For a little while, I’m not going to think about The Uncertain Future of Apple, or What This Means for The iPhone. Instead, I’m going to think about how Steve Jobs changed my life, and probably yours, too.

His vision of a computer for the rest of us. His belief in ground-breaking design. His concept of the computer as the hub of a digital lifestyle (and more recently, as just another device in a networked lifestyle). His insistence on technology that just works (a mark Apple admittedly still sometimes misses… but compared to its competitors?). That all did at least as much as any technical innovation to spur the ubiquity of computers and the adoption of the consumer Internet.

All of that helped make the work I do today possible. It has helped to shape the world my children are growing up in. And if my vision diverges from his in some pretty key areas, I also have to admit it draws even more heavily on it in others. As much money as I’ve sent his way over the years thanks to Apple’s products and services, I still owe Steve Jobs a huge, huge debt.

Thinking about Apple’s future can wait a while. For now, I wish the man only the best on what I suspect is a very tough road ahead.

I probably shouldn’t have been so shocked by this morning’s news that Jack Layton has died at the age of 61. At his announcement last July, when he told Canadians he was stepping aside temporarily as NDP leader to fight a new incidence of cancer, you needed only to look at him to know that struggle was a serious one.

But I’m still reeling from the news, maybe because Jack always radiated so much vitality, in person as well as on camera.

There are people who knew Jack far better than I did, who worked with him much more closely and over years, instead of the month and a half or so that I can talk about. They’ll have much more to say about Jack Layton and his legacy; for now, I’ll just offer this.

As his speechwriter in the 2004 federal campaign, there was always that thrilling moment when he would take the words I’d written an hour or two before, and lift them – not just from the page, but beyond the podium. There’s speaking as an obligatory act, speaking as performance, but rarely a politician can turn speaking into a way of genuinely connecting with an audience, and that’s what I saw the few times I got to watch Jack deliver one of those speeches in person.

While I did most of my speechwriting from the Ottawa headquarters and from my hotel room, I got to sit with him for a while on a flight to Whitehorse, as we talked about a few of his upcoming speeches – in particular, the one he’d be giving to the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. Although he’d left municipal politics behind a few years ago, his passion for Canada’s cities hadn’t dimmed a bit. And I don’t think I’ve ever spoken to anyone with as much focus, determination and confidence in what he was saying.

We spoke a few times after that flight in the run-up to the FCM speech, and he had me speak to several other people as well. In strict electoral terms, it was probably much more time than the speech’s likely impact warranted. But Jack was devoted to urban policy. And while the speech veered into wonkish territory – always a danger in an election, where you risk either rolled eyes from reporters or an ambush from opposition researchers eager to seize on an out-of-context detail – it was also very much a reflection of the man who delivered it.

Jack died too young, never having had the chance he’d earned to lead that historic Official Opposition in Parliament. If he allowed that enormous unfairness to cause him any bitterness, it doesn’t show in his final message to Canadians.

 Canada is a great country, one of the hopes of the world. We can be a better one – a country of greater equality, justice, and opportunity. We can build a prosperous economy and a society that shares its benefits more fairly. We can look after our seniors. We can offer better futures for our children. We can do our part to save the world’s environment. We can restore our good name in the world. We can do all of these things because we finally have a party system at the national level where there are real choices; where your vote matters; where working for change can actually bring about change. In the months and years to come, New Democrats will put a compelling new alternative to you. My colleagues in our party are an impressive, committed team. Give them a careful hearing; consider the alternatives; and consider that we can be a better, fairer, more equal country by working together. Don’t let them tell you it can’t be done.

My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we’ll change the world.

I dropped in on SIGGRAPH on Wednesday and, at Alex’s recommendation, checked out the SANDDE system at the Emily Carr University booth.

SANDDE – which stands for Stereoscopic ANimation Drawing DEvice - bills itself as “the world’s first freehand stereoscopic 3D animation software”. What that boils down to is you sit in front of a sensor, moving a stylus in the air while you view a screen through 3D glasses, and watch as a three-dimensional drawing takes shape.

Munro Ferguson, who demoed the system, walked me through some very basic line drawing. (One fun aspect to all of this: the controller for this insanely sophisticated device is the stylus for a Wacom Bamboo, their consumer-grade drawing tablet.) Between rotating the pen to alter the line width, and moving it forward and backward to achieve depth as well as my usual 2D drawing, I found myself concentrating harder than I have in ages.

But I was also more thoroughly absorbed in the sheer process of drawing than I have been in a long time, too. This feels like a completely new medium, and not one where I feel nearly as sure of myself as I do with a piece of paper and a Pigma Micron.

I’m not just talking about technical skill which I gather starts to gel after about a week of using it. I mean the graphic language of 3D compared to 2D, and the way you tell a joke or a story in pictures. Can a gag cartoon – which relies so heavily on that sudden spark of realization and unexpected connection – work as well in a 3D world, which seems to lend itself more to exploration and unfolding?

If you’re in Vancouver for SIGGRAPH, then drop by the Emily Carr booth and see what you think.

Someone may have pointed you to this blog post because you complained that someone’s clip in a news story failed to address something. You may have said something like:

• “She went on about the problems with the highway project, but completely ignored this study showing its amazing benefits.”
• “He was so full of compassion for the poor criminal, but not one word about the victims!”
• “Typical politician – lots of big promises, but no way to pay for them.”

Or words to that effect.

Okay, here’s the thing. When you get interviewed by a reporter, you can talk for 20 minutes about the victim, and then take 20 seconds to acknowledge the social context of a crime. Debunk a study point by point, then as an aside talk about a related issue. Lay out a comprehensive financing plan for a proposal, and then summarize the proposal itself.

… And the reporter can then decide to use that 20-second clip, that related issue, that proposal summary, and nothing else

And often, there’s nothing wrong with doing that. It isn’t the reporter’s job to offer a comprehensive picture of an interview subject’s opinions on a subject; the job is to illuminate the subject itself. If that 20-second clip offers the most articulate, compelling expression of an important perspective on that subject… well, in it goes. If the rest of the stuff the interviewee said doesn’t really fit in with the story, or was said better by someone else the reporter quotes, snip.

Sometimes, I should add, the subject is too complicated for the kind of story the reporter feels able to tell (either because of their own skills, or their estimation of their audience’s sophistication), and they dumb it down by leaving some crucial stuff out. Scientists will likely be nodding in rueful agreement right about now. And once in a while, it’s pretty hard not to think there’s some personal animosity or a political agenda at work. It happens. (Happily, neither the dumbing down nor the animosity has happened to me in quite a while.)

The upshot? The next time you see a clip of a politician, or a professor, or a celebrity, or anyone who seems to be expressing only one point of view, don’t assume that’s all they said on the subject. Or that the format of the interview let them say everything they wanted to.

Five years ago this summer, in a boardroom at Vancity, William Azaroff was unveiling a new online community to an audience of Vancouver-area bloggers — a community we had worked with Vancity to conceive, build and launch. Also in attendance (maybe explaining his later affection for computers and gadgets): our one-week-old second child.

Today, that child is his own amazing human being, and if you get me started on just how wonderful he is, I won’t shut up — which is parental pride at work.

And I feel a shadow of that parental pride toward that online community we were launching half a decade ago this month, called ChangeEverything.ca.

When you create an online social project, and then step back and let your client run with it, it’s not that different from watching a beloved child leave home as a young adult. You fret, you worry, you check in… but most of all, you can’t wait to see who (or, in the case of our online communities, what) they become.

Three of the online projects we’ve helped to build over the past few years passed some pretty important milestones recently — kind of the equivalent of hearing that a grandchild is on the way.

With one project, it’s a profound transformation; with another, a rebirth; and with a third, a huge step forward to a whole new level of impact.

We’ll be blogging about each one over the next few days. But for now, I’m struck by how apt the comparison is between building a community and raising a child.

You can provide infrastructure (whether it’s a server or a house). You can manage content (blog posts or books, videos or video games). You can monitor metrics (analytics or report cards) and respond accordingly. You can offer guidance, set and enforce rules, and give them all the love in the world.

But in the end, you can neither determine nor predict where they’ll go. It may be that they veer off in a much different direction than you’d planned, or surprise you with some completely unexpected ability. They will become their own amazing, astonishing, wonderful organism.

And you won’t be able to shut up about them.

Sachi and Lee LeFever’s company Common Craft has reinvented itself a few times… and each time, they just get more and more useful. From an online community consulting firm, Common Craft turned into a creator and provider of simple, charming and monstrously popular explanatory videos – starting with the now-famous RSS in Plain English.

Now they’ve relaunched Common Craft with a membership model for anyone who wants to help educate others. Join for a reasonable fee (there’s a reduced rate for schools and non-profits) and you gain access to the entire Common Craft library, which you can use in presentations or embed on your site.

There are a lot of reasons I’m delighted by this latest evolution, not the least of which is my happiness at seeing friends succeed. But maybe the biggest one is this:

Nearly every traditional business model for content creation is in turmoil these days. Books, newspapers, television, movies, music — all of those industries are scrambling to cope with the challenges of a new and dynamic digital world. So when someone comes along who can create something terrific, who can do it really well, and can turn that into a viable business, it offers real hope for anyone who wants to earn a livelihood from their creative talents and skills.

Maybe, on a good day, I could whip up an explanation of what I mean using paper cutouts and a whiteboard. But I think I’ll leave that to the experts.