Day 1 of ISMAR ‘09 in the bag.

Lessons:

• Wow, this is a much smaller community than I envisioned.
• These folks are really passionate, smart and visionary.  I’d invite everyone of them over for dinner.
• In some ways the technology is ready for market, but the utility is still fuzzy.

Hats off to all the wonderful people that I met today.  You have welcomed me into this cadre of visionaries, and I’m looking forward to building the future, not just talking about it.

Kudos to the guys who get the press:

• Markus Tripp with Mobilizy (Wikitude)
• Dirk Groten (Layar)
• Chetan Damani (AcrossAir…Nearest Tube)

But the real congratulations go to the guys who have been at these for years, and whose technology is just coming into realization:

• Peter Meier with Metaio
• Daniel Wagner with Studierstube Tracker / Imagination.at (congratulations on your new baby, sorry to have missed you)
• Mark Billinghurst of HIT NZ

Finally, special mention goes to Ori Inbar and Robert Rice.  It was a bold move to bring together commercial organizations to begin to lay out a road map getting AR / Mobile AR to market.  I doubt it yielded your expected results, but the energy behind standardization was palatable.  Let’s move forward on the Consortium.  Great Idea.

Up early this morning.  Taking the next week off to attend the ISMAR 2009 (International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality) conference in Orlando.

I’m absolutely fascinated by this technology and it really inspires my imagination.

I have been a fan of Dr. Gates for years, as I’ve seen many of his programs on PBS.

Those who know me, know that my mother is Puerto Rican, yet through the interplay of genetics I resemble my Danish-lineage cousins more than my Puerto Rican cousins.  Working in Florida, with green eyes and only slightly olive skin, weekly I am confronted with racists who do not realize my heritage.  But those remarks are demographic.  Hardly ever do I hear any comments from people my age or younger.  Still, race and bigotry are real.

But in my opinion, that is not what was experienced by Mr. Gates.  Here is a link to the police report.  Read it, and come to your own opinion.  To me, this event is not about the bigotry and racism that unquestionably exist.  Rather, this event is about a man of privilege who used his race and connections, as a means to belittle others.  That is not the kind of honorable action, I would expect from his public persona!

There were witnesses to the event, and the police report indicates Mr. Gates' actions we confrontational and degrading.  The Police are here to protect us.  They give their lives to protect us.  And yes, sometimes they do stupid things.  But I feel Mr. Gates was acting like a bully.  I should congratulate him on demonstrating, not the story of race in America, but privilege in America; with his quote, “You don’t know who you are messing with…I’ll meet your momma outside.”

He's lost a fan, and set back those who experience true discrimination.

My family has always loved the outdoors, and especially the awe inspiring parts of the out doors.

On Friday, Andrea and I witnessed an amazing event.  The cell phone video, does not have the best resolution, but I was able to track down these pictures from the internet.  In the second picture, you’ll see a McDonalds across the street from the Yellow ‘PET’ Superstore sign.  Andrea and I were across the street from the McDonalds.

Like all SilverLight newbies, one of my first projects was an image carousel.

Step 1:  Make the images rotate.

Step 2:  Add some rounded corners to my images, via RectangleGeometry.RadiusX{Y} and Image.Clip

Step 3:  Let's add a shiny border...my brain totally page faults at this point.

In XAML it's pretty straight forward:

<Border BorderThickness="5" CornerRadius="10" BorderBrush="Black">
  <Image x:Name="doSomeCoolness"/>
</Border>

But, I'm a programmer damn it and I like to build all my stuff dynamically in code.

At first, I thought adding a border would be as simple as:

Notice there is no Image.Border property.  A careful look at the XAML will reveal the error of my ways.  The Border is not a Property of the Framework Object, the Border is the container of the Framework Object.  I was hoping Border would work something like an inverse .Clip.

My work around, and yes it sucks, was to treat Border as the Container object in all my calls, including the .Tick event which repositioned the Carousel in the ellipse.

Being an Ex-Microsoft, I know this is a hack, and I have a sticky feeling that I need to be thinking of my object as a Control Template.  But, I'm still a SilverLight newbie and this is about learning, and understanding through exploration.  I guess my next Blog Entry will be about Control Templates

Follow Ups:

@ryantherobot - Totally get the decorator bit, but I don't see it as appropriate for containment.  It would be like Margin also being a parent of the Framework Object.  To me at least, but thanks for the Tweet Back.

BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front)

I've been crazy busy for the last 45 days.  While I'm still committed to "living la vida start up", the market has me a bit freaked out; so I'm upping my steady contract work to accumulate some "just in case" capital.  With luck, six months from now, I'll be back to at least 50% of my time experimenting with technology.

Does that mean, I've turned into Al Bundy.  Hell no, I'm still me, and I still LOVE TECHNOLOGY.

Since I don't have a ton of time, here are the cool things that have captured my attention and imagination.

The Heterogenic Future and SilverLight

In my January 7th Post, I honestly felt that Flash was the future.  I picked up some ActionScript books at the library, and cracked open CSS3.  For all you programmers out there, take my advice and stop there.  Holy crap, Flash is a nightmare.  It just doesn't feel like a development environment.  I love the pervasiveness of their plug-in, but ActionScript is exactly that; a Script Language.  I know I'm old school, but I just don't get the Script Languages. 

So with my Adobe foray cut strikingly short, I felt pretty bummed for a few weeks.  Then I had some free time about two weeks ago, and I needed to do some animation work for the Jax EBikes catalogue.  I decided to crack open SilverLight.  I had my animation going in like 4 hours, and after about 3 days, I felt really at home in the environment.

SilverLight runs on Mac(s) and Windows Boxes, and it is the backend of NetFlicks' Streaming Video.  Thus, I think it's a safe bet that it can at least be a player over the medium and long term.  In the near term, I don't have a ton of use for SilverLight RIA(s), because the plug in is not ubiquitous, but I can definitely see it reaching critical mass.  That will be an awesome time for the Internet, because RIA(s) are fun as hell to write.

Jax EBikes

So I must be mental, but I just don't want to close Jax EBikes.  They are too much fun, and I want people to be able to see how they can be used to change our conceptions of transportation.  Sales suck.  Gas is cheap.  People are worried.  And its been a cold Winter.  It's not my bread and butter, the only thing is that it's having a negative impact on my relationship with Andrea.  NoTimeOff == StressAtHome.  Gotta figure out what to do.  I thought good Karma was supposed to make things easier, not harder.

I have been fascinated by UX (user experience), since I left Microsoft.  When I joined in 2004, the world was HTML Tables on IE Browsers.  The world has truly changed.  The UI metaphor has become rich and beautiful, but the homogenous nature of the platform has deteriorated into islands of implementation.

From an economic (and social justice) perspective, I applaud diversity.  But the complexity of developing in a multiplatform world, will ironically devolve the richness of the user experience.  How can this be?

Appropriate parallels can be found History.  Civilization advances as specialized production becomes commodified freeing up the resources required for new specializations to develop.  This commodification is a function of standardization.  Standardization then leads to mechanization which dramatically reduces the resources required to produce a good or service.  Yet the opposite is also true.

My professional career has been encompassed by a Pax Romana, dominated by Microsoft homogeny.  As an independent business owner, looking to invest resources in new Rich Internet Applications.  I am truly challenges by the disintegration occurring in the marketplace.

I had hoped to develop rich applications that spanned Mobile, Desktop, XBox and Server environments seamlessly; leveraging the .NET CLR VM, and providing those services at a commoditized price point.  Instead, I am confronted with islands of devices whose integration and independent evolution becomes prohibitively expensive.

I always found it ironic how Microsoft was vilified in its relentless pursuit of standardization.  Few realized that standardization enabled richer dreams to be realized.  I wonder, if we will look back 5 years from now and say, "that was the golden age of technology."

References:

Browser diversification in 2008

OS diversification in 2008

Plug In Deployment

I've learned a ton of CSS in the last two days, by reviewing 7 Chapters of CSS the Definitive Guide 3rd Edition. I certainly feel more comfortable with the idea of CSS Layout. And I begin to see the elegance of the architecture. The 'sticky' part for me, is that CSS has no concept of an object that combines both text and graphic metaphors, outside the basic HTML controls.

For example, I cannot easily define this widget, in a reusable manner.

My brain describes this widget as a set of elements that are encapsulated in an container, but can be manipulated independently

A web based user agent can describe the button in two ways:

A Single Image

Pro: Simple to assemble and position on the page.

Con: Image and Text cannot be easily replaced, providing for reusability

Con: Global changes cannot be impacted by a simple modification to a style sheet. For example if the button background no longer fit with the theme of the site, all buttons would need to be replaced.

A grouping of independent elements that are 'rendered' by the user agent to appear as a button.

Con: There is no explicit definition of the container.

Con: Because there is no container, the 'container' is not reusable.

Con: Images, as border agents, restrict container's ability to be resized.

Pro: If correctly defined, global changes could be applied via modification to the style sheet.

Eureka

In fact, this second description is the way I need to think about all HTML/CSS layout. Three dimensional layering. The <div> and CSS definition provide the wireframe, skeleton, etc. of how the information will be displayed on the screen. A set of images are used to decorate the wireframe layout. Finally, images and text are used to convey the linguistic and visual metaphors for action and information.

When viewed from the Y-Axis Apex, the layers form a single structure. Yet, when viewed askew, there is no containment.

For someone who has been programming in OO for 15 years, the lack of visual containment is very difficult to wrap my mind around.  But by 'layering' the implementation, I get back containment through the use of <div>(s).  I just need to let go of visual containment.

Now that I think of it, this is probably why we programming types are clutching desperately to tables.  <td> gives me containment. 

I cannot wait for Silverlight / Flash ... somebody to rebuild the metaphor.  But until then, at least I get it.  When viewed from this skewed perspective the architecture is quiet beautiful.  As an engineer it makes me cringe, but as someone who loves art, I find it lovely.

It's been 10 1/2 months since I left Microsoft.

The first part of this time was a period of well spent self discovery.  Connecting with the Graphic Design and Web Development community in Jacksonville, helped me ground myself to the local area.  The wonderful trip out West, reminded me how to dream.  And the countless days enjoying the beauty of Riverside, brought me a sense of peace and place.

The next part of my journey was the creation of Jax EBikes.  I've learned so much about business in these last 6 months.  The store is beautiful and my neighbors are a community of entrepreneurs, that inspire me everyday.

But it's time to return to my roots, and get back to developing the kind of cutting edge applications I've dreamed about.  I had hoped that I'd be able to leverage the local .NET Developers Community.  But the Users' Group seems more focused on Enterprise Applications.  While the Enterprise can be a rich and wonderful space, it's complexity is more about maintenance and structure than the kind of creativity and beauty that inspires me.

So over the next few months, I'm hoping to build the 'Creative Coop' part of the space.  I hope to foster the kind of 'StartUp' energy we all felt in the 90(s), by funding a space for people to come and build on their ideas.  I'm hoping to connect back with some of my Microsoft friends to explore what we can create with Microsoft Expressions, WPF and Silverlight. 

We'll see, no matter what the outcome, it should be a wonderful experience.

The last three months have been amazing, and very busy!

The Creative Coop and Jax EBikes is finally done!  We've been open for 3 weeks, and I feel very satisfied with what we've created.

The Jax EBikes events of this Saturday's Night Ride marked the end of a grueling 3 month effort.  But we are finally done.  

Stores Open.  Warehouse has plenty of inventory, and we already have happy customers!

I'm still deeply involved in Software, but my faith led me to making a difference in global warming and socioeconomic equality.

I've learned so much over these 90 days.

• I've learned how lucky I am to have married an amazing talented wife!  Thank you Andrea for making our shop look beautiful!  If I spent a lifetime, I'd never be able to describe how much I love you.  I hope my actions do my heart justice.
• I've learned the importance of friends and the importance of letting other people drive.  Thanks Matt for our awesome motto and your tireless work with BikeJax.  Thanks Joe for your cheerful company.  Thanks Jon for the beer ;)  Thanks Philip for teaching me about how to integrate other peoples dreams into my own.
• I've learned how helping just one disabled customer realize a new found freedom can be rewarding in ways I could never have imagined.
• I've learned that I come from a rare and amazing family.  Thanks Dad for showing up, unannounced, at the boat show with a four pack of energy drinks and a six pack of Red Stripe.  Someday, I hope to be half the man I see when I look at you.
• I've learned that we all care about the environment, about our community, about our city.  I'm so proud to be here, and I hope my energies make this city a better place for all.

Now that I've nurtured this dream.  I can get back to my passion for Software:  Serialized Principles, Microsoft Expression (Silverlight/WPF) and Agile Programming (speaking of a lot to learn)...hope you missed me.

Best to all.  And now that things have settled you should see me blog a bit more often.

I've been scouting locations for the creative coop for the last few days.  Today, I think I found its home.  The property is affordable; the location is perfect; and the neighbors are awesome!  I'm so frecking tickled.

Here are the pictures:

These postings are WAY LATE, but I've been super busy since returning from vacation.  Here are some shots with captions.

On the outskirts of Vegas we stopped to get some water and Gatorade for the road trip to Zion Canyon.  The landscape was alien to my South Eastern experience, so dry and open.  I love the name of the store, "Green Valley Grocery".  Who are you kidding?  :)

The Virgin River Canyon pass into Arizona.  We had to stop, because the pass looked so cool.  This shot doesn't do justice to the scale.  It was awesome.

Arriving at the Majestic View Lodge in Zion Canyon, and the view during breakfast the next day.

The Virgin River makes an Oasis in the desert of Zion Canyon. 

The River is too high to continue into deeper into the Narrows.  To bad, the Narrows were to be the highlight of the trip.

Andrea cools off with water that started its journey through the rocks, before the Europeans came to America

The bravery of our forefathers.  You should be able to read the story, the next picture shows where the cable started.  Crazy!

Climbing up the path.  Did I mention that I'm not a fan of heights.  Yup, that says 4 feet wide and 700 feet down!!!! 

About two weeks ago, I was greeted with a blue sign in the neighbor's yard.  "Notice of Public Hearing.  New Residence Construction."  New Residence Construction!  WTF.  We live in the quietest awesomest neighborhood in Jacksonville.  That's going to be totally ruined by loud construction at ungodly hours in the morning.

After the commensurate few hours of bitching (and a few beers), I checked my options:

• Fight It - No chance to win and bad karma.
• Rent a Space - Looks to be about $600 a month.
• Start the Creative Co Op that I've been thinking about - Probably about $600 a month, but could go to $1500 if partners drop out.
• Find Public Spaces to work and create a mobile desk - About $400

I put the mobile desk together yesterday, and I'm testing it out this week in Orlando.  I'm totally psyched about how it worked out.

Mobile Desk and the Caring Case (at the Towne Place Suite in Orlando)

The mobile desk consists of the following:

• 20" Acer Monitor with 1680x1050 Rez - $189.00 CompUsa
• 7 Port Power Supply - $9.99 CompUsa
• Logitech Lazer Wireless Natural Keyboard / Mouse - $79.99 CompUsa
• Jeep Bag with MP3 Speakers as a bonus - $39.99 Walmart
• Chair cushion stuffing from Walmart (Padding for Bag) - $12.99 Walmart

Gratuitous Newton Shot.  I love my dog!

It's 7:15 AM on Saturday Morning.  Andrea and I are 3 days into our trip out west.  Today, we will be leaving Vegas to go into the canyons of Utah and the Rockies.  For both of us, it's none too soon.

It's been 10 years, since I've been to Vegas.  And I had forgotten the way it made me feel.  The city is aptly named.  Almost everything I do here reinforces pride, envy, anger, sloth, avarice, gluttony or lust.  These sins are part of our nature, and experiencing them undeniably connects to a part of my self.  But when the moment has passed, I invariably feel ashamed.

I had always thought these motivations to be part of my animal self.  But today, we go into the wild...into nature.  And it is this experience of mother earth, that will wash away these last three days.  What could be more animal then marveling at the beauty of nature?  Something to think about, during the drive.

I haven't missed Vegas, over these last 10 years, and I don't think I'll miss her in the future.  Still, she is not without value.  To me, her Siren's Song does not catch my ear for long.  And for some reason, that makes me feel comfortable with the man I've become.

I like to think of myself as a fairly ethnically and culturally diverse person.  My mother is a Puerto Rican Catholic, my father is a Californian Agnostic, my step-father is a trained Southern Baptist Minister and my step-mother is a Jamaican Jew.

Often, when I tell people my mother is a Jamaican Jew, I am regarded with a look of consternation.  I enjoy imaging what must be going through their minds.  My mom's family are Sephardic Jews that fled Portugal, during the Inquisition.  Apparently, one of the techniques used to root out Secret Jews was to note the kinds of foods they ate, during the Passover Festival.  For this year's Seder dinner, mom wanted to honor her ancestors by eating the kinds of foods that would have been eaten by the Secret Jews. So on Saturday, Andrea and I went up to Charleston to celebrate Seder with my Father and my Step-Mother.

Seder is celebrated after sundown which was around 8 PM this particular Saturday.  So, Andrea and I took a late lunch at Mondo's. 

This joint is absolutely local's only, but it's the best food in Charleston hands down!  Better yet, the prices can't be beat.  I had an Eggplant Parm Sandwich, Andrea had a Veal Burger, we washed them down with 2 Bloody Mary's and finished with a shared Hazelnut Chocolate Gelato.   Total bill:  $28 (with a good tip).

So with full bellies, we headed off to John's Island to see the folks.  We were greeted with Reggae Music, a lazy cat and awesome smells.

Here is 'Kitty', I swear this cat never ages she's like 13 years old!

Here is Mom putting the dinner together, Dad and I weren't being lazy, we were ordered not to help.

The Pièce de résistance a beautiful chicken coated with this amazing paste.

So for about another 5 hours, we cooked, talked and drank.  Finally around sundown, we put on our nice clothes and sat down for dinner.

Andrea, mom and Fran (mom's dear friend for over 20 years).  And here's the Seder table.

The meal was outstanding!  And the ceremony was truly powerful.  Religions and their unique ability to preach love openly and yet proclaim a monopoly on God; generally engender feeling of discord within me.  But spirituality, the human, individual communion with the divine is beautiful and powerful.  While, I'm a stranger to Judaism, I can appreciate the spiritual nature of the ceremony.

The next day, Andrea and I drove around Charleston, and in the late afternoon, I took her to James Island County Park.  Like Mondo's this is another local's only spot in Charleston, which is absolutely breath taking.

While I'm in love with the Urban Bohemian feel of Riverside in Jacksonville, my heart and my soul will always belong to the marsh lands of the Southeastern Coast.  Someday, I hope to return to Charleston to settle, but until then I need to walk my own path.

I have this vision of Boone Park in Avondale along Herschel.  It's a sunny Sunday with just a dusting of puffy clouds in the sky.  The weather is perfect high seventies and there is a whisper of wind.  The open field, just west of Herschel, is filled with Adults and Older children playing Frisbee, kickball or catch.  Under the trees, younger children chase gigantic bubbles.  The picnic tables are covered with different family recipes.  All around strangers become acquaintances and acquaintances become friends.  Everyone eats hearty, laughs and feels like a kid again for a day.  As the sun goes down, the gathering retires back to their individual homes.  Groups of neighbors who have lived 100 yards away from each other, finally meet and realize they share many of the same interests and stories.  Maybe, we all become a bit more connected.  Maybe, we feel a bit less like islands amid a digital sea of entertainment.  Maybe, we make the place we live a community.  At least that's my vision.

This weekend, we beta tested Potluck in the Park.  A wonderful time was had by all!  And I thank my lovely wife, for this awesome idea!  Ya'll should come next time, everyone's welcome!

We were here...you should be too!

Best Bocce throw ever.  That was about 40 yards away!

Everybody loves big bubbles!

As my understanding of our industry has evolved, I have learned to value the contributions Graphic Artists have added to my projects.  I remember the early days of the web when content was king, and a web designer was anyone who knew an <a/> from a <br/>.  But as we have matured as an industry, the form of a page has become tantamount in capturing the average user's 8 second attention span.  In fact, when Andrea, my wife, started in the Graphic Design Program at UNF, I had visions of starting a Web Studio with top of the line application developers, paired with top of the line Graphic Designers.  We were to be the personification of the 'design wives and programming husbands' paradigm.  That vision may someday come to fruition, but at the moment our careers are talking two divergent paths.

So in order to better network with the community of Graphic Designers, I decided to enroll in the RE:Charge 08 AIGA Design Conference.  Turns out this was an awesome decision!  I was inspired by the speakers, and left more convinced than ever that Graphic Artists can play a critical role in the development of applications.  We engineers are the machine, but the designers are the paint job.  For better or for worse, consumers make their purchasing decision based on an emotional connection to the paint job, not just an understanding of the utility of the machine.

I found it fascinating ironic that I came across the following quote, while reading about Game Theory between sessions.

"Some recent experiments have raised questions about utility theory, the mechanism that allows you to express a person's preferences in a consistent pattern so he or she can make rational decisions.  It appears that choices are often made on the basis of the way the alternatives are expressed; while this may not be news to biased poll-takers, salespeople and advertisers, it is disturbing to game theorists.  Game theorists assume decision makers behave rationally; when they don't difficulties arise, and these difficulties are discussed in the text."

I love this quote because it shows how disconnected the mathematical and systemic minds of the scientific community are from their own souls.  Their spouses must be pissed!

So why is this important.  This is a simple example showing how the scientific mind clings to the rational.  For years scientists have mocked the religious for clinging to a subjective mystery, yet we too are guilty of ignoring the subjective in the pursue of the quantitative.  The result is that we miss the obvious.  In this example, does the irrational components of behavior invalidate the rational foundations of game theory?  Absolutely not?  The irrational decision points provide no objective means of predicting behavior.  It's kind of like quantum uncertainty at the store front.  :)

I'll close with the following.  During the RE:Charge event, Juliet D'Ambrosio gave a presentation on interviewing technique.  When she asked for volunteers from the audience, I spoke.  The purpose of the 12 minute interview was to demonstrate interviewing techniques.  At the end of the exercise, she would summarize the person in 6 words.  For me she chose, "Bohemian Techie in Love with Life".  I think I'm sticking that on my business card.  I am a scientist == techie and I am an artist == bohemian.  In some way, shape or form I think that this is not just a description of me, but also a description of the human condition.  Before we ate the Apple in the Garden of Eden, we saw the world as color and experience.  The Apple showed us cause, effect and consequence.

Thank you AIGA, the speakers at RE:Charge and the participants.  What a wonderful few days!

Last night Andrea and I went down to the Florida Theatre for 'Art After Dark'.  Several of the local artists there absolutely knocked my socks off!  I'm absolutely unschooled in Art.  I don't know what to look for, but I know what makes me 'feel'; and to me, feeling is the purpose of Art.  Special kudos go to the following artists:

• Grant Thornton - Man your stuff is great!  It's like post nuclear electric candy!
• Nicklos Richards - I love your vision of the hypocrisy and danger that underlies the 'Leave it to Beaver" persona of Conservative America's Golden Age.
• Jonathan Atkins - My favorite pieces look like they walked out of a Lovecraft Novel.  Terrible, but beautiful.  H.R. Giger better keep an eye on you.
• Phillip Chesnick - Dude, the fact that you are still in high school is frecking unreal!  Wow, have you got a bright future...Stunning imagination!
• Ali Isabelle - Ali your work was like walking into a Dr. Seuss landscape at sunset, I loved it and can't wait for your show next week.

So to these artists and the many more that came out to Art After Dark; thank you for sharing your essence.

With that said, Art After Dark, as an organizational venture totally sucked.  For Andrea and myself it was $40.  The halls were too crowded, and I felt trapped in Ponta Vedra Land..."Who told these people how to get downtown?!"  If you want to see the same quality, with more variety, in a more genuine event, check out 'Art Walk'.  Although, I understand the artists were likely to get more sales from 'Art After Dark', then from us locals at 'Art Walk'.  So 'Long Live Art After Dark', but don't look for me there next year.

Andrea and I went to Art Walk on March 5.  It was my first Art Walk, since leaving Microsoft, and it filled me with creative electricity.  The evening was full of fresh experiences.  We especially enjoyed meeting the young artists above ClubTSI.  The evening must have been a bit too adventurous, because I was certain that we passed the NGen Works Studios, during Art Walk.  I'd have bet $50.00 that their studios were right next to ClubTSI.

I've got an appointment on my calendar this Thursday for Refresh Jacksonville and as I recalled, from skimming the announcement, Refresh Jacksonville meets at the NGen Works Studio.  Since I wanted to bike to the Refresh Jacksonville meeting, I decided to take the afternoon and find the NGen Works Studio.

The day was bright and beautiful, if a bit windy and cool.  But with a sweatshirt in hand, I biked Downtown to find NGen Works.  When I got to ClubTSI and the building that I thought housed the studio, I found the following:

Looking like an idiot, in front of an empty building

In fact, I found a ton of commercial space for lease.  What a travesty and what an opportunity!  As soon as I'm building some kind of revenue stream from my business ideas, I'm definitely getting a place downtown!

Back to the story.  So obviously, I had the wrong location.  I used my trusty XV6700 to find their address off NGenWorks.com, then I used Mobile Live Search to get directions to their actual studio, off Hendricks.  Finally, I hopped on my trusty bike and road towards the other side of the river.

 
My Killer Recumbent

I finally arrived at the studio and was greeted by Joey Marchy and Travis Schmeisser.  After offering me a glass of water, which was SO appreciated, we spent a few minutes talking about the creative community in Jacksonville.  These are really bright young business people, and I'm very impressed with the way they present themselves.  At Microsoft, we are taught to always have your 'elevator pitch' ready, but I am really just researching the market; so I wasn't looking to sell or buy any services.  In fact, having a conversation without an ulterior motive was pretty refreshing.

It turns out that it was a good thing I checked out their studio beforehand.  Apparently, the March 27th event is tentative at best.  Thus, I could have been making this exact same bike ride, Thursday evening only to find 2 empty buildings.  That would have sucked!

Anyway, it was an awesome day.  I'm really looking forward to getting to know the guys at NGen works.  They think about the community in much the same way that I do.