We made a commitment this year to go all-in on conferences. It was a worthwhile bet but not one that we’ll repeat moving forward. There are still a couple more this year, too, but next year we’re going to double down on the few that worked and skip the rest. This week, we went to SEETA, one of the conferences that worked best for us in 2024. It helps that it is co-hosted by schools that mean we can drive instead of fly and that we can put on smaller events for during the rest of the year. We generally wait until spring to host events on campus, but we probably will again this school year at at least one of the four participating universities.

I am an introvert who tends to shut down in the face of sensory overload, especially auditory overload. I’m not a big concert person for this reason. Being at a conference, though, requires me to be “on” for hours upon hours and to be talking to people most of that time. Sure I’m able to steal a few minutes here and there in order to find some quiet and recharge, but it’s like your phone being on 5% charge and you only have enough time to plug it in to get up to 10%. Big receptions with lots of people and a wall of sound make this even harder, but I can white knuckle it for a while. And don’t even get me started on the insanity of pumping music into a conference event space.

I’m also still not used to the way people at ETA conferences will walk up to me and start a conversation as if I know them since they’ve watched some of our webinars. It is something of a de facto business development filter for this reason. The best side effect of this parasocial dynamic, though, is that people will self-select and approach me at these events so that I don’t have to guess who I should try to speak with in a crowded reception hall.

Charlottesville was lovely and I wish I had an extra day to explore it more. It was very warm on Friday but we were inside and then the weather was nice by the time the event ended late Saturday afternoon and we joined one of our classmates and his family for pizza. I also walked on UVA’s campus on Sunday morning before driving back. It has more historical buildings than most college campuses, though there was ample construction taking place too, and there were very few people milling about given when I was there. Dinner on both Friday and Saturday were good. Friday, we ate late at a comfort food Southern type of place amongst a cluster of restaurants in an otherwise residential area and Saturday was pizza. I also walked through the downtown area Saturday night. It is definitely a college town, for better and worse.

After yesterday and looking at today’s agenda, I can well and truly say that vacation is over. We are in the midst of a very busy time. I was swamped with work while Bill was away, then the reverse. Now we’ll both be very busy for a time. This is a very different situation to what we faced during parts of last year. A better one. My sleep schedule is more or less back to normal. That took two nights longer than I’d hoped it would take as it is normally much easier to come back from Europe than to go to Europe in that regard. Overall, coming back has been more jarring than I wanted it to be. I was forced into a slower rhythm and appreciated it, but now that is over.

As I predicted in last week’s newsletter, seeing the puffins was the highlight of my trip. I spoke with several other tourists during my stay who were unable to go to Mykines to see the puffins due to choppy seas cancelling the ferry. That means I had a stroke of travel luck on this trip. And there was another when my flight back to Iceland actually took off as that flight was cancelled each of the previous few days before my scheduled departure. I made my tight connection without difficulty even if I was unable to get anything to eat in the airport and had to wait for what became a very late dinner on my body clock when I got home.

The other highlight was an 11 course tasting menu at a seafood restaurant (though the final two courses were chocolate desserts and so wasted on me). It was very expensive though not much more expensive than meals that were not nearly as good. I did not eat at the cousin restaurant that just received two Michelin stars as that would have involved an even greater expenditure. The breakfast at my hotel was also very nice each morning as I loaded up on salmon and rhubarb juice. This was a critical benefit given how limited lunch was on several days on the various tours driving to different parts of the archipelago.

And I cannot conclude writing about the Faroe Islands without mentioning their undersea tunnels. They’ve built several tunnels that go underwater between the more populated islands. They even have an underwater roundabout in one of them, to my knowledge the only such roundabout in the world. You can look up more about that on YouTube if you want. It’s also a pretty wild image on digital maps if you’re into that sort of thing.

I am writing this from a hotel perched above Torshavn, the capital of the Faroe Islands. In almost any other place, it would be just a fishing village. Here, it holds just under half of the population. The Faroes are part of Denmark but are more-or-less autonomous. If you’re wondering where and what they are, the Faroe Islands are a striated archipelago of volcanic rock in the North Atlantic between Scotland and Iceland. The economy is built on salmon farming with some wool production and a budding tourism industry thrown in. It never gets hot here, which is a big part of why I came, and the weather’s defining feature is the wind. Most people risk sunburn on their summer vacations; I’ve been windburned on mine.

Why would I come to a place like this? Several people have asked, so these were the and somewhere I hadn’t been before. There are other places that meet those criteria, but this is the place I chose for this summer. There was also a draw for me in the desolate, wind-swept landscapes that mark this place.

There are almost no trees here. There are also sheep that eat any little seedling they can reach, so it’s not easy to tell if that is entirely the result of weather and wind. There are no land predators on the islands as all mammals were introduced. Naturally, these islands are sanctuaries for seabirds. That is actually one of their main attractions in summer. On Saturday, I took a ferry out to the westernmost island in the archipelago specifically to see the puffins that nest there in a huge colony. The little birds look similar to penguins but can fly, fast if not exactly gracefully, and spend their days this time of year catching fish out at sea and bringing them back to feed their chicks. Watching them might end up being the highlight of the entire trip for me. It was on the way back from Mykines that I got windburned when I calculated that a little sting on my face later would be much preferable to throwing up now on the boat. Later today, I’ll be back on a boat taking in views of sea cliffs on another island. The weather looks calm this morning, so I hope that the seas will be smooth and that I will enjoy it as much as I have most of the other places I’ve seen.

Despite its size, Torshavn packs a culinary punch. I suppose that is to be expected as it is ultimately governed from Copenhagen. All of the restaurants definitely have Copenhagen prices. I’ve had really good food at a few places; I’ve also had to eat two dinners, but I’ll reflect on the food more once the trip is finished. Culturally, the place is more like Iceland than Denmark (I haven’t been to Norway to make that comparison) and the language isn’t Danish at all. According to what one of the guides said, the islands were given to Denmark by the king of Norway a few hundred years ago as a dowry for his daughter. That historical quirk explains those differences so I have little reason not to believe him.

Last weekend, we took advantage of one of the newer airlines offering underserved route pairs to have my brother and sister-in-law fly nonstop to come stay with me. My parents also had already planned to be in North Carolina around the same time, so they extended their stay and drove farther east to join us. I expect that there was some advance coordination, but those logistics did mean both that everyone would be together for a few days and that I’d be saved a trip to the airport on Thursday afternoon.

Since it was my brother and sister-in-law’s first visit to the Triangle, we crammed in a lot of local restaurants: Dim sum; Peruvian chicken; local smashburgers; Persian ice cream; and a fancy new American place that I hadn’t had a reason to visit previously. We visited the farmer’s market on Saturday morning for breakfast pastries and I scrambled to find a coffee shop where Dad could get another cup. As I don’t drink coffee, that was harder than planning all of the various restaurants. It was definitely more driving than I usually do in the course of a weekend and that may have led to a warped perspective and/or disorientation as to where different places are relative to each other in the Triangle, but such costs must be paid sometimes for culinary exploration.

I worked more than I’d hoped on Friday (there was a closing after all and Bill didn’t return until Monday), so they went off and explored some on their own since they had another vehicle. This followed them joining me for an early lunch after they had spent the morning walking along the forested paths through the neighborhood. No one complained to me about the trip, so I’ll take that as a positive.

This week also marked the official closing of a chapter as I handed in my apartment key fob and garage access card at the conclusion of my lease. I’ve now fully moved into my new accommodation and have survived having five people here for ~72 hours. I don’t expect to have any more visitors for a little while, though I do hope to have more on average here than I did while I lived downtown. One of the big differences is that now I have a guest bedroom that doesn’t also double as my office.

Last week I described the goal as minimum viability for my new living quarters. I’d transported some stuff over the weekend but the big moving day was Monday. That I’m covering for both of us with client work meant there wasn’t much time or energy left for unpacking and arranging things. I still worked to make slow, consistent progress, though, and made a bigger push on Saturday.

Now I’ve achieved closer to a normalized baseline. Of course as I sit in my recliner typing this I’m looking at two boxes of decorations that I’ve not yet placed on the shelves they will adorn nor have I put anything up on the walls and so pictures are spread across the dining room table, so the process isn’t exactly complete. There are a few things I still need to purchase to make the space work for me, but I should have those in place within another week or so. Then I should feel the space to be mine. I talked to someone this week about how that part—decorating and settling in—was his favorite part of the whole moving process. While it is certainly better than twisting screws and carrying furniture, I still don’t think I can say I enjoy it. At this point, I just want it to be finished. But maybe that’s just a lesser part of me talking.

All of this is going to be tested in the coming days. I’ll have several guests staying with me so if something isn’t in order they’ll surely point it out and hopefully fix it. I’m not as excited as I’d like to be about family coming here. I’ll mark that down to the volume of work right now. As I described it to a few people, work right now feels like a pie-eating contest where the prize is more pie to eat. I know it’s just for a season and I’ll white knuckle my way through it. It’s certainly a better problem to have than the inverse problem of no work that we experienced at the start of last year.

Last month, I wrote about how much I enjoyed watching Department Q. As I noted in that post, Netflix describes that show as a Tartan Noir. This description marked the coining of a new genre, an offshoot of the novels and television shows of Nordic Noir (only in English). Even Department Q is based on novels set not in Edinburgh but in Copenhagen.

After watching Department Q, I’ve gone further down the rabbit hole and taken on the burden of reading some subtitles (I prefer reading subtitles to watching dubbed audio but I understand many people don’t want to read while watching television) to take in more of a genre categorized by troubled protagonists, unadorned narratives and dialogue, and the bleakness of winter in the far north. Thus far in my limited but ongoing exploration, The Åre Murders gets my highest recommendation.

I don’t like reviews that offer spoilers so I won’t here, but I will offer a teaser of the introduction so that you’ll be able to get your bearings quicker should you watch the show. The plot starts with a suspended Stockholm detective escaping the city for a while by going to her sister’s vacation home in a little ski town in the north of Sweden. Then she meets the local police force and becomes involved in their investigation of two murders when they accept her help.

Perhaps it is seeing the stark wintry landscape shots in the midst of a hot and humid summer here, my growing up in a small town that saw a few incidents of hidden secrets leading to violence, or how the main character is unable to outrun some of her internal demons even after fleeing the city for the picturesque town in which the story unfolds. It’s probably a combination that kept me glued to the television. It’s only five episodes long, which I watched in about a week taking in no more than one per day.

There are multiple transitions coming for the Barlow & Williams team in August. Nothing will be changing with the firm itself. We’re still going to provide great service and fight for clients to complete business sales and acquisitions, but things will be changing in our personal lives. Mine is the smaller transition but I only describe things happening in my life in this column so that’s all you get. I signed a lease on a house this week, which means I’ll maintain the rhythm of moving every two years that I’ve kept for what will now be four occasions. Each move has been shorter: DC to Charlotte; Charlotte to Raleigh; Raleigh to Durham; now Durham to a different part of Durham. Each of those (until now) also saw me move from one apartment to another so this will at least be some change.

This move feels less consequential in many ways. It doesn’t accompany professional change. It doesn’t come with a need to start from zero in my persistent attempts to find/build community. I won’t change many of my regular destinations or weekly routines. Yet in other ways it marks a more pronounced departure. It will be the first time I’ve lived in a suburb. I’ve only ever lived in a small town or an urban environment. Being tired of my current milieu is part of the impetus for this move, but not that long ago I was adamantly against living on a cul-de-sac. I’m not really sure what has changed for me, perhaps just the passage of time. 

I booked movers yesterday to assist me. I abhor the moving process, something I assume is a near universal sentiment. This time I do have the benefit of a two week period where I’ll have possession both of my new space and my current one, which in combination with the shorter distance of this move will allow me to make a few trips myself with the more fragile items. I’ll leave the heavier furniture to the professionals with their box truck. I just have to pack things between now and then.

I like to watch at least one Cubs game per season. Given where I live that is tougher than it was during certain other times in my life, but I still try to do it. That is especially true when the Cubs are good, and at the time of writing they are sitting in first place in the division.

When I checked this season’s schedule, the Cardinals were slated to visit Wrigley Field for the Fourth of July weekend. As my sister-in-law is a Cardinals fan, I pitched the idea of a family trip to Chicago. While that meant that I also got to organize the trip, everyone approved. I flew in on Thursday and everyone else drove in.

We went to the baseball game on Friday afternoon. Wrigley is always magical, the best baseball stadium there is. I booked our accommodation so we could walk to the stadium. We walked around the stadium soaking in the building atmosphere as people queued in line for the bleachers and others milled about in the bars and restaurants around the ballpark. We went into the stadium early to let things build and to go to the concession stand and bathroom before the first pitch. There was a pregame flyover in celebration of the Fourth of July during the national anthem. Our seats were on the first base side in the lower bowl tucked under the upper deck bleachers. This made tracking fly balls a little challenging but I don’t have any real complaints. This was especially the case as the game unfolded. The Cubs hit a franchise record 8 home runs. Headed into the top of the ninth, with the score 11-1, the Cubs even trotted out a reserve infielder to pitch the final inning. The Cardinals scored two runs against the slow batting practice pitching but could muster no more and the game ended 11-3. Fly the W.

Saturday was a different sort of day. In the morning most of us walked to a commercial area set in the midst of the three or four story residential buildings that make up Lakeview/Wrigleyville. Then we regrouped and headed into the heart of the city. Temperatures reached the low 90s so we spent the afternoon ducking in and out of stores along the Magnificent Mile. We stopped for a few obligatory pictures at Millennium Park then doubled back to our dinner spot along the Chicago River. For the evening, all five of us went to the sketch revue show at The Second City, a legendary comedy venue where I wanted to see a performance. Over the course of ~90 minutes the cast ran through at least two dozen sketches, some interwoven with callbacks, some taking minutes to unfold, and others taking thirty seconds or less. It was a very punchy show. There were a few references that I missed, which was bound to happen given how little I watch cable television or listen to pop music. Overall, though, it was a really good show that offered a lot of laughs. Live comedy, much like live sport, brings you into the present in ways that aren’t possible when an experience is intermediated through a screen.

I took part in a group discussion Monday evening. The starting point was a utopian blog post about the future of AI. That blog post is titled “The Gentle Singularity.” It paints a rosy picture of a future like what was once portrayed on The Jetsons, only better. It is a picture that OpenAI needs to keep before the public for its own interest, a picture that I cannot see. Read for yourself if you want to read the AI maximalist perspective. There have been rejoinders from others working to build AI technologies that I find more compelling. But even more, I thought about the older, deeper insight expressed by Dostoyevsky in Notes from the Underground

Shower upon him every earthly blessing, drown him in a sea of happiness, give him economic prosperity such that he should have nothing else to do but sleep, eat cakes and busy himself with the continuation of the species, and even then, out of sheer ingratitude, sheer spite, man would play you some nasty trick. He would even risk his cakes and would deliberately desire the most destructive nonsense, the most uneconomical absurdity, simply to have the right to his own fantastic desires!

That is a much easier thing to imagine. As I sometimes say, with the grammar deliberately incorrect, people is people. I don’t see that changing any time soon.

As for the conversation itself, there was a wide dispersion in the room as to how much people interact with AI tools. I’m hardly a wizard and haven’t tried to vibe code anything yet, but I do keep multiple windows open to converse with large language models and we’ve built simple agents to streamline repetitive workflows. That put me around the bottom of the top quartile in terms of use. I like to hear how people use the tools. I might not be able to use them in the same manner, but hearing ideas from people in other fields is often the source of the greatest insights. I didn’t come away with any breakthroughs, but the conversation did get my mind turning on a few ideas.