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The Space Needle Meets Chihuly on a Sunny Seattle Day

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Most of us shell our days like peanuts.

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Lafayette is Ragin’ Cajun Country

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Glenstone Museum Rocks!

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On the Lookout for Signs of Folly

@Folly Beach, SC. I’m loving the repurposing of flood space on the ground floor of a beach house into a walk-up bar. Too bad it wasn’t open to the public!

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Making Mezcal-fueled Memories in Mexico

So many chic spots are tucked in among the boutique hotels and beach clubs of Tulum. Candles twinkle under the jungle canopy at places like Gitano, Rosa Negra, and Casa Jaguar while DJs and craft cocktails get the international crowd moving. During the day my cousin and I explore the local cenotes--natural swimming holes--and practice our day drinking. I can’t wait to return with my girlfriends! 

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Enjoying the DJ on the last day of Catharsis, the National Mall.

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After House Bill 2, a refreshing sign in Durham, North Carolina.

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The art mural scene brightens downtown Worcester, MA.

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Asheville Redux 

When my friends and I traveled to Asheville for a long weekend, we had lots of fun things planned because that’s how I roll. What I looked forward to most was a return visit to Sunny Point Cafe. A bluegrass trio, bar service, and flower gardens helped distract from the hunger pains while we waited an hour outside for a table. The waitstaff was personable, and the food was incredible: somehow we managed to limit ourselves to ordering just chipotle cheddar cheese grits, chicken and waffles, organic carrot Johnny cakes with cardamom cream cheese, and beautiful Bloody Marys that could have been a meal all by themselves. I cannot get enough of that place!

Asheville is arts central, and on the tentative trip itinerary this time was a visit to The Orange Peel, a historic venue named in 2008 as one of the top 5 rock clubs in the nation by Rolling Stone Magazine. The last time I was in Asheville, I tried to go to a show at the Orange Peel but I waited too late to buy a ticket. Who sells out a Monday night show?! This time I planned ahead and skimmed the schedule in advance, unfortunately none of the music guests appealed. Then my eyes lit upon Studio Zahiya’s Old School Dance Fitness class--with a DJ!--being offered on Saturday morning at The Orange Peel. Sign us up! Actually, sign us up and about 48 other strangers similarly interested in sweating to Poison by Bobby Brown and other 80s and 90s jams. It was a blast!

Pro tip: Take a guilt-free field trip to nearby Vortex Donuts to fuel up! 

The shopping is always great in Asheville and we picked up a few things at the Asheville Bee Charmer, including my newest fav t-shirt that I have been wearing all summer. While we were wandering around downtown, we encountered Abby the Spoon Lady busking away, which I’m going to count as a celebrity sighting. We also spent some time browsing in the Riverwalk Art District; I wish I had pulled the trigger on a piece I saw at Splurge Design that a month later was sold. While you’re there, consider stopping by the studio to hear painter Daniel McClendon talk about his work--his passion and talent jump off the canvas, and I can easily picture it hanging in the lobby of a chic hotel or bar. 

The only thing hard to buy in Asheville is a decent glass of wine; some call it the Napa Valley of beer. And to pay homage, we whiled away an hour or so at New Belgium Brewing (home of the Fat Tire), enjoying a flight and watching people tube down the adjacent river. Luckily we scored some tasty red with our last meal at Bone and Broth.

For cocktails and a view, two places to check out are the rooftop bars at Hemingways and Capella on 9. 

On our last full day we ventured about 45 miles south of Asheville to visit the National Park Service’s historic Carl Sandburg Home, where one of my relatives volunteers with the goat sanctuary. I never turn down an opportunity to play with baby goats, and the forest bathing provided a peaceful change of pace from the transportation trifecta of planes, trains, and automobiles that our trip to Asheville entailed. We wrapped up this mini adventure with lunch in nearby Hendo, as the locals call it, where movies such as Dirty Dancing and Hunger Games have been filmed. 

For the past year a number of travel outfits have named Asheville a top travel destination in the US. This summer is a particularly great time to go because of the simply stunning Chihuly exhibit at the Biltmore Estate Gardens, through 7 October 2018. Asheville--you live up to the hype! 

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And Now I Want To Go To Burning Man

Spend some time at the Renwick Museum in Washington, DC, for a stunning, interactive exhibit on the visual arts--the costumes, the mutant vehicles, the elaborate structures--as well as a tribute to the culture and ethos behind the annual Burning Man festival in Nevada. 

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Must-See: Chihuly at the Biltmore Estate Gardens

This should be a permanent installation. Pro-tip: Time your tickets to enjoy the exhibit in different types of lighting.

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City Bathing in Chucktown

Forest bathing is the Japanese term for taking in the forest, and thus I would like to introduce the term citybathing to describe my recent time in Charleston, SC. First though, I headed straight to Folly Beach for sand and sunbathing--with a direct flight I was surfside before noon. Later on, I wandered downtown, taking in the street eye candy and discovering new delights—like the banana-chocolate-peanut butter deliciousness at Brown’s Court Bakery and the dragonfruit smoothie at Hurayali Gardens. I also made time for old favorites, like Indaco, where I savored every melt-in-your-mouth bite of the homemade butterbean agnolotti. Without the ocean breeze, downtown was brutally humid, so I took lots of one-mile Uber trips and escaped to the Revelry Brewery rooftop for 360-degree views and a much-needed breeze.

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SxSW 2018 Diary - Day 5

I wake up after sleeping 11 hours and feel great! I hit Silicon Valley to Restaurants: The Path to Equality with Open Table CEO Christa Quarles, which turns out to be a great Plan B when my first choice, Leading for a Culture of Innovation and Creativity, is full. There are only about 20 people present but more trickle in as the talk gets going. I lament my failure to figure out breakfast yet again and snack on patriotic colored M&Ms snagged from the WeDC house.  Where is Jose Andres to help feed the hungry when you need him?

It’s about belonging. Belonging makes people more productive and happier. When Quarles was first starting out, she took her Harvard MBA to Merrill Lynch, which just a few years earlier had outlawed strippers on the trading floor. She joined the company’s all-male basketball team in order to be one of the guys and accepted.

When more women are present, the workplace becomes less of a locker room. Eighty percent of women in the restaurant industry have experienced sexual harassment, and the #MeToo movement has prompted some self-reflection:

What have I been able to take for granted on my way to the top that women have not, and what can I do to fix that? –Top Chef’s Tom Colicchio, in an open letter to the restaurant industry.

What did I see and what did I let slide? –Anthony Bourdain in an interview on The Daily Show.

We are in the middle of a reckoning. Quarles makes the business case for increasing the number of women at senior levels, similar to other SxSW speakers. She believes leaders can be effective in setting the tone. At Open Table, 38% of its executive staff and 43% of its workforce are female.

It’s not a pipeline problem. The Board List has more than 2,400 qualified, vetted women capable of serving on a board. Still, 75% of the largest IPOs between 2014 and 2016 had zero or one woman on their boards.

She cites a recently updated diversity study by McKinsey: Companies that are more diverse use more data, process it more carefully, and are more innovative.

Leaders can make change and can make it quickly. Quarles gives a Silicon Valley example:  From January to April 2017, 14% of new hires in engineering positions at a particular company were female. Then the leadership stated: “Hiring a diverse engineering team is a priority.” From September to December 2017, 50% of new hires in engineering positions at that company were female.

Open Table is proud of its initiatives to foster diversity, equality, and community. Open Table changed its recruiting process, scrubbed job descriptions to ensure they were gender neutral, and removed identifying information from resumes, such as the names of universities. They require two women to be on the finalist list for any engineering position–if there is only one minority candidate, that person becomes the diversity candidate.

Open Table hosts “Open Conversations,” a forum for women to network and discuss issues; WOOT–Women of Open Table–brings in speakers; and the company also broadened its efforts to create programs to support the full lives of employees, regardless of gender or parental status.

At SxSW 2018, Open Table announced the Open Kitchen initiative, which encourages restaurants to pledge to operate a safe and respectful workplace that stresses gender equality; look for the badge denoting these restaurants on the Open Table app.

I justify going to the This Is Us Cast Panel because I deprived myself of the season finale sneak preview yesterday afternoon. Mandy Moore, Milo Ventimiglia, and Justin Hartley are present, and similar to the Westworld cast, they talk about collaboration, teamwork, and the importance of having supportive colleagues.

The interview feels like an US Weekly article conducted by the show’s biggest fangirl. One point that stays with me is Ventimiglia’s story about encountering the rare fan who just wants to say thank you and connect, as opposed to collecting some sort of prize–a hug, photo, or memento from the show–to impress others. He says, “If you lead with love, you should have a good life.” Connection is a recurring theme this week.

Thank you Austin for keeping it weird. While waiting on the street corner for my cauliflower tacos, a man passes furtively by wearing a dark trench coat and hat, clutching a live brown hen to his bare chest. Story prompt–go!

My tolerance for the panelists in Five Major Generational Shifts and Understanding Gen Z fades quickly. Maybe I am annoyed by their glorification of SnapChat (”The stories disappear so if I don’t check it out, I’ll miss out.”) Maybe it is because of their efforts to foment FOMO in others by asking everyone to take a pictures of the room and post it to social media. Maybe it is because of all the like, verbal graffiti–like seriously!

A few points to pass along before I bail on this session: 1) everyone is a content creator; 2) remote work is the new American Dream; and 3) Generation Z is the side-hustle generation.

I return to the standby line for the IDEO presentation, Leading for a Culture of Innovation and Creativity, which I had mistakenly abandoned to hear Generation Z. This is the second of three runnings for the popular talk. A spot opens up with about 15 minutes left so here are a few takeaways from the tail end:

Create 5 to 7 design principles for your product, process, or team and review them when you are making key decisions.

Communicate progress back to everyone who touches your work.

Save time for problem-solving when you get close to launch.

For my last night at SxSW I put on comfy clothes and stroll over to the Alamo for The Dawn Wall, a documentary about free-climbing the face of El Capitan. It is well-paced and suspenseful, and the views are harrowing. But mostly I enjoy what the narrative says about partnering and overcoming adversity. And of course, it’s cool to have the film’s talent on hand to answer questions. On a scale of 1 to 5–movie goers get to vote for the film festival’s audience award–my friend gives it a “10.”

It wouldn’t be a trip to Austin without some breakfast tacos, so I make a quick stop at Torchy’s on the way to the airport. Delicious! Until next time Austin …

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SxSW 2018 Diary - Day 4

Monday starts off with what may be the most relevant talk to my job, Lessons in Innovation from Silicon Valley Elite by Ann Hiatt, who served as the Chief of Staff for three tech giants–Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, and Google CEO Eric Schmidt. Based on her interactions with them, she identifies five qualities of effective leaders–Balanced, Curious, Fearless, Humble, and Influential–and shares some memorable anecdotes.

Schmidt asked Hiatt what to expect the first time he was going to fly on a private jet. He has a plaque on his desk that says, “If at all possible, say yes.”

Bezos follows the regret minimization principle, “If I don’t take this chance, at the end of my life will I regret it?”

The free food at Google is intended to cross-pollinate ideas and avoid silos.

Jobs that seem invisible may change your life. Hiatt viewed herself as these executives’ brain double or shadow, someone to represent them at all times, be involved in strategy, and help them pivot when something new hits. An international studies major, she read the same papers that they read to familiarize herself with the the tech industry, and tailored her communication to each executive’s style. She talked about her growth in the job:

She arrived at Google when the team was understaffed and began focusing on the backlog of work until Mayer gave her feedback that she had neglected to develop the relationships in the company–the friendship currency–needed to get hard things done at the pace and scale required.

When all 700 people on the design team listed Hiatt in a workforce survey as one of the top 5 people they communicated with, she realized she was a bottleneck and needed to delegate more in order to be more accessible.

The next talk also seems like a no-brainer: How 5 months on the PCT Made Me Better at My Job. I loved Cheryl Strayed’s book Wild about hiking the Pacific Coast Trail solo and took extended leave in 2014 to travel and recharge, so I was keen to hear Elizabeth Schwartz’s perspective.

This talk lacked the vulnerability, humor, and warmth of Strayed’s book; it seemed more of a how-to guide aimed at tightly wound people who want to take a sabbatical–e.g., how Schwartz weighed every item in her pack, how she trained, and how she rationed two wet wipes per day to shower. I would have rather heard how she felt when her younger brother told her he preferred to hike the last month of the trail solo, rather than with her.

Schwartz makes a decent business case for supporting sabbaticals. As the COO and most senior person in Square Root, she dispels the notion that senior leaders are too indispensable to take a chunk of time off; every company has to deal with personnel transitions, regardless of the reason. And I agree with her observation that there never is a right time to go if you are in an intense job.

You can do your job better by not doing it for a while. As Schwartz catalogued her 57 job responsibilities in order to hand them off to others, she identified some drift in her portfolio. She also realized that she had been operating in startup mode, trying to be the hero and do everything, even though the company was no longer a startup. when she returned to the office, she was able to hit reset on her job and negotiate more impactful responsibilities.

Work Your Own Work. Her soft skills improved; she adapted and adopted the trail mantra, Hike Your Own Hike, to become less of a micromanager.

The afternoon Keynote Speaker, London Mayor Sadiq Khan, has  a few protesters but their street-level signs are hard to read from the fourth floor of the Austin Convention Center. Khan gives a long, political speech about how the technical revolution is giving rise to an unease about globalization, growing income inequality, polarization, and disillusionment about our shared way of life.

One part of Khan’s speech stands out: when he reads a half-dozen mean tweets that he received that day. For example, “Sadiq Khan is just a gay Muslim terrorist,” “I wish Sadiq Khan would blow himself up like they all do,” and “I’d pay for someone to execute Sadiq Khan.” The hate-filled messages are shocking, but he doesn’t want to talk about the personal impact on him or his family. Instead his concern is that this hate speech exacerbates, deepens, and fuels societal differences. He also is concerned about the impact on minorities and aspiring politicians.

Khan argues that we need a stronger duty of care and that we must do more to protect people online, but other than noting that tech companies need to take more responsibility for their impact, he doesn’t offer a lot of concrete ideas.

The last talk of the day is one of the most inspiring of the entire week, Changing the World Through Food with chefs Jose Andres and Andrew Zimmern. Both chefs see food as a way to communicate with other cultures and share a distaste for waste. Dignity, respect, and empathy help us be inclusive.

A defining moment for Andres was visiting the Ivory Coast as a member of the Spanish Navy–it was the first time he saw people who didn’t have enough food.

The turning point for Zimmern, who became an addict and homeless after living a life of privilege, was the care and respect he was given in the kitchen.

They offered lessons from their travels:

People don’t want charity, they want respect, and they way to do that is to listen. Andres found himself in Haiti about two weeks after its deadly earthquake, serving up rice and beans “his” way. Imagine his surprise when a couple of old ladies told him the beans were no good. Remember Ann Hiatt’s observation that great leaders are humble? Andres responded by asking how they liked their beans cooked and adjusted.

Sometimes it is more important to be a good guest. Zimmern told a story about visiting indigenous tribes for his show Bizarre Foods. The crew did not want him to eat fish that had been prepared with feces-contaminated water but he did anyway–and didn’t get sick. Later he encountered some US Special Forces personnel who said they use his show to teach cultural sensitivity in the military.

Hunger cannot wait. The discussion turned to Puerto Rico, where Andres explained how his team went from serving 1,000 meals a day to 375,000 meals a day. The wrong decision is the one you don’t make.

Interested in being a part of the solution? Donate to World Central Kitchen. Volunteer at a soup kitchen. Touch a person.

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SxSW 2018 Diary - Day 3

Pace yourself people. It’s Sunday, and I’m planning to recharge and explore; there aren’t many sessions today that I’m interested in and the switch to Daylight Savings Time also means that I have lost an hour of sleep. First though, I pack and head to my new place in South Austin; I’ll spare you the details but suffice it to say that check-in was NOT/NOT smooth. I am crabby and in need of a nap. instead I have a delicious lunch at Bouldin Street Cafe, named one of the Top 20 Vegetarian Restaurants in the US by Thrillist.

Then I line up to hear the Melinda Gates Keynote: The Company We Keep, which turns out to be a panel of speakers, something I was trying to avoid (I prefer personal stories over three people answering the same question.) The doors to the ballroom close with nine people ahead of me. Argh. I head over to the simulcast and grab a seat; this room also hits capacity at 800 people.

The speakers give examples of diversity and inclusion practices in their industries.

At the Gates Foundation they have lots of conversations about what they want the office culture to be. She advises young women: If you want to have kids, do–don’t put it off because it becomes harder as you get older.” Also, she’s a strong proponent of paid family medical leave.

Joanna Coles, the Chief Content Officer for Hearst Magazines said her company anonymizes names and schools in interview packets.

Another panelist talked about the 50/50 by 2020 gender balance boarding initiative, noting that one woman alone cannot make a difference on a corporate board and linking diversity to better business outcomes.

Other inclusion tips:  Watch for, and stop, when people talk over or interrupt others. Invite men to be an ally; men can ask, “How do I help?”