Chiara Fox .com (Now with more Fox)

Decisions, Decisions

I'm having trouble deciding what to do with my blogs. I started out with just this one and then spun off Chachi In Charge because I figured that folks coming here because they knew me from work didn't really care about my political rantings or what the cats were doing today.

ChiaraFox.com ended up going fallow for a long time as a result. I posted a lot more on Chachi. Yet, ChiaraFox is the one that has the wider readership, higher rankings in Technorati and such. Which makes me want to post here more often and really spruce up this site.

I'm wondering if I should merge them back together. Or change the focus. Or, I'm not sure what I want to do. A new visual design is in the works. And I'll be thinking a lot about the content and topics to cover here. Any input from you readers would be most helpful. :)

Today on Today

I was just fast-forwarding to through the Today Show episode I recorded today, looking for the interview with Dooce. I was watching the show go by (god I love Tivo) and I realized that it has been *years* since I've watched the Today Show.

I used to watch the Today Show all the time, when I first moved out on my own. I think it's because it is what my mother always used to watch in the mornings when I was growing up. And on some level, being a responsible adult meant watching grown-up shows like the Today Show.

Ha!

All I could think about as I watched the show go by was all the consumerism and the plastic people, and how shows like that are the epitome of what I hate about popular culture. I thank my lucky stars for NPR and the intarwebs so I can get my news another way.

Heather did a great job though. I'm so glad she is getting the recognition she deserves for all her hard work.

Is a Smaller World a Healthier World?

It's hard to go five minutes these days without hearing about sustainability and being green. As a long-time environmentalist this is both cheering and infuriating. Yay that the masses and big business have finally gotten on the bandwagon. Boo that they keep talking about everything as if they just discovered it, and in the same breath as some other fad. Caring for the earth is not a fad: it's a way of life. But it does make it easier to be an environmentalist. There are more tools and resources popping up all the time. The carbon footprint calculators that are springing up all over is such an example.

Ever since I heard Matt Jones talk at Adaptive Path's MX Conference last week, this idea has been rolling around in my mind. Matt talked about the work he was doing with Dopplr, and showed how they just added the ability to see how your travel is adding to your carbon use.

My carbon footprint isn't that bad for an American (notice I qualify it :). I don't eat meat, I ride the bus to work, I compost and recycle, I bring my own bags to the grocery, my detergents and bath products are natural and not tested on animals. Sure, there's lots more that I could be doing. And things that I used to do that I probably should get back to doing (whatever happened to my EcoSneaks?). But I try to pick the more earth and animal friendly options when I can.

Except in one place: travel. My carbon footprint always tanks when you calculate in how much I fly. Airplanes are big time polluters. As a consultant, I am on the road a lot. I also love to travel in my personal life. Exploring other places was a value that I grew up with. And I believe that you can't fully understand some place if you haven't experienced it physically.

Obviously , movies, museums and zoos, photographs, video conference calls, and virtual worlds like SecondLife go a long way to broadening our horizons. They are suitable surrogates for the real thing in a lot of situations. For many people, it's the closest they will ever be able to get to the "real thing." Seeing a zebra in a zoo is better than never seeing a zebra at all, right?

But this brings us to the dilemma I've been wrestling with. If we really want to cut back on our pollution, energy use, and greenhouse gas production, we really should stop flying around the world. The "good" environmentalist would opt for virtual or local surrogates whenever possible, right? As the web and other technologies get better, we won't need to use up resources to go someplace; we just get there from our living room.

But... I don't think I can fully subscribe to that. As wonderful and beautiful and amazing as the Egypt-wing in the Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York is, it just can't compare to standing in the great hall at the Temple of Karnak in Luxor, Egypt. I've been to the Acropolis on the Greece sim in SecondLife. It's cool, but it's nothing compared to actually being in Athens. There are cases where close enough isn't good enough. Sometimes you need to have a face-to-face conversation. You can't approximate visceral reactions.

I believe what Baba Diou from Senegal said, "You only conserve what you love, you only love what you understand, and you can only understand what you've been taught." Which says to me, don't give up on having real, authentic experiences. It is through those experiences that we learn. Travel to Kenya and go on safari to see the zebra. But find a way to do it that has the least impact. And it may mean cutting way back in other areas of your life to balance out the excesses elsewhere.

Drinking From the Fire Hose

It's so passé to talk about information overload these days. Living awash in information and ideas is our constant state of operation it seems. Some days, I'm able to navigate these waters. I'm tuned in to the pieces that are relevant to me and am able to let the other things wash over me.

Other times, like how it's been lately, I feel like I'm drowning. There were so many great ideas and connections between thoughts during the IA Summit. I had no time to process all those things before jumping feet first into my next project. I'm now in sponge-mode doing discovery and trying to get up to speed on the intricacies of this organization. This morning I find myself at day two of Adaptive Path's MX: Managing Experience, conference. I'm now getting more ideas thrown my way.

Swimming in information and ideas is something that I love. But what I love more is when I'm able to take that sea and make sense out of it. That's the part that has been lacking recently. I need to make sure I give myself the time and space to reflect, before the tide recedes and these ideas are gone forever.

Come to the AP AP!

Adaptive Path is hosting an IA Summit After Party Sunday night! We'll be at the Hyatt hotel bar from 10-midnight. Come on by and we'll buy you a drink!