Improv Everywhere and the power of collaboration

I've recently been working a proposal for an innovation program at work. Today, I met with one of my peers to discuss it and he suggested adding an element of competition to the program as a means to drive quality and interest.

I recoiled at the suggestion. My reaction was something like "Competition is such a cheap way to drive people, the value created through collaboration is much more interesting." I was thinking of the work of Improv Everywhere, a group I first heard about on This American Life. Their original No Pants stunt is now an annual event in New York City.

When I got home, I set about reviewing the work they've posted on their site, and I ran across a couple of "missions" that made me so happy I wanted to cry. First, "Rob!" in which they turn a significant part of a baseball stadium into willing collaborators. And second, "Best Game Ever," in which the participants in little league baseball game are gifted with what may well recall as one of the best days of their lives.

More collaboration, less competition. Truly a goal worth striving for.

Tomatoes and canning

M and I recently read "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" by Barbara Kingsolver for a book club, and we were inspired to try the canned tomato sauce recipe therein.

We started out by canning a ha'bushel of tomatoes into 7 quarts of Kingsolver tomato sauce. "Canning" for historical reasons means putting something into glass jars in a sterile way, and boiling them so that you don't die of botulism. Kingsolver emphasizes that it's important to preserve the acidity of the recipe, so you're not supposed to mess with it. This turned out to be about 7 hours all told given our equipment, i.e. 1 hour per quart of sauce, i.e. a pain in the ass.

However, the farmer's market tempted us into more tomatoes, so we canned another bushel of tomatoes into 17 quarts of ..well, canned tomatoes, using a Fannie Farmer recipe which was basically tomatoes and salt.

More temptation pulled us into another ha'bushel, but this time we decided to make S's uncle's sauce. Since we didn't know if it is canning-safe, we've been eating some and freezing some. It is awesome. We've made two 4-quart recipes. A lot of water boils off, and it turns into 3 quarts or so. It's so good!

All told, we've probably cooked more than 100 pounds of tomatoes in the past 4-6 weeks. (A ha'bushel is ~25 pounds.) If you're not, you should really be buying farmer's market tomatoes, you lazy Seattle alcoholics. (j/k?)

Embarassed of my Minnesota heritage

JR and I proudly wear the badge of our former Minnesota citizenship out here in Seattle. Or rather we did, until Michele Bachmann started spouting off.

It's pretty tough to convince our West Coast friends that Minnesota isn't a bunch of poorly-educated, ill-informed hicks when Michele keeps spouting her verbal diarrhea. Can you remaining Minnesotans please get this neanderthal out of office?