m happy, but if either of those two fade, so does my happiness.

Less planning, more doing.

2007, in my opinion, was a year spent figuring out who I am, who I want to be, and how I want to get there. I constructed a bunch of systems - both personal and public - to organize what I do in a more easy-to-understand way. The prime example? Collage. I launched Collage a little less than a year ago as a place to keep track of everything I publish, mark, and discuss online. Today, about 90% of my public work is included in Collage in an easy-to-read (and subscribe-able) format. I’m really proud of it.

I want 2008 to be a year of advancement instead of planning. I want to take the systems and practices I constructed last year and move forward. As it stands right now, I’m in a pretty good place to do just that.

Don’t get me wrong, I intend to plan when appropriate. In fact, I’m planning two new projects right now.

The first project is a new blog I intend to launch soon called Another New World. I’ve always debated whether Two Cents and a Thousand Words should be the random collection of personal tidbits it is today or whether I should focus a bit more. I realized last year (largely due to my columns in The Maine Edge) that I really do enjoy focusing on a topic. I tried for months to figure out what the focus of the blog should be; I wanted to find my true passion. I realized after some time that my passion in technology has always been looking at what’s new, reflecting on how we reached this point, and seeing how it may affect what’s next. ANeW will cover that. I’ll have more details when it launches, of course. I was originally planning to launch it today, but I just felt as though it wasn’t ready yet. I’m not setting a launch date now, but I hope to have it up fairly soon.

The other project is a new service by Sephone (and more notably, the Sephone Development Teamâ„¢) that we’re currently storyboarding. I can’t go into much detail about it right now, but it has the possibility of transforming Sephone (at least partially) into something new. It’s also more in line with my personal interests and philosophies than anything else we’ve ever done. We hope to have it ready by Q2 ‘08, but it’s at a very tentative stage right now. I’ll update you as more details emerge.

As I said before, I’m in a good place right now to move forward. I’m already trying some new things this year; I’ll let you know about them as soon as they’re ready to go. Some of the projects I’ve done in the past may receive a little less attention as I carve out my ideal “brand.” But with a good understanding of who I want to be, a good lineup of tools to get me there (including my amazing new iPod touch - thank you Mom and Dad!), and some great ideas waiting for their chance to shine, 2008 will hopefully be a very fun and inspiring year.

This year will not be one of those years. I don’t like goals.

This past year was tough for me in some ways, and it was great in others. Overall, it was a year spent trying to figure out who I am, what I enjoy, and how I should be who I want to be. I made some progress, but a lot of the year was just spent thinking.

I have a lot to do on my day off tomorrow, but I’ll hopefully have a chance to write a fairly extensive post about the things I want to focus on in 2008. (Call them resolutions if you want… I don’t want to.) I really don’t want to spend a lot of time dwelling on the past year instead of moving onward and (hopefully) upward, so I’ll just end this last post of 2007 with a few of my very-very-favorite photos out of the approximately 4,500 save-able shots from the last twelve months (for comparison, I took just about 2,000 in 2006 and 1,800 in 2005). Some have deep emotional attachments; others are just cool shots.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Two years ago I started another tradition: a Christmas Eve trip to South Paris, Maine. I’ve spent the last two Christmas Eves with my friend Melody. We usually grab a bite to eat and catch up on what’s happening in our lives. We also visit the elk farm in West Paris.

The elk at the farm are amazing. They’re beautiful animals, and they’re used to being fed grains by people. They walk right up to the fence and will lick the grain out of your hand if you so choose; you can also throw it into a feeding trough. They seem to like being patted, and they’re lots of fun overall.

The other highlight of the trip is the drive back home. I stay in South Paris until around five, and then I make the three-hour drive back through Rumford, Farmington, and Skowhegan, stopping at the Irving station in Farmington for a cup of hot chocolate and admiring the Route 2 Christmas decorations along the way. On the radio for the trip is WHOM’s “Home for the Holidays.” The leisurely drive on Christmas Eve with Christmas music in my ear makes me smile for the whole trip home.

On Monday I’ll continue my South Paris elk trip tradition. It’s one of the few new traditions I’ve started recently, and it really makes me realize what’s so special about doing the same things year after year: it evokes emotion. The drive back is a quintessential Christmas season experience for me.

Merry Christmas to you all. No matter what you practice, enjoy the season.

Any future videoblogs will, of course, be part of Collage.

Let me say this right off the bat: Subscribe to or bookmark Collage instead of this blog. Collage reads in EVERYTHING I do - not just blog posts. You’ll get all of my pictures from Flickr, any YouTube vids I post, and a ton more. More sources will be added soon-ish. Of course, if you read my posts through Facebook or something like that, it doesn’t really apply to you. I’d love to have you read or subscribe to Collage anyway!

In fact, here are the only links you need: Read Collage | Subscribe to Collage

I wanted to make Collage even more appealing. Two Cents and a Thousand Words has kind of gone by the wayside as far as usefulness is concerned, and I’ve pretty much used it only as an outlet to inject Collage with content that won’t fit anywhere else. You won’t miss a thing if you subscribe to Collage instead of this blog; everything here ends up there. I added a list of sources to each Collage section, and I also added a little description of what each page shows. I think I finally squashed the time bug, too, that’s been showing incorrect times since I moved my site to a different server (in California) this summer. I now understand why lots of Web apps use relative time instead of absolute time.

At the same time, I didn’t want to lose all faith in the blog. If you’re coming to comment on a post or if you just find the blog in a search engine, I’ve scaled down the number of categories I use to be more content-driven than topic-driven. In other words, if you want to see my “photoblog” (stories and events that revolve around the photos I take), check out the Photography category. For project updates, check My Work. I may go back and re-associate everything, but don’t hold your breath. You’re on your own for older posts. I almost have 700 blog posts, after all.

Questions or comments? Get in touch with me. More to come soon, of course.

This is the letter I wrote CBS after I read and watched the piece:

I’ll be bluntly honest: I was offended by your 60 Minutes “Millienials” piece. As a 24-year-old Web developer, I find it outrageous that you stereotyped a whole generation based largely on the accounts of two twenty-somethings who make a living coaching its least productive workers.

Why, in a piece covering 12- to 27-year-olds, were a large majority of the interviewees not contained within that age range? Why was all the video footage of our generation illustrating the carefree, priority-lacking members of our generation instead of showing some of us who are passionate about the work that we do or individuals who have already had great success starting their own businesses and companies?

While watching the piece, I couldn’t help but think of those old sitcoms with a grandfather whose only line in the show was “kids these days” or “get off my lawn, you scoundrels.” I can only imagine what older generations would have said as the Baby Boomers and Gen-Xers entered the workforce for the first time. I imagine they lacked the faith in you that you obviously lack in our generation.

There’s no question why the people of our generation don’t watch much television - especially shows like 60 Minutes. Your “Millenials” piece makes it tragically clear that these kinds of shows are not for us. These kinds of shows can’t stand us.

Time to go back to YouTube.

Out of all your interactions with me, when was I the most passionate about something (and what was it)? What would you say I’m the most passionate about in general?

I’d really appreciate a response via any means (comment, e-mail, Facebook message, 206-350-HI-JR, etc. etc.).

By far my favorite photo project of 2006 was a little effort I coined 30holidays. The idea is quite simple: take one holiday or winter-related photo each day from November 26 through December 25, then upload the photos to Flickr. After the holidays passed, I had been a part of a strange coincidence, documented my holiday season, and just had a better appreciation of how we celebrate such a wonderful time of the year. I loved it.

As hard as it is to believe, November 26 is just over two weeks away. Starting that Monday, I will once again be bringing along my cameras everywhere I go to capture a single photo each day until Christmas. (This year, I hopefully won’t miss a day like I did on December 21, 2006.)

Here’s the thing: I don’t want to do this alone. If you like photography or if you just like the holiday season, please try this out, too. It’s a lot of fun. It’s as simple as registering for a free Flickr account, taking photos, and then uploading them to the site.

Get more details on the 30holidays group page. If you’d like, you can see a calendar of my collection from last year.

I really can’t wait to get started.

On Saturday, Kelley and Ian took me to a fantastic restaurant called FiRE + iCE. This place was about the closest thing to a new media grill as one could get; you fill a bowl full of raw meat, pasta, veggies, rice, or whatever else you’d like, fill a smaller bowl with any of about a dozen sauces, and take it to a grill at the center of the restaurant. The cooks grill the contents of the large bowl, throw on the sauce, and you have a customized meal. It’s a next-generation buffet. It never gets boring. And man, was it tasty. I’ll definitely be going back.

On Saturday night, I realized that I could spend Sunday doing more than just PodCamp in the big city. I e-mailed a few of my friends in the greater Boston area, and my good friend Laura called to invite me out to her church the next morning.

For many people, church on a Sunday morning wouldn’t be a big deal. For me, though, it was quite the change of pace; I hadn’t been to a Sunday service in about a decade. (I’m not really that much of an organized religion guy, and I religion is one of the topics I consciously don’t talk much about on this blog.)

So to the complete disbelief of anyone who knows me well, I spent Sunday morning at Vineyard in Cambridge. Like FiRE + iCE, it was a type of establishment I could never imagine taking hold in Bangor; it was the first church service I’d ever attended with plain-clothes pastors and references to YouTube and the Red Sox (it is Boston, after all). I told Laura after the service that I found it to be refreshing, and I was very glad I attended. The church did a wonderful job of delivering a message while leaving the sermon open to some interpretation; unlike some other congregations, it really seemed as though Vineyard was trying consciously to be open to a lot of people. The fact that the sermon included video clips and contemporary music definitely appealed to the new media part of me.

I’m not doing the church justice with my brief explanation, but I wanted to mention both it and the restaurant due to the differences they both showed from traditional institutions of their types. Boston definitely seems like a place that appeals to a younger, more creative population.

If you’re interested in a bit of audio to illustrate my points, Vineyard provides an MP3 of the oddly-relevant creativity-themed sermon on their site.

“But Justin,” you ask, “you’ve always said that you don’t want to live in Boston.” That’s true. As much as I like the city, it’s just too busy for my taste as a rural/”suburban” Maine guy. I’ve started to enjoy each visit to the city more, and I do like spending time in it.

I managed to become somewhat of a subway master on this trip. I’ve always loved the T (and trains in general); the concept of having a speedy underground train racing around a city has always fascinated me. Sure, the system isn’t perfect - there were shuttle buses for one part of the Orange Line last weekend, and then there was that time where I had to get out of the car and walk to the closest station when the train didn’t work correctly on a previous trip - but it’s a very efficient method of transit overall.

I also had the pleasure of riding the Silver Line for the first time. The Silver Line is a 5-year-old section of Boston public transportation that uses underground electric buses instead of trains. I loved it.

The star of the weekend for public transportation was the Red Line, my favorite leg of the T. The Red Line has become familiar to me since most of my Boston area friends have lived in Cambridge; the Harvard station is one of two (along with North Station) that I feel familiar with. On Sunday I parked at Alewife at the end of the Red Line and rode from there to South Station with a couple stops along the way. I was really impressed with the ease of the new CharlieCard stored value system as well.

Thanks to my friends Kelley and Ian, I was able to stay in Manchester, NH for the weekend. I’ve really started to appreciate Manchester after the two BarCamps there and this last trip; if I was to move away from Bangor, I’d probably end up there. It’s tough for me to think that I might leave Maine since I really love it here, but it’s always good to have options, right?

The trip made me want to explore places outside of Maine more. When I get some time, I might just do that.

Check out a few of my photos from Boston on Flickr. I also uploaded a video from the Red Line.

PodCamp, for those of you who don’t know, is an event organized by a set of devoted organizers and the event’s participants. It’s a lot like a BarCamp, but it’s focused more on podcasting and other new media and less on technology. Over 1,200 people registered for the weekend (an incredible number given the relatively young age of podcasting).

Aside from the sheer number of people registered, the most impressive aspect of the event had to be the variety of people it brought together under one roof. There’s always been talk of an “A-list” of bloggers throughout the blogosphere, and a similar concept has been occasionally mentioned throughout the world of podcasting. Whatever the case, a number of popular and recognizable podcasters all assembled under one roof. Despite the event’s size, everyone was amazingly approachable; I was overjoyed and impressed at how many of my favorite podcasters I met over the course of a couple of days. (The list of people I met in person included C.C. Chapman, Mitch Joel, Matthew Ebel, Rudy Jahchan & Casey McKinnon, Chris Penn, and Brother Love.) It was so energizing to have so many people within the community together in the same place.

The event was organized amazingly well. The BCEC’s location was easy to find, and the schedule was planned out well. The participants of the event did their part, too, by contributing an enormous amount of content to sites like Flickr, Twitter, and their own blogs. Many of the sessions were recorded either by the presenter or by members of the audience, and the recordings should be available in podcast feeds soon.

There was, of course, still some room for improvement. PodCamp founders Chris Brogan and Chris Penn commented in the wrap-up session that the crowd may have actually been too large for the intimate style traditionally held by PodCamps. Not everyone who signed up for the event actually attended, including some of the presenters; Chris Penn saw this as an indication that PodCamps should be allowed to charge a nominal admission fee (PodCamps up to this point have had to be free to attend). He mentioned that an admission fee would most likely raise the quality of presentations and discussions as a result of having a more devoted, focused group attending the event.

I found it odd, though, that he brought up that point after mentioning the dreaded fishbowl. For the last year, podcasters have been debating whether they exist in a fishbowl; in other words, everyone who listens to podcasts are in the same core group. The fear is that podcasting is not reaching an audience outside of this core group, and it will therefore not be able to grow in the future. By charging an admission fee, I’m afraid that people new to podcasting would be hesitant to pay the cost of attendance; I think an admission fee to PodCamp could quite possibly encourage the fishbowling of the community.

The fishbowl manifested itself at PodCamp in a rather predictable way; as the event progressed, I started to have the feeling that I’d heard everything being said already. Many of the presentations were given by people I regularly hear on podcasts, and most of them understandably talked about the same things they talk about on their podcasts. The most valuable part of PodCamp for me, therefore, were the discussions and socialization occurring outside of the actual sessions.

In my opinion events like PodCamp should be a time to discuss where the community is heading in the future. How do we appeal to more people? What else can be done with these media? How is the dynamic changing within a world of user-generated content? I mentioned earlier that the schedule for PodCamp was planned very well. For the next PodCamps, I’d actually encourage Chris and Chris to be a bit more flexible with its scheduling. I propose that the Sunday afternoon of the conference is left open, and the sessions for that time are decided either Saturday night or Sunday morning. This would allow presentations to move beyond the routine topics covered by podcasters and move into a more general discussion about podcasting and the world of social media in general, largely fueled by conversations occurring during the first half of the PodCamp. The spontaneity of a malleable conference schedule screams “new media” to me.

I was extremely impressed by the organization of the event, and I’m truly glad I went down to participate and honored that I met so many of the people I hear every week. As Chris Brogan mentioned, these events allow the “social” of social media to come alive; amazing things can happen with so many smart people under the same roof.

Check out my photos from the event at Flickr. I didn’t get many and they’re not very good, but I wasn’t really there for photography.