Excited! 7: SPURS
Trust me, y'all, as the nerrrrdiest of nerds, I’m the LAST person who thought I’d respond to this week by uttering the following:
Friends, let’s talk about sports.
Sports! Sports. And morality. And politics (kind of, sorry). And heroes.
Most cities love their professional sports teams. Some L-O-V-E them, embroidering into the team those values their residents hold dear. The best sports teams are the ones that give people heroes to cheer for and examples to live up to.
In Texas, you'll find one such city, and one such team.
San Antonio, home of the Spurs (five-time NBA champions!), is a town with a rich military heritage. Randolph Field, Fort Sam Houston, Brooks, Lackland. People from all walks of life passed through the gates of these bases as they began their military service; many return to retire there, too.
Gregg Popovich is the coach of the San Antonio Spurs, a coach who’s helped shape the city's beloved basketball team into what they are today. He’s soft-spoken, matter-of-fact, and often laconic in interviews; courtside in games, when muted by the roar of the crowd, he’s livid with purpose.
Popovich—lovingly called “Pop” by San Antonians—might be considered an …unconventional NBA coach. Where many teams focus on a star player, Pop and the Spurs focus on teamwork. Everyone on the team is given a chance to shine. He’s often sat out his starters on away games, resting them up, giving rookies time on the court. Having served in the Air Force himself, Pop encourages his players to think for themselves, to read current events, to be smart about the world beyond the game. Like Pop, the team is ever-humble in post-game interviews; they divert praise to their their fellow Spurs, and the team as a whole.
Teamwork—without flashy star players, dysfunction, or drama—isn’t always popular. Successful Spurs championship seasons seem to correlate with drops in NBA television ratings.
For that reason, I doubt many have read or heard what Gregg Popovich has said lately on politics. Even if you follow sports, his words are boiled down into terse headlines, easily ignored or scrolled past.
Please: take the time to dive beyond the soundbites and check out the full piece—it's articulate, needed, and to-the-point.
Read or listen. (It’s ~6 minutes long.)
(And then read some more, from late September.)
Go ahead. I'll wait for you to come back.
Actual heroes, when you meet them, would deny being heroes. They’re the kind of people who don’t want adulation, but earn your respect through their actions and their service to others. They own their mistakes. They do the right thing, often quietly; they listen; they bravely speak out against injustice and defend those who have been wronged. They look out for their neighbors. They remind you that their success, our success, is NOT something they alone can do, ...but a team effort.
It's no coincidence that the words and deeds of Pop and the Spurs interlock with the core values of our armed forces—values of integrity, service before self, and hewing to high standards. The Spurs are a team fully aligned with their San Antonio community of largely military families. It's a virtuous feedback loop that brings out the best in both players and fans.
And as a fan, I'm extremely grateful. These values, and modeled heroism, aren't a given. Thank you, Spurs. Thank you, Gregg Popovich, for giving words to our conscience. Thank you for decrying hypocrisy, bullying behavior, and racist/misogynist/xenophobic rhetoric in all forms. Thank you for reminding us that, regardless of our political affiliations, we never normalize that kind of behavior—we must hold ourselves, our words, and our actions accountable to high moral standards. In sports AND in life, it's not solely about winning, it's about how you play the game, and how you earn the respect of your teammates and the opposing team. It's about character.
Let's get out there and play a good game.
✊🏿 ✊🏾 ✊🏻 ✊🏽
Thanks to my parents, and to my friend Wilson for indirectly inspiring this conversation on Friday.
It's hard to offer up things to get! excited! about! at the moment, I know, ...but this tinyletter is called "excited to be here!" not "TOTALLY BUMMED ABOUT EVERYTHING AND/OR LIVING IN FEAR," so you get this pep talk today. 😤
What's the status on the myriad code-named projects?
- [✓] ANTHOZOA is done! Provided technical support on two interactives for a new exhibit at the aquarium introducing visitors to the new Research Vessel Sally Ride. We put together both (1) a virtual tour of the ship using Pannellum to showcase 360˚ Panono spherical panorama photos of rooms aboard the vessel and (2) a touchscreen with video interviews introducing visitors to the ship’s crew and their jobs. (AND I got to meet a pickled Bathynomus giganteus!) Should you ever have a touchscreen running Windows 8.1 that you need to lock down in kiosk mode, note: there are a few hoops to jump through.
- [✓] MUSCULUS and SYD were presented at the Museum Computer Network conference!
- MUSCULUS, a collaboration with Miriam and Dre’ from New Mexico Highlands University (building off the EOMAIA poster), was a workshop on using Arduino / Raspberry Pi in museums. We made an Arduino IR sensor people-counter and a Pi push-button video player. Source code and slides are here.
- SYD, a project with Chad, was a 45-minute session on the future of museum technology and the importance of infrastructure. We interviewed 19 museum professionals, from directors, to registrars, to social media strategists, to developers, and many roles in between, then edited them down into a narrative within a collaborative Evernote notebook, and presented it as a “live podcast.” People said very kind things about it and started conversations afterward; an audio recording is forthcoming from the conference’s AV crew.
- [✓] ATREYU has launched, with a minimum of fanfare. Massive thanks to D & Y.
- [⋯] Fixing bugs on ATREYU and building another big feature for release before Thanksgiving. More about ATREYU after that.
- [⋯] Making concept wireframes for HATCHEL for a Wednesday morning presentation.
- [⋯] Finished wireframes for STUDEBAKER; comping designs for next week.
- [⋯] We dropped the ball on ANTELOQUY, hoping to follow up this week.
- [⋯] With Alex, pitched a proposal for an installation for MAILLARD’s first art show; working on art and code after hours for that. Excited because it’s my first OpenFrameworks project and will involve some fun computer vision tracking. And hand-illustrating a lot of birds.
- [→] Trying not to burn hours on MAXELL, but paying attention in the background.
- [→] Nothing to report on RIO GRANDE and COLLINS and HAMMERSTEIN; JULIAN and FYNBOS; BOMBILATE; or BROECKEN. Will return to them in due course.