Nov 2006, 116 entries

I'll be giving a 5-minute talk at the first Ignite Seattle event at CHAC Lower Level next week.  It's a potentially interesting speaking format where people will create 20 slides and have 5 minutes to talk about them, but the slides will be out of your control, each slide sliding by at 15 second intervals.

I just met with Brady for lunch and I think I'm going to do my talk on McLeod Residence.  What we're building, why we're building it, and how it will change your life.  I'll probably be going on in the first half, so if you want to hear me talk, come around 8pm.  See you there!

There will also be a bridge building competition at 6:30 and a werewolf tournament around 9:30.  Learn more about Ignite here.

It's been a little over a month since we signed the lease on our space.  What a crazy month.  I want to document what's going on publicly just because I know that if I was watching from the outside I'd be curious about all of the various steps that were required to get this going.  I am coming to believe that the uncertainty of this process is the most intimidating barrier that blocks most people from doing something crazy like opening a new business.  But, then again, there are some personality types that thrive on the uncertain and swirling madness that working with the city, the bank, the architect, the friends, the family, the contractors, and insurance agent all at once provides.   Those people should probably just start their business rather than read this blog.  For the rest of you slackers, here's what we've been up to...

City permits.  Our space is zoned for commercial, and therefore can be opened as a restaurant, bar, or pretty much any other kind of retail space.  Potentially.  However, in order to get permission officially, you need to apply for a permit from the city.  In Seattle, you do this here.  We got stuck because we need a site plan of the space in order to apply... so we hired an architect friend to make some plans for us.  Once he submits them, he gets us a project number, and we can use that to apply for a permit number.  And THEN we can get inspections from fire, health, ADA, and the liquor control board.  So far, we've learned that we won't have to do any major structural modifications to the space because it's small and we're not doing a lot of work on it.  The catch-22 is that if you begin to invest a lot into tenant improvements on the building then you will become responsible for updating it to code as well.

Liquor license.  It costs $2,000 to apply for a restaurant liquor license (beer, wine, and spirits).  In addition, you need to send them all kinds of other information like the last 10 years of your employment record, the last 10 years of addresses you've lived at, and forms for criminal records.  The actual code requirements for getting the license are pretty easy... having rails separating 21+ areas from non-21+ areas, putting up a couple stickers and signs (alcohol + pregnancy = bad), having some food on the menu for a certain number of hours per day, and keeping entrances to the liquor area a certain size (not wider than 10 ft).  The difficulty is simply that you also need to comply with the food and health codes that the city.  My contact at the Liquor Control Board has been really helpful so far.

Changing the space.  We're doing a number of minor improvements to the space to make it fit our vision.  For example, making it so the bathroom floors don't slope down.  :)  Also, painting/wallpapering walls, building a desk and a bar, adding track lighting to the gallery rooms and chandeliers to other rooms.   We have  a lot to do here, lots of small things, but we're also trying to keep a lot about the space as it is.  We're not tearing down any walls, and will probably keep most of the doors and windows.  They give it the residence-feel that's a big part of the reason we chose the place to begin with.

Budget.  We created a month-by-month budget for the next 14 months, and yearly budget projections for the next 5 years.  We're creating worst case scenarios and best case scenarios, raising money from a few friends and family members, while also having backup lines of credit in case we need it.  We know exactly how long we'll last if we never make a dime.  We know when we'll break even if things go according to plan.  Of course, all of this is changing day-to-day, and we don't know how things will actually turn out.  The main goal of planning this way is so that we don't get surprised by math that should have been obvious from the start.

These are the basics that have been occupying our day-to-day activities as we start building this up.  Next I'll talk about different parts of our planning process... ideas for the technology, art, and collaboration pieces of McLeod.  In the end, we're building this for the big ideas, but first we need to build the foundation.

We are creating a semi-permanent installation of seven light boxes in our largest exhibition room at McLeod Residence.   The boxes are each wall-mounted, horizontal, and 30" x 40", with fluorescent bulbs behind Plexi-glass.

This is a call for art work.  We are looking for digital imagery: photography or computer-generated two-dimensional work.   We are in search of imagery that would look stunning mounted, large scale, with light emanating from behind.

But also: McLeod Residence is a home for ideas, so rather than focusing on decoration, we would like to have work with a concept.   We would like for each piece to have an explanation, a reason why it was created.

If you are interested in submitting work, please email a jpeg (preferably 700 pixels in width, 72dpi) of a file that you have in high resolution.   The original file must be able to print at 30" x 40", 150 dpi. 

The pieces will be for sale at McLeod Residence.  For details regarding sales, please contact Lele at leleblixa@gmail.com.

Please send your files to: leleblixa@gmail.com by December 1, 2006.  Artists will be notified by December 15.  Thank you!

On October 16th 2006, 6 days after Lele's return to Seattle, Lele and I signed the lease for McLeod Residence.  It's an old converted apartment building at 2209 2nd Ave, across the street from the Crocodile, Tula's, Shorty's, and the Lava Lounge.  There's a red door on the street level, and once you've entered, you walk up a broad staircase and into a foyer with six doors.   

We always knew that the space we found would have a huge impact on the business we built.  As soon as we found our new residence, everything else started coming together.  With six rooms, nine doors, two tiny triangular closets, twenty-two steps, fourteen windows, two bathrooms, a back deck, and over two-thousand square feet packed into the best location in Seattle, this place is a perfect home for our vision.

I want to use this blog to talk about the vision, both as an idea and as it becomes a reality.  I want to talk about Seattle, and friends, and art, and technology, and about how this project embodies the lifestyle that I want to live.  The last two years at my other project, The Robot Co-op, has taught me that the quickest way to a great life is through a great lifestyle.  That the great things in life can be had right now.

It started in the early 1970s, following a terrible television accident that left astronaut Steve Austin a man barely alive. "We can rebuild him. We have the technology. We can make him better than he was.  Better...stronger...faster."
   
Let's update that for the 21st century.

To celebrate the return of Mutual Improvement we are kicking off a new effort we are calling: "How am I doing?"™  Our goal is not to turn you into a bionic freak addled with technology (though that sounds pretty cool).  Our goal is much simpler - we want to create a system that will let you quickly measure where you are, where you want to go, and make a plan for getting there.

And we are inviting you to help us create it.  After a round of brainstorming and lots of time reviewing the most popular goals on 43 Things, we came up with an initial list of 12 categories:

1. Travel
2. Money
3. Career/work
4. Health
5. Diet
6. Exercise
7. Love/relationships
8. Family/home
9. Education
10. Habits/self improvement
11. Art/music/hobbies/culture
12. Spiritual/religious 

Our thought is, to build a system that lets you assess "How you are doing?"™ in each of these 12 categories as well as indicate which areas are of the greatest importance to you.  Based on that data - we'll generate a list of goals that have been recommended by users to help people make progress in that area.  After measuring whether you've accomplished the goals or not, we'll have a sense of where you are, and make a set of recommendations on goals that might get you ready for the new year.

What do you think?  We'd love to hear what you think of the 12 categories -- are there some you'd combine, delete, or add?  Do you think the users on 43 Things can pitch in to create lists of recommended goals in each of these areas?  We'd love some feedback on the ideas behind "How am I doing?".

This isn't going to by your typical old-fashioned photo booth.  This is going to save a history of all photos taken, upload them to a flickr group (join it), and be free to use.

Josh is doing the majority (okay, maybe all) of the heavy lifting on this one.  He describes what he did here.  We were initially inspired by the folks at Shine, a bar in SF that has a similar photo booth setup.  They were very open and helpful in explaining how they put theirs together.  In the end, we did ours slightly differently (we're not going to do photo strips, for example, and aren't going to brand the photos taken), but the spirit is the same.  More places should have this.

How it's going to work

We're going to install this in a closet near the staircase.  When you open the door, you'll be presented with a screen that displays one of the pictures that has previously been taken, and a menu to browse more, or to take a picture.  It's a touch screen so you just touch "take a picture" and it counts down from 5 and takes it.

It immediately uploads to the internet... which will add a bit of a risky element to the whole process.  You can take as many as you want for free.  At some point we're going to allow you to print them out, but not at first.  It's just a quirky experiment to see how it's going to be used.

When can you see it?

We hope for it to be fully functioning and in action on New Years Eve, when we'll be throwing a little party for our friends.  If you want to be invited, sign up here.