Scott Berkun

Teaching Seattle How to Drive – in 5 minutes

The good folks at Ignite Seattle let me do this fun, ranty talk, pointing out the annoyances of driving in Seattle and how we can fix them. May apply to other cities too.

Very happy to share this: I’ve been wanting to do this talk for a long time.

Redesign the news: an invitation to Seattle

It’s common for everyone these days to bemoan how biased, superficial and misleading news reporting is. And the fall of major newspapers in the wake of the web is oddly seen an achievement. Yes, seeing old things fall can signify change, but it does not guarantee progress.

Are you a developer or designer who cares about news? Who believes quality reporting and information is key to a stable and long-lasting democracy? Do you wish there were better tools for finding, creating and verifying the information we share about the world?

If so, I invite you to sign up for Hacking Seattle News. An event next weekend (10/14-10/16), sponsored by King5 news:

JOIN US! We’re hosting a weekend hackathon with the goal of creating a social-savvy, aggregated news site for Seattle that YOU want to use.

The news industry is ready for a new idea and we’re coming together to build one. In a weekend. Want more social sharing built-in to the news process… or a better way of surfacing content you want to see? Let’s build it.

We’ll be brainstorming, creating, and coding a new news site for Seattle. The winning team will get a cash prize.

All used and created platforms will be open source. Registration is free. Designers and Developers wanted.

Register here.

Help me Teach Seattle How to Drive

Next week I’ll be speaking at Seattle Ignite 15 on August 20th. My topic? Teaching Seattle how to drive.

I was born and raised in NYC and despite living in Seattle for almost 15 years, I’ve still never gotten used to bad driving habits I see all the time.  From the snowpocolypse, to four way stops where no one goes, to camping the left lane, it seems we struggle with the basics of urban driving.

If you live in Seattle, what do you think the biggest deficiencies are in how your fellow citizens drive? If you could get everyone to start, or stop, doing something on the road, what would it be? Leave a comment.

Postmortem: Seattle and Snowpocolypse

About once a year Seattle gets snow, and invariably we do not handle it well. The shock is how, year after year, an entire city seems stunned by how fragile our transportation system is.  And then, during the failure, some people complain that the city didn’t do enough to fix or prevent the problem.

Here’s a postmortem on what happened:

• Our geography sucks. We have hills. It doesn’t take much ice to make hills dangerous. There isn’t much a plow or salt can do in a large city with lots of hills, with once a season snow. And many Seattle-ites have limited first hand experience with cars losing control on hills: they becomes unguided missiles (see videos below).
• All our transportation is surface level. Due to our geography, we have no true subway. Buses run on surface roads and are not immune to surface level problems. I didn’t hear any reports of light-rail issues yesterday, likely because it’s an independent system.
• We have inexperienced drivers. Since it snows once a year, whatever lessons people learn about how ineffective ABS brakes and fancy cars are in bad conditions, they’re forgotten 8 to 10 months later. And as driving home is a (understandably) selfish activity on normal days, people don’t realize the risks they’re taking in aggressively trying to beat the weather to get home.
• Issues have compounding effects. Traffic is comprised of non-linear relationships, meaning it can accelerate faster through the traffic system than people expect. An accident here, can lead to a backed up exit there, and soon there is the equivalent of gridlock on arterials or even highways.
• Plows, police and emergency crews can’t magically teleport through traffic. Once nothing is moving, there is no magic way for buses, tow trucks, or ambulances to get anywhere. We so rarely have bad weather it doesn’t make budgetary sense to maintain a large staff of plows and salt trucks that will sit dormant 95% of the season.
• Thanksgiving/Holiday week’s amplify issues. More people are out and rushing to get things done.

The net lesson is it’s not the amount of snow that matters. It’s recognition of how:

1. Easily traffic flow can fall apart
2. The prime danger isn’t the roads but the other drivers on the road
3. Using a vacation day to avoid the whole thing might be a brilliant move

Yes, many people had no choice yesterday and I empathize. But many of you reading this probably did.

It’s interesting to read through this list of stories shared to the Seattle times – there’s a persistent sense of shock and surprise. I’d love to know how long these people have lived here. And what, if anything, they’ll do differently next time they hear a report of snow in the winter in Seattle.

Here are two videos from last night:

How you know there’s snow in Seattle

There’s barely a half-inch on the ground and look at the highways at 9:15am.

The future of golf: Smash-Putt (Seattle)

If you live in Seattle and like fun you owe it to yourself to check out Smash Putt: a unique arts/sports/golf experience, open for its last weekend of the year (perhaps all time!).

The basic idea: what if you take crazy artists and engineers and let them rethink miniature golf?

You get:

• A full service bar (It’s a 21+ experience, with exceptions on one day)
• Holes that include catapults, power drills and guns
• Experiments in both physics and silliness
• A stellar soundtrack (sometimes)
• Full gallery of the madness here

We went last weekend and had a great time. It’s crowded and chaotic, but totally worth it. For extra fun, it’s in the old Immigration building in downtown Seattle, making for a bizarre, but ultimately fun experience.

This is the last weekend it will run in Seattle. Buy tickets in advance here

($12-15 – they tend to sell out if you wait)