Vos Virtual Network

Making friends at the Jazz fest on Flickr

Tags: Detroit, I Love Detroit, jazz, jazz festival, music, photos

Jazz Hands on Flickr

Tags: jazz, piano

You can see more photos by following ktpupps photostream on flickr.

Tags: auto racing, Belle Isle, car racing, Detroit, Grand Prix, I Love Detroit, IRL racing, Michigan, photos, racing

Here’s a photo of Danica Patrick rounding the corner at the Detroit Belle Isle Grand Prix race. Apparently Danica Patrick and Vitor Meira slapped tires a third of the way through the race, forcing Patrick’s car to stall. She ended up finishing 16th.  Oh well…

You can’t tell from this photo if it says “We Love Danica” or “We Love Detroit” — so let me tell you it says “We Love Detroit”.

You can see more photos of the Detroit Grand Prix by following Andrew Larimer’s photostream on flickr.

Tags: Danica Patrick, Danika Patrick, Detroit, Grand Prix, I Love Detroit, IRL racing, photo, photography, racing, We Love Detroit

Corvette, Porsche, and Viper on Flickr

See Andrew Larimers Photostream on Flickr for more Detroit, Grand Prix photos. These shots were taken yesterday at the Detroit Belle Isle Grand Prix held at Detroit’s Belle Isle Park.

Here’s a map of the island (in the middle of the Detroit River) if you want to do some virtual exploring. I look out of my office window in Detroit and see the island every day, so it’s nice to see Belle Isle in the news this weekend … and people were excited to see rookie Justin Wilson win the race.

Tags: Belle Isle, Detroit, Detroit River, Grand Prix, I Love Detroit, IRL racing, island, map, racing

Detroit Riverfont - Labor Day Weekend

See Brunsters Photo Stream on Flickr for more cool pics.

Tags: Detroit, I Love Detroit, Michigan, photo, RenCen

Carl Levin (with his age showing) in an emotional speech from the floor of the DNC, said he was getting too old, and after 30 years of “the same old thing” in Michigan, it’s time for change. Levin has tried everything he could think of to help Michigan, but after many years of repeated failures to stimulate the Michigan economy, he ran out of ideas, lost his vision, and decided it’s time for change. So it’s time for new ideas and new leadership.

In a message to his supporters he quoted Obama:

“Change happens because the American people demand it, because they rise up and insist on new ideas and new leadership, a new politics for a new time.”

Everyone that listens to the voice of principle and reason, agrees that it’s time for change.

Sounds to me like Mr. Levin is asking the people of Michigan to vote for Jack Hoogendyk this November. “New ideas…new leadership…new politics…new time.” If I may paraphrase Levin’s essential message: Don’t vote for me. I’ve been in the Senate so long that I don’t know what hope and change is all about.

The Michigan people are speaking out.  We agree that it’s time for change.

BDBopper said Let’s get Hoogendyk elected to the US Senate, in his blog - Oh, Baby That’s What I Like!

Dennis Lenox said: “Jack has been a tremendous voice for conservatives in Michigan’s Legislature. He’ll make an outstanding senator.”

We are sick of Carl Levin’s hot air and empty promises. It’s time to return to core principles. It’s time to go back to the constitution.

Tags: 2008 Election, Carl Levin, Jack Hoogendyk, Michigan, US Senate

Maybe you figured out that I love jazz. I enjoy many musical genres, and musical styles, but lately I’ve been really exploring jazz. In a recent article I described jazz as being full of  images, mirrors, and reflections.  Jazz is like a bridge — always going from someplace to another place. Jazz is always asking questions, bending notes, refactoring routines, revisiting and revising themes, and making analogies. Jazz energizes me with its innovative musical poetry of patterns, parallels and allegories.

Jazz Piano Art - found at Detroit River Days

Back in April, I started talking about creativity, innovation, improvisation … and how it relates to jazz and the blues… meditating on the mysteries of musical creativity  … compared to creativity , innovation, and risk taking in other domains (like art, architecture, design, entrepreneurship, computer programming, product design, web design, etc.) … pondering the amazing results that often happen when a skilled musician begins  to improvise with a good idea and the right attitude.

Surprising success and fantastic results can happen in your life (or your business) when you understand how it all works.  Innovation - It’s not a new idea, and I’m not the only one talking about this. I’m just improvising on a great theme.

Nick Sieger (no relation to the Detroit rocker Bob Seger) wrote a great article in July called Jazzers and Programmers. I found Nick’s article while researching some things about Ruby on Rails, and JRuby.  NIck describes the history and styles of jazz and compares it to the history and styles of programming. He talks about jazz fundamentals, and compares the rhythm section (piano, bass, and drums)  to programming libraries, frameworks, and patterns. He compares Bass-Drums-Piano to Model-View-Controller. It’s really great stuff — and even includes a musical score from one of the jazz standards, Blue Monk.

Nick spiced up the article with nifty quotes from famous jazz musicians like: “It’s taken me my whole life to know what not to play” - Dizzy Gillespie … “Anyone can make the simple complicated. Creativity is making the complicated simple” - Charles Mingus  …  I won’t steal anymore of Nick’s thunder. Go read the whole article.

Are you catching my drift? We’re not done with this jam session yet. I’m just taking a breather in between songs.

Tags: creative thinking, I love jazz, improv, improvisation, innovation, jazz, jazz musician, jazz standard, JRuby, Model View Controller, music, MVC, ruby on rails, scripting

Scott Berkun returned to his alma-mater, Carnige Mellon University, on March 27th, 2008 to talk about his book,  The Myths of Innovation. This 51 minute video captures the talk, where he presented a few of the ideas from the book.

Berkun is a former manager / team-leader from Microsoft — now a successful author and public speaker. While at Microsoft, Scott worked for six years on the Internet Explorer browser, during the browser wars of the 90’s. So he knows a few things about creativity, team-work, innovation, perseverance, tenacity, and success habits.

People love new ideas. People love innovative new products.

Scott’s job at Microsoft was to come up with new ideas — innovative ideas. But his job involved more then just coming up new ideas. He had to lead his team to develop the ideas into new product features and functions quickly as possible and ship a new version out as quickly as possible.

In this video (borrowing some great material from the book) Scott shows that much of what we know (or what we think we know) about innovation is wrong — as he explores the history of innovation and creative thinking.

Tags: creative thinking, ideas, innovation, invention, Scott Berkun, video

Mr. Travelin Blues - A popular street musician in Detroit

Here’s a photo I took of Mr. Travelin’ Blues –May 9th, 2008.

Tags: blues, Detroit, guitar, I Love Detroit, singing the blues, street music, Travelin Blues