3 Cup Pyrex Lunch Container
$9.99 on Amazon
It doesn’t matter what food options your office is surrounded by (in DUMBO that equates to not many), all work week lunch options will eventually lose their tasty glimmer. The way I see it, if you have to eat it every day you will inevitably result to grabbing “the usual” overpriced spinach salad or expensing Seamless.com sushi on the reg as survival food. In February, I spent an exorbitant amount of time identifying the optimal sized (good meal portion + appropriate flat shape for work bag packing) microwave-safe, dedicated lunch container. Ever since, my go-to Pyrex has helped me continually cook, save money, and even lose weight. Oh hell yes.

Tooth Brush + Mini Toothpaste for Office Desk
$Whatever at Bridge Fresh in DUMBO, Brooklyn
Never underestimate the usefulness of emergency teeth brushing utensils stashed at your desk. That one day a year you realize that you forgot your morning brush 10 minutes before the big meeting, you will thank me.

Handpulled Noodles with Minced Pork Sauce + Pan Fried Dumplings
$6.50 total (before tip) at Lam Zhou, Chinatown, NYC
They recently moved the noodle-slapping/hand-pulling out of customer view, but I forgive them. When I first ate at Lam Zhou on a friend’s recommendation, they had a C health rating and were damn delicious. All that’s changed is their fresh health code B-status. Do yourself a favor, hop off the East Broadway F stop and find this spot. The guy who takes your order may not smile at you like he does for me, but the noodle texture is a beautiful thing and their dumplings (which you will douse generously in the magical four: Vinegar, light soy sauce, chili oil and Sriracha. Repeat that to yourself.) are out of bounds. I’ve had a number of great meals in great company here. Tip ‘em well.

6 Hour Bike Rental
$10 at Greenbikes in Barcelona, Spain
The highlight of a week in Barcelona con mi madre. Copped a sweet beach cruiser (with lock included!) from a Santa Cruz to Barcelona transplant in the Gothic Quarter. So ensued a perfect 80 degree half day of pedaling along the Barceloneta beach, diving into cold water in my underwear, and grabbing a burger + Orange Fanta with my feet in the sand. Unforgettable.

My mother is a voracious bookworm, tearing through a couple crime novels on the weekend, working her way through every free book the Kindle library has to offer. You’d think the genes might have been passed on, but my unfortunate personal truth was that as of January I hadn’t read a book recreationally (excluding Harry Potter) in nearly five years.

I read a handful of classic novels in high school and college as part of English requirements but at the end of the day, me-time reading was a hobby that never stuck. But when 2013 came around, my fear of the “What’s your favorite book?” question came to a head. My feed of blogs and long-reads were beginning to bore and spending enough time around a few habitual readers moved me to take on the embarrassing lack of books in my life.

Five months in, I’m proud to say I’ve finished seven books and enjoying numero eight. It’s admittedly a funny mix of fiction and nonfiction, following my fickle interests of the month.

Here’s the lot:

Shape of Design by Frank Chimero
A short read by a fellow studiomate. Loved his anecdote on putting a little extra “love” into your work.

Purple Cow by Seth Godin
Best-seller by last month’s CreativeMornings/NYC speaker. A whip-smart dude, helped me make a few business decisions as of late.

I Will Teach You To Be Rich by Ramit Sethi
Also felt guilty about the state of my personal finances. On Bekka‘s recommendation, Ramit got me up to speed. (And I got to meet him at SXSW!)

Bend, Not Break: A Life in Two Worlds by Ping Fu
The remarkable life story of another NYC speaker.

Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
A Second-Life like world, language viruses, futuristic pizza delivery. My brother raved about this scifi classic ten years ago.

The Hunger Games TRILOGY by Suzanne Collins
Boom.

Born to Run by Christopher Mcdougall
Didn’t exactly inspire me to run a 100mi ultramarathon, but close.

Currently reading – Fresh Off the Boat: A Memoir by Eddie Huang
Food, hip hop, Asian culture. What more can I ask for?

They might not all be gentleman-worthy American classics, but I’m damn proud to say I’ve read these books. Here’s to new stories in the new year.

She asked if I would fly in to be her young, hunky escort at the awards banquet. So last week I trekked from LGA to DIA to catch the event. After working from home (and by working I mean alternating between staring at my inbox and the refrigerator), my mother and I got dolled up and sauntered over to the Marriott Ballroom for an evening of red wine and healthcare industry inside jokes.

The senior management took turns describing accomplishments and recanting stories as they announced each of the official winners. After two hours of some seriously heart-warming tales and 24 recipients had walked the stage, a voice from the microphone started “The last selection for Employee Of The Year definitely knows her charts and graphs. Please welcome our final winner tonight…”

My mother’s name boomed over the loud speakers. Number 25 of 25.

There’s something disconnected about trying to comprehend your parents’ professional lives. Maybe it’s because I always saw the after work, non 9-5 versions of them. It’s difficult just to imagine how they operate in their work. What are they known for among their coworkers? How do they act during meetings? How do they deal with stressful situations?

My mom handles infection control, that means preventing disease spread in the hospital, prepping epidemic readiness plans, doing the hand-hygiene-WHO-CDC-decontamination-Purell-stuff. Hearing her managers describe my mother’s work, her quick thinking, her cool head under pressure was nothing short of humbling. It also was a little like attending a friend’s dance performance or hearing a buddy’s band play, that awe of seeing someone do something you’ve only heard them talk about. Though watching my mom walk the stage wasn’t exactly like seeing someone perform, just the context gave me a bit of a better grasp of “her thing.” This was her zone.

I helped my mother boot up Excel and Powerpoint for the first time years ago. When she went back to school for her Master’s Program, I was a bratty high-schooler. I showed her how to launch programs on her PC, navigate Windows Explorer, and eventually build presentations and plot graphs. I didn’t think much of it back then, and my hormone-induced snappy demeanor didn’t make it any easier for her. But thinking back, I’m glad I could play a tiny role in helping her make an impact today.

Mother’s day was on Sunday, which is merely an appropriate coincidence. But since it’s timely, Happy Mother’s Day and congratulations, Mom. You’re doing great work.

I’m proud to be your son.

Any type of exploring is fine. High fives if you’re out in the world, seeing new things, and boosting your Vitamin D. But personally, when I think exploration, I’m not envisioning a trip to that one Chicken & Rice cart and back. I’m not talking about hopping in a cab en route to one of those places that Thought Catalog says you have to check out in your twenties.

My best days in New York have undoubtedly been the ones that started without a list of places to go. Whether we set off in the morning or in the evening, I wandered in good company. And without fail I found myself in quaint shops, on new islands, in beautiful parks, and amidst impromptu dance parties. When you skip the plan, you remove the pressure of judging how “worthwhile” an experience was.

If you want my opinion, I say explore without the maps.

I say explore until your hands feel fat because you just started walking and never asked where to.

Explore with friends who vow not to look at their phones.

Explore new shops, streets, alleyways, and neighborhoods.

Explore by foot and don’t forget to look up.

Explore until you stumble upon that obscure barn museum of Civil War miniatures.

Explore with a confidence that eventually you’ll find your way back and until then anything is fair game.

Explore where you’re sheepishly checking if doors are *actually* locked and until you find yourself trying to explain in broken Spanish that you wanted all of that food plus the Chicharrones.

Explore by saying yes more than no.

Explore with people who are always game.

Explore until you’re lost and then celebrate because that was always the intention.

Jerri described her vision of bringing back The Feast in 2012 with a new focus on in-person collaborations and public initiatives. She and I would soon join forces and spend the next year and half developing + producing a series of events that took place during the first week of October 2012 to celebrate social innovation.

The Feast 2012 featured:

The Feast Conference
Oct. 3-5, 2012, A new kind of conference.

The Feast Worldwide
Oct. 5, 2012, 7pm local time,
A global day of action.

The Feast Pavilion
Oct. 6, 2012, A public festival in NYC.

“The Feast’s approach is clear and focused on solution design and enterprise creation.” —Forbes

“This invite-only gathering for innovative do-gooders has matured into the kind of event where you see people before they get a TED Talk.” —FastCoExist

“Hey, any conference where Arcade Fire does acoustic “Wake Up” is automatically cosmic.” —Stephen Levy, WIRED

The Feast Conference
We have the tools to create a brighter future, but we need to start building it now. The Feast Conference gathers remarkable entrepreneurs, radicals, doers and thinkers that bring their talents to the table to make life better. Our attendees don’t just sit back. They’ll be rolling up their sleeves at roundtables this October to respond to challenges issued by visionary speakers who dare to ask the question, “What does the world need now?”

Jerri and I worked throughout the year, rethinking the conference format to create a 2 1/2 day immersive experience for 350 attendees. I’d say there were three main elements that really informed our vision.

1. We aimed to focus on a brighter future over past accomplishments by working with select speakers to present broad challenges which we built the programming around.

2. We tried to create an environment that was much more suitable for hands-on collaboration by heavily customizing a raw venue with roundtables welcoming of “creative mess.”

3. We strived to produce a dynamic final workshop day that really pushed the envelope as far as participation goes at these sorts of events.

In August of 2012, CreativeMornings launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds to create a growing, searchable archive of all CM talks old and new. After going from four to 34 chapters at the time of the campaign in just over a year, it was evident that the CreativeMornings world was in need of platform that could support not only ever-increasing amount of content but also the growing community.

I took the lead in crafting our campaign, from working with talented videographer Jacob Krupnick (Girl Walk // All Day) to laying out our rewards structure and outreach plan. Tina and I were floored as the campaign raised its initial $35,000 in the first four hours and went on to raise close to $80,000 from 1200 backers over the 30 days.

The campaign featured a mix of product rewards (e.g. CreativeMornings prints from Lisa Congdon and Jessica Hische, T-shirt by Kate Bingaman Burt) as well as in-person experiences (e.g. an hour of consulting with Jason Fried). With the success of the Kickstarter, we plan to launch a new creativemornings.com in 2013.

Yet bold entrepreneurs, companies, and institutions are making strides toward a better future. While the numbers drive us to look down, we could be looking up. Global access to healthy living is a lofty goal, but we believe the path forward, at the very least, starts with a little imagination.

Healthy Dose of Imagination is a visual guide to innovation in health. The site contrasts current (at times troubling) facts with optimistic predictions for the future of healthcare in the context of the companies and organizations working to make those visions a reality. Did I mention the explorphing hand-drawn animations courtesy of John Bister?

Healthy Dose was created as part of a partnership between Collaborative Fund, GE’s Healthyshare and Start Up America.

My family is spread out. With work, travel, and varying timezones, it’s difficult to stay in touch. I think it’s easy to say that all you need to do is try a bit harder, but it’s trickier than that. Even if you do manage to consistently give (each of) your folks a call, conversations always seem limited to just highlights and none of the “just because.”

I’ve honestly pondered this for awhile. How can you help families, no longer living in the same household, better stay-in-touch? Well, I’m glad to say that a recent simple solution has really helped my family out.

Just put everybody on a group text message. If you’re a brood of Apple elitists, even better. You can add Mom’s iPad, Dad’s iPhone and everyone else on iMessage and create an ongoing conversation that even works overseas.

For me it’s been about making it so easy just to pop in and say hello. Making it natural for your bro to check-in on you, making it a no-brainer to ask mom for that Asian salad dressing recipe, and making it dead-simple for dad to share an embarrassing baby pic of you he stumbled upon.

A couple text messages obviously can’t replace a lengthy catchup. But, if you limit your contact to just a couple meaty blocks of time a month, my hunch is you might miss out on a host of the small things that make family… family.

Ice-T: Why do you think that rap music … doesn’t get the full respect of jazz and blues?

Marley Marl: I think it’s because we’re not banded together like jazz and blues artists. You know, you’ll see reunions with jazz and blues artists. I mean it’s starting to happen now. We’re starting to realize it now. But you see blues artists, they have love for each other…

Basically when we start respecting ourselves and showing homage and getting up there and winning awards and saying “I’d like to just thank Grand Master Flash. I’d like to thank Kool Herc for even starting this so I could be here getting this.” Once that happens and we start showing compassion for the people before us that’s when we’re gonna have respect like that.

I sat down last week and carved out some time to watch Ice-T’s ambitious hip hop documentary, “Something From Nothing: The Art of Rap.” For some reason this short clip with influential DJ and producer, Marley Marl, was what really stuck out to me. It’s just a minute excerpt from the two hour film, but in it he argues this lesson–you need to give respect to get respect.

Extrapolating a bit, I think Mr. Marlon Williams strikes a chord with the idea that it’s not until we respect ourselves enough to recognize what we have been able to build on–whether it’s the roots of hip hop or the foundations for our own work–that we can demand the same respect of others.

Drop the entitlement and spend the time to better understand where you come from. It’s not like we’re really doing anything for the first time.

Pro-tip: If you’re interested, Art of Rap is currently available on Netflix Instant.

For the first time, this June, all 29 CreativeMornings chapters will be hosting their events under one common, unified theme: The Intersection of Arts + Technology , presented in partnership with the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD).

The arts are often seen as a “nice to have,” especially amidst tight budgets. Yet, CreativeMornings believes that it is through mixing arts and design with other disciplines that society can foster the next generation of creative doers and makers.

In an effort to stir up a global conversation, CreativeMornings has partnered with John Maeda, President of RISD and their STEM to STEAM initiative to recognize the magic that bubbles up when Arts and Tech intersect. As part of this special themed month, there will also be a special RISD pop up chapter in Providence, Rhode Island with speaker, Kelly Dobson.

New York hosted Jonathan Harris to kick off the themed month on June 1 for a packed crowd at the Galapagos Art Space in DUMBO.