Part of Something Good (Part 2)

I wrote earlier about getting involved in helping to design Yahoo's first foray into marketing directly to the gay community with the Pride site we rolled out last summer. As that project was winding down in June, I had the opportunity to get involved with another volunteer design project that while not as personal to me, ended up being pretty satisfying as well.

The Yahoo Employee Foundation (YEF) is an entirely employee funded and managed organization that gives grants to local non-profits for causes centered around the environment and local community. It's unique in that it has no corporate oversight; the board is made up entirely of employees and the funding comes entirely through donations that employees make. The group organizes large volunteer opportunities like re-building local homes and gift drives for local kids. Twice a year, donors can sponsor their favorite non-profit to receive a grant, and the organization has given away hundreds of thousands of dollars in its 5+ years of existence. It's a feel-good group that makes me proud to be a Yahoo, and I got involved last year by beginning to donate a small part of my paycheck each week and by joining the Communications Committee.

YEF's website was last redesigned in 2000 or so, and it looked that way. The layout, fonts, and palette were hopelessly outdated; much in the way of a leisure suit, what looked good then certainly did not look good now. It also smacked of the late 90s/early 00s trend of building a site that was not much more than brochure-ware, with limited or no functionality. So a small team of us swooped in to upgrade the site, and it rolled out a few weeks ago with the launch of the annual fundraising campaign, and you can see a screen shot above.

My involvement was again at the conceptual design and information architecture level, as well as art directing and managing the site through production and release. The visual design was done by the designer who works with in my team at Customer Care and she did a great job. The site now looks like it belongs in the modern day and we have plans for adding more functionality in the coming months.

I used to struggle with knowing that I wanted to volunteer somewhere, but I just didn't know how or where. For now, it seems I've found my niche helping out on these do-good side projects that take advantage of my design and management skills. As I mentioned before, it's been largely Christian's influence that has caused me to get involved in these types of volunteer projects, and I thank him greatly for it. His commitment to the greater good is certainly starting to work its way on to me, and I'm certainly better for it.

** As for my day job, we just rolled out a new version of Yahoo! Help Central with a nifty module that pulls content in from Yahoo! Answers, where users ask and answer questions themselves. Check it out at http://help.yahoo.com.

Worst. Schwag. Ever.

Part of the fun of working for a Silicon Valley firm is all of the free stuff you get. I've been decently lucky so far to pick up a couple of t-shirts, a gym bag, and a couple of jackets with Yahoo! proudly emblazoned on them. A lot of people wear this stuff to work and some even make a hobby of collecting the stuff. There's even a website, called Valleyschwag, which is dedicated to allowing people to swap stuff from their company's for others. The name itself is a take-off of the tech gossip blog, Valleywag.

I know. This is nerd's paradise. Bear with me.

A few weeks ago was "National Customer Service Week" (did you somehow miss it?) and being part of the Y! Customer Care group, we had a lot of fun stuff happen. Breakfast one day, ice cream the next, and the week culminated with handouts of a super comfy new fleece that is modestly labeled with a Y! Customer Care logo on the front and a Y! 2006 on the back, which will enter heavy rotation for me once it starts to get a bit cooler here in SF. But we also received something this week that is beyond description. See the picture to the right here.

It's a pen! It's a lanyard! It's a globe! It's a back scratcher! It's a relay baton?! It's a lot of things combined into one that leaves the imagination running wild as to who or what could actually use this thing. Its hard to tell by the pic, but it's about 3x the width and 2x the length of an actual pen, which makes it really hard to hold, despite the handy black grip at the bottom. The globe does spin, which is handy... I guess. We all had a good chuckle about these thing-a-mo-bobs, as everyone was aware of how hideous they were, and went back to work shortly after they were distributed.

But I must say, a worse schwag gaffe came from my former company, the old US Airways. Times were tough for most of the time I was at the airline and beyond the travel benefits, freebies were hard to come by. Budgets were being slashed left and right, salaries were being cut, jobs were being eliminated, etc, so the corporation was hardly in a place to be able to give stuff away, and I think most of us who were left after all of the layoffs collectively understood that. I even started holding a pot-luck each Christmas at my house that became a 4-year tradition in my group.

But one year, a few days before Christmas, I came home from work and found a white box in front of my door. It was about 2 feet high and about 1.5 feet wide. There was no return address on it and naturally, I was curious as to what it was and who it could be from. I took it inside and quickly opened it. Inside, I found a giant cylindrical block of cheese, like in the pic here, with a small navy US Airways sticker on top of it. No card, no note, no anything other than a huge block of cheese. Um, okay?

At work the next day, people timidly started to talk about the mysterious block of cheese. Had it only been sent to a select group of people? Who had actually sent it? Had the company got a giant shipment of cheese that couldn't be used elsewhere, so they sent it to us? Like the current season of "Lost", way more questions were brought up than answers presented. Before long, emails started going around with "The Top 50 Things You Can Do with the Cheese", including things like doorstopper and giant hockey puck. If I had still had that list, I would post more, it was deliriously hilarious and provided some much needed laughs in the office, but I don't think that was the intent.

I suppose whoever had the idea of giving employees something for Christmas had his or her heart in the right place. The company had taken a lot of things away from employees over the previous years and the thought was genuine. But as they say, execution counts as well, and in this area as it did with lots of other things, the company couldn't have stumbled more. I mean, a 5 pound block of cheese? It ended up only engendering more ill will towards the company from an already disenfranchised employee group.

So as Yahoo! weathers a round of bad press about the missed earnings these past two quarters and continues to see the stock be hammered, I'm taking solace in some of my past experiences here. As ridiculous as the pen/lanyard/ who-the-hell-knows-what-it-is is, it was followed up with something most employees see as an actual "thank you" for all the contributions made to the company that actually engendered the goodwill that schwag is supposed to. The company tries to make a good environment for its employees, and I really appreciate it.

But if I come home in a few weeks and find a small white box on my doorstep, I reserve the right to change that opinion.

I'm Lovin' It

I spent last week in New York City visiting Christian and as expected, it was a blast. A definite highlight included seeing a taping of David Letterman where Jon Stewart and Nick Lachey were the guests. Stewart was hilarious, almost upstaging Letterman at times, and Lachey was as hot as expected. The entire interview was about his divorce, which I sorta felt bad about until he preformed his new song “I Can’t Hate You Anymore” or whatever its called and I thought ‘this guys is still making tons of money off that relationship”, so then I didn’t mind as much. Of course, if he needs any comfort, I would be happy to help.

We also went to hear none other than my fantastic-favorite DJ, Kaskade, spin at a mega-club called Pacha, named after one in the clubbing mecca of Ibiza . It was one of those clubs that have 6 floors. It had the works, from a chill downstairs to hip-hop floors, and reminded me of the kind that I used to go to with my girlfriends before I came out, where I sorta liked the music, but never really got the crowd. I was a little concerned by the people in line, which were pretty "bridge and tunnel", as they say. But once inside, it didn't matter much. Christian and Derek managed to find the one gay bartender in the place and we were set with one free round of cocktails after the next. (Membership has its privlidges!) Kaskade didn’t come on until 1A, but it was well worth the wait. He played a bunch of songs from his new album, ”Love Mysterious” and the song he played right before we was my all time favorite by him, "It’s You, It’s Me”. What a treat! (Thanks to Lem for the suggestion)

We also ate a number of fantastic restaurants, as expected in New York City . The city is renowned for the variance and quality of the places to eat, with good reason.Particuarly where Christian is living, just south of Tribeca, there were many great new places to discover. An instant favorite for brunch is a place called Kitchenette, which has the best peach jam this side of the stuff my great grandmother used to jar herself and store in the basement of our house. However, as great as most of them were, there always seemed to be something that made it not as good as expected. We visited old favorites such as Rosa Mexicano (pomegranate margaritas are as good as remembered and we sat near Glenn Close, but $28 for a small serving of guacamole???!). Odeon is a 24-hr cafe that was frequented by Andy Warhol and other 80s luminaries back in the day and while the burgers were good, but the end price ended up being ridiculously high. We also visited The Harrison , a swanky place with a great interior and promising appetizers, but alas, my main course came out not cooked enough and was just ok. (at least my Dad picked up the check for that one, thanks Dad!) So while each place had tons of great things going for them, the end feeling usually left me wanting something more.

So I flew back Sunday night, and after only eating brunch before I left, by the time I got back to SF, I was fairly hungry. T-Todd was sweet enough to stay with Hobbes while I was gone, so he picked me up and I was getting ready to take him home when he said “Don’t tell anyone, but I am really craving McDonald’s. Do you want to stop there on the way to my place?” (Sorry Todd, guess I just told people..) And so we did and I must say, the meal was pure heaven.Two cheeseburgers and a large fry, and I was a happy man. This meal cost about $5 and all I could do was think about all of the $$ I spent on these fancy restaraunts in NYC and if I’m being truly honest, none gave me even close to the pleasure I got from woofing down those burgers and fries.

Does this mean I am giving up on fine dining for Taco Bell Hell? Not exactly, but it did stop and make me think. Where else can $5 buy so much culinary happiness?

Maybe I'm more "bridge and tunnel" than I thought....

A San Francisco Treat

This has happened a few times to me. I order something from Netflix that I think I should watch, like a classic that I have never seen, or one of the recent heavyweight movies I missed at the theatres. But then it arrives, and I just can't bring myself to watch it. Other movies come and go, multiple shows from Tivo are viewed, and the movie sits there on top of the DVD player, unloved and unwatched. So I resolve that if-I-don'’t-watch-it-by-this- weekend-I-will-send-it-back. But something nags at me, like you should really watch this film and you've paid all that money to let it sit there collecting dust.

I've gone through this process a few times, with recent highly rated movies such as Munich and Capote, only to end up sending them back because I just don'’t make the time to sit down and watch, and after they sit there for over a month, I figure I probably never will. Well, I finally sat down to watch one of these this past weekend, and what a treat it turned out to be.

I watched the Alfred Hitchcock classic, “Vertigo”, a movie that I had never seen. The basic premise is about a former detective that watches a colleague fall to death, becomes powerfully afraid of heights, and retires. An old college buddy asks him to take on a special project that involves following his wife, who he is convinced has been inhabited by a spirit of a woman who has been dead for over 100 years. In traditional Hitchcock themes, nothing is what it seems and the plot certainly kept me interested, as well as the actors, including James Stewart'’s lead role, Kim Novak as the blonde bombshell, and a WAY pre-Dallas Barbara Bel Geddes in the role as the detective'’s best friend and unrequited love. At 2+ hours, the movie is a bit sprawling and some of the effects that I'’m sure were frightening back then wouldn'’t even scare a kid on an amusement park ride, but I'’m glad I kept watching. The twist of the plot puts anything M Night Shamalyn has done to shame, the score is hauntingly beautiful, and the last 2 minutes are simply stunning.

But the real star of the movie to me was San Francisco. Released in 1958, Hitchcock chose to make the setting of the city a true part of the film. From the Golden Gate Bridge to the Presidio to Coit Tower, many of the familiar icons are represented in all of their glory. The pic to the right is from a key scene in the movie by the Golden Gate. Beyond that, however, was the representation of a gloriously colorful and clean city, filled with people dressed in suits and fur tulles going about their business. The shots that were filmed along the streets of the city shocked me with their pristine and I'll just say it, clean, nature. The remasteredremastered the movie did a terrific job of presenting the 50s theme of innocence that is deliciously juxtaposed against the darkness and fear of the plot and characters. As I'’ve continued to settle into feeling like a San Franciscan, this movie made me proud to be a resident of the city.

So I highly recommend to anyone from the Bay Area to add this movie to your queue and don't let it languish. It's a real San Francisco Treat!

Taking a Bite

The Top 10 Reasons I FINALLY Switched to a Mac

10) They are just so freaking cool

9) I got tired of being the only designer in the world who doesn't use one for his primary computer

8) The latest ads are hilarious (and convincing)

7) Garage Band will allow me to make my own mixes and podcasts (coming soon!)

6) I was pretty tired of CTRL + ALT + DELETE

5) The 24" monitor really is stunning

4) Derek & Lem and Phil & Ted and especially Alex each have one and, frankly, that bothered me

3) All of the main stuff I used on the PC (iPod, music, photos, etc) I was able to easily transport over

2) I've wanted one for over 5 years

1) Did I mention how freaking cool they are??

So this is the first of hopefully many blog entries and other creations to come that will be created on my new Mac. I'm happy to finally be part of the club!