Today we celebrate (y)our Independence Day!

President Whitmore's words were certainly ringing in my ears last weekend as I watched fireworks over the Hudson River up in NY with some good friends of mine. Happy Birthday America!

My good friend Ara was in town for the long weekend, on the way back from a business trip. Here is an abridged version of our itinerary to entice any other readers to visit:

Friday - met Ara near JFK and took the subway to his accommodations in Columbus Circle. Took a stroll round Lincoln Center and Central Park before returning to said accommodations to be harangued by a nice lady who remembered the awning used to say something about 'home for wayward christian girls' and couldn't believe how cheap the accommodation was. We set her straight on as many counts as we could. Boarded train to Amy Ruth's in Harlem for waffles. Ara had blueberries on his, I had a large piece of fried chicken. Walked waffles off down MLK Blvd, hiked up the hill to Columbia University and discussed life's intricacies, as we are wont to do. Then subway down to the Lower East Side to meet Polina, Claudia and Andreas. Found a nice place with a garden on Ludlow St called 'Tre' to pass the night away.

Saturday - Ara went for a run and got slightly lost in Central Park. After that decided it was an excellent day to head to the sea (as did half of NYC), so got on the Long Island Rail Road out to Long Beach. $10 each to get on to the beach! And this in the country of freedom? The sand was very nice though, if the ocean a tad cold. Soaked in rays for a while before returning to Manhattan. Wowed the crowds in our carriage with a soft-loud-soft version of Phoenix Foundation's 'Damn The River' and then some nice Beirut by Ara, taught to him by Andy (this was all with ukelele mind you). After dinner we headed to Manhattan and towards the Hudson and promised fireworks but for whatever reason (proximity to start time perhaps) were prevented from reaching water's edge by NYPD barriers and loudhailers. So watched the excellent display through a park grating, then headed to Claudia and Andreas' lovely apartment with a view of the UN for the rest of the evening. Ara stayed until 4am arbitrating a good-natured sparring match between some of Mexico's and Brazil's finest minds.

Sunday - got up 'early' to go queue for tickets to Shakespeare in the Park, arrived midday. Got through 3/4 of the 400-metre line but then were told tickets all gone, and the last tickets went to someone who queued up at 5:45am. Reconciled the wasted time with the fact our sardonic southern-hemisphere humour had entertained small segments of the crowd. Ran into Claudia and Andreas and drowned sorrows with excellent brunch on Upper West Side. Then headed to SoHo for shopping, including at least 90 minutes at UniQlo blowing Ara's hard-earned cash, before walking the Brooklyn Bridge. Couldn't be bothered waiting an hour in the line at Grimaldi's Pizza, so split for Fifth Avenue (Brooklyn) to meet Polina for dinner (excellent Mexican, including AVOCADO FRIES!) and then The Chocolate Room where Ara died of cocoa excellence, before we saw him on to the F train bound for Manhattan.

So all that being said, if you're heading to New York City any time soon, give me some notice and maybe I'll meet you there...

Bad 'Models'

No, not clothes models. Models of social, economic and other processes that are really just glorified drawings that could be made by five-year-olds.

What can one actually learn from such a model? Often that 'everything is interconnected' (knew that already), or 'everything is dynamic' (yup got it) or that 'there is a clear sequence of events here' (either obvious or false).

Until I start a real blog to collect these up, I'm going to start here with a doosey from the UK-based 'Consortium for Service Innovation'.

Let me point out some of the key features of the Bad 'Model', expertly implemented in this example:

• absolutely key is the mid-late nineties Microsoft(tm) PowerPoint(tm)(c) cloud shapes - putting them at the top of the diagram really helps users orient the page
  
• awkward stick figures doing 'zany' things EVERYWHERE on the diagram
• random punctuation marks in a 'wacky' font that emphasizes just how fun this all is
• funnels and cones of causality, showing...uhhh...that things that start large can get smaller
  
• you got your arbitrary numbering of 'levels' in there, nice!
  
• arrows connecting almost everything to everything else (note to self: bi-directional arrows are WAY cooler than those boring uni-directional ones)
• the ability to form cool new buzzPHRASES by stringing together the buzzwords already in the diagram, for example "Level 1 Knowledge Base(d) Community Conversations" or how about "Assisted Self-Help Community" - sounds like a retirement village advertisement!
  

And then, just in case part of this isn't clear, they provide a clarifying diagram:

AH, I get it now, KCS captures the collective experience of the support organization! So you mean "our call centre operators type stuff into their computers which we don't delete but rather store for future use".

Source: http://www.serviceinnovation.org/our_work/

We were on a boat!

These are my 2008-09 Ann Arbor roommates Tim and Alex.

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=1912316&l=a386f5b53e&id=703999762

And here is some context for all y'all dying to know what all the fuss is about.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QwM4vXex7c