Time for Puppies

It's time for puppies in our little corner of Napa. Jasmine, the wonderful Lab/Aussie companion of 12 1/2 years passed away right before the New Year. Our new little Bernese Mountain Dog "Jackie" has been learning how to be a good dog.

Jackie the Bernese Mountain Dog puppy, 6 months old

She is now 7 months old and is eager to work! Here is a little video of her doing her first job. This little 18 second video had more response on my facebook page than anything in recent memory.

She is eager to please, and eager to work. Praise, little treats and the joy of hearing "good job!" seem to be all the motivation she needs. She is starting to bring me my slippers so we can get the day going each day. What a pleasure to have her in our lives!

Napa Porchfest

I'm still decompressing from the third annual Napa Porchfest held last Sunday, July 28. This is a labor of love for our dedicated committee, which is a standing committee of Napa County Landmarks, Inc.

Napa Porchfest 2013

 We had over 4,000 people who wandered in our Old Town neighborhoods listening to over 80

musical groups performing on 47 porches between 1 and 6 pm. Planning starts in January and goes till event day. It's a solid six month volunteer commitment. I'm a founder and chair of the event, so a lot of unusual tasks come my way. Things like making the map, being webmaster, crunching all the data, social networking, picking up T-shirts. The T-shirts are great, and co-chair Thea sold hundreds of them. Thea also has the massive task of coordinating music for all the porches. Others on the committee coordinate volunteers, handle logistics, and media and public relations. We even have a committee member who coordinates food trucks - added this year to the line-up.

 

Porchfest T-shirts disappear at the food truck round-up

 

I was inundated with texts and calls from the "hot spots", but snapped a few pictures on the run. Churchill Manor was the largest and most elegant venue we've had yet - beautiful lawn to sit on, expansive two-story porch, and great music. Everyone played for FREE, even these seasoned professionals.   

Jimmy Smith Band at Porchfest

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 There was one report of a badly stubbed toe, and one reported bee sting. As the person in charge I am greatly relieved!

Porchfest 2013 at Churchill Manor

As the afternoon waned, this idyllic spot beckoned. One of these years, when the event is well established and we really know what we are doing, I'll bring a blanket and sit right here. All this came from a conversation on Facebook. Don't believe the pundits who crow that Social Media is a waste of time. Napa is all the richer for it.

quiet nights

After walking a precinct in the sleet and rain today, the "quiet night of quiet stars" is a welcome respite. The chill makes it seem possible to have one of those thunder snow storms sometimes seen in northern California. Bossa Nova for St. Patrick's Day? Yes, of course.

I've been trying the Spotify premium service and like the ease of use, ability to create playlists, and large music library available. The jazz and classical catalogue is extensive. As a early adopter of Napster, I subscribed to their premium service when they finally went legal. The libraries seemed to shrink over time, and more and more tracks were unavailable on the playlists I had created over the years. After trying out Pandora, LastFM and other services, the Spotify interface seems to be working very well. Pandora provides an approximation of the desired music. Actual tracks cannot be played at will. It's a radio station. So far, I can recommend Spotify. I've linked Spotify to Facebook, so check out some recent tracks and playlists. It is very convenient to listen to music in the office and press the pause button when I'm on the phone.

In other internet activities, I've progressed a bit on twitter. It's possible to link the twitter feed and facebook, and on occasion I will do this when posting political news or information.

I joined google+ and it turned out to be a bust. There is not much going on behind the velvet rope. No bouncer required. I'm convinced this was a re-launch of Buzz.

Here's to St. Patrick's Day - and sister-in-law Patti's St. Patti's Day birthday!

Napa Porchfest 2011 - part 1

While it is still the day after, making this yesterday's news, I wanted to reflect on Napa's first Porchfest.  Porchfest is a music festival bringing home-grown music out of parlors and garages and onto the porch.  The idea was originally spawned in Ithaca, NY. in 2007.  Louisa Hufstader brought the idea of porchfest to Napa through the wonders of Social Media.  Those are capital letters because Social Media has become such an important internet gorilla that it carries extra special weight.  Google especially would like to be a Social Media gorilla.  But that is another story.

Social Media in this case was a Facebook link to an article in the Somerville Patch about Somerville considering having a porchfest.  Thea Witsil, friend, book lover, and even bigger music lover - chimed in immediately with the comment "Let's do it here in Napa!"  The discussion blossomed - online - then we expanded it to a real face-to-face meeting with all who expressed interest invited.  Our ad hoc committee was born under the auspices of Napa County Landmarks, whose board had the unanimous good sense to see a great community event in our historic neighborhoods as a good way to carry out our mission. 


Between January 10 and July 31, 2011, Napa Porchfest was born.  (My daughter Anna Pfeifer is on the left). 

It was not an easy birth, because none of us had done anything like this.  Thea wrangled music; I wrangled venues, permits, and logistics; Louisa wrangled media, press and Social Media outreach.  When we found ourselves stranded with a web address but no web master, John L. Poole, aka "JLPorchfest" stepped in and built a database and Napa Porchfest website that could serve up information on not just the musicians, but photos of all the houses and a map combining everything.  Then he proceeded to make promotional videos, one of which serves up the houses like Anette's chocolates.

We could not foresee all the logistical problems and possibilities - which was probably a good thing during the process.  Sunday morning it felt like Yazgur's farm before the rain.  Fortunately, we did not have hundreds of thousands of concert goers, and the genial Napa crowds ranged up to the hundreds.  They took seriously our request that everyone "pack it in and pack it out", ride bicycles, and bring chairs and sunscreen. 


"Blonde on a bike"


We pulled off a free music festival on 28 private porches in residential areas featuring over 40 musical groups and over 120 musicians.  I attribute the success of the event to strong personal ties and relationships, and also to Social Media (Facebook), which brought this idea to a little "marketplace of ideas" where it could bloom.

Is Google arrogant?

Are you on the A list?

With a great media buzz fomented by selective invitations to media and online "influencers" to try out Google+, I of course was curious to try out the new applications myself.  Notice the past tense "was".  I spent time this morning instead watching the live feed of the facebook roll out of their new applications.

I was an early adopter of Google Wave, even going so far as installing an open source program providing similar applications.  Once it was finally rolled out to us commoners, I found Google Wave to be a robust and useful set of tools and was unable to share them with anyone.  A group of us collaborated on a project using Google Wave, but the other members of the group had to install the program and learn to navigate.  Other than that one project, which happened to be the City of Napa application for the Google Fiber for Communities grant - I have had no use for Wave.  I was waving to myself. 

Google Buzz, on the other hand turned out to be a disaster of a completely different sort.  I finally rationalized that it would be safe enough to upload all my contacts to gmail in order to more easily format them for use in "Vertical Response" for political email.  This was several thousand contacts.  What could go wrong? 

It seemed like a few days later (though I don't recall how many), Google Buzz was sprung on all gmail users and exposed all of one's contacts as "friends".  All visible to everyone on the list. As a careful facebook user, I kept my friend list to myself during the last election to prevent political rivals from "poaching" or mining the list for their own purposes.  Imagine my shock at seeing my political email contacts exposed in one click of the switch.  Of course this flaw was quickly noted by other users, and a work around, then patch deployed.  Nevertheless, I have not used Buzz ever.

This brings us to the unfortunate current circumstance where Google is rolling out a new product to go one or two better than facebook, but more slowly and more inefficiently.  By the time Google is ready to let the common folk past the velvet ropes, there may be few commoners remaining.  The Google+ group page has many threads and comments by frustrated geeks who cannot add their friends to their circles.  Oops.  Google did not seem to notice that Google+ is supposed to be a social application.  What good is it if your friends are not there?

Image via CrunchBaseAll us commoners will be video chatting on facebook - and not have to log into Skype to do so.  750 million other people + myself are on facebook's "A" list.  No wrist band, no bouncer. 

I like that.