Jason Toney

The One That Was Mostly Uncomfortable

"Why can't we turn the page?" — Nneka, The Uncomfortable Truth

My tongue keeps running over the stitching string in my mouth. I went to the dentist on Friday expecting to be told that I had too much tartar and that I needed to floss more. That happened. What also happened, though, was a surprise extraction of the leftover root of a tooth from a previous visit with a different dentist. I haven't been in much pain since but I have been uncomfortable. There's this nagging numbness. The occasional odd bite when I forget to eat mostly on the other side. But there's this string that my tongue can't seem to forget about no matter how much I want to get it out of my mind. It's constant and annoying and a distraction. It'll be there until I heal. Then it will simply fall away.

Which brings me to another mostly uncomfortable week at work. Outside of Wednesday, when I felt like I was starting to make sense of the new normal, I was mostly caught up with feelings. Feeling like we're still in this middle ground between what was and what will be. Feeling awkward in meetings with friends and colleagues who were leaving at the end of the week asking them how to do their jobs. Feeling sad and celebratory with many of those same colleagues as we said goodbye. And goodbye. And goodbye. And goodbye. "Good luck and good fortune," I would say to those who were going on to new adventures and I meant it but it never seemed enough. Not enough recognition of their contributions to our mutual success over the years. Not enough recognition of the peculiar situation we were in. Not enough recognition of my own sense of loss.

So, I've spent the weekend mostly in my head. Reliving those moments. Preparing myself for what is to come. I'm excited. I'm nervous. I'm uncomfortable.

I'm reminding myself that usually when I feel that way something big is about to happen. I like big. I do well with big. 

And I'll be ready.

The Week In Review

• The Best Thing I Saw This Week: was definitely not Sucker Punch. Friday Night Lights, however, continues to be awesome.
• The Best Thing I Heard This Week: James Blake's debut was very interesting and it, coupled with The Cosby Show teaching me how to dance to it, has made this coming week's playlists very dubstep focused.
• The Best Thing I Read This Week: The City & The City is complicated and weird and very good.
• The Thing I Read This Week That Most Resonated

 I have no intention of apologizing for believing in people, for insisting that we all use this moment and these assets to create some art and improve the world around us.

To do anything less than that is a crime.

Why? Because that's how I try to live my life. No regrets. No missed opportunities. No letting my nearest and dearest lose out on living their best lives because of their own self-doubts. I believe we only get one shot at this. Let's make it count.

Let's go!

On Getting Away With it

"There's a price for over doin' it." - Jay-Z, Fallin'

Seth Godin asked yesterday, "How much can you get away with?" He positions it as either, how little value can you get away with providing vs. how much are you willing to give away but that's not how I thought of it.

I want to be a disruptor. A change agent. I want to see how much I can test and bend the rules. How far can I take a good idea before it makes people uncomfortable. How much can I challenge old assumptions, old business, old so-called "best practices" before someone balks.

And then, can I take it further?

I want to exceed expectations and taking what however much leeway I'm given and going way beyond what you thought I could do.

How much can I get away with? More than you thought I would, that's for sure.

The That's That Fitness Test

"Did you miss these rhymes when I was gone?" - Doom, That's That

It's been a month since my last insanity Fitness test and I'm happy to report I didn't backslide too much. In Fact, I have few total inches than I did then and have only gained 2 pounds back after nearly a month of not much physical activity at all.

Injuries suck. I'm now on non-steroidal muscle anti-inflammatories and can no longer do Insanity (although I'm sticking with using the fitness test as a guage of my general fitness). In the short term, I'm replacing it with hip hop abs and the biggest loser boot camp DVDs. Soon, though, I think I'm going to have to bite the bullet and join a gym and get a personal trainer.

Yikes.

The One With Way Too Many Downs

"The love we have for each other seems to outweigh what we do to each other." - Snoop Dogg, Ups & Downs

I'm staring at this screen trying to reconcile all the feelings I have about this week. I turned 36 yesterday and got to spend it with my friends and The Lady. I started the week in Austin, one of my favorite cities in the country with many of my favorite people in what has become the incredibly overwhelming (and not really in a good way) SXSW. I got to do something I haven't really done since I left BMP 6 years ago: work a video shoot. And, I was reminded late in the week what's so special about the place where I work and get excited by what's to come.

But getting to tonight was rough. We're saying goodbye to a lot of co-workers and friends at work this week. The best boss I've ever had has decided to move on to new adventures. And so, on Wednesday, I had a real sad. Like a down in the dumps, woe is me, mopey mope sad face situation.

However excited I am about the future, professionally and personally, there are people who I've succeeded and failed with over the years that aren't going to be there on a day to day basis soon. And they are great folks. They have all treated me with great kindness and I've enjoyed working with them so much.

So, as I look ahead, I'm making my own commitment to pay that forward. To be kind and compassionate to all those I work with. To listen more than I tell. To create an atmosphere of teamwork, collaboration, candor, and creativity.

To give us all the best opportunity to kick ass.

Because once you're down, the only way to go is up.

Let's Go!

The Week in Review

• The Best Thing I Saw This Week: I started watching Friday Night Lights on Netflix Instant yesterday and I'm already hooked. 10 episodes over a 24 hour period. Go Panthers!
• The Best Thing I Heard This Week: Rebirth Brass Band's latest album Rebirth of New Orleans. 
• The Best Thing I Read This Week: I'm reading The City & The City right now and...I'm still trying to wrap my head around the concept.
• The Thing I Read This Week That Most Resonated:

Phone calls are rude. Intrusive. Awkward. “Thank you for noticing something that millions of people have failed to notice since the invention of the telephone until just now,” Judith Martin, a k a Miss Manners, said by way of opening our phone conversation. “I’ve been hammering away at this for decades. The telephone has a very rude propensity to interrupt people.

Why? Because I hate the phone that's why. Your phone call fills me with anxiety most of the time. And dread.

That's real.

SXSW 2011 Interactive - Day 3 Notes

"I'm coming back to where the core of the problem is." - The Roots, Long Time

It's amazing what a little dancing, a little quiet time, and some solid conversation can do to change one's mood. I'm still quite amused by the jumpbysharkwest hashtag and subscribe to several of the ideas -- it's too big and it's not techie enough -- but I think I figured out what I need to do to make my experience here (and at other conferences) better in the future:

1. Be A Panelist - the two years that I haven't been a panelist have been my least favorite years at the conference. I want to contribute and feel like I'm part of things. It helps me stay invested.
2. Plan Ahead - I just kind of showed up this year. I didn't do much prep work in seeing who was here that I wanted to meet or what parties I might want to attend or in understanding how the conference had changed.
3. Have Goals - I knew I wanted to focus on seeing what others were doing in Kid's Entertainment and Social Responsibility but beyond that I didn't have any stretch goals. I needed some. When a panel didn't meet my expectations or plans fell through, I was without any quick options.

And, while this is my last day at SXSW, I'm actually leaving with a lot of inspiration. I have some blog posts planned, some connections to follow up on, and some clear ideas about where I want my own professional development to go.

Oh, and the best things about Day 3?

• Brunch with Erica, Gillian, Lainie, and Tiffany at Moonshine
• Meaningful conversations throughout the day away from the panels
• Dinner off-campus with some of my most favorite people in the world mostly talking about life with a little bit of this digital space we're working in seeping naturally into the seams.
• Nap Time!

SXSW Interactive 2011 Day 2 (and a half) Notes

"I'm too young to be feeling this old." - Drake, Over

I think this is the beginning of the end of my love affair with SXSW. Despite the fact that I am getting some value out of the few panels I've attended and I have met (or at least started following on twitter) interesting people with similar interests, that spark that ignites into an inferno of inspiration just hasn't happened yet this year. I have yet to be delighted by a conversation or wow-ed by someone's insight into the future of the web or technology or society. Maybe it's because many of my favorite conversationalists aren't here this year and maybe it's because new thought leaders are harder to find in what has become a massive experience.

Maybe it's me.

Whatever the reason, while I love Austin, I'm kinda glad I'm having to cut my trip short this year and return to LA Monday evening instead of Wednesday as originally planned.

But, anyway, enough of my maudlin "remember-whens". Here's the stuff I've really dug in the last 36 hours.

Marissa Mayer Presents...Location, Location, Location

I'm a big Marissa Mayer fan. Much of the product and team management practices I engage in at work have been sparked by her approaches at Google. I was really looking forward to getting a chance to see how she talks about those products and presents them. Her 30 minute presentation (which started exactly on time and had a very nice rhythm complete with a couple "ooh ahhh" moments) was interesting. She focused a lot on what issues her products were attempting to solve for Google's users and what ways they were still seeking to delight and push their user base forward.

Most interesting nuggets:

• 40% of google maps usage is mobile. There have actually been two days in the last 6 months where mobile usage was higher than the web.
• Google Places with hotpot is like gowalla/Foursquare but with a much lower threshold for user acquisition since it is already integrated into Maps and Search. 3 million reviews already in what is, essentially, a soft-launched product.
• Google art project uses google street view tech in bold new ways. 7 billion pixels allows you to see the intricate details of a painting. It presents Art in an entirely new way to view and appreciate.
• Did you know you can view walt disney world in 3D in Google Earth? I didn't.
• Context based results in the mobile space is the future of many of their products like Places and Google Goggles as well as deeper general contextual integration across android.

Apps for Healthy Kids: Government Challenges FTW!

This panel was interesting but it wasn't what I expected it to be. I thought the focus was going to be on the apps developed in the Healthy Kids Challenge and how they were being used/distributed today. Instead, the focus was on how the US government is using challenges and competitions to essentially crowd source solutions to problems and how other groups or entities might do the same. A few useful nuggets for me, including the realization that I really should be following the whitehouse.gov blog but not as inspiring as I wanted it to be.

Designing stuff kids will love and use

Best panel, by far, for me so far. I loved hearing the folks from PBS Kids talk passionately about developing for children and the unique challenges and opportunities it brings. Most discussions of design and user experience focus on adults and fail to consider the interesting idiosyncrasies of the kidspace. I haven't spent much time at PBSKids.org or PBSKidsGo.org before now but I will in the future. They are doing some really smart work that can inspire some of what we're doing in my office. I really need to spend more time talking with folks working in the same space as me and I struggle to find that at LA (and at SXSW and other tech-centric conferences before this weekend). Even Ypulse is more teen focused than tween and younger. Great stuff. Check out #designingforkids on twitter.

Blacks in Tech

There are more black folks at this conference this year than I have ever seen, most of whom I've never met before which is amazing. I will say, though, that I feel like "Blacks in Tech" is a bit of a misnomer now. Like the rest of the conference, there are an increasing number of people who use technology rather than create it and that leads to very different conversations. There's a lot more self-marketing and business networking going on than in earlier years. That said, I love seeing people of color who are power brokers at places like NPR and Discovery Channel and even here at SXSW and I love the problem that there are so many panels featuring people of color and talking about diversity that we can't attend them all. That's a great problem to have and an impressive change from my first appearance here in 2005.

Good on ya South By. 

I just wish I wasn't feeling so curmudgeonly about it.

Day 1 Notes - SXSWi 2011

"I might flip but usually I'm a calm individual." - Dilated Peoples, Kindness for Weakness

Quick Jabs

• I love BUR
• SJC has a very nice airport
• Having flown Delta almost exclusively the last two years, I missed the at-your-seat entertainment screens. Not to be entertained but for the flight tracker
• Salt Lick in AUS airport is okay but I don't come to Austin for the BBQ. I'm all about pancakes at Magnolia, pizza at The Onion, muffins at The Hideout, and as many meals at Moonshine as possible.
• The Powerskin MyTouch 4G charger was the best pre-SXSWi buy and has already paid dividends. I've never been in fear of running out of juice all day and my phone has been in use since 5AM. I picked that up based on an additional tip from Andy Baio (http://waxy.org) on Michael Pusateri's blog.

Longer Thoughts

Location, Location, Location
Gowalla (my favorite), Foursquare, Google Places, and Facebook Places regularly come up. The two major updates in service from Gowalla and Foursquare and the planned changes to Places means that these will be the big news of the conference this year...and the ones that likely most smell like opportunity to those marketers and Suits hanging out at the Convention Center in large quantities this year.

It's Bigger Than Geek-Hop
A common theme of the early conversations amongst the veterans of the conference that I've spent time with so far is about the size of the conference this year. More people, bigger sponsors, multiple campuses. It's a lot. The biggest change is that Interactive isn't just for the startups and web nerds, the digital space has become THE core of the business for many industries old and new so that means amongst the technologists and creatives and thought leaders, there are now a lot of marketers and, for lack of a better term, Suits. The fear is that will mean less opportunities for those serendipitous moments, fewer chances for the folks who actually make this stuff to connect, and an increase in the noise. And if those things aren't there anymore, how much longer can we justify the cost of attending?

Maybe we're worrying too much, though. Today's activity proved there's still moments of magical happenstance. A stop for coffee led to randomly running into old friends, an interesting mix of people, and an hour's worth of smart chatter and proof that Austin is still weird. A planned dinner for 3 turned into 5 people crowding in to a car and laughing the night away over breakfast foods.

Maybe you still got it Austin.