Thomas Maloney Online

I went to Minnesota for the six days and I had a bunch of firsts. In the vicinity of Ely, MN lies the Voyageur Outward Bound School, approximately 20 miles south of the Canadian border. There I went dogsledding, skied on a frozen lake, and sweated in the dry air of a sauna heated to 190° F. When I went in at night, the air outside was -10° F (a few days later it dropped to -30° F).

The goal is to sit in the sauna until you can’t take it anymore, then run outside and dip yourself in a frozen river with a hole chipped out of the ice. Alternative actions include rolling in the snow.

Imagine running outside when it’s -10° F and dipping yourself in a frozen river. It’s possible, I did it.

And it was fun.

There are wolves in Minnesota.

In other news.. mushing is exciting and it’s very much a collaborative effort with the dogs. The dogs are amazing. Turning on a trail is pretty tricky. Here’s a picture of the of sled dogs and a picture of the cabin where I slept.

I baked chocolate chip cookies at Homebase, the main campus building. Homebase has an amazing kitchen with much similarity to the kitchen at my college co-op, 660 Stewart Ave. at Cornell.

Restaurant recommendation: Buca’s in downtown Minneapolis.

Fred Wilson points to the new New York Times Video Obituaries section.

Instead, I found myself stuck watching the videos on the NYT Vows section. The section features videos with each partner discussing the story of how they met. I can see this as an addictive feature for the Vows section followers, and the Times would be wise to advertise their other video sections postroll. As it stands, once you’re done watching one couple’s video, another couple’s video starts up. I think the Times should add a little text advertisement: something like a black background with a white text “nytimes.com/video” spliced between each video for one second.

I see advertisements for the Times print subscription on TV.. I wonder why they don’t advertise their online video? Seems to fit the demographic.

I attended BarCampNYC2 this weekend, an unconference intended to stimulate discussion about emerging technology. Topics concerned web apps, like Gmail and Salesforce.com, identity and OpenID, time management for system administrators, privacy in a world of GPS-enabled cell phones, and much much more. It was graciously hosted by Microsoft in there Midtown office, and you had to take your shoes off at the door. I think this was intentional on the part of the BarCamp organizers, not Microsoft. My favorite rule of these type of conferences is the Law of Two Feet: If during the course of the gathering, you find yourself in a situation where you are neither learning nor contributing, then you must use your two feet and go to some more productive place. Check out the BarCamp site for unconferences near you.

By far one of the better conferences I’ve attended, and free. Other conferences I’ve been to thus far this year: The Identity Mashup Conference at the Harvard’s Berkman Center, The Internet Dating Conference in San Francisco, CA, and Digital ID World in Santa Clara, CA. Fun!