Another day late on the musings, mainly because…
Seattle Politics and Sports
…I wanted to see what the City Council would do on the vote to vacate a deserted alley behind a strip club, in order to clear the path so someday it would be possible to build a $500 million arena. This is one of those votes that would only be newsworthy in Seattle. Not a vote on building an arena. Not a vote on financing an arena. A vote on whether or not to SELL – not give away – an abandoned alley to the would be developer of the project. This decision is so simple to make, it would literally take a group of misfit buffoons to be fooled into voting the wrong way. Well Ladies and Gentlemen, I bring you the Seattle City Council. According to the Seattle Times, three of the people voted against vacating the street because they didn’t like how another Council Member was being treated on social media. Yes, we have the only politicians in the country who cast their vote based on how social media is treating their friends. It’s just maddening.
Personal Life
I mostly write about thoughts, observations and rants here, but it probably is worth mentioning that I joined an Australian company called Whispir. Very cool technology being used extensively in Asia. The Americas team is just getting off the ground, so it should be a fun experience. It probably also means that since I’m not going to be building a content development agency, I probably don’t need to write a lot of content. Just enough to keep up the SEO rankings (and rant about the Seattle City Council.)
Sports
The Mariners keep winning. But man it’s hard to root for them when they did so much work to keep the new arena from being built. How do you support the game of baseball but protest the Mariners management? I think I’m simply going to take a little break from them and explore things like hiking and such on days I would normally go to games. Let me know if you want some of my tickets.
Tech Events
The Geekwire Awards are on May 12. Always a fun event. Usually sells out, so buy your tix now. (Coincidentally, it’s being held on a piece of property that at some point the Seattle City Council would have had to give away to Paul Allen so he could build the EMP there.)
Consider a typical 5th grade game. If we were to enforce all the rules in the NFHS rule book, the ball would never cross half-court because we would call travel violations on every possession. Nobody wants to sit through that. Instead, we have to balance where the rules must be enforced and when to let them slide for the sake of the kids trying to learn the game. 
We need to apply the same logic in a high school game. Although our tolerance for violations narrows a bit, we still have to consider the skill level of the players. Our 3A state champion team is probably going to have a different skill level than a rural 2B team with 6 varsity players. We have to figure out how to manage that gap in skill sets every single game. 
But remember, youth and high school sports are for the kids. In addition to being competitive events, they are teaching opportunities and a way for your kids to gain confidence. Our decisions might be different than yours, because we are working hard on blending a need to enforce the rules of the game while considering the quality of the experience.
