Okay, so today I was supposed to file my first of two field reports written this weekend, the first one my trip to the Lillstreet Center for ceramics, fibers, metalwork and other kinds of applied arts. (I've got a bunch to tell you about it, too, along with 26 photos to share.) But alas, I did something stupid this morning and forgot my bike lock back at my apartment, which means that I now can only do things out today that involve actually sitting next to my unlocked bike and watching it (like while having a coffee at the outdoor seating of Intelligentsia Coffeehouse, which is precisely what I'm doing right now), which means that I can't actually go into the internet cafe and post the Lillstreet photos I want to reference, because I don't want to leave my bike unattended for even 30 seconds, because that's how quickly it can get stolen here in a place like Chicago. (Which sucks, because I have to get my rewritten arts-center business plan emailed to my SCORE liason today as well, which means I have to go all the way home later, pick up my lock, then bike out again to another internet cafe, before finally calling it a day.) Sigh! So then, tomorrow for the field report from Lillstreet, then Wednesday for my other field report, from the "City of Destiny" reading at Quimby's Bookstore Saturday night. (I have another 25 photos to share from that; and I also recorded five audio reports from the event as well, which are live as we speak over at my Blogspot page, [metafeed]. You can listen to them now if you want, and then see photos and read explanations on Wednesday.) And since these are put off for now, today I think I'll tackle instead some of the random notes piling up on my Treo that I've been wanting to get to, following below.

--Okay, so I keep forgetting to mention it, but I had this really great experience a couple of weeks ago - I was invited to be a special guest contributor for a couple of days to this business magazine I really love called Fast Company. How cool is that, exactly? Well, it's actually not as impressive as it might sound at first; basically, their online blog recently celebrated its second anniversary, so their editor (Heath Row) decided to have a "BlogJam," where they invited their readers to pitch story ideas to all run in a two-day period. And they ended up picking something like 75 of these pitches to actually run, with mine being one of them.

So, yeah, I know, I've been featured in some much bigger magazines before; but this is a business magazine, and this is the first time I've ever been asked to write something for a business magazine, so that was kind of a personal thrill for me, to know that I've actually learned enough to at least be taken seriously by a magazine like Fast Company that I admire. And I basically wrote a two-part story about the things I've learned myself over the last year - that is, how to properly educate yourself on all the things you need to know about small business, without actually going to business school. And it's gotten referenced a couple of dozen times now, according to my Technorati watchlist, including by some blog authors I really respect, so that's just all ended up being this really pleasant little experience for me. So thanks again, Heath, for allowing me to be part of the experience this year.

--So have you been following the saga with this FedEx furniture dude, which seems to be the big hot subject on the blogosphere this week? Unfortunately I don't have any of the links handy, so can't point you directly to the writings in question; a simple search at Google should point you to the subject pretty quickly, though. Basically, there's this guy who started up his own freelance consultancy out of his apartment last year, and was so broke from the experience that he couldn't even afford furniture. One of the things, though, that FedEx offers such small-business freelancers such as himself is the opportunity to have shipping boxes sent directly to his apartment, free of charge, just to encourage such self-employed people to use FedEx more. And so FedEx was doing that with this guy, and sending so many that he decided to start building some furniture out of the extra ones. And then he posted photos of his creations (including a full-sized couch and a full-sized bedframe) at his blog, which of course then ended up getting linked to a bunch of times, because they really are some pretty ingenious designs.

And so what was FedEx's reaction? Oh, I'm sure you can guess; that's right, they got all fascist on his ass, and had their lawyers send the guy a cease-and-desist letter about how he can't use FedEx's name and image at his blog, and how they'll sue him if they find out he's been using shipping boxes anymore for purposes other than shipping things. And so now that's become the big story this week, about this little underdog freelancer guy and the big bad FedEx, swooping in and punishing one of their customers for the "crime" of being an obsessive fan of their shipping containers, and showing the rest of the world just how sturdy they actually are.

And, I don't know, I just keep thinking of what just a profound marketing opportunity FedEx blew in this case. I mean, sure, let's face it, legally they had every right to step in and do what they did - FedEx's boxes, after all, aren't meant for making furniture out of, and they also have every right to monitor where their logo and image is being used in public. But now suddenly there are hundreds and hundreds of negative articles on the web about the situation, no matter how legally in the right FedEx is, and how legally in the wrong this guy is.

Much better, I think, if the FedEx guys had stepped in and turned it into a big giant publicity stunt; to decide that they want to reward this customer of theirs, who keeps faithfully using FedEx even though he can't even afford furniture, and show up at his place with a vanful of IKEA crap or something. 'Cause let's face it - if FedEx had shown up at this guy's place with a van full of free furniture (at a total cost to FedEx of a couple of thousand dollars), they could've milked millions of dollars of free publicity out of it, and all of the publicity this time fawning, positive stories.

Or how about going even one step further? A lot of us already know about the hot new subject in the architectural and urban-planning worlds - of the challenge of creating lightweight, modular emergency housing (often out of the same cardboard containers shipping companies use), that can be shipped in by the thousands to places like Indonnesia after natural disasters. Why not use this situation as an excuse to sponsor such an amateur architectural contest? Invite FedEx customers to build their own portable emergency shelter prototype using only FedEx boxes; then run a web page full of examples and explanations; then pick a winner at the end, give him a prize, and then donate some money and resources to an actual relief organization so that they can actually build the structures.

I can't help thinking of just how sweet FedEx would've smelled coming away from this situation if they had done something like this, despite this guy clearly being in the wrong about company material use and trademark use. I keep thinking about what a bunch of clueless bullies FedEx has come off as instead, handling it the way they did, despite them being perfectly within their legal rights to do such a thing. Man, why do so many human beings have to be so fucking stupid, so much of their lives? It really frustrates me sometimes, I tell you.

--Okay, I've decided what the next step in social networking needs to be...albeit, admittedly, I did come up with this idea the other night while stoned, courtesy of a friend of mine. You know how most serious social-networking services break their service up by city, right? So I can register there that I live in Chicago if I want, and only get notices and search results that are specifically for Chicago. And you know how many of these services are now starting to sponsor regular physical activities in certain cities, right? So once a month, for example, I can go down to some hipster bar and actually meet up with random other members of the service, and bring a whole new layer of intimacy and networking to the mostly online service.

So, I've decided, one day soon one of these services is going to get all smart, and build actual permanent physical locations in, say, five or six of the largest American cities. And they'll be exactly like those old "Battletech" retail centers from the 1990s, that I used to be so obsessed with and have written about here before; just this interestingly-designed loitering space, hooked up to a cafe or retail center, where the most regular of their customers could simply hang out with other members and form the most hardcore of their customer social scenes.

I keep thinking about how great it'd be if, say, Dodgeball had an actual Chicago physical location, just like a small-scale cafe or something, where I could hang out, meet up with other Dodgeball members, use Dodgeball software for free while there, etc. And then you have a Dodgeball center in New York as well, San Francisco, etc., so that (for example) when I visit NYC this October, I can stop by the center there and meet yet other Dodgeball members. And then each of these centers could also sponsor performances by local bands, partner with local hipster weeklies, do all these really attention-grabbing promotional events, which tie directly into the online service they're providing.

Who's with me on this, people? Who's going to be the first social-networking service to offer something like this? 'Cause I want to be a customer there!

--Hey, so I finally got to check out the new book Hacking Movable Type, written by some of the insiders and core programmers associated with Six Apart, the company which owns the type-engine service. And boy, sure enough, the title lives up to its goddamn name - this is a highly technical book about doing legitimately impressive things with your local MT build, including creating your own plug-ins, customizing your particular install, and building from scratch such popular commercial applications as Flickr-style photo sharing. Now, don't get me wrong, most of it concerns writing your own Perl modules, which just goes right over my head and is of no real use to me in particular; but, just in case you're like me and have been following the pre-publication news about this book on the web, and have been curious about whether it really is as geekily delicious as the pre-publication news made it sound, you can now take it from at least me that it is. Nerds unite! And when are one of you amateur developers, by the way, going to finally invent podcasting software for my fuckin' Palm, man? That is, something like iPodder that can accept podcast RSS feeds, and will actually download the audio files directly through my Treo's internet connection in the middle of the night, while I'm not using it, so the files will be ready to listen to the next morning? When oh when will I actually get to use such software on my Palm, man?

--Ugh - I have a crush on one of my online readers. Well, not a "crush" so much, per se, but I do find her just awfully cute, and she's always posting photos of herself at her Flickr account in these goofy little sexy poses. Sigh. And of course, she lives so far away that there's just no chance of us actually meeting up. Sigh! No, I'm not telling you who it is!