What is a Blog Off: a Blog Off post

Every two weeks, the blogosphere comes alive with something called a Blog Off. A Blog Off is an event where bloggers of every stripe weigh in on the same topic on the same day. The topic for this round of the Blog Off is "What is a Blog Off?"

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In 1975, the British group Supertramp released the album "Crisis? what Crisis?" and its cover art sums up my sentiments about our modern times perfectly. That to photo in question dates from 1975 (a year I remember too well) tells me that nothing ever changes.

The world is going to hell and it's wasting no time getting there but Blog Offs let me see an alternate reality. Every two weeks, we get to write about the same thing and interpret it as we want to. It's fascinating to read all of the participants' takes on a given topic and it reaffirms my faith in humanity to see the amount of good will spilled out on Twitter on Blog Off days. Total strangers stop what they're doing, read a participating blog post, leave a comment and Tweet about it. Would that everything worked with such genial generosity.

As a founder of this thing I see new bloggers build communities around themselves with Blog Offs and these things give people like me who've been at it for a while the chance to encourage newcomers. I always learn something and I never stop marveling at the amazing people my fellow bloggers are.

So even though everything seems to be falling apart, there's this. The Blog Off and the community of bloggers and Twitter-ers who keep it alive every two weeks. It makes me think that all is not lost after all.

And as one of the people who keeps this thing alive, we're looking for you to help us refine what we're doing. How can we better serve the Blog Off community? What topics should we tackle and just how commercial are you willing to let us get? We have a designer-ly skew though not all of us who participate have have an involvement in the shelter industry. How can we grow our pool of participants without alienating the folks we have on board already? This topic is the perfect opportunity to let it all out, for good and bad. How can we make this thing better and more useful?

As today wears on, and as I fly to San Francisco, a table of all the participating bloggers will appear here. Please do me a favor and click on the links to see what people from all over think about the Blog Off.

Lee Broom at the London Design Festival

Two weeks ago while I was in London for the London Design Festival as part of Blog Tour 2011, I had the distinct pleasure of meeting Lee Broom. All of us on the Blog Tour were treated to a personal tour of his workshop. He'd converted his Shoreditch work space into a salon for the Festival, all to showcase his new collection, the aptly named Salon.

Here's Lee being profiled in a Polish design magazine.

Lee's a brilliant young designer with an eye that won't quit. The glamorous drama of the collection was highlighted perfectly by the lighting and walls draped in black. That the man who designed everything was describing his pieces to us was almost too much to take in. Here's how Salon looked at his studio.

From Lee's website:

As part of the London Design Festival, Broom is drawing on his interior skills and has transformed his Shoreditch-based studio/showroom into an exclusive, contemporary, design salon. Recreating the space in a dramatic, surreal and intimate setting.

It's a spectacular collection but what impressed me almost as much as the pieces themselves is Lee's commitment to producing his furniture in the UK. Talk about keeping it local! Someone so committed to his home country deserves every accolade he gets.

Downstairs from the Salon collection were more of Lee's collections and what stopped me dead in my tracks was a collection from the 20098 Festival called Heritage Boy.

Again, from Lee's website:

The Heritage Boy collection was shown at The Future Gallery (formally The Photographers Gallery), 5 Great Newport Street, London WC2, during London Design Week, 2009. Heritage Boy draws on traditional British manufacturing techniques to create a modern-day furniture collection which is divided into three distinct ranges: Carpetry, Parquetry and Tiles. Broom has applied the same philosophy, classic shapes and daring applications to each distinctly unique range. All the pieces are made in the UK and involving these industries in his design process is something that Broom feels particularly passionate about.

What I'm still reeling over is that he used carpet as a finish on furniture, actual carpet.

The tile lamps and coffee table; and the parquet tables are fantastic too. But that carpet sideboard is one of the most unique and beautiful pieces of furniture I've ever seen.

That he's a genuinely kind and generous man makes his creations all the more appealing. Earlier this week, the editor of Elle Decor asked me to respond to a feature on their website called Design Insiders' Weekly Finds. Without missing a beat I started gushing about Lee's Heritage Boy collection. This link will take you to my response on Elle Decor.

So keep your eye on this guy. Clearly, he's going places and it's great to see a good man succeed. Here's the link to Lee's website. Look over all his collections and projects, it's inspiring, innovative work.

Game changing innovation from London

I saw more amazing things at the London Design Festival than I ever imagined I would. Being part of the first ever Blog Tour was a gift that keeps on giving, that's for sure. The London Design Festival is a nine-day, city-wide celebration of design and art with more than 280 scheduled events. One of the larger events this year was 100% Design.

Of the many venues we visited, 100% Design was by far my favorite. While I can get excited about furniture and textiles, after a while they all start to bleed into one another. I guess I'm a kitchen and bath guy at heart after all. 100% Design had the perfect mix of sofas and counters, draperies and flooring. I saw a lot of cool stuff and one thing in particular really blew me away.

The following images are from Pyrolave UK and they are photos of a kitchen designed by my friend Johnny Grey.

Notice anything unusual? That counter has an induction cooktop integrated into it. Pyrolave made from glazed, volcanic stone and it's the only material that can allow the electromagnetic energy of an induction coil pass through it without any loss of efficiency. There's no need for a typical glass cooking surface and being able to pop in an induction coil just about anywhere is an incredibly freeing thing from a design perspective. It's also a great opportunity to use induction outside of the kitchen. Imagine an induction-enabled sideboard or dining table. The mind reels.

Pyrolave UK had a booth at 100% Design and I was playing around with one of these induction-enabled cooktops while I was there. It was nothing short of amazing.

It's genius really and it makes perfect sense. Induction technology begs for innovation and I love that Pryolave has stepped up to the plate and delivered such a great idea. Induction-enabled Pyrolave counters aren't crossing the Atlantic any time soon unfortunately, but when they do get here I'll be the one applauding loudest.

100% Design was the 7th trade event I'd attended outside of the US in the last ten months. I'm getting on a plane for another one in Toronto in a few hours and my seeing innovations such as Pyrolave's induction counters have proved what I've long suspected. The US no longer leads the world in innovation. There. I said it. Much of the innovations I've seen this year will never make it to our market here and if they do, they'll be a dumbed down version of the original.

I hate to be one of those Americans who travels abroad and makes endless comparisons to life here as opposed to there. But the innovation thing is as obvious as it is troubling. How and when did that happen? What would it take to turn that around? These are some of the things I think about during long plane rides.

Anyhow, how about this induction idea? If you're a designer, how could you see this figuring into a design? If you're a homeowner, would you ever spring for a put-it-anywhere induction cooker?

From Bologna, new stuff from Sicis

Sicis defines manufactured mosaics and they turned out in Bologna in a really big way. Sicis (see-chis) revolutionized glass mosaics and seeing them play around with glass and stone combinations is nothing short of inspiring.

What do you think? Could a Sicis mosaic work its way into you home? Check out the rest of their collections here.

The starlings are back, it must be autumn

As a transplant to the tropics, I can't always tell when the seasons change. However, this sight always lets me know its autumn.

Those birds on that wire are Common European Starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) and they're an invasive species introduced to North America in 1890 and 1891 when between 60 and one hundred birds were released in Central Park in New York. A society led by a man named Eugene Schieffelin wanted to introduce to North America all of the birds mentioned by Shakespeare. It's from those 60 to 100 birds that all 200,000,000 starlings that call North America home are descended.

Even though their a non-native species, they've figured out how to migrate to warmer climates in the winter. That amazes me to no end. In addition to their ability to figure out migration patterns, starlings are pretty amazing creatures despite the fact that they're an invasive species.

• Both males and females can mimic human speech. (Some people keep starlings as pets). Some starlings also imitate the song of many other birds like the Eastern Wood-Pewee, Meadowlark, Northern Bobwhite and House Sparrow, along with Blue Jays, Red-Tailed Hawks and Cedar Waxwings. Vocalizations inside the nestbox during nest building can be lengthy and quite varied.
• An estimated 1/3 to 1/2 of returning females nest in the same box or area in consecutive years. That is why it's even more important not to let them nest in the first place.
• A starling couple can build a nest in 1-3 days. Both sexes incubate.
• A migrating flock can number 100,000 birds. They roost communally in flocks that may contain as many as a million birds. Watch this amazing video of a swarming flock of starlings that appear to be feeding.
• Each year, starlings cause an estimated $800 million in damages to agricultural crops (Pimental et al, 2000)
• About 15-33% of first broods are parasitized (via egg dumping) by other starlings.
• Starlings have an unusual bill that springs open to grip prey or pry plants apart.
• Starlings only molt once a year (after breeding) but the spots that show up in the winter wear off by the spring, making them look glossy black.
• In Starlings, the length of the intestinal tract actually varies depending on the season. It is shorter in the summertime (when birds are mainly eating protein-rich) insect foods and larger in wintertime when they are mainly eating seeds, which are rich in carboyhydrates. (Source: Analysis of Vetebrate Structure, Hildebrand and Goslow)

Source

I grew up learning to hate them as a scavenger and a pest but if I step away from that, they're a beautiful bird and any invasive that can figure out a migration pattern and alter the length of its alimentary canal can't be all bad. Right?