Training coming to Vancouver Island

The New Warrior Training Adventure is coming again to Vancouver Island on March 31-April 2, 2006 weekend.  I found this intense training for men to be transformative, and the follow-on trainings and groups excellent.  Created by three men in the mid-80’s, something like 33,000 men have now gone through it.  There’s more info at www.mkp.org/vancouver and a registration link at www.mkp.org/canwest.

What I got out of it:

• a mission/sense of purpose, and how to take action in the world
• the fundamental power of accountability (both modeling it and holding others accountable)
• a better understanding of integrity and how to live in integrity
• how to balance compassion, action, mystery, leadership, self and beliefs

The training is recommended for men who are ready to let go of preconceptions and take a hard look at themselves, and push themselves to their limits.  The number of staff exceeds the number of participants, so safety is paramount.  The training is run by the ManKind Project, a not-for-profit organization.  For men who are interested but can’t make it to Vancouver Island, this training is held 125 times per year around the world.  See www.mkp.org for local trainings.

Leadership

In a discussion about the recent Canadian election, a friend mentioned how powerful he perceives political leaders are, and what a great influence they have on people. I’ve considered political leaders be rather irrelevant, and that economic forces, social norms and personal beliefs are far more important. Maybe I’m wrong, and the words and actions of political leaders affect people’s thinking more than I considered. Personally I think I can effect change most effectively through my own actions. Both in what I do, and how I serve as a model to others.

Catching up

After a couple of years absence from the local (Victoria, Canada) industry scene, I’m catching up a bit recently, connecting to folks I know in part to determine which local successful companies might be interesting to work with.

I discovered that a couple of the active companies I knew from a few years back have been acquired by large multinationals (IBM, Schneider Electric); good for them. And there are a number of very interesting local companies, odd for a small town like this. For example, Abebooks and National Money Mart are headquartered here, as is Mercurial Communications who did the Netscape 8.0 browser for AOL. Carmanah Technologies’ sales of solar-powered LED lighting systems (including runway and taxiway lighting systems) are growing rapidly.

Most fun though is catching up with the doings of the folks I know. As much as I enjoy the Flightsim world and all the great people I know there, it’s refreshing to talk to people in real life, rather than skyping or forum exchanges or emails. And with the healthy local economy most people are doing quite well.

Relativity

I watched a bit of the Canadian leadership debate last night. I wrote in an earlier post about some of the immaturity I judge exists in some of the Flight Simulator boards.  That pales in comparison to the simplistic polarized positioning of these “leaders”, and how they communicate with each other and to us.

I did hear Martin (the Liberal leader) that he wanted to clean up the embarrassing circus that is Canadian parliamentary debate, full of heckles and catcalls.

Every industry has its oddities

And this Flight Simulator add-on industry is no different. I’ve been dabbling in it for a little over a year (www.jonpatch.ca/flightsim) and it’s populated by one big player (MS), a couple of larger players (small by any other industry standards) and many tiny players. The market is not big: the customer base is filtered: they first have to have MS Flight Simulator, then want to add to that product, then be aware there is a way to add to the product, mostly through downloaded products. Further the majority of add-ons are distributed for free, requiring a higher level of quality and support from commercial products.

It is an enthusiastic market though, and there are many forums frequented by flightsim fans. At CES 2006, Bill Gates announced the next version of Flight Simulator, FSX, to be released towards the end of this year. This created a stir on the forums, and focused a lot of the mudslinging (overt and covert) that goes on between competitive forums. It’s quite childish, IMHO, and some of the news announcements modeled sarcasm and ridicule, which some forum members embrace like an old friend, posting vitriol and opinions based on insufficient information. I suspect that drives quite a few people from these forums. It’s possible that many of these mudslinging folks would behave more respectfully if their behavioiur wasn’t tacitly condoned and overtly encouraged (through modelling) by the forum owners. I’d personally prefer that they changed their behaviour (which I think most would be willing to do), rather than labelling them as bad apples and writing them off. Treating them sarcastically or attacking them just perpetuates the problem.

Nonetheless these forums foster a sense of community, and especially among some of the smaller less-antagnostic forums, provide valuable support to newbies and experts alike.

MS has chosen over the last little while to wade into this teapot, with development team members posting on forums, and opening blogs. Good for them. Because my guess is that that FSX will be a huge improvement over FS9, and by educating the community MS (a) gets more constructive feedback and (b) more fans=more sales. I’m guessing that the use of GPU-based lighting, shading, and other effects will transform the often cartoon-like experience of FS9 to something much more realistic. And they’ve promised to provide a rich development environment for third party developers. The FS9 environment was a hit-and-miss potpourri of great tools, sometimes awesome SDKs, undocumented features (that the third party community had to painfully infer), great flexibility, tedious procedures (later eased by third party tools) and just plain black magic.

Anyhow now that I’ve co-launched a product, I’ve throttled back my flightsim effort for awhile, balancing it with other stuff. I’ll sit back and watch as FSX info oozes from MS in dribs and drabs.

Inspiration or …

I’m reading Bob Dylan’s autobiographical “Chronicles”. His writing seems honest (the occaisonal misused or misspelt word is a clue perhaps) and surprisingly articulate. Why did I think he was a doped-up pothead? At times he says he behaved strangely just to hide the mis-applied mantle of hippie evangelist. Maybe that’s what I remember. What’s most interesting to me is his descriptions of his creative process, which varied from time to time. I liked that his view that trying or pushing to create didn’t produce a good result, but connecting somehow to a flow did; whether inspired by hearing another artist, discussion with a friend, or just a realization apparently out of the blue. He describes the sessions for a number of later songs; it’d be very interesting to listen to those.