Pecha Kucha Night/OC Vol #1

Pecha Kucha Night/OC Vol #1
Originally uploaded by nguyenduong

Just found this pic of me from last week's inaugural Orange County Pecha Kucha night. A very cool night of presentations made possible by @nguyenduong and @buddingculture that featured such presenters as Dave Swartz of Medl Mobl and Jon Rose, surfer, writer, and photographer. Definitely looking forward to the next one in January.

Barrels in Baja

Today marks my first day back at work after a three day weekend in Northern Baja for a surf trip with some friends from my ad agency as well as some other friends of ours. We try to pull off this trip every quarter but lately the trips aren't nearly as well attended as they once were (before drug cartels started cutting people's heads off, striking fear into the hearts of surfers). This time around we had a decent turn out with 6 guys in attendance and a forecast that said it was going to look like this:

We ended up scoring some great waves in empty line ups at several top secret locations.

The trip was a success. We got overhead surf, uncrowded waves, came back relatively unscathed, and somehow never got pulled over by the policia. I am definitely looking forward to the next one.

Vans Kicks Ass in Q3

Just read today on Boardistan that VF (parent company of Vans, Pro-Tec, North Face, and Reef) has declared a quarterly cash dividend of $.60 per share, an increase of $.01 per share. I don't dabble heavily in the stock market but I do dabble heavily in the action sports industry and am stoked any time a brand rooted in skate and shred culture is kicking ass, especially in such tough economic times. I am also stoked for all of my friends working over at Vans who know that their jobs are secure.

To put it into perspective, Boardistan posted just four posts later that Billabong's profits are down 13% in 2009.

Times are tough out there. Pray for snow.

All in a days work

Worked to design user experience into a product, learned how to make a documentary, saved the world, and learned how to design a great game. And that was just in day one of the Planningness conference.

Looking forward to day two tomorrow.

Mark Lewis rocks for putting this conference together. I will hopefully give a more detailed report on the event after this weekend.

Broken in HB

Went out for a quick surf in HB today before work with a couple of friends. It looked like it was going to be a fun day with some off shore winds, shoulder high waves, and maybe even a few barrels.

About 20 minutes into the session I dropped in on a left, got pitched, landed with my back on my board, and did this...

Kind of a bummer to break a perfectly good board, but on a happy note, I have had an outpouring of generous offers from friends to let me buy a board for cheap, or to loan me one until its feasible for me to buy a new one. I must say I have some pretty nice friends.