You never realize how much you depend on the smallest thing until it fails. Like a key on your laptop.

Last month, I traveled to San Diego to attend the ASU+GSV Summit, an investor- and company exec-focused education technology conference. I’d committed to writing about it for GeekWire. That meant lots of note taking during sessions, nighttime drafting of stories, and the usual stuff that goes with the practice of “writing.”

My laptop of choice was a Lenovo Flex 4, which had been primarily a personal laptop (purchased when I had a corporate exec position, so I had a job-issued Dell ultralight as my main machine). The 14″ Lenovo, with its lightweight keyboard and touch screen, wasn’t a standalone workhorse. I used it almost exclusively with a docking station in my home office. But it seemed to also suffice as a road companion on my infrequent trips.

I’ve always been a fast typist and probably a bit more of a keyboard-pounder than most (I’m told I’m noisy by others on conference calls). That’s what happens when you learned “keyboarding” on an old-school manual typewriter that required great force for the metal type lever to make an impression on the paper through the cloth inked ribbon.

Still, the Flex worked fine through the first day of conference note-taking, and an evening of responding to email. The next morning, as I began to draft stories, I noticed spaces frequently weren’t appearing between my words.

Odd, I thought. I kept trying, and then found periods (so to speak) of no spaces were punctuated by occasional unending strings of repeating spaces.

Glancing down at the keyboard, I saw the space bar had gone flush with the laptop base.

Uh oh.

I turned the laptop over and tapped on the base. Yes, that popped the space bar up. For about ten words of typing. Stuck flush anew.

I realized I had a problem. Solutions considered, tried, and discarded:

1. Type a hyphen (-) between each word instead of a space, then later do a global search-and-replace. That quickly got tedious as I had to consciously stop after-each-word-to-reach-up-to-press-the-hyphen-key.
2. Race like a stereotypical ink-stained wretch on deadline and ignore the malfunctioning space bar, inserting spaces later. Thatquicklymadereviewingandeditingtextawful. And I felt like a bizarre hybrid of James Joyce and e.e. cummings.
3. Use the on-screen touch keyboard to insert spaces, since I recalled the Flex was also a touch screen-enabled laptop. Same mental speed bump problem as the hyphen solution, not to mention rapid smearing of the screen I was trying to read.
4. Find an existing space, copy it, and then just paste it between words. God. No.

After trying workarounds and failing, a quick phone call to Lenovo technical support from the hotel made it clear that this was not something I could repair myself.

So for the remainder of the conference, I took my notes on paper (also leading to the realization that if one doesn’t do handwritten note-taking often, the printing becomes indecipherable and one’s hand cramps quickly), as well as in Evernote on my smartphone (hoping that auto-correct would fix any thumb-inspired typographical mess).

Once home I filed several stories for GeekWire, including a general wrap-up of ASU+GSV Summit (“For investors, the future of education technology is now the workplace“), the launch of a new interoperability effort (“Project Unicorn signs first companies to help schools handle the hairball of edtech data“), and a forthcoming Media/Tech column, all with an external docking station and keyboard plugged into the Flex.

Then the Flex 4 went back to Lenovo for replacement of the keyboard under its one-year warranty . Which was good timing, as I discovered while on the phone in the hotel room to Lenovo tech support that I was calling on exactly the one-year anniversary of my purchase. (Whew.)

I’ll be finding a new home for the now-fully refurbished Flex with its virgin keyboard. I’ve purchased a more industrial-strength primary work laptop, a Lenovo X1 Carbon on which I’m writing this.

And I hope never again will space threaten to be my final frontier.

I love to travel. (Yes, even business travel.)

I hit the Million Mile Flyer level on Alaska Airlines five years ago, and am well on my way to my second million butt-in-seat miles. I used to commute regularly and routinely from Seattle to each of New York City, Boston, San Francisco, Minneapolis, and more for various projects and positions. I’ve given keynotes in locations ranging from Arizona to New Zealand.

Every couple of years, I redeem flight and hotel loyalty program points and take trips to Europe, making all of my own arrangements.

So I’ve learned stuff.

After my recent ten days of vacation in Germany and Spain (thanks to redeeming Alaska Airlines and Starwood Preferred Guest miles and points), I wrote up the latest in series of “guides” to mostly paperless travel, “Can you go paperless on an overseas trip? The Geek’s Guide to International Travel, 2018 Edition,” for GeekWire. (One hint: Evernote and/or Dropbox are great for storing digital copies of critical documents, like passports, and usable copies of any barcoded rail or admission tickets.)

But for my friends and followers on Facebook, I shared ten more general tips on how to make overseas vacation travel better:

1. The highest and best use of frequent flier miles and hotel loyalty program points is international travel. Not only does it remove a lot of costs from the vacation equation, it provides the best value per point.
2. Conversely, the highest and best use of vacation time is walking the city streets and visiting the local haunts wherever you are. You meet real people and see real places, not just those that hawk “We speak English!” or want to offer you a “free” walking tour.
3. Prepare for language frustration, no matter how well you think you’ve prepared. You’re not going to understand the rapid-fire real-world linguistic shorthand outside of a language-learning app (though I did love prepping with Duolingo). Just smile and point and lot, and you’ll be fine.
4. Wear a money belt. (Yeah, it’s a pain, but so is replacing all of your credit cards and cash on the go.) And, if you carry a day pack, consider the really safe and well-designed PacSafe brand with interlocking zipper pulls and RFID shields. We loved ours.

   

5. Take local mass transit. You’ll see more of the city on a tram, bus, or subway than you’ll ever see on a scripted tour bus. (And get a souvenir that may prompt you go to back, such as our Barcelona T-10 pass with four rides left.)
6. Give yourself down days to reflect, relax, and re-visit. We decided to to forego another day trip from Madrid to either Toledo or El Escorial after a previous day trip to Cordoba so we could explore Madrid more deeply. We don’t regret it.
7. Don’t over-plan. Pick one must-see sight per day. Then fill in around the edges as your time and energy level allow. That way, you’ll know you’ve seen the highlights and won’t be more concerned with a checklist than what’s around you.
8. Eat local. Yes, we’re pescetarians (fish and veggie). But we tried local sausage and currywurst and Riesling and Apfelwein in Frankfurt, and jamon and paella and manchengo cheese and olives and red wines and churros with hot dark chocolate in Barcelona and Madrid. Food is a critical aspect of culture, not just nourishment. Can’t indulge? Sample. (That’s what tapas are for.)

   

9. Study in advance, and keep humble keepsakes along the way. Diving deeply into an experience and making it memorable isn’t just having the experience. It’s anticipation, built by catching videos and reading guidebooks about your destination in advance. It’s reinforcement, which means keeping those museum tickets with images and place maps. Don’t underestimate the value of either.
10. Pack a sense of humor. Things will go wrong. But making others (and yourself) relax through humor at the absurd will make the journey less stressful. (And yes, I’m looking at you, Frankfurt Airport.)

And, if it’s not clear: You can use many of these on any vacation trip to get the most real life and enjoyment out of your travel.

That clever meme. Cute cat pictures. Terrifying urban legends. All shared, and spread, on social media and sites. And all worth preserving as “web culture?”

That’s how I introduced what is one of my favorite interviews in my GeekWire podcast series on pop culture and the arts: an interview with Library of Congress officials about their new Web Cultures Web Archive.

But it was not a smooth road to recording. It took three attempts on three dates over six months to get to the finished podcast and feature article.

First, some backstory. The podcast episode had its genesis when I was having dinner in Washington D.C. with Trevor Owens, inaugural head of digital content management for library services at the Library of Congress. He mentioned some incredibly interesting work he’d been doing at the world’s largest library, taking “born-digital” content (materials that have never existed in any other form other than digitally) and archiving it for everyone to see online.

That was in September 2017. I was on vacation. I’d just started my podcast series for GeekWire a month earlier. I thought, “Wow, this could be a cool topic.” I asked if he’d be interested in coming on the show, and he agreed.

We exchanged several emails over the next month, reviewing background on the various projects in various parts of the sprawling LoC. I finally decided to focus on the American Folklife Center and its online collection of archived sites that document what the LoC calls “emergent cultural traditions on the web,” from emojis and GIFs to Creepypasta and Slashdot.

Both Trevor and Nicki Saylor, head of the American Folklife Center Archive at the Library of Congress, agreed to record the podcast remotely from D.C. Clare McGrane, my ace producer, worked out a seamless way to use Skype to record two different guests at two different locations in addition to recording me asking my questions from the GeekWire studio in real-time.

So far, so good.

The first recording date approached, in November. A few days beforehand, Clare and I realized while we had all the technical pieces set, we hadn’t actually tested them working together. There was a small glitch. To play it safe, we apologetically postponed. The holidays were ahead, so the next date that worked was in January.

Specifically January 22. The one and only weekday of the federal government shutdown of early 2018. The Library of Congress was shuttered. No interview.

We rescheduled a second time for early March. The Friday before our Monday recording date, a huge storm slammed D.C. and also shut the Library of Congress. We crossed our fingers. We bit our fingernails. By Monday, everything had melted and re-opened.

The third time was the charm. The result you hear sounds relaxed and spur of the moment, as though we’d just decided to have a chat.

That, more than anything else, is the magic of audio. And a really good producer.

There’s a lot of information and geeky fun in this podcast and story for library and web history buffs. Do enjoy reading, “Library of Congress saves the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus and other online ‘web cultures’” and the related GeekWire “popcast.” It was a half-year in gestation.

And let me again thank Trevor and Nicki for their patience and good humor, and Clare for pulling it all together.

How do you bring a venerated arts organization into the digital world? Often in non-public-facing ways. And with the support of audiences and leadership.

The Seattle Symphony is considered one of the top orchestras for doing “multi-sensory” performances — everything from accompanying films live, on-stage, to playing alongside “kinetic instruments” while the conductor uses a Microsoft Kinect.

I take a look behind the scenes at both (including what happened during a rehearsal for a live orchestra-enhanced performance of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets) in both my podcast and related article for GeekWire.

But a few details about digital risk-taking didn’t make it into the GeekWire story.

One is the role of leadership. Director of Operations Kelly Woodhouse Boston credits Music Director Ludovic Morlot and President and CEO Simon Woods with being, “key to the experimentation we’ve been able to do in the last five or six years,” she says. “Both Ludovic and Simon are very open to new ideas, experimenting, openness, innovation, and they have really set us up so that when their departure occurs we’re in a really strong position to move forward.”

Departure? Yes. Morlot and Woods, who have both been with the Symphony since 2011, are leaving (for different reasons and opportunities).  That means a transition.

Joseph Kaufman, the Symphony’s assistant principal bass, is also optimistic: “They were such strong leaders (and that) has set the tone for us as we search for a new executive director, to find someone who’s going to fit that mold, who’s going to continue that trend.” Woodhouse Boston also notes that Thomas Dausgaard, the incoming music director, “will be continuing that tradition.”

The acceptance of digital and multi-sensory experiences also relies largely on the audience. Seattle, Woodhouse Boston notes, has audiences that are “sophisticated and adventurous.” It also doesn’t hurt that the greater Seattle area is a technology hub.

Is there anything new that the Symphony hasn’t done, but would like to try? Kaufman would like to go beyond accompanying well-known films, to doing a live score with the premiere of a brand new movie. “I think it could be something that people would clamor to see especially if it was in partnership with the film festival or some other institution,” he says.

To find out more about how the Seattle Symphony earned its reputation for taking risks with technology, both overtly and subtly, read, “From Harry Potter to Star Trek Beyond, behind the scenes with Seattle Symphony’s multi-sensory tech” at GeekWire, or listen to the podcast.