My TED bookstore picks

It's always an honor to curate a selection of books for the TED Conference bookstore — the team asks 20 or so people to select a few books that are their current (or all-time) favorites, and say a bit about why. Here are my picks for this year.

Intro
From a very early age, letters on a page have drawn me in. I get nervous in a room with nothing to read. These days I have plenty of digital titles (and devices), but also house many paper-based books, a messy pile of magazines and newspapers. All of that comforts me, as does the act of zeroing in to read. I can feel the synapses firing and I’m happy.

Why these books 
Predictably, these six titles reflect my passions. I love graphic non-fiction, and so there are two very different books in that style. Two touchpoints in my life are home and Buddhism, loosely defined, and so here they are represented too. One is an old classic, and the other a brand new novel. I hope you discover something that speaks to you in any one of them.

Rebecca Solnit - River of Shadows
Solnit has written a raft of books since this came out in 2004, but it’s such a terrific story: how Northern California became the nexus and nurturer of early technologies, outsized dreams and failures, and wild ideas that came into being. Little has changed in 150 years.

Alison Bechdel - Are You My Mother?
I loved Fun Home, her earlier graphic memoir about her father. This one cuts deeper for most every woman: the saga of Alison’s gnarly relationship with her complicated, mixed-signal-emitting mother. It’s rich in self-awareness, humor, and a hard-won understanding how life works.

Pema Chodron - Comfortable With Uncertainty
I have my share of “Buddhism for Westerners” titles; the ones I return to are by Pema Chodron, an American Buddhist teacher. The chapters are short readings that guide us through the various difficulties of being human in a modern world, toward generosity of spirit, openness, acceptance.

Mary Gordon - Home: What It Means and Why It Matters
This little book is a lovely exploration of what makes a space into home, and how acutely we feel love or longing for that ideal. She writes candidly about times in her life when she knew she’d found a “home”, and other times when she couldn’t get to it. As a nester of the first order, I love understanding the deeper impulses of home.

Brian Fies - Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow?
A whimsical (and dark) graphical exploration of our old ideas of what the future could mean, and our grownup understanding of its limitations. Fies starts with the World of Tomorrow at the New York World’s Fair in 1940, the visions from which were quickly dashed. But Fies is still hopeful: “There was a time when building the future was inspirational...I think it can be again.”

Robin Sloan - Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore
I’m not usually a novel reader, but this cabinet of wonders offers a rich story of a secret bookstore, Google, magical characters and digital natives interacting and therefore exploring the pull of old and new. Sloan is deft and affectionate about all of it.

Mika Louise, 1999?-2013

The day I have long dreaded has come. My darling brindle pit girl, Mika, died this morning around 6 a.m. Over the past year or so, she had been living the reduced life old age brings: she couldn't walk very far or very fast anymore (let alone run, her specialty for years). She had much less energy, she slept more, ate less. But it was the last few weeks where I knew her advanced age (13 years and change, but who really knew? — she was, of course, a rescue).

Early this morning, her weakened body - her rear legs had been giving way, and she had not eaten anything in three days - surrendered. As last night wore on, I knew today was going to be her last day. I  kept my hands on her most all night, comforting her as I readied myself for the vet hospital to open at 8 a.m. But by 5 a.m., I could see that she was in distress. I called the emergency vet and bundled her in the car. She died en route, so that was a saving grace: I didn't have to make that decision. She went out on her own.

Mika was my first dog, and I marveled at her every move the way a child might marvel at a wild animal. Look — she's yawning! Isn't that adorable, how she rubs her snout with her paws! Watch her wipe her butt on the grass! How does she know to do these things? And of course I anthropomorphized her like crazy. She was like me, I was sure: sociable, but wanted her own quiet time (she was always ready to wind down after an evening of company). Knew her own mind. Self-reliant, like when she would jump on the counter to devour a whole baguette or quarter-pound of cheese. And above all things: resolute. I read this once about pit bulls — they can be resolute about being fierce, and equally resolute about being gentle.

Mika was resolute about everything to do with food and humans. Till last week, she was a tireless observer of humans preparing and eating food and (with luck) sharing any leftovers. When she was younger, her hallmark when hearing the doorbell was to run in circles till I opened the door, and then race down the steps to greet guests. They sometimes assumed she wanted to get out the gate and onto the street. Never! She wanted to guide them up the steps so they would come into our home to fuss over her and hang out with her. She loved nothing more than being underfoot with human friends.

I am going to need some time to understand that she's really gone. She won't be at the door. She won't be sleeping in in the mornings as I head to work. She won't be there to lick the plates. Perhaps in preparation for this awful day, I have already had dreams about Mika, so with luck she'll come back to me again that way.

Meanwhile, what I know to be true is this: She is the only creature who gave me joy every single day of our lives together. Which makes me think of Eugene O'Neill's famous "last will and testament" he wrote in the voice of his beloved dog Blemie: "It would be a poor tribute to my memory never to have a dog again."

I hope to, sometime. But for now, what I said to her every day for 12 years holds: You're my Meeks. There is no other Meeks. There is only — Meeks. I love you so.

See & Be Seen

Thanks to the gentle nudge of my friend Liz Gebhardt over the past couple of months, I have just finished a little art project I've been mulling over for a while now. It's a Blurb e-book about some of the art I've collected over the years, with some attempts at explaining what these pieces mean to me. I found it much harder than I'd expected to verbalize the wonderfulness, the depth, the context of meaning I derive. More than once I found myself thinking, "just look at it, for god's sake — the thing says everything it's supposed to say!" Which isn't very effective when you're trying to write. Still, it was fun trying.

So: here it is, my 40-page special, available as a physical book and as a digital e-book for iPad. (You can find it on iTunes, too, but Apple being Apple, corrections aren't possible after you submit it to the store, and I've since fixed a few bits and republished on Blurb.)

Blurb e-book (iPad)
Blurb print book

I hope you enjoy it. Let me know what you think.

The other shoe drops...@twitter

A couple of weeks I wrote an affectionate farewell to the Goog, where I hung my hat for a long time. Today, I've landed at my next new thing: Twitter. I'll be working closely with the marketing & comms teams (and probably a few others) in a new role: editorial director. As you might guess, it will involve a fair amount of wordsmithing as well as nurturing a consistent Twitter voice across our public messages and information pages.

I've been enamored of Twitter for a good while now, and am both pleased and amazed at how its value and influence have grown in an incredibly short time. Count me in what promises to be an extremely fun ride — and I'm sure you'll let me know how the Twitter voice works for you, or doesn't. Just give me a small window before you start with the heavy feedback!

And of course, feel free to follow me @kvox.

Wickre ankles* Google

After 9 years in the trenches, my last day at Google was Thursday. This long stint marks a personal best with one employer, handily beating my last record of 4 years (IDG). In my pre-Google life, I tended to get bored after a couple of years. Now, it's clear that when I'm talking about my career, there will be two phases: Before Google (BG), and all that follows. I say this because working at Google really and truly is a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and never boring.

If you know me you know "starry-eyed" isn't the first descriptor that comes to mind. But trust me: Google is an astonishing, life-changing place to be. Of course, its (incessant) output has changed the lives of everyone who searches the Internet, has an Android device, uses Gmail, Maps, Apps, and all the rest. In fact much of the work Googlers undertake has a huge impact on the world, which, let's face it, is not something most workplaces can offer.

At the risk of sounding ancient, I remember a time before there was good search (or before there was an Internet, but that's another story). The emergence in 1999 of a funnily-named service with a plain page that "just worked" was nothing short of miraculous. Even more astounding: that fast, accurate and efficient search mechanism still works 13 years later—today with billions of people performing surely tens of billions of searches in dozens of languages. We all still expect—and we still get—accurate results in nanoseconds, now on multiple devices in umpteen locations. It is nothing short of awesome. The core Google search team, led by the wonderful Amit Singhal with able veterans like Ben Gomes and Matt Cutts among many others, are real heroes.

Even for a peripatetic type, it hasn't been hard to stay at a place like Google. The benefits, as you've heard, are great. It’s certainly fun to work for a company, and this is my first, that absolutely everyone knows and virtually everyone loves. And then there are the people. From the start I fell for the friendly, informed, wry-but-curious worldview shared by so many of my colleagues. I've felt true and lifelong kinship with people very unlike me in nationality, age, education, and interests—it’s a veritable United Nations. If you are sensitive to such things, being a Googler can make you a citizen of the world. I'm a better person for it.

Since I was inside so long watching Google grow up, I’m struggling to characterize what is second nature to me now (like breathing out and breathing in). Let me try to distill a few elements I think the Goog offers.

Wisdom of the crowds. One example: Google has thousands of internal email/discussion lists for product teams, affinity groups, technology news, and an untold number of interests (chess, politics, photography, music, dogs, Burning Man, etc etc). There is a wonderful self-managing quality found on all of them. It’s a joy to meet and kibitz virtually with smart people. The best of these discussions do what Google does: point concisely to useful information, clarify answers, summarize, suggest next steps—and build virtual friendships. (There’s also crowd-wisdom to be found in teams, where everyone is free to have thoughts and suggest ideas that get serious consideration. And no small number of these succeed.)

Questions are valued. At the Friday all-hands meetings called TGIF, Googlers famously ask about everything from benefits to facilities to geopolitics and public policy; Google Moderator is used to solicit questions from those not in the room. Such questions are rarely softballs. Questioning product development or strategy (even about what’s already underway) is fair game. The point of asking is to understand better, raise unconsidered angles, improve on something or bring it to light. The assumption is: asking > information > exploration > greater intelligence > better outcome.

Humor is a strength. Googlers are typically very funny. They savor irony, they quip naturally, they make knowing jokes, and jokes have layers. April Fool’s hoaxes aside (even these are quite cerebral), there is a humorous sensibility that makes much of the work more pleasurable and improves the output of ~30,000 people. (Because there is an equal measure of earnestness among Googlers, thank god humor is a vital attribute at the office. Without it, the air at Google might be too thick with sincerity.)

Creativity is encouraged. Googlers are often quite accomplished in their outside pursuits, which range very widely— from photography and music to Maker Faire and Burning Man to chain mail, wine, and comics. Many avocations are celebrated with company exhibits, talks and meetups. Quite a few of the eulogies about Steve Jobs mentioned his belief in the intersection of liberal arts and technology. It’s a byword at Google too.

Agility is key. Perhaps the most significant skill I absorbed, and the one that will help Google as it continues to grow, is to stay limber. It would be easy for an unbelievably successful company to start codifying The Playbook and refer to that and that alone for all future roadmaps. Much credit goes to Larry and Sergey, whose very natures seem compelled to question past (often successful) approaches in favor of bigger new ideas. As work, so life: I think it’s infinitely more rewarding to be mindful and alert to the swirl than it is to rely on the bound volume on the shelf. As a work environment, of course, that doesn’t suit everyone. It can be messy, things never seem finished, there are long beta periods, you have to turn on a dime. To me, there’s no contest between this kind of ‘foolishness’ and a staid place where the checklist is tidy and the work is rote. Give me this road!

As for what comes next, I’ll write again in a couple of weeks as I plunge into an exciting new realm. Meanwhile, all thanks to Google for the amazing, memorable ride. I am lucky.

*I’m a long-time fan of the ‘slanguage’ of Variety, and at last have a reason to use “ankles” in a hed.

The 3-Day Komen walk in Seattle

Last weekend I went to Seattle to fulfill my 3-day Komen Walk with two friends, Harriet Baskas and Lisa Siegel. As I wrote earlier, we had a bunch of reasons for walking: to honor friends who had died, to celebrate those, including Lisa, who are surviving, and thriving—and to support further breast cancer research. A huge amount of progress has been made even in my lifetime, and the more support and community brings to bear on research and treatment options, the more positive outcomes there can be.

These fundraising walks are designed to be cheery, and when you add in "breast" you get acres of pink in the forms of ribbons, boas, tiaras, leggings, tutus, sneakers, and much, much more. Though I'm not much of a joiner or cheerleader, I really did enjoy the team get-ups, like this:

Of course, this kind of effort is a very personal one for many of those walking or crewing. It was common, and always touching, to see people wearing home-made signs commemorating their own loved ones: a grandma, mom, aunt, sister, best friend.

The walk took us through parts of Seattle I knew (Pioneer Square, International District) and parts I didn't know (Magnolia, swaths of Bellevue and Redmond). It was exciting to cross the I-90 bridge to Mercer Island, and to cover ground in some of the wonderful local parks. Most of all, it was great to spend time walking with friends and banter with kindred spirits along the way. The locals were great, too—cops and firefighters who volunteered their time to join or crew, friends and families who came to designated cheering stations to greet their walkers, and some, like this woman, who popped up every day on the route to offer her drumbeat. (She was great. Here she is with Harriet, who knew her.)

Besides the team outfits, there were slogans, puns, and bad jokes galore—one of the things that makes these "good cause" events so much fun. Some we spotted:

• "The original happy meal" (on a silk screened T-shirt featuring a pink bra)
• "Leave It to Cleavage" (team name)
• Moms for Mams
• Breastie Boys 
• "Big or small, we love them all" (supportive men!)
• "Honk if you love ta-tas"
• Testicles for Chesticles 
• the Half-Racks (my vote for best team name)

And there was this, surely an instant classic:

As for our metrics: Our team of 3 raised $10,175 from 112 people. Thanks to everyone who chipped in to help us reach our (required) goal and then exceed it. It's a terrific feeling to see the energy and generosity that emerge for such causes and community events. As for me, I'll look forward to further support for this and other vital causes (though I admit it: campaigns shorter than 3 days are mighty appealing) Even so, I'm very glad to have seen this one through.

Here's the Komen organization Fact Sheet ("Why We Walk"), and their summary of the Seattle event.
Finally, if you crave more pink, here's my photo album. Enjoy, and onward!

Komen 3-Day Walk, Sept 2011

Walking for breast cancer research

I recently signed up for the Susan G. Komen 3-Day 60-mile walk in Seattle September 16-18. While I'm usually not a joiner however much I support a cause, these walks are designed to raise awareness as well as money, and they offer great community spirit across the country. Eleven years ago my friend Ellen and I walked for our college friend Lucy, who died at 49 after 11 years of dealing with breast cancer.

Since then other wonderful friends have died; even more have been diagnosed and/or are living with the effects of breast cancer. My good friends Harriet and Lisa, who live in Seattle, decided to walk in honor of our dear mutual friend Mary Catherine Lamb, who died in 2009. And then earlier this year, Lisa was diagnosed. Fortunately her early stage and fast surgical response mean she is now cancer-free. So I decided to join them in gratitude for Lisa's survival and in memory of M.C.

In my life, more women I know have died—or lived—with breast cancer than any other threatening illness. These wonderful women are now gone from my life:

Letitia Brown

Lucy Wicks

Ellen Olinger Longsworth

Jennifer Lovejoy

Lynnly Labovitz

Mary Catherine Lamb

I'm walking for them, and equally important for friends who continue to survive, and thrive. Thanks to major advances in research and treatment, there are millions who do. Some of my friends in this camp:

Lisa

Sandy

Barbara

Marcia

Ingrid

A generation ago the number of those diagnosed who lived a good life after a breast cancer diagnosis was dramatically smaller, treatments were more extreme (and caused plenty of other problems). There's been a lot of improvement, as this post by a male breast cancer survivor attests. And as you might expect, around the world, treatment does improves with income and education (see data guru Hans Rosling's explanation).

All of this gives me determination to help more. I'll update now and again here on my progress. Here's my personal donation page on the Komen site where you can support me/the walk. (Don't forget corporate matching!)

One more thing regarding Komen: Charity Navigator gives them a 4-star rating (most income goes to program activites, not administration & overhead).

Thank you so much for your support.