A little breaking news from my world, via the executive editor of The Seattle Times:

(Eek! So am I!)

Working on some columns already.

Stay tuned. This should be fun.

The Jitterbug: Could old tech help me rein in the new?

I’m a big fan of honesty. So when I started my GeekWire column about how we’re still using our phones while we drive, despite all the science and stats and intentions, I knew I’d have to admit that I’m very much a part of the problem.

And I did.

I knew what that would mean. I’d be exposed as the culprit as well as the messenger. Though also, in a big way, the addict. Like a GeekWire editor pointed out, “This column reads like the first of the 12 steps.”

I’m glad I wrote it. A lot of you understood the temptation and offered some solid tips to tackle it. (Check them out; they’re great. And thank you!)

So, after all the back-and-forth, I think I’ve got a pretty solid two-part plan to kill this tech habit for good:

1. Ride with the phone in the trunk, beyond my reach and that of my piddly self-control. Some of you suggested I put it in my bag or the glove compartment instead. But that’s too tempting. Trust me.
2. Buy (groan!) a dashboard GPS device that tells me where I’m going. Following turn-by-turn directions is the number one reason I hold and use my phone while I drive. This should take care of that.

So far, Part 1 of the plan shows promise. My iPhone has spent every drive since the column ran in the trunk, and I’ve sent Glympses to whoever I’m meeting before I go, so they know where I am — and that I’m driving — in case I’m late or they’re trying to reach me.

There is one possible pitfall. Nate Tepp brought up that leaving my phone out of reach could mean trouble in an emergency. An interesting point. Then writer Kelly Clay suggested over lunch that I get a drop-dead simple phone to call 911 if needed. “Get a Jitterbug!” fellow writer Hanna Olsen — whom I’d just met, and is awesome — added.

Hm. Maaaaybe.

Pirate Captain's secret to success: Don't think; just do.

Tonight I found wisdom in moving clay.

Jason and I saw the claymation movie “The Pirates! Band of Misfits” downtown. Think “Pirates of the Caribbean” meets “101 Dalmatians,” plus any of a thousand films in which the protagonist works so hard to be liked that he forgets what really matters –”who you are inside.”  Aw.

Just before the final showdown, this protagonist pirate hears how unlikely success will be against what are of course enormous odds. It’s impossible, a character with far more brains than brawn points out. The protagonist laughs him off.

“It’s only impossible if you stop and think about it.”

I used to believe that the amount of thought you put into something was always directly proportional to the insights you’d gain from it. Now I’m not so sure. Lots of thought is great when it’s focused and driven, when you’re tackling a problem or working to understand something external. But when it comes to weighing decisions about what can and should be done — particularly what can and should be done by you — you reach a point where the toxic tendencies inside your own psyche actually outweigh the benefits of analysis. We’re human and full of self doubt.

This is the thing that makes characters like James Bond so cartoonish and so damned appealing: They’re missing any shred of insecurity, any realistic lack of confidence. Their minds and guts never conflict, and that’s how you know they don’t exist.

This afternoon I met with a journalism student whose passion and sheer sharp talent make me know she’s going places. She brought up her anxiety about leaving school to jump into an unpredictable career, and all the tremendous decisions she’ll have to make to build it. Where, in the face of all that uncertainty, will she find confidence?

I told her about my first gig out of college as a cops reporter at the Houston Chronicle. Starting a couple days after Hurricane Katrina drew 150,000 New Orleans evacuees to the city, having only written one story on a true daily deadline in my limited rural New England interships — I studied sociology, not journalism — I bumbled my way through the first months of that so badly that looking back I’ve wondered how the hell I didn’t give up, like, 100 times. In talking to the student I realized what it was — a brute, boneheaded willfulness that, I swear, slapped my brain every time it tried to measure too exactly the depth of the hole I was in.

It didn’t seem boneheaded at the time, of course. Being a strong student at college had taught me a great strategy for success: learn how to get the A and don’t stop fighting until you get it. That didn’t work at the Chronicle. At all. I couldn’t cram my way to a great article. I couldn’t read about the cops beat and master the next day’s work. Journalism can’t be learned by studying, but by doing. My formula was all wrong and I didn’t know it. Thank God. Because the fight I had in me, senseless as it was, was what kept me going until I finally figured some things out.

I’m a fan of reason and knowledge and good deep thought, so it’s weird to arrive at this interpretation of my own past. My ignorance saved me? Really? “Pirates” screenwriter Gideon Defoe was just telling a joke, for all I know, riffing off a convention seen in just about every action/adventure movie where you know that if the hero actually thought about what he was doing, he’d think better of it (and where would be the fun in that?).

But there’s wisdom to that proud pirate’s line. A backward, paradoxical truth. Don’t think — just do. It may surprise you.

After we’d pulled into our driveway and talked a few minutes, I put on my sweatshirt and reached for the door. But Jason stopped me.

“I want to listen to the rain.”

It sounded strong. Loud, sure beats on the windshield and roof. I closed my eyes, snuggled under my sweatshirt’s thick hood, and focused.

The night I met Jason, four and a half years ago, I talked to one of his friends about the rain. I’d moved to Seattle 10 months earlier, and it was a go-to topic with natives. I gave my usual spiel about missing the sun and getting down in the gloom. He said I had it all wrong. I should hear the rain more. It has, he said, an “aural beauty.”

Ever since, listening to the rain has been an exercise in appreciating this city for everything it is and everything it’s not. I can wish for fewer clouds and clearer days all I want. It’s not going to happen. In any good relationship, both parties have to recognize things about the other that just are, and leave them be. Seattle isn’t a setting to me, a dead plastic backdrop to my life. It’s a partner.

Love, I think, can’t suffer perfection. If everything agrees, there’s nothing to learn. If there’s nothing to learn, there’s nowhere to grow. If there’s nowhere to grow, there’s no way to love. It’s not real when it’s so easy.

It was a cold rain tonight. It got my feet wet in my sandals, and stung through the cotton of my sweatshirt and pants. But it made the warmth of the house feel softer, better.

I know love as a choice, not a reaction. I love Seattle, the good and the bad. It’s alive to me; flawed, ambitious and human.

As soon as I’d shut the door, I looked forward to curling up in bed by the window, and hearing its rain lull me to sleep.

If someone had told me the idea of the Bushwick Book Club, I would have shaken my head and thought, “Nah. Too hard. Too cool. Couldn’t happen.”

Sometimes it’s good to be wrong.

Tonight Jason and I saw a Bushwick Book Club Seattle performance of Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451″ at the beautiful Columbia City Theater. That’s right. A book club performance. Rather than sit around and talk about a book, participants in the Bushwick Book Club hear local artists play original songs inspired by a book.

I know. Awesome, right?

I hadn’t read “Fahrenheit 451″ since high school, so there I was, reciting plot points off the 1953 dystopian novel’s Wikipedia page as Jason drove us to down I-5 and to the venue.

It was enough. Bushwick shows don’t explore the details of a book, it turns out, as much as its emotional truth. By the time the lights came up, two songs had moved me to tears — the last, by Robert Deeble, to near sobs — and I walked out of the theater feeling, deeply, a beautiful thing: that our ability to tackle ideas is among the most important things we have.

Thanks to our friends Ale and Drew for — once again — introducing us to something that makes us appreciate people, this city — hell, humanity — more than we had before.

The next Seattle Bushwick show, March 29, will feature music inspired by the graphic novel “The Watchmen.” We are so there.

As if I don’t surround myself enough with geeks and geekdom, here I am at SXSW.

I arrived last night — direct Alaska Airlines flight from Sea-Tac with enough fellow Seattle festival-goers to make us all feel like we were on a special field trip.

In a way, we are.

This morning, while sitting at a table near a precious set of plugs in the Austin Convention Center, a festival newbie asked what it’d been like to come the last three years. That’s when I realized — I’ve never come in the same role twice.

The first year, I was a reporter for seattlepi.com, the largest U.S. metro daily to go online-only, after the Seattle Post-Intelligencer shut down. I spoke on a panel with great folks in the business (Will Sullivan, Jesus Diaz, Moka Pantages) about getting things fast while getting things right — a big challenge in the real-time, instant news universe.

Last year, I came while working as outreach director for Intersect, a Seattle-based startup building a social storytelling platform. I was an evangelist, in part, but still attentive to the tech topic that moves me the most — communication for the common good.

This year, I’m wearing two hats. I’m helping out the team at Trover, a Seattle-based photo discovery app and one of my clients, put on some community building activities at the festival. And — quite separately — I’m keeping an eye out for great quick stories and great quick moments to share on Seattle-based tech site GeekWire.

It’s amazing, how many emails I’ve gotten from brands, PR pros and entrepreneurs since I’ve written and tweeted that I’m here as press. Friskies emailed that they’re hosting a tournament in which a cat — an actual cat — faces off against human opponents. If I weren’t madly allergic, I’d be tempted to check it out.

A big goal this year — apart from learning as much as I can about tech things I love — is to stay healthy. Or, in the slightly starker terms I used in my pre-SXSW GeekWire post, to not die. After one day, I’d say I’m averaging a C+. I skipped breakfast, went to bed after 4 and forgot to have lunch ’til after 3 (at which point I had what Jason, my husband, immediately proclaimed a great band name: “bad taco”). A water bottle, a bag trail mix, a couple tums and — yes — the geektastic adrenaline that runs like a current through this whole space, saved me from feeling the worst of all that. And the nap. The nap definitely helped.

Tomorrow morning, the SXSW Interactive Festival officially begins. Where today I could walk the halls of the convention center, tomorrow I’ll join the throngs and crawl.

Stay tuned. This should be fun.

I spent the weekend in Phoenix, attending the second of what I hope remains a recurring annual event with a funny name — NewsFoo.

Put on by O’Reilly Media with the help of the Knight Foundation and Google, this ~150-person unconference (read: most powerful event format when done right) gathered minds from journalism and technology for two days of serious and seriously laid back thinking about anything and everything new in news.

With nonstop conversations with some incredible people (I am not worthy!) and nightly rounds of the blockbuster geek conference game “Werewolf,” it also left a lot of us exhausted.

Before I take a nap (seriously — or maybe I just turn in?), here are a couple of thoughts that have emerged so far from the mix of insights I heard at NewsFoo and the contents of my own messy mind:

• When you have data, you have to think beyond the story. Better than a story is an interactive feature that lets readers explore the data. Better than an interactive feature is a tool that lets them compute, calculate and better understand the world to come based on that data. How can news be more useful?
• When seeking revenue — and I am so sure of this — you also have to think beyond the story. What products or services would your community value? The Texas Tribune host popular newsmaker breakfasts. The Chronicle of Philanthropy offers webinars. The Seattle Times sells a college football fan app. BostonGlobe.com offers a simpler reading experience. The Chicago Tribune puts on a regular ticketed variety show. (I led a session on this, and thanks to the amazing folks in attendance, my three examples turned to ~15. Thanks to Elise Hu, Dean Putney, Andrew Phelps, Brian Boyer, Jon Bruner, Baratunde Thurston, Dean Jonathan Dube and everyone who stopped by for a great discussion).
• Journalists can combat fear-mongering and other ailments by leveraging their knowledge, taking a risk and taking up a voice. We’ve sat safely in neutrality in the past, saying something only when someone else has said it. But what if we see it, and it’s too important not to say? (Thanks to Jay Rosen and danah boyd for helping flesh that out)
• The more you know your community and the more narrowly they are defined, the more deeply you as a journalist or news organization will be able to serve them (and the less a cold metric like raw page views will need to matter).
• Let’s not kid ourselves: a terrible news consumption experience can ruin otherwise wonderful content. If it’s clunky, choked with ads, a bad fit for the device it’s read on, or otherwise distracting or incongruous, it’s less effective.
• You can’t deny coming changes; you anticipate them. One trend I’d not heard of but am now convinced will grow: drone journalism. (Thanks to Matt Waite for the introduction.)

P.S. — I gave an Ignite talk at the conference Saturday night about why I’ve decided to unplug one day a week (’cause yes, I’m actually doing it!). Stay tuned for the video.

Tiffany Shlain wants everyone to take a weekly day off gadgets

I felt so energized this weekend after talking to filmmaker Tiffany Shlain. And not just about the power of conversation, the subject of my latest GeekWire column.

In our conversation at the Napa Valley Film Festival Friday, she reiterated what she had told viewers after a screening of her latest film, “Connected: An Autobiography of Love, Death, and Technology:” that she unplugs completely from technology for one day a week, and believes everyone should do the same.

To her, unplugging isn’t about losing stress and obligations. It’s about gaining perspective. It’s thanks to her routine unplugging, she says, that she acknowledges and feels daily grateful for the amazing capabilities connected technologies provide.

I hadn’t thought of it quite that way before. At least, not deeply. But I’m convinced she has a point — and not by any means a new one.

Shlain takes her weekly day off from tech on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath. The tradition of the Jewish day of rest, she explained, is not just about taking a break from life, but about gaining perspective on what it means to be living. Time off leads to a better understanding of the time you’re on.

So today I asked on Facebook: Has anyone done this — committed to taking a day off connected technology every week? Should I try it? The response was encouraging. Check it out here.

It’s no secret I’m a nut for connectivity tools — especially the ones I carry around in my pocket.

“I give you 2 hours max!” wrote my friend Nadja.

But who knows? I may just give this routine unplugging thing a whirl….

Former Pixar CTO Oren Jacob shares stories about his former boss.

On Sunday I was in California at the Napa Valley Film Festival, attending the Tweethouse, an event focused on communication innovation that my husband’s company, the Parnassus Group, puts on at various larger conventions and festivals throughout the year.

Oren Jacob, entrepreneur and former CTO of Pixar, was one of the speakers. For over an hour, he held the room with breathless stories about someone he worked with — someone who is arguably the most captivating figure of the year: Steve Jobs.

Among all of Oren’s recollections of Jobs’ leadership, one stood out:

“You never left a meeting thinking, ‘What did he mean by that?’”

Clarity is complicated in business, especially, I’d imagine, when you’re at the head of one of the most revered companies in the world, leading some of the most fiercely brilliant minds. It must be easy to go on and on, leaving sensitive issues vague and employees scrambling to extract their own meaning. But something about hearing that the great Steve Jobs managed to be straightforward with his team made me think — maybe clarity in not as hard to come by as I think.

Point to Steve.

From writer Larry Carlat and the New York Times, “Confessions of a Tweeter” is a must-read for anyone who’s ever felt even a little a bit burdened by social media. Lord knows I have, much as I appreciate Twitter and all the amazing connections it’s helped me make over the years. Carlat writes:

Soon my entire life revolved around tweeting. I stopped reading, rarely listened to music or watched TV. When I was out with friends, I would duck into the bathroom with my iPhone. I tweeted while driving, between sets of tennis, even at the movies. (“I love holding your hand in the dark.”) When I wasn’t on Twitter, I would compose faux aphorisms that I might use later. I began to talk that way too. I sounded like a cross between a Barbara Kruger installation and a fortune cookie. I posted every hour on the hour, day and night, using a Web site that enabled me to tweet while asleep.

It was an obsession. And like most obsessions, no good came of it.

However much or little you relate, the piece is a good reminder to keep control as you’re swept up in the stream.