tins ::: Rick Klau's weblog

I spent the weekend in Chicago as a very fortunate attendee at ORDcamp, an annual unconference that's the brainchild of +Brian Fitzpatrick and +Zach Kaplan. I've got several things I want to write about as a result of the many wonderful sessions – being surrounded by a couple hundred fascinating people is apparently what I needed to get back on the blogging horse. It's good to be back!

An early session I attended was titled "Raising digital natives"; most in the room were parents, and we kicked things off by going around the room introducing ourselves and saying a few words about what the topic meant to us. One by one, parents (most of whom had children in the 3-6 range) expressed concern about technology. (Keep in mind, this was a very technically literate group.) Statements about wanting to limit screen time, avoid television altogether, restrict video games, etc. abounded. Then it was my turn to introduce myself.

That's when I realized: I don't want to restrict any of those things for my children. I absolutely want them to find balance, they must do homework and chores first, and my wife and I rely on Common Sense Media for help gauging whether certain materials are appropriate for our kids, but the fears expressed by several in the room about the potential harm that could come from exposing their children to technology are not mine. Not at all. I started by saying that I want my kids to be hackers. I want them to be frustrated by the way information is presented to them and be motivated to learn how to change it. I want them to visualize a tool – a program, a device, whatever – and then make it.

At some point during the session, it occurred to me that what we were talking about was not a digital native in the sense I thought of a native; we were talking about a digital tourist. Natives know the lay of the land, they know all the secrets, and they know what makes their area special. Tourists rarely get below the surface – they may enjoy the place they're visiting, but they rarely know what makes it tick.

I want my kids to be natives when it comes to the technology that increasingly surrounds them. Digital tourists (I doubt this term is new or unique to me, but I don't believe I'd heard it before) will be able to use a smart phone, a computer, or some other technology, but they won't really understand them, and they definitely won't be able to change or improve them. Natives, on the other hand, will see beyond the surface, appreciate the utility these tools provide, but also see their flaws, and over time be motivated to improve them.

To be clear, I don't think this means that my kids all have to become computer scientists. They could be artists, writers, designers, or something else entirely. But I'm certain that kids who develop the skills to shape the world around them through technology (in whatever form that takes) will have a huge advantage as they grow up. Understanding that the world around them is in fact changeable is a big first step.

One parent in the room was frustrated by this, because she said she didn't understand how computers worked, so how could she help her kids understand them? I'm sure that's daunting for some – and I certainly have a huge advantage as I've been tinkering with computers for over 30 years now – but I don't think this is as hard as it seems. There's no rule that says you have to know the answer to the questions you ask. "How do you think the DVR works?" to a kid who wants to watch a show they've recorded is a good exercise to get them to think about the inner workings of a hard drive (what does it mean to record a tv show?), a video signal (how would you change the channel? where is the video coming from?), a program guide (how does TiVo know what's showing and when?), and a TV (how does the TiVo send the recording to the TV?). "How does the car's GPS work?" is a great time to talk about satellites (how does the car know where it is?), traffic data (where does it come from?), routing (how does the computer know which roads to recommend?) and data visualization (is the info presented in a way that's useful? how would you make it better?).

Whether you know the answers to those questions doesn't matter at all; it's the act of asking the question that matters. And if you want to actually find the answers to some of these questions, check out YouTube. It's great for stuff like this:


Several years ago I discovered that my oldest son (then 9) had figured out how to bypass the parental controls on one of our computers in order to play some Flash games his friends had told him about. While that led to a long conversation about responsibility, it's nevertheless exactly the kind of enthusiasm and curiosity that I want to encourage. They're not natives yet, but they're on their way. And before too long I expect they'll be telling me more about the world around us than I can tell them. I can't wait.

A good friend of mine died on Saturday. For those who didn’t have the opportunity to meet this man, I feel compelled to tell you a bit about him.



I first met Michael O’Connor-Clarke at the Hilton New York in 1999 when we were in marketing for competing software companies. He at Hummingbird, the industry-leading document management software company, and I at iManage, the upstart nipping at Humminbird’s heels. I remember thinking it must have annoyed him that I was invited to share the stage with him; his company, after all, had more than 70% of the market, and iManage had been none too subtle in painting their product as yesterday’s technology.



But he wasn’t annoyed. No sooner had our panel wrapped up that he invited me to lunch. We hit it off, though we lost touch as our careers went in different directions. I stumbled across his blog several years later, and got reintroduced to what a cool guy he was.



And our paths crossed once again in New York, at another conference, this time in 2005. I was with FeedBurner, and Michael was at a tech company that was complementary to what we were doing. We reconnected over another lunch, and resolved that this time we'd stay in touch. We did.


We never went more than a few months over the last seven years without some e-mail exchange, and though we didn’t see each other too often, our lunch at SXSW a couple years ago was a highlight of that conference for me. By then I was at Google and he’d returned to agency life after some time with a tech firm, and we spent a good 90 minutes comparing notes about our families, our careers, and life in general.



Michael loved his job, and loved PR. He reveled in finding the story worth telling, and anyone who spends more than a few minutes browsing some of his blog posts will see a man who even loved those who practiced bad PR. (“Loved” might not quite be the right word: adored, maybe? Enjoyed? He took a perverse delight in their ineptitude, because even in their poorly targeted e-mail blasts, their terrible turn of phrase, their poor choice in tactics, there was a story there, too. Here’s but one example of countless exchanges he and I had over the years documenting this.)



This past July 4, I was driving my family north for a long vacation weekend. Early in the drive I got a call from one of my best friends, who was calling to tell me his wife had cancer. It hit me hard, and I spent much of that six hour drive predictably thinking about what’s important. Family. Friends. Legacy. As we neared our destination, it was dinner time. Rather than try to cook in the house we’d rented after a long drive, we found a local pizza joint that was open on the holiday. While I waited for our pizza to be finished, I checked my e-mail.



I didn’t recognize the name of the sender of the latest e-mail received, but I recognized the name in the subject line: Michael O’Connor-Clarke. The sender was Michael’s boss, sending to contacts in his address book, letting his extended network know that Michael was battling esophageal cancer.

Michael died Saturday, 48 years old, leaving behind a wife and three children, and an online and offline community of thousands whose lives he touched.



Last fall he and I were e-mailing about a YouTube problem a client of his was having. I asked how his family was doing, and his reply spoke volumes about who he was:

Things here are utterly wonderful, thanks. Actually in love with my job ... Great team, fantastic clients, and we're kicking 31 flavours of arse every single day. Family growing like weeds and eating us out of house and home, but all happy, healthy and (even more important) the kids all still like each other. La vita e bella.

It seems simplistic to reflect on a friend’s passing and say that we should cherish every moment, treasure the time we get with those we love. But the story of Michael’s life is, in the end, actually rather simple: love your family, find your passion, apply that passion to making others’ lives better while you can, and know that joy isn’t hard to find if you know where to look. I liked Michael the day I met him, and over the years grew to admire that here was a man who had his priorities firmly set.



Another of Michael’s friends recounted that Eamonn Clarke posted this on Michael’s Facebook page earlier today:


Enjoy life.
Hug your loved ones tight.
Be happy that he lived.
and raise a glass to him tonight

I’m raising a glass right now. Here’s to Michael, a man whose story I’ll remember for many years to come.

Earlier this year I asked for suggestions on Google+ about dealing with increasingly large image collections. In our house, we have two DSLRs, four phones that take pictures, and two point and shoot cameras. The images from these are scattered across several hard drives and online backup accounts; over the past several years they've been inconsistently backed up. We have a network attached storage device that houses all images, but due to poor backup processes in the past, we have several cases of duplicate images.

Adding to the complexity, we paid Scandigital to scan years of print photos – everything from our honeymoon to our first cross-country drive to our first house. This added several thousand images to our archive – a good thing, to be sure, as we no