Dan York

Revisiting My Four Word for 2014 - How Did I Do?

On this final day of 2014, I thought I should reflect back on my "four words" for 2014. They were:

• Running
• Religion
• Audio
• Strategy

How did I do? Let's take them one by one...

RUNNING

The good news is that I did make running more a regular part of my life. By adding up the monthly totals in my iPhone app I see that I ran over 288 miles this year. It was spotty, though. I only ran 6.2 miles in September yet I ran over 56 miles in July! I finished the year doing 26 miles in December... which works out to be about 6 miles a week. Good... but not great. Next year I'll aim to do better.

It was also a strange year in that I ran only one race... and that was the short 1-mile "Pumpkin Mile" that was part of the Keene Pumpkin Festival and that I ran with my five-year-old daughter. For all the other races I wanted to do I either had a schedule conflict or in one case it rained harder than I really cared to race in.

My goal starting off 2014, though, was to get running more a part of my life... and I think I can safely say that I did that.

RELIGION

Back at the beginning of the year I wrote:

But you wouldn't know any of this from what I write and post online. There are thousands of blog posts online from me since 2000 and many thousand tweets/updates/posts on social media...

... but pretty much NONE of them say ANYTHING about religion.

There are a lot of reasons for WHY I have been silent about the religious side of my life in my online activity... and I'll write a post about that at some point (probably soon).

But I've realized that in being silent and hiding this aspect of myself I'm not really letting myself be truly whole.

So I'm going to start... I've been letting pieces of that side of me leak out into Facebook lately. THIS blog post is a huge step for me.

I'm not going to be "in your face" about religion or anything (that's not the UU way! ;-) ). But I'm going to stop hiding that side of me. I will treat it instead just as yet another facet of the complicated person that I am (and that we all are).

We'll see... this will, in all honesty, be a bit challenging for me... but is an area I'd like to grow personally.

This has been hard for me, but I have started to be more open about this side of myself. For instance, I participated in a panel that was recorded on video distributed on YouTube where I talked about our church and my involvement in the "community breakfasts" that we do for the homeless each morning during the winter months. I also shared on Facebook and social networks when I was giving a sermon at our church in late October on the subject of "Facebook and Fox News: Escaping the Echo Chambers of Affirmation". I actually recorded that sermon but have yet to put it online... perhaps in 2015.

I also shared out more links from our church's web site and social media feeds into my own feeds... which was a big step for me.

Baby steps... but at least I'm no longer hiding my this part of me. We'll see where this goes from here.

AUDIO

Unfortunately this area remained a bit of an "aspiration" this year. I had hoped to do more with audio this year. Now I did do more with my "The Dan York Report (TDYR)" podcast... producing over 155 of the short episodes. I also didn't miss a single week of For Immediate Release (FIR) reports, producing 52 of those reports. I also started using several new applications on my iPhone to more rapidly produce podcasts

BUT...

... I'd had aspirations to do more. Here's how I wound up with what I had hoped to do:

• FIR On Technology with Dan York - Sadly I only cranked out one episode during the entire year. :-(
• Blue Box: The VoIP Security Podcast - I'd hoped to publish some interviews... but... nope. None. Zip. Nada.
• Internet Society Deploy360 Programme - I only published one episode here, too, but a very large part of this was that I spent a good bit of time seeking an audio publishing platform that supported IPv6... and never found one (SoundCloud doesn't). In the interim I held off on publishing episodes.

We'll see if this gets better in 2015. I thoroughly enjoy audio and would like to get back to doing more!

STRATEGY

I wrote in January:

Finally, there is an exquisite irony to me that while my job title at the Internet Society is "Senior Content Strategist", my own personal content online is severely lacking a strategy. I am inconsistently writing across 8 or 9 different places online - and I'm adding more sites like the Monadnock Curling Club... and there are a few other projects in the works.

Yes, this is a bit of a case of the proverbial "cobbler's shoes", but in 2014 I'd like to pull some of this together a bit more and have a bit more discipline about what I'm doing with all my online content. I'm at least aggregating my online content at my danyork.me site, but this year I want to do more with getting more consistent with the creation of content.

Alas... still a work in progress...

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So there I was for 2014... good progress with two of my words... less so with the other two. How did your year work out?

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An audio version of this post is available on in my "The Dan York Report" podcast:

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Watching Live Curling At 65mph on I-91

Today was an amazing testament to the power of today's mobile Internet. We traveled to Connecticut today to visit some friends and family, but we also wanted to watch the live video stream of one of the youth in our Petersham Curling Club youth program playing in the national Playdowns up in Rochester, NY. So, while my wife drove I set up my iPhone as a personal hot spot and used my iPad to display the live video stream from the Playdowns.

It worked out great... and was just amazing to think about!

Some thoughts via audio:

https://soundcloud.com/danyork/tdyr-207-an-amazing-day-of-the

Video: "Mary, Did You Know?" From Pentatonix

On this Christmas Day, I just wanted to share one of the videos I and my family have very much enjoyed. It is "Mary, Did You Know?" from the amazing acapella group Pentatonix. I don't think it matters what religion you may worship (or even none at all) to enjoy the sheer beauty of these voices::

If you celebrate Christmas, I hope you had a wonderful day of celebration... I did with my family today and I am so thankful and grateful for all that I have in my life today. And if you don't celebrate Christmas... well, I hope you had a wonderful day!

Ceremonies of Light and Dark

What I so love about this time of darkness in the northern hemisphere is all the "ceremonies of light and dark". Because it is so dark, we seek out times to celebrate the light.

To drive back the darkness.

To celebrate with friends and family.

To embrace the wonder of the flame.

To shine out as a beacon of love and hope.

And there are so many different ceremonies of so many different religions and faith traditions:

- the advent candles and candlelight services of Christian churches, along with the Christmas trees.
- the menorahs of Judaism.
- candles and fires of earth-centered faiths.

... and, of course, all the lighting of our home decorations....

I enjoy the candles the best... the simple flames, burning as they do.

This is one of my favorite parts of the season.... the light in the darkness.

A time of hope... for the light that is yet to come.

Moving My Various Web Sites To Responsive Design To Be Mobile-Friendly

Today I made on change on this "DanYork.com" site to move it to a new theme that uses "responsive design" so that it will look good on a mobile device as well on a large screen. I've been wanting to do this for quite some time because any of a zillion reports out there will tell you that an increasing majority of users are viewing websites on their mobile devices. I can just see that in my own behavior where I use my iPhone or iPad for viewing so many sites.

The challenge I have is that this site, and my other major personal blog sites, are all still hosted on TypePad, one of the early blog hosting providers where I started writing back in 2005 or so. Some year I'd love to consolidate them onto one of the other hosted sites where I run WordPress... but the amount of work to do so is quite substantial given the hundreds upon hundreds of posts between my various sites. Some day...

Meanwhile, I figured out enough about TypePad's one responsive design theme to be able to move this site over. At some point over my holiday vacation I'd like to move these two over to a responsive theme:

• Disruptive Telephony
• Disruptive Conversations

They are where the bulk of my personal writing occurs. The challenge with any move to a new theme on TypePad is that you need to rebuild the menus, sidebars, etc., so it does take a bit of time.

I also want to move my writing aggregation site to a responsive theme:

• DanYork.me

That site is hosted on WordPress and so there are many options... I just have to find one that I like and spend the time configuring it.

Most of my other WordPress-hosted sites already are responsive, including:

• Code.Danyork.com
• Monadnock Curling Club
• Migrating Applications to IPv6
• Voice of VOIPSA

Out of my various websites where I write that will really just leave CircleID, where I have no control over the formatting, and my 7 Deadliest UC Attacks site that is also still hosted by TypePad. If I have the time, I'll probably just move that one during the migration of my DisTel and DisCon sites.

And then, of course, there is my Deploy360 site at work... which is a MUCH bigger challenge that will be dealt with sometime in 2015...

The end goal will be that people will be able to read my writing with ease on whatever platform they use - mobile phone, tablet, desktop... or anything else.

Stay tuned...

Video: The Keene Interfaith Community Breakfasts

One of the great changes in my life over the past year has been helping out at the community breakfasts for the homeless that happen now each winter weekday morning at our church in Keene, NH. While they are held in our church building, the teams of volunteers who staff the breakfasts also come from several other churches in our community. (In fact, we're looking for one more church or other community group to step forward and help on the one remaining day that needs coverage.)

It's been quite an eye-opening experience for my wife and I, both in terms of learning about the quantity of people in our region who are homeless... but also in hearing some of the stories and knowing that while often it is very definitely choices that get people into these situations, sometimes it is instead circumstances - job losses, medical expenses, family issues - and that the line between those who have and those who have not can be very thin and fragile.

Recently a local community TV show recorded an episode with several of us who have been involved with the community breakfasts. I represented our church and spoke about some of the changes that being involved has brought about with me and our family.

Give it a listen... and if you are in the Keene, NH, area and interested in helping, we're always looking for people to help during these cold winter months!

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What are the "community" breakfasts that take place at the Keene UU Church (KUUC) during the winter months? How did they get started? How are they an example of interfaith service programs? And how can people get more involved? In this episode 501 of her show "My Karma Ran Over My Dogma", Rev. Sandra Whippie explores these topics and much more with a panel including:

• Rev. Michael Hall, KUUC minister and member of the Interfaith Clergy Association
• Charlie Gibson, member of the Catholic churches in the Keene area
• Dan York, member of the Keene Unitarian Universalist Church (KUUC)
• Marcia Winters, member of the Keene United Church of Christ (UCC)

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P.S. For the purpose of including an image for this post in the "carousel" at the top of the site, I'm including this screenshot of me talking:

In Every Action We Take, We Create The World We Want To Live In

In our every action... each moment of the day... we make the choice to build people up or to tear people down. The choice we make determines the type of person we are - and the type of world we want to live in.

No Adults! An Awesome Aspect of Youth Curling Games

Today I was reminded of one of the truly awesome and wonderful aspects of youth curling bonspiels (tournaments) - when the kids go through the door out onto the ice, the game is ENTIRELY up to *them*.

No adults are allowed out on the ice. No coaches. No parents. No one.

Just the youth.

Unlike other youth team sports there are no coaches helping call the shots or determine the flow of play. There is no one to consult with. (Although we are nearby if there is a rules question that needs addressing or if there are safety issues.) From the initial start with a shaking of hands and a coin toss all the way to the end... it is entirely up to the kids.

The strategy. The scoring. The flow of the game. The making of the shots. The interpretation of the rules.

All of it... by them.

Of course we as coaches work with them to teach them all the different aspects of the sport and to prepare them for the games.

But when they go through that door... it is entirely up to them!

We are left to just watch from behind the glass... to celebrate... and sometimes to cringe... but there is absolutely nothing we can do but watch!

Pretty awesome for the kids!