Tag: tradition
It’s a beautiful almost snowy morning in Boulder. Crisp and cold, but subdued. Amy is on the phone with a cousin, Brooks is asleep on the floor, and Cooper is whining a little every now and then but generally happy to be on his tether chilling out after running around the yard like a maniac puppy for 30 minutes.
For many years, Christmas time was difficult for me. With the help of my amazing wife, I adjusted my attitude about five years ago and in 2012 wrote a long post about it titled Christmas Isn’t Awesome For Everyone. Christmas still isn’t awesome for me, but I now have a mellow, relaxed time for the last two weeks of the year.
Amy and I celebrated Jewish Christmas by going to see The Force Awakens followed by a quick dinner at Tasty Asia in Longmont. We then came home and finished movie night by watching Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Perfect.
Yesterday, Danielle Morrill, the CEO of Mattermark who, with her husband Kevin, have become good friends over the past year Slacked me with:
“Not sure if you ever read this book, but my parents gave it to me as a kid and it is something I like to read out loud with them on Christmas https://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/williams/rabbit/rabbit.html“
I vaguely remember reading The Velveteen Rabbit as a kid 45 or so years ago. I knew the story was about a boy and his toy rabbit, but I didn’t remember anything else. I just finished reading it and it brought tears of happiness to the corners of my eyes. It’s a wonderful childrens story that the inner child in any person can enjoy.
If you’ve got young kids, consider trying what Danielle and her parents now do every Christmas and read The Velveteen Rabbit out loud together.
And – Danielle and Kevin – thanks for being part of my life in 2015. It’s been a joy working and becoming friends with the two of you.
Foundry Group has now been around for over seven years and I’ve been working with my partners for 14 years. We’ve started to develop some traditions.
One of my favorites is exit gifts. When a company has an exit that generates a return for us, we give a gift to the partner who served on the board. These gifts are generally tuned to what the partner loves such as musical stuff for Ryan and Jason, bike stuff for Seth, and art for me. They are modest, but very thoughtful and something the partner wouldn’t have just gone out and done for himself. They are often self referential, such as the Makerbot sculpture of me created by an artist and printed on a Makerbot after Stratasys acquired MakerBot.
A few weeks ago Seth, Jason, and Ryan corralled me in our small conference room. Whenever they do this, I’m never sure if it’s going to be a happy thing or an intervention. Ryan was holding the following 2′ x 3′ framed print.
To get a better sense of this masterpiece, let’s zoom in on the G and the N.
This is a list of every tweet I made at @bfeld from the day of our investment in Gnip to the day that Twitter acquired Gnip. This first one is from 2/29/08.
The last batch is from 4/14.
Ryan told me that Gnip was used to generate the tweet list for the poster. And Postertext was used to print it. Thanks guys – this one made me smile a huge smile. I love this tradition.