Maker Faire is coming to New York City’s Flushing Meadows Park and the Museum of Science and Technology, amidst the remains (used to be ruins by they cleaned them up) of the 1964 World’s Fair (or is it faire?)  What is Maker Faire?  I’m not quite sure, but I’ve followed the posts on the west coast events, and it sounds like a lot of fun.  Two days dedicated to having fun with science and technology – how can you beat it?  And by technology this is not just computers – craft and more traditional technology has a place at the table too.  Denizens of the northeast – here’s your chance to find out what its all about.  Bring the kids.

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How do you take time in your busy day to just think and plan?  Especially with the constant stream of operational demands – the weeds – knocking on your door and appearing at the email in-box.  A recent article in CIO Magazine suggest tactics such as staying focused, setting aside scheduled non-operational time during the day, delegating to staff and outsourcing commodity work.  I find blogging is a really helpful exercise, allowing me to pull together ideas I’ve gathered from various sources and think through how they relate to my own experiences.  Conferences and workshops are always a great way to get out of the day-to-day and gain some perspective – particularly if you are also contributing through a presentation to your colleagues.   It is all too easy to allow time to get eaten up through many small needs and distractions.  We all owe it to ourselves to make a conscious decision to create time for planning, general information gathering, and strategic thinking. 

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Do-it-yourself (DIY) is back in style again and on bookstore (and library) shelves.  I recently read two of these books which take decidedly different tacks on the perils and rewards of a DIY lifestyle.  In Made by Hand: Searching for Meaning in a Throwaway World, Mark Frauenfelder, editor of Make magazine and Boing Boing (tech culture and weirdness blog) provides a pretty positive outlook on the benefits of doing it himself.  Manny Howard in My Empire of Dirt: A Cautionary Tale isn’t quite so sunny.

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Check this out – an easy way to re-use old clothes to make something cool.  Especially for the hair-challenged (like me.)

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I like my Kindle.  It makes it very easy to get access to books via the Amazon store.  It is easy to use, convenient, good form factor, and easy on the eyes.  It also is a great conversation starter on the commuter train (“ Is that a Kindle?  How do you like it?) But despite all those positives, I find myself not using it much these days.  Why not?  It is a matter of policy, not technology.

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The recent Yankee magazine has a story on a social networking service started in Burlington, VT that has a very local focus.  Frontporchforum.com lets you create a social network for your neighborhood.  Sound silly?  With people’s busy schedules the days of talking to neighbors over the back fence are long over for most of us.  With a format that sounds like a mix of craigslist and Yammer neighbors can connect on everything to loaning canoes to help out a teen boat trip to loaning a cake pan.  Everything else is moving to a virtual existence — why not the back fence?

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