Ideas worth talking about.

portland coffee

Great to see some familiar faces (Stephen, Russell) this morning at Stumptown in Portland. I enjoyed meeting Matt, Barbara, Christian, Noel and a few others whose names I didn't get. If you have a blog or a name let me know.

develop your brain

"The true nature of mankind is that of a super-social ape. We are programmed to be together; sociability is our species' key evolutionary strategy; we feel happier with others; our brains develop through interaction with others and when our brains don't develop normally this often robs us of key human skills. When they develop properly we have the most amazing capabilities to live together and create things together." from  Mark Earls' book Herd.

Join me for conversation, coffee and brain development. The next coffee morning will be Friday, May 25, 10 a.m., Midtown Marketplace 1591 Willamette St. (in the back section near the fireplace). See you there.

coffee morning review

Thank you, for those of you who made it to last Friday's coffee morning. Great conversations. Sorry, I didn’t take photos. But I do have some pics from the last few coffee mornings I’ve been meaning to post.

think. talk. do.

At coffee morning today I mentioned the books The Creative License by Danny Gregory and Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud. I enjoy them both, but for different reasons.

Danny inspires me to keep a journal. Not like the one I have now, with some ideas and a few notes jotted down. I’m talking about one with drawings and paintings of interesting things in my life and other cool stuff like that.

Scott’s book is more than just a book about comics; it’s about how we communicate visually. If you care about art or design you’ll want to read this one. But I’m not here to sell books.

I’m here to embrace my new mantra: Think. Talk. Do. I’m good at thinking and talking. Now, I need to start doing. I think it was seeing The Creative Act Blog’s create-a-thing-a-day that made me want to do my own thing-a-day.

Today, I begin. It can be a drawing, photo, painting, song, poem, short story, video or whatever. I just need to create something new each day. Maybe I’ll post some of my creations here or I’ll start a new blog for them.

What pushes you over the edge to begin something new?

inaugural coffee morning

Thanks to everyone who made it to coffee morning. I was happy to see a good turnout (not bad for our first time). From left to right: John, Matt, Cody, Heron, Joe (he’s a little blurry here. He only had a few minutes to chat before leaving to meet up with Jelly Helm at W+K Portland) and Erin.

Conversation ranged from gentrification to custom limited edition toys (and a few things in between). Some sites mentioned: highsnobiety.com and coolestshop.com. Matt suggested meeting at 9:30 next time. With that, the next coffee morning will be at the same place, but with a new time. See you next Friday.

coffee and chat

It’s official. Eugene now has its very own coffee morning. Inspired by a recent visit to a Portland coffee morning (with Stephen Landau and friends) and Russell Davies, of course. (And a special thanks to Andrea Schneider and Joseph Leary for that quick conversation we had today. That was the motivation I needed to get things started).

The first Eugene coffee morning will be Friday Feb 2 at 9 a.m., located at Midtown (formerly Triomphe Bistro) 1591 Willamette St.

See you there.