It was arrival day for one of the tech industry’s most brain-straining conferences, Defrag 2009, in Denver. Lots of catching up with old friends like Graeme Thickins and meeting new ones like PostRank CTO/founder Ilya Grigorik. Here’s a quick shot from our table at the John Minnihan/Freepository-sponsored pre-conference dinner hanging with Infectious Greed’s Paul Kedrosky, Foundry Group’s Brad Feld, and the man himself, Robert Scoble.
Update: Minor corrections and added a must-watch video.
Update: Rumor has it Chucky III got a throw off on the last day for a distance of 1,000+ feet. Way to go!
“Fire in the hole!”
It’s the first warning you get that a 10 pound pumpkin is about to fly out of an air canon for nearly a mile at speeds close to 600 miles per hour. And it’s the rallying cry for the Punkin Chunkin 2009 World Championship.
The what?
Yup, Punkin Chunkin…or pumpkin chucking for those less informed. It’s a 25 year-old tradition in Delaware where teams compete to see who can launch a pumpkin the farthest distance. Come to find out, it’s also one helluva day of tailgating.
The Punkin Chunkin Anthem
Written in 1989 by William and Dawn Thompson. Part of the opening ceremonies.It was the end of October, the beginning of November.
The air was cold and clear and I said, Boys listen here,
I think I can make a punkin fly.
John said, Cannot. I said, Can too.
So we put that punkin in a bucket, swung around, away it flew.
John said, No fair. We said, Hell, it’s in the air.
So the challenge was made and the gauntlet was laid
To build a machine to power a punkin through the air.
John said, Springs are the way to go. Bill said, I don’t believe so.
It’s Punkin Chunkin time again.
Come on, all you neighbors and friends.
I’ll show you how to make a punkin fly..rain, snow or blow.
Them punkins are gonna go!
Not knowing exactly what to expect, Jenn and I packed the girls and the mother-in-law into the family truckster and shot down I-95 to my parents’ house in Delaware to experience a Saturday of pumpkin chuckin. Well, we knew a little of what to expect, since Jenn’s childhood friend was part of the 2008 adult torsion record-holding team, Chucky II (which managed to chuck a pumpkin 3091.78 feet in 2008) and my parents TiVo’ed the Discovery/Science Channel’s coverage of the 2008 competition. Even that wasn’t enough to prepare us for the day.
Pulling into the parking lot — er, into this massive farmer’s field — we were greeted by the sound of a jet plane taking off from a carrier deck about 100 meters away. Except it wasn’t a jet. It was a pumpkin launching out of a 50 foot-long cannon sticking out of the top of a converted yellow school bus. Car parked, we set up our chairs and cooler near the fence behind Team Chucky and started the day’s festivities (fueled in part by some nice bottles of wine and Landshark Lager). The tailgating scene is best painted as an unholy trinity of Jimmy Buffett, NASCAR and MIT. The party atmosphere represented the best of a Jimmy Buffett pre-concert parking lot, complete with funny costumes, games of beer pong and camaraderie; the look of a NASCAR race, complete with cowboy hats and couches in the beds of jacked-up pickup trucks; and the brains of MIT, complete with feats of engineering normally reserved for endeavors more suited to national safety than gourd chucking.
The competitors lined up in a semicircle along the outside edges of the field. At the far end, were the children’s launchers, followed by the giant air cannons piercing the sky, the mechanical trebuchets and catapults, and the torsion-powered launchers like Chucky III. All-in-all there were more than 100 contraptions, each manned (and womanned) by teams of 5-20 people, watched by a crowd of 80,000. The contraptions were as varied as the crowd: some made out of pure wood, some scrapped together from junkyard parts, and others looking like they were built by NASA using leftover rocket parts. And the teams were just as eclectic: Chucky III was built by a team that included an IT exec and a botanist.
Alas, Chucky III failed to launch the day we watched, the result of a new design and not enough time to test it (as if having 80,000 people waiting for you to launch a pumpkin 5,000 feet isn’t enough, each team only gets to take one shot a day…three over the entire competition). But that’s ok. Like Team Chucky, we’ll be back next year, stronger and more prepared (although our preparations will be of the tailgating kind). Until then, make sure you catch the 2009 Punkin Chunkin World Championships this Thanksgiving eve, November 26, at 8pm ET on the Science/Discovery Channel and check out my 2009 Punkin Chunkin photostream.
I finally got around to posting the video from last month’s family trip to Disney World in Orlando. You can check it out by clicking on the image below (or going to this link: http://gallery.me.com/mikemaney#100000). It’s roughly nine minutes long, so let the cache build up for the best viewing experience.
In what world does something like this happen? The Wall Street Journal basically shuts down its Boston bureau and, in so doing, jettisons one of its top reporters.
There are too many high profile, top-of-their-game reporters in free agency these days. The Fourth Estate is more than profits and losses…it’s the core of the checks and balances that make up the bedrock of a democratic society. Unfortunately, the last few years have seen the erosion of media’s role as a recorder of history and public watchdog. As an industry, media has allowed Trumponian ideals to overtake Cronkiteian roles and responsibilities.
Journalism’s heartbeat gets weaker each time it abandons its best players.
I make no pains to hide that I am a proponent of the always on culture. I believe technology is less a shackle and more a liberating tool that frees people from archaic views on time and place relative to work (not to mention the positive effects technology has on the environment and economy via reduced commuting and office air/heating costs).
That said, this post by TechCrunch’s Paul Carr challenges the always on, always connected lives many of us today live:
“And yet this real-time mentality – pictures/tweets or it didn’t happen – continues to seep into every aspect of our lives, both personally and professionally. Whereas once we might attend a conference to watch the speakers and perhaps learn something, today our priority is to live blog it – to ensure our followers know we’re on the inside; first with whatever news might be broken. And it’s not just journalists doing the live-blogging, but anyone with a laptop and a wifi connection.”
I agree with Carr on many points of the post. Technology that allows us to stream our lives should come with a governor that forces us to put down our devices and experience the experience. Yet, not everyone is lifestreaming with the intent of ego; some, like my friend Graeme Thickins, do so to help others learn and — here’s that word again — experience what they are experiencing by — one more time — breaking down the barriers of time and place.
Where do you fall on the always on spectrum? Let’s hear it in the comments.
I don’t know what’s worse: the fact that I didn’t make Fortune’s “40 Under 40” list of business’s hottest young rising stars…or the fact that I no longer qualify for inclusion on the list.
The forecast for this morning called for a 100 percent probability of rain, 15 mile per hour winds and a high temperature of a balmy 38 degrees Fahrenheit.
Luckily, only the wind and temperature proved the meteorologists correct for my third — and Mark’s first — Central Bucks Bicycle Club Annual Covered Bridges Ride (it was the club’s 29th).
This was also the first year I chose to ride the hilly, challenging 50 mile course. In past years, I’ve done the hilly 33 mile course. More importantly, this was the first ride Mark had done over 22 miles…and he rode it strongly.
[Click here to see the route.]
This has become an annual ride for me, and I suspect it will now be for Mark as well (maybe Paul and Troy can come out next year and join the tradition). It is unbelievably well supported, with friendly volunteers manning the rest stops an handing out piles of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, boiled potatoes, bananas, oranges and cookies (someone made a stellar chocolate chip pumpkin cookie at the first rest stop).
Plus, there are covered bridges. Five of them on the 50 mile course. They are historic, wooden and the reason 3,000-plus people normally come out for the ride (the weather kept the numbers low this year, unfortunately).
Thinking we’ll do the 63 mile metric century next year 😉
How long have I been doing PR in the technology industry? How about 1997 when buying things on the Internet was a novel, really big deal. The things I’ve seen…
(Click here for a larger version.)
It was 34 degrees when I awoke this morning. The trees around my house are transitioning from a solid wall of summer green to a palette of reds, oranges and yellows. The late-October Bucks County Covered Bridges ride approaches. Killington is blowing snow.
It’s one of the most exciting times of the year for me. While others see it as a time of hibernation, I see it as a time for being outdoors to ski and ride and to enjoy spending time with my family on a Sunday afternoon experimenting in the kitchen.
A few random lessons learned from last week’s family trip to Walt Disney World in Orlando:
Mike Maney 