I’ve been loving the Vine app from twitter lately. It’s an app that allows you to share short videos and animations with you friends. Check out some more vines I’ve made.

I like to imagine that my social networking experience is a beautiful and wonderful thing that connects me directly to experts, helps me find good jobs, save money, do good and so on. I have this strange notion that we live in a time where technology connects us together and we are able to accomplish amazing things because of it.

This is the experience I would like to have while roasting vegetables, let me walk you through it…
(the above graphic explains my idea experience, click it for a more detailed view)

About Me and my Struggle
I am 35 years old, male, vegan, I try to eat healthy and I enjoy cooking.
My plan for dinner tonight is to do roasted vegetables over quinoa and arugula.
It’s almost dinner time and I’m realizing I need to get my vegetables started soon so that they will be done at a reasonable eating time, ideally before my girlfriend gets home.
I love cooking but I still have a lot of scientific questions about the process. I would prefer to get cooking advice from an expert than potentially making a mediocre meal.

Issues with Common Tools
Google – Google offers great searches and will give me a whole lot of information on cooking, I still have to filter through content to find my solutions to my specific problems. I also can’t quickly ask a follow up question.

Quora – Quora gives you direct access to experts in a variety of areas, the process is kind of slow and not great for timely issues.

The Amazing Experience (my delusional expectation)

Previous Knowledge

I start the quinoa in the rice cooker with a little vegan soup broth. The rice cooker is awesome for making quinoa the way I like.
I have beets, carrots, pineapple, mushrooms, onions, garlic and sweet potatoes as well an assortment of spices and staple cooking supplies.

Concerns

Having successfully roasted root vegetables before, I’m concerned about the pineapple and mushroom addition.
Since time is an issue, I don’t want to be searching online for answers, I want the answers to come to me, this will allow me to prep up the food I’m planning to cook with.

Tech Time

I quickly take a picture on my phone and send it out to twitter and instagram asking for help.
with 949 twitter followers and 460 instagram followers my plea for help goes out to master chefs and expert cooks all across the internets….

Resolution

In almost no time, I get a call from a professional chef, answering my question about roasting vegetables.
Following the advice of the chef, I make the best dinner ever.
My girlfriend is highly impressed with my awesome cooking skills and I’m super pleased with my social cooking experience.

The Reality (the experience as it happened)

Not surprisingly my ideal experience and the reality have some variation. The biggest difference happens when I reach out to my social network to find expert help.

Tech Time

I quickly take a picture on my phone and send it out to twitter and instagram asking for help.
with 949 twitter followers and 460 instagram followers you would think one person out there may be not only capable but also available to assist me.

In my first tweet I ask for advice and include my phone number as a specific way I would like to be contacted in order to best get my questions answered quickly.

I’m looking for some roasted vegetable advice any excellent cooks out there have a few minutes to talk? please call me —

I don’t mind putting my phone number on twitter. In 2010 I did a simple test about putting your number of twitter check that out here. Back then I had no instagram followers and 587 twitter followers. The basic results from that indicated that unless you are some sort of famous superstar people aren’t going to abuse your number. As much as I like to think I have a massive following and everyone is interested in what I’m doing at all times, the reality is that most people could give a hoot.

After a few minutes I post my instagram photo not only my instagram followers will see but also my twitter followers too. A photo explains a lot about what I’m doing and gives some context to what it is I’m looking for.

Time passes and I’m slightly frustrated as it’s clear that my dinner is going to be delayed and I still have questions that need answering.

I send out a grumpy tweet indicating my frustration with my social network experience.

I get a nice response from the amazingly awesome @wormulus. For many reasons, her reply and conversation meant a lot to me.

Resolution?

While my social network didn’t quite provide me with an expert chef to answer my questions, I reached a point where I just needed to cook and do what I can to make an outstanding meal while not totally knowing the best way to go about it.
I experiment a little with my roasted vegetables and add pineapple to my dish and quarter mushrooms to cook with my root vegetables, I make a delicious dinner.
My girlfriend is highly impressed with my awesome cooking skills despite dinner being ready an hour after I had intended.

Conclusion
Next time I need advice on cooking I should call my Mom. Honestly I think if I would more regularly engage with others and their questions I may get more help in the future on my project. In general people are not very likely to call a phone number to provide assistance.

Possible Solutions

• Turn to Facebook – I would be more likely to get feedback from my facebook friends. I suppose part of my ideal experience would connect me with an expert who perhaps is a stranger to me.
• Directly asking – Directly pushed my questions to experts or specialists in the field. I would still then be wasting time trying to track down an “expert” I suppose that’s why Little Bird exists. It doesn’t guarantee a response from them though and doesn’t allow for good followup questioning in a timely manner.
• Calling – Picking up the phone might just be a perfect solutions. I might be able to reach out to some of the fanciest restaurants or cooking schools in the world. While this method may seem a little bizarre I’m guessing that within a few phone calls, I may find an experienced person with a little time to assist me with my problem. This is kind of what Clarify.fm does, however sometimes there is a charge for talking with an expert.
• Books – I suppose I could just look through one of the many cookbooks on the shelf, this isn’t directly answering my question about roasting pineapples and mushrooms with root vegetables. This method also requires a lot of filtering content too.

Engineering my Ideal Experience
I do believe there are several ways to engineer my future experiences so they will match my ideal one.

Engaging With Others – On my part by engaging more with others, I might be able to get better direct feedback. Most likely if I was regularly engaging with others on social networks they would feel more apt to assist me with my problems.

Better Reach – I should be able to reach out to people that don’t follow me yet are interested in the subject of my tweet or instagram post.

Support Ticket – When you call for technical support, they will often open up a support ticket for you until your solution is found, why shouldn’t my social networks work the same. I could state my issue or my problems where I ask for support, a simple indicator icon could show that the current issue is either outstanding or resolved and perhaps entice more people to assist with my needs.

Reward – An expert cook might be more apt to pick up the phone and call if when they could gain social credit for such help. After listing themselves as an expert cook, could then get some sort of reward for their actions. This might work somewhat like Aardvark did before it’s demise. At the very least a public thank you might just be enough.

Takeaways

L. Nichols is amazing and if more people were like her the world would be a much better place. I hadn’t seen what she has been up to for some time so it was refreshing to go through her site and flickr images. Check out her site and follow her awesomeness on twitter @wormulus.

It’s difficult to get people to call you without a direct benefit to them. Maybe next time I should offer one of many direct benefits I could offer.

If I was Rock Hudson or some other famous popular movie star, I would probably get a mountain of phone calls because a good number of people believe that connecting with celebrities is valuable. This is also why celebrities may regularly be getting good freebies all over the place.

A lot of experts are probably busy being experts at what they do and they probably get paid pretty well to do what they do. They might not have time to answer my basic questions, I guess that’s why they are experts.

I shouldn’t rely so much on what others have to say about something, there are a lot of ways to learn to do something and sometimes you just need to dive in and learn from doing it.

I think the experience for people looking for help through social networks could be greatly improved. While cooking is one specific area, these concepts could be applied to pretty much any subject. With a few small adjustments to asking for help online, I feel that I can better engineer an experience that I would ideally want for myself.

If you still have some suggestions on roasting veggies, feel free to answer my question on quora through this link.

Happy cooking!

This task isn’t exactly the easiest in the world and while I may not be able to paint everyones birthday portrait, I do plan on putting together quite a good collection before the year is over.

Painting portraits will not only be a fun regular creative practice but it makes a wonderful gift.

My mom’s birthday is January 1st. I figured this was a good start for the portrait project. I’m glad she has a sense of humor because my portrait skills aren’t quite dialed in yet.

In my first attempt at doing a portrait, my mom’s portrait turned out looking like a Chucky doll then someone asked me if the painting was supposed to be the Goblin King from the Hobbit, I’m just glad my mom doesn’t take things too personal. I figure as the year progresses so will my skills.

The next portrait I did for my mom looked a lot less like Chucky

It be super cool if it was your birthday and you received a bunch of portraits of yourself done by your friends and family. Perhaps this concept might grow into that and soon replace the less personal facebook timeline birthday posting.

As your friends have birthdays this year, consider making a portrait for them, write them a song or poem, draw some art, do something digital, do something physical, make something for them from you, do something with heart and passion and try to give something that only you can give.

Please feel free to contact me if you or someone you know has a birthday coming up and would like me to make a portrait of them. Let me know the person it is, their birthday, and ideally a photo stream of them and I’ll try to make a portrait of them.

To summarize this post:

Finding the process to achieve your goals is better than setting your goals. 

–

Happy New Year!

This is the time of year to take a look forward and figure out how to take care of business. Like most people, I have a lot of ideas in my head about what I want to accomplish this year, I realize as the year progresses so will my goals and resolutions. For the new year, I’m more interested in implementing new processes that will actually help me achieve whatever goals I set.

Find a Process
Learning a process that will actually help me achieve my goals is way better than having a list of goals. Since there are a nearly endless number of ways to go about reaching goals it will be important to find the right process that consistently works for me. This may involve trying several things out.

I’ve failed at achieving a lot of my goals in the past, instead of learning from my mistakes I’m going to focus on learning from my successes and try to implement new processes that work. This is something I picked up from a book called Rework that I recently read. They also had some other good advice about working and getting things done.

I have a variety of different goals or achievements I would like to accomplish in 2013 each may require a different process in order to best make them happen.

One of my resolutions is to work more on MoHDI.com for 2013.
A new process for me in order to achieve this is pretty straight forward and is what I’m currently working on learning and implementing.

List, Sort, Do.
Here is how this works.

1. List out a bunch of ideas for MoHDI posts and content
2. Sort through the list of ideas, categorize them and pick a handful to work on
3. Focus on an idea for 15 minutes blocks at a time until it’s done.

Since MoHDI has always been a depository of ideas for me, it’s easy to list out a ton of ideas to work on. My thinking is to keep the list under 50 items in order to not be overwhelmed by a list of ideas.

I initially was going to do this list on paper but soon realized how much easier doing this on my phone would be.

I found an app called Paperless for my phone and so far it seems to be pretty helpful for me. I think I could do a lot of similar things in the free Reminders app that came with my phone and I’m sure I’ll use a combination of the two to actually make things happen.

Here is what one of my lists look like.

I’ve already sorted through and the top 5 items are ones I’m actively working on.

My next step is to pick one and work on it, ideally for a 15 minute block of time.

Most of the items on this list are for content that I would like to make for MoHDI. Some items might require a few minutes to write about and post, others may require a lot more, either way by working on items for small blocks of time I actually can make good progress.

Since I generally write about ideas or things, I really don’t have to do much more than to get the idea across. Ideally I can present ideas in a clear, concise manner with proper grammar and spelling but sometimes I may present something or write about something quickly to get it out.

If it was perfect it wouldn’t be mine.

For the kinds of things I write about and post about, it’s generally more important to get my idea out there. There are exceptions to this and it’s intrinsically rewarding to make things polished and nice. Locked up ideas have no value so it’s important to just get them out, good ideas will evolve and become polished .

Sometimes an idea can be explained with a simple doodle, this is my favorite way to present an idea. Long wordy posts are typically just that, long and wordy. As much as I like to explain and rationalize ideas and share my thoughts on them, I realize it’s more important to simply present an idea and allow the audience to come up with their own opinions and thoughts. No one likes to be told what to think, they do like to be encouraged to explore their own thinking.

The main thing is to keep creating.

I feel this is going to be a good solid process for me to regularly produce good content for MoHDI.

This listing, sorting and doing method might not apply to every goal I’ve set for myself but different goals might require different processes.

Reverse List

Another concept I have for taking care of business in 2013 was to create a reverse list or a count list. This is particularly helpful when it comes to job hunting as that is a crucial goal of mine for this year. Instead of having a list that you go through, you have a list you fill up as you go. For instance I might say to myself that I want to send out 10 emails with my resume and portfolio  on a daily basis until I get a job. The same list concept is super helpful for taking care of things at home too “I will do 3 things to make the house look cleaner daily” you would be surprised at how just doing a few things each day regularly really helps.

Working Smarter

When I think about how I’ve gotten things done in the past, the best processes are often the ones that require a minimal amount of time, energy and are actually fun to work on. When you make your process better, you are working smarter and can make way more things happen. Working smarter also means being more adaptable and be able to adjust as needed. The path to your goals and resolutions should be a process thats as easy as breathing.

Tracking 

In addition to creating processes, It’s going to be important to track progress and actually see some sort of headway and have measurable results, documentation and recognition is crucial in the process of achieving goals and resolutions. While writing on MoHDI the results are easily viewed by page visits, comments and interactions. Even a small step forward is progress and is way better than making no progress at all.

While I know my goals will change, I feel that once I find good processes that work for me, I will be way better off in this coming year than just having a list of goals far out of reach.

There are a whole lot of ways to do things and articles and tips on going about them. Without a good process your goals and resolutions will remain out of reach.

Front Side

Back Side

Inside Front

Inside Back

I’ve always loved these types of computing devices the color wheel is another simple example of this kind of device.  I imagine designing my own would be a rather fun activity, perhaps I could make one that lets teaches people how to be more polite or a device that shows you how to quickly calculate distances and heights perhaps a device that shows you what foods go together well for meals.

Play Pause Movie Theater

Going to the movie theater costs more now than ever before. Shouldn’t you be able to see every second of the movie you pay for?

The solution is to have the theater set up more like home  and simply providing each member of the audience the ability to pause the movie when needed, this would allow audience members not to miss a second of their favorite films. With a theater like this even those with the smallest of bladders won’t be afraid to go out to the movies any more.

Each seat in this revolutionary theater would be equipped with some simple controls that would allow the viewer to pause the movie when they might need to.

When a viewer needs to go to the bathroom for instance, they would simply hit the pause button on their armrest then proceed to the bathroom. When they return to their seat, by pushing the “resume” or “play” button, the movie will continue right where it had left off.

In order for the movie to play, every seat must be in “Play” mode. This give everyone an opportunity to freely go about important business that may otherwise disrupt the movie.

For epically long movies like the Hobbit this type of theater is a must.

Nature calling will no longer be an issue for such long movies, hitting the pause button will give you what ever amount of time you might need to carry out your business.

If you are hungry and need some healthy snacks from the concession booth, pause the movie, get some snacks and return to continue the movie right where you left.

I know at home it’s nice to pause the movie to fact check things pertaining to the movie, so now you will have time to do such tasks.

With a theater like this it really puts the audience in control. When you pay top dollar for a movie experience you shouldn’t have to miss the movie just because you have a tiny bladder or have important phone calls coming in.

You are probably wondering what might happen if the movie is paused and you are part of the audience who doesn’t need to go to the bathroom or get a snack or whatever…

Well, in addition to pausing the movie the remaining audience members in the theater would be shown a variety of consumer opportunities until the movie resumed again. It’s really win win.

Once again Pickle Baby! attended Kenny & Zuke’s Picklefest. The Pickle babies met a lot of people while they waited to sample some of the finest pickled goods that Portland has to offer. Below are some of the pictures of Pickle Baby with people attending the event.

Watch on youtube.

See the set of images on flickr at http://flic.kr/s/aHsjAQKm7S

Great news! You can now help MoHDI pay rent and bills by shopping for it’s products online! We are excited to share with the soft launch of our new online shop. Check it out here www.mohdi.com/shop.

In addition to selling Stag Bike shirts and decals, we will also have artwork and prints up for sale and a few other wonderful MoHDI products. One of my favorite items now is this concrete skull that is only $45 if you pick up in person!

Check out the shop today!

As part of an open session at Open Engagement, I gave a very short and somewhat rough presentation about ideas. Something I’m very passionate about and I’ve always wanted to present on the subject. While I didn’t have a formal presentation totally together, I had several good ideas about how and what I was going to present on. I decided it would be best to go over a lot of things very quickly as opposed to a lot of presentations where they focus on one particular point, my plan was to present several points and loosely tie them together under an general concept.

I had planned a 30 minute presentation that was to move very quickly. Part of the open sessions flaws was scheduling sessions one directly after another with no time cushion. When the previous presentation went over, it was no big deal, I had to simply adjust a little. I started my presentation on ideas at 2:10PM.

The funny thing was this girl Teresa Flores who I believe was visiting from LA or something. She had a 2:30PM presentation and I think she sat through my painfully drab session only to enforce her time laws and rules upon me. So at the end of the video you will hear her time sirens in her head going off. Teresa Flores, then asks me to wrap up by plugging my gallery, as if I was giving a sales pitch about my gallery for 20 minutes, I guess she was too busy throwing her session together during my session to pay attention to anything presented to her. People amaze me sometimes. So for the presentation, I had borrowed Kayla’s laptop after the presentation Teresa had the nerve to ask “where did that laptop go?”, Kayla was there and said that she had put it away.
“I was going to use that.” Teresa said….

uh, so you cut my presentation short in order to commandeer the laptop I used?? Super funny, I guess it was nice mode day for Kayla and I cause Kayla allowed her to use the computer and I actually stayed to see what was so important that this person would be so rude… Teresa then started her presentation to an audience of me and 2 people who had come to see me. ugh, I guess people can be so incredibly rude that they become a fascinating study in tactlessness.

Other than the strange social study of Teresa Flores, I did learn a lot about presenting.

I think with a lot of work and a bit more time to put into it, this presentation could be pretty spectacular and I’m going to start searching for places to continue to develop and share this. I think future versions of the presentation will have more a few more examples of how the audience can take the ideas from the presentation and make it more applicable to them in whatever they may do.

Without further ado, the presentation on ideas I gave at Open Engagement.

click here to see on youtube