I'm going to try to blog at regular intervals this week while I'm at CHI in Montreal. They have the student volunteers organized to do this too, so it should be an interesting collection of entries on the official CHI blog site by the end of the conference.

The opening plenary this morning, by Scott Cook of Intuit, was great. Scott is a very genial, affable guy who quickly builds a cnnection with the audience. The official topic for his talk, which he generally stuck to, was 'Creating game-changing innovation.'

He had many interesting insights into the business of innovation, many cribbed from Peter Drucker (in a good way, with appropriate credit given). Of particular note was his list of five 'models of innovation inside a company:

1. the lone genius
2. the boss is the genius
3. copy competitors' innovations
4. cloister the geniuses in a lab
5. make the people the geniuses

and of course he subscribes to the last one.

The heart of his talk, though was about five principles of innovation and invention. His principles:

1. Invention comes from mindset change.
2. Mindset change comes from seeing differently.
3. Savor surprises -- as learning.  (and 3a. celebrate your failures for the learning you derive from them)
4. Focus managers on a customer metric
5. Nurture and protect teams that are doing innovative work.

Cook talked a lot about how Intuit has a culture of always starting with the customer need. He gave several examples of how Intuit products were created directly out of customer studies that gave them key insights about how they weren't solving the needs of their customers.

It was a fun and inspiring talk. If you get an opportunity to hear Cook talk, I would strongly encourage you to do so.

• You sneak out of bed at 5.30 in the morning, just to be able to have a cup of coffee in silence
• You haven't been able to have dinner at the same time as your husband for weeks (a crying baby has had you eating in shifts)
• You pick up things with your toes as your hands are always taken up by carrying children
• You cut your finger and have to wear a 'Dora the explorer' bandaid, which is all you have in the house
• The theme tune to 'SpongeBob Squarepants' is stuck in a loop inside your head (Wo lives in a pineapple under the sea? SpongeBob Squarepants!)
• You lie awake at night wondering how on earth you're going to be able to pack sensibly for an upcoming trip (is it possible to bring the baby swing, car seat and the stroller? Will we be exceeding the luggage allowance on the flight? And how many presents and treats do we need to keep Lucas entertained for the duration of the trip?)
• You start to gravitate towards blogs written by other mums. Their words resonate with you like nothing else can
• And you could totally relate to Felicity Huffman's character Lynette in 'Desperate housewives' when she started to take her childrens' ADD medication just to keep up with her pace of life

Yep, being a mum is a crazy thing. It's wonderful and annoying. A blessing and a curse. You wouldn't change it for the world, yet you fantasize about life without children. You are jealous of your former self, of how all she had to think about was herself & at the same time you cringe at how selfish she really was. Being a mum is the ultimate paradox, a black hole of love, that sucks you in and forces you to lose yourself, yet helps you to find your truer self, there where you lost you (does this still make any sense?)

Anyhow, some of the parenting websites and blogs that I have come across and liked:

1. Five minutes for mom. They were even so nice to add my blog to their site and to interview me as well
2. Parent center. They send me weekly updates on baby's developments. It tells us what we can expect at each stage, which is great as we don't have many other babies around us to measure Aidan's development against
3. The mommy blog. Made me laugh out loud. Especially the part about traveling with young children (she deals with the same pre-travel anxiety as me)
4. Happiness is a good nap. Sweet personal blog by a single mother of two
5. Natural parenting. All about attachment parenting
6. Dr. Sears website. His 'Pregnancy' book & 'The Baby' book are my bibles
7. Think twice. Are you debating whether or not to vaccinate? Make sure you read this website.

And finally, you know you're a mum when it takes you at least 10 attempts to write a short blog like this....

OK, I've been pondering this for a long time, but now I'm finally going to do it. I'm moving my blog.

I like Radio. Sort of. I seriously underuse it. If I had the time to write code, there are all sorts of cool things I could do with this. But I don't at this point in my life, and so Radio is just overkill. Plus, I'm much more mobile and would like the flexibility to blog from multiple locations (including my cell phone). Anyway, the Radio folks have been great, uptime has been wonderful lately, and I realyl don't have any complaints other than it's just too heavyweight for my needs.

Plus, on the flip side, MSN Spaces has made tremendous strides lately. So I'm moving there. Even though I'm going to be on a Microsoft-owned site, I'm still going to be opinionated and independent. I'm going to pay my own way so that I'm beholden to no one, just as I did here.

I'm going to leave this blog up for a long time -- it has a nice archive of my last couple of years, and I don't want to throw that away. I'll probably link over to old things here too.

So the bottom line is that the only thing that will change is the URL:  http://spaces.msn.com/kschofield Bear with me over the next week or so as I figure everything out in my new digs.

The following is an announcement for a very cool workshop that's going to be run by a friend and neighbor of ours and should be of interest to a number of Attachment Parenting Blog readers.

Expecting a child can be an overwhelming time in your life, one of physical and emotional change often complicated by outside pressures. Take this four-week journaling class to reclaim your initial joy and excitement about the journey, or take it to record those special moments and create a written legacy for yourself or your child. You don’t need to be a writer to benefit.

Taught by writing instructor Tanja Pajevic. In seven years, Tanja has taught 22 writing workshops and over 500 students at the University of Colorado at Denver, Indiana University and in private workshops. A former Fulbright Fellow to Slovenia, Tanja holds an M.F.A. from Indiana University, where she was a Hemingway Fellow. She has published her fiction and creative nonfiction in literary magazines such as Crab Orchard Review and Orchid and is the recipient of a recent Faculty Development Grant at UCD as well as a residency at Vermont Studio Center. She is expecting her first child in late July.

• 
  Link Troll Catapults Original Pyro to World-Wide Fame.
  
  
  So admits the original Pyro himself! Actually, he would have got there eventually, even without my help!!
  
  (tags: blogspotting pyromaniacs warnie)
  




• 'The tithing issue is the pressing one as I work on my money study. Israel did it (although it looks like it was more like 23% than 10%). Should Christians be tithing?
  
  
  The bluefish is drawing a lot of traffic regarding his current posts on money and giving . . . join the fun!
  
  (tags: tithing)




• 
  'In a sinful and broken world—a world that really does suck for lots of people—a missional worldview invites Jesus followers to bring Jesus to redeem and heal and invite people into a life of shalom.'
  
  
  Anthony Bradley posts an article with the title 'Life is not supposed to suck.'
  
  (tags: missional)
  




• 'Here in China,' said the student, 'we have a hard time getting people to do what they ought to do. If I understand you correctly, the Gospel of Jesus Christ makes people want to do what they ought to do. Is that right?'
  
  
  The Heart of Christian Ethics: Over at Resurgence, there's a great post on legalism versus grace and the power of the true Gospel to bring about obedience.
  (tags: gospel grace legalism)




• 
  ' . . . the question isn’t whether my children should listen to rap or country or jazz. Rather, it’s whether or not my children distrust their hearts and desire to make choices that honor the Savior who bought them with his own blood.'
  
  
  Bob Kauflin provides four guidelines in helping parents facing the question of whether they should allow their children to listen to Christian rap, or for that matter, any type of musical genre.
  
  (tags: legalism music worship)

Alright, it's maybe not the worst situation in the world, but we just got back from two weeks in Hawaii on holiday and I experienced a distressing situation on the five hour flight back from the Big Island to San Francisco (where we overnighted): an abusive parent and her child in my row of the plane.

As is common with airlines, we booked months in advance but couldn't get our five seats together, so we had three seats in one row, one seat immediately ahead of it, and one seat two rows ahead of that. Not so good when we're traveling with the kids, needless to say, but since K-'s now two, we have to buy her a seat too.

We decided that we'd arrange it so that Linda and all three kids were squished into the three-seat row (with the baby on her lap to hopefully sleep) and I'd be in the row immediately ahead.

But when we were all trying to settle into our seats, I was joined by a heavyset native Hawaiian woman and her five year old (I'm guessing) daughter. Her daughter promptly stood on the chair to look over and meet our kids and the Mom...

I'm listening to a panel on how to manage international user research -- whether you're trying to build a product directed at a far-away market, or trying to design for a worldwide audience.

There's fair consensus that international research is budget constrained more than anything else -- in fact, Microsoft keeps coming up as an example of a company with the 'luxury' of having user researchers in many parts of the world and the money to send them to others (as if making those investments weren't a difficult budget decision just like at every other company).

Susan Dray made the good point, though, that deciding to do international research is usually a strategic decision, not a tactical one. That usually puts it in a separate decision-making process for investment.

Lots of discussion about the cultural issues -- both in terms of the 'content,' i.e. discovering cultural issues that affect your design; and in terms of the user research process and how certain practices (and certain questions) are not culturally appropriate in some countries.

I admit it, I'm a closet Disney fan and am delighted that I have an excuse this summer to visit Disneyworld (I'm speaking at a conference in Orlando). Having said that, though, I also have found Disney to be going through a real dry spell with innovations and truly family-friendly products and services. Sure they've expanded the theme parks, but just about all the expansion has been thrill rides like Kilimanjaro that are aimed much more squarely at teens and younger adults than at families with wee ones.

But still, there's Mickey Mouse and the many additional cultural icons that Walt Disney and his team have given us over the years, however much crass capitalists like Michael Eisner later tightened the thumbscrews and changed things (to, I admit, be more profitable and a better run business, but somehow the fun, the heart, the caring seems to have been lost along the way).

Anyway, I'm really delighted to see that Disney is jumping into the world of cell phones and mobile telephony with its upcoming launch of Disney Mobile, and the more I read about it, the more it seems like just what families need to let their children have the connectivity of cellphones while also having limits and controls.

I'm in Montreal for CHI 2006, then on to Princeton for an advisory board meeting for their engineering school next week.

I'm working up a really good rant about air travel, snce my flight out here very nearly went wrong on Friday. But I'll save that for another post.

Friday morning I dropped my kids off at school, and headed for the airport. On my way in the car I was listening to Marc Broussard, and the untitled/uncredited song at the end of the CD came on.

I wish you freedom
I wish you peace
I wish you nights of stars that beckon you to sleep
I wish you heartache that leaves you more of a man
I wish I could be there, but I can't

I wish you places that sit so still
Where people never ever change and never ever will
I wish I could hold you and make you understand
I wish I could be there, but I can't

Be good for your mama
Cause she'll need a hand to hold
Boy, she loves you
More than you'll ever know
There are rhymes and there are reasons
And times when nothing stayed the same
But you know my love still remains

I wish you wisdom
I wish you years
I wish you armies to conquer all your fears
I wish you courage for all that life demands
I wish I could be there, but I can't

Be good for your mama
Cause she'll need a hand to hold
Boy, she loves you
More than you'll ever know
There are rhymes and there are reasons
And times when nothing stayed the same
But you know my love still remains

I wish we were together
I wish I was home
I wish there were nights where I was never alone
I know I've said it but I'll say it once again
I wish I could be there, but I can't

Damn. I wasn't ten miles from the airport and my heart was already achng to turn around, stay home, and spend more time with my kids. Particularly since I missed a performance of my daughters' choir on Friday night, and I'm going to miss opening night of the school play this coming Friday. In three years they're graduating from high school and heading off to college, and here I sit in a $^%&! hotel room in Montreal, two thousand miles away from them.

I really look forward to CHI every year, but this year the conference hasn't even started yet and I'm already dying to get home. But thanks, Marc, for reminding me where my priorities should be.