Adam Avenir dot com
Why districts? For me, the most pragmatic and shrewdly capitalistic case looks like this. Central Richland has some of the very best bones in the whole northwest, almost entirely uncapitalized on its potential. Every other city in the region would kill for what Richland has naturally: a downtown immediately adjacent to waterfront. Kennewick? Cut off from the Columbia by 240 and industrial…
Background # Richland has an administrative item on its ballot to determine whether to move from all at-large voting for council or toward a mix of districts and at-large positions. I'll be transparent—I think districts would have made a difference 10+ years ago when we failed to bring a public market to Richland and most council members were from Meadow Springs and had no vision for downtown…
I would like to share: The experience of trying to bring the public market to Richland and what it tells us about the current council; How Richland slyly directed $19mm in new debt toward city hall replacement under the guise of "waterfront development"; A glimpse into Brad Anderson's approach to citizen engagement; and Why I believe the Herald got their endorsement of Brad Anderson wrong. The…
Dear friends, family, and folks we know from the Internet who have squirreled their way into our hearts, We have a new name! We were going to wait until the wedding celebration we'd planned for later this spring, but after much conversation, we've decided to change our names now and hold off on a ceremony indefinitely. Yes, indefinitely. We officially got married on December 28th in what was…
I was sitting in the grey IKEA wingback in the corner of The Local when the door opened, the sun broke through clouds, and my heart warmed as a smile flooded me. My dear friend and mentor hadn’t come to the coffee shop to meet me, but that didn’t prevent us from sharing a huge hug and talking for a good half hour before his appointment arrived. “What are you up to?” I asked him. “I’m meeting some…
At &yetConf , everything was a surprise. No one knew what the schedule was, who was speaking, what they were speaking about, where we were going, or what was happening during the event, which was punctuated by original music, artwork, and an immersive fourth-wall-breaking choose-your-own adventure storyline. At one point, buses pulled up and everyone got on. Attendees didn't know where the buses…
The week after Christmas, I married Sarah Bray , my dearest and closest friend in the universe. Hearing I’m remarried may be a lot to process, especially given that some of you likely didn't even know that Kristi and I haven’t been together for two years, and you’ve probably only heard me say how awesome she is. And that’s true. Kristi is a great person and I feel lucky to still call her my…
Our announcement of Sarah and I acquiring Tumbleweird, a local independent newspaper in the spirit of The Stranger or The Portland Mercury. Read it here .
Dee Hock. Jane Jacobs. Ricardo Semler. Peter Block. Parker Palmer. Whether they acknowledge it or not, each of the philosophies and ideas shared by these writers align directly with the fundamentals of anarchism. When it comes to “anarchism” there are few more loaded words in the English language, and not many that are more misunderstood. The best summation to me is that anarchism is asking…
I wrote this story to try to describe the late, great, and beloved Christopher W. Turner’s amazing life (at his family’s request). I have truly never been more honored to be asked to do something. (Thank you again so much, Rachel, for letting me be part of this.) I’ve known Christopher for about 15 years and had his life intersect with mine in a whole host of different ways. I am so grateful for…
I have a problem. I start things. It's an addiction, really. I get people spun up on some idea (could be mine or someone else's I'm championing), parade off into the wild, and before I know it, I'm responsible for maintaining more than I possibly could ever have time or energy or interest or capacity. And a bunch of people are in the wilderness without socks. I am just so sure I am going to do all…
The suburbs are broken. Our severe isolation comes from our community design—the lack of central gathering places, the car as primary transportation, the endless sprawl—these all result in everyone living their lives in isolated bubbles. And the result of that is worse than people recognize. New ideas and initiatives require encouragers, supporters, collaborators—and diverse viewpoints. And…
It's really easy to see why people get cynical, stop caring, shrink their world, build walls, and exponentialize the number of people they couldn't possibly give a flying f * about. The past year I've just felt this constant beating drum urging me to give up and stop caring. At least to stop caring about so much stuff. Buuuuuut that's not really doable for me. The counselor I've been seeing thinks…
"Conflict is a part of life," they say. A pretty painful part—yes—but a good part, too. You're not going to do anything creative, new, or original without conflict. Without conflict, nothing gets better—but they assuredly can get worse. You'll never win. You'll never succeed. You'll never take a bow, receive a thank you card, raise a three year old, lower your debt, get your degree, land that…
Fuse , the Tri-Cities’ community and business accelerator, is beginning a project to publish the history of our local community of founders, professionals, makers, developers, and designers. Below is my section. I was asked to describe the beginnings of Doctype Society and TriConf, two components I was involved in which contributed to the development and growth of this community. Note that this is…
Try to do things beyond categorization that are as hard to describe as they are to pull off and there will always be pressure to tame them. And every moment you'll have to decide whether to do the hard work of defying categorization or just pack it in and be like everyone else. If you choose to do it differently, you will be—many times—utterly alone and everyone's expectations will make you feel…
I first heard about Jo Freeman’s The Tyranny of Structurelessness from Christina Xu at Brio . I consider it to be one of the most important essays I’ve read, and I think often about organizations and how to help them be healthy and successful, while considering how to avoid the disempowerment that seems to be the default state of most. Prior to reading this essay, I thought that flat and…
The Internet was a town. Then it became a city, then a nation, then continents, then hemispheres. Without centralized search tools, early communities were only discovered organically, like neighborhood cafés. Businesses eager to multiply their reach and revenue logically rushed to create communities that spanned cities, nations, hemispheres. Maximum reach, lowest common denominator, unintended…
This month, I laid off six people who I care about—people I want to be friends with for the rest of my life. It was one of the most painful things I've ever done. I’ve had a few hard Januaries in my life. This has certainly been one of them. February will mark 7 years in business for &yet, a company I started entirely on accident and which has steadily persevered—entirely bootstrapped from $0.…
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I quit caffeine a few days ago in an effort to improve my overall mental health. Caffeine is clinically shown to worsen depression and anxiety. Here's a quote from one study : "Chronic excessive caffeine consumption leads to the development of caffeinism, a syndrome which includes increased anxiety, depression, frequency of psychophysiological disorders, and possibly degraded performance." Having…
Occasionally I get myself to a point where I feel completely overwhelmed by a large number of things causing me anxiety. When I'm in the midst of it, the feeling is like being mentally DDoS'd—I can't even make progress on one of the things I'm anxious about because thoughts and worries about the others keep flooding in. To deal with this, there's an approach I have used for years which has really…
I woke up Monday morning and needed— needed —to tear apart our entire kitchen and reorganize everything in it. The contents of five of the most accessible drawers in our kitchen were neatly and tidily filled with organized collections of excess grocery bags, pot holders, appliance manuals, and basically everything except for the kinds of things we might actually want to use when making meals.…
I honestly liked freelancing better than running a company, but I think that’s mostly out of my own personal weaknesses. As a freelancer, I could participate and collaborate as an equal in conversations, and express opinions without them meaning much of anything to anyone. I could try and fail; I could hold and abandon wrong opinions or ways of thinking; all without significant consequence or…
Individual, one-to-one connections are what I want out of and what I want to put into a community. That's the only real value I can give and it's the only value I seek. I'm not a community leader. I'm an individual person going somewhere. And I'm doing the best I can to learn and grow and be true to myself along the way. There are a few people who will travel with me. And for me that is enough.
Wince though I may: I (eventually) appreciate each excruciating reminder that not everyone likes me. That there are others more brilliant, more talented, more creative, more capable. That I am biased and broken and blameworthy, and sometimes bigheaded, pigheaded, and worse. That I am good at being wrong. Ahem. That I am great at being wrong. That I am, in fact, quite extraordinarily small. For…
I've been thinking about what it was about NodeConf that had me a little anxious going into it. Was it my fear of looking like an amateur developer? Not really. Was it worrying about camping with two small children? Nope. (They did great!) And it wasn't even about the fact that conferences are socially overstimulating for me. (That's a guarantee for my introverted self.) Then I identified the…
How did you get here? Erm, set aside the stork for now. I mean: how did you get where you’re at in your life and your career? You probably have a pretty good story to tell about how you set out to do (a) , but because of (b) , you’re now doing (c) , which you never could have anticipated. No matter how many things you square or divide, there’s no Pythagorean theorem for triangulating your way…
At the conclusion of this year's JSConf, Chris Williams held an open discussion, taking questions and comments from the several hundred gathered. You could sense the mood. Hanging, unspoken, in the air was a sense of everyone asking, "Is it really almost over?" This feeling began to increasingly manifest itself in the questions and comments in the final session. Eventually came a series of…
Sit down. Okay, let me hear it. You know—the thing you’re really passionate about. It’s distracting you completely right now. It keeps you up, wakes you up, and catches you daydreaming in between the rude interruptions of real life. You look down, take a breath, and then it all comes out, bursting forth like you’ve just backed over a sprinkler, a blubbering apology to your dreams for not living…
I woke up in a Los Angeles hotel bed in the early hours of last Tuesday and picked up my phone to see it was 5am and I had a new email from an old friend. Of course I opened it. A minute later, I was crying. A week later, I'm still heartbroken over it. And wrestling. The email provided a visceral reminder that people will vividly remember the day you broke their trust--and your perspective won't…
I surprised some people when I said I was taking November off Twitter. I've been using Twitter since July 2006 (user #1568!) with almost completely unbroken usage since late 2007, so that reaction is understandable--most especially from those in my life who consider me addicted to my iPhone. Twitter has done a lot of really great things for me. I've met a huge number of people I care about because…
God grant me the grace to solve at least as many problems as I create.
When I was a kid, the picture I had in my head of "leadership" was pretty stereotypical. Maybe Abraham Lincoln. A decorated military general. My Scoutmaster. And definitely my parents! Leaders, I thought, were the people who told others what to do. But leadership is not position. It is not authority. It is not power. Leadership is the gravest form of responsibility—a responsibility that we each…
A few weeks after starting &yet, I started a ritual that I carried on for most of the first year I was freelancing. I began every single day by writing on my whiteboard those four simple words in all-caps. It all started because one day was particularly discouraging and I felt like giving up. I don’t recall what happened and I’m sure now it wasn’t actually a big deal—despite how I felt about it…
The only certain product from a decision is an outcome. There are two optional products: second-guesses and education. The more time spent second-guessing the decision, the less can be learned from it.
Encouragement is the only force that can change the world with words in the only way that matters: one person at a time. They say, “energy cannot be created or destroyed.” Encouragement gives physics the finger.
Four of us sat on the floor in the one room of the castle with reliable Internet access, our “wireless” network mocked by 16-inch 13th century stone walls. Our &yet team had rented Petritoli’s sprawling village castle for a month, working and living there together with our families, staying in this tiny medieval town made up of tinier stone streets and buildings stacked and scrunched together on a…
There’s a stark difference asking that question about the past vs. the future—a drink of despair vs. a drink of possibility.
Accomplishment is an irrelevant trinket, like a merit badge sitting in box of childhood nostalgia. Sure, shiny is nice, but at the end of the day, success is just leverage to get things done. It's a tool that can be employed to more efficiently make the kind of difference you would like to see in the world, whatever that may be. On the first version of the &yet site, when it was just footloose and…
An idea is introduced. Legitimate questions and objections are voiced. What follows are the five stages of cognitive dissonance: Defensiveness (and subsequent embarrassment over defensiveness) Internal consideration of original counterpoint Recognition of validity Shame Admission of wrong and reconciliation Or, at least--upon reflection--that's apparently how I do it.
You have a dream. So, just like every single one of us, you ask, “Do I have what it takes?” The answer is yes. Every other answer is a lie, an excuse or a distraction. The call itself is enough of an answer. I consider myself good at a few things, passable at many, and passionate about more. What I’m capable of is completely irrelevant. I’m likely the worst to judge that anyway. You prove yourself…
Forget time and money. The two productive forces that drive success are focus and action. You can create focus by carving out space for it with cash--or by having no other option. Priorities become pretty plain when the balance sheet's thin. The necessary questions provoked can make you compromise either everything or nothing. I actually think it's easier to set focus without much in the way of…