g: the early years...

One big omission...

I failed to report on a terrific afternoon Kim and I had in Santa Monica, at an event to launch the new brand and name of CHEC - the non profit we support. Their new name is Healthy Child and they do great things to help keep homes safe for kids.
The event was held at the fabulous home of Steve Glenn. His home is the very first Platinum Leeds standard home in America. And his business - Living Homes - is in the business of making these homes for everybody. As he says, they are "nature made, factory built". They are prefabricated offsite and then the team arrives onsite and puts it together - just like lego, kinda. His home took 8 hours to erect and you just have to watch the tour here. It is beautiful!

Solar Powered Treo

Charging my Treo in the glorious Portland sun. The folks at Reware make this great portable solar power plant. No emissions or messy used uranium to handle. You can strap it to your courier bag or just lay it out wherever to power up your PDA, phone, iPod...way cool!

The kids at work at gDiapers

Spring has sprung and the Village has been out tilling the fields...

A movie launch isn't a movie launch...

...without an after party. gDiapers, Happy Baby and Baby Legs hosted an after party for the aforementioned movie. It was quite the success. We met customers by chance - who were really tall too - which is always a thrill. We ended up having sushi with these guys!
And as a couple who have had two homebirth waterbirths, we were surrounded by like minded people which is always nice. As homebirth now represents such a tiny percentage of all births, if you have had one you tend to be drawn to others who have done birth that way. And while I am by no means preaching - birth is a choice and you need to do it the way you want it - the movie did a great job of setting out where birth has come in 100 years, the medicalization of it and the risks of both hospital birth and homebirth. It was really well put together, again in non preachy way. There is always such a fine line to tread with these kinds of issues. There was a great interview with a really wise French ObGyn who did such a good job of setting out the issues.
Maybe time to have another one...

The Business of Being Born

Wow - what a great movie. It was just the right balance of data and expert opinion revealing the state of birth in the US, real experiences of Mums and Dads and their birthing stories, the view from a midwife and an Obgyn's eye and humour. Yes humour - they had that fabulous clip from Monty Python's Meaning of Life and the machine that goes ping.
I was really surprised you can make a movie that hammers home a point so well while being entertaining and not preachy. Just the facts.
The film is in the top 10 for audience popularity - if it wins the audience choice award, they get another
viewing tomorrow. And then it is off to a Cinemax near you.

Waiting, waiting, waiting

For a movie on birth, there was quite the audience for the matinee showing. And a surprising number of blokes...

A touch of De Niro

Kimmo and I are in NYC for the day - gotta love that JetBlue redeye. With 42 channels free it is just so hard to get any shut eye. We are here as a sponsor of a film that has been shortlisted for the Tribeca Film Festival. The film "The Business of Being Born" is by Rikki Lake of talk show fame. Her first birth involved a 30 hour labour and a world of intervention - drugs, C-section the whole nine yards with lots of machines that go ping. Her second was just the reverse: midwife, at home in a pool. It is a subject close to our hearts. We had both our kids in a pool at home with a midwife. One in Australia and one in the US.
We are setting up for a post launch party in Tribeca and will then choof off to the cinema to see it. Should be fun!

All sizzle, no sausage?

Dot com business plans were derided as all sizzle, no sausage. Joel Makower makes the case for the recent media focus on green business being less bubble-ish. There's much more sausage with all the recent sizzle. Mmmm... is it lunch time yet?

New home page...

Just click here. Thanks to Sue & crew - it looks fabulicious.

Pop Quiz...

Q: What does Lesotho, Swaziland, Papua New Guinea and the United States of America have in common?