I’m not really tired of waking up tired. I was, though, a little tired on Thursday morning after two worlds collided for me on Wednesday night at the Starlight in Waterloo.
When I worked at Platform Computing I had a fine manager, Ian MacKay, who was a great supporter of our user experience team. We got along well, and he was a generous collaborator in addition to being an inspiring leader. Ian was, and is, also a man of many other talents, including visual artist and musician. Around the time that I left Platform to join Primal Fusion, he left Platform as well. One of the things that he’s taken on since leaving that company was to return to his roots as a Canadian punk rock pioneer, playing bass and singing in The Diodes. Some of you may remember their catchy hit “Tired of Waking Up Tired”.
Happily, the band played here in Waterloo Wednesday night, as part of a mini-tour that they have underway. I was glad to have a chance to catch up with Ian, along with another friend and former Platform UX colleague who joined me at the show. Hearing The Diodes was fun too. I wasn’t sure what to expect musically from a band that has played very little together in the couple of decades, but they were tight and sounded great.
So which two worlds collided? As with my Ignite talk on metaphor in product design, the Diodes show saw my working life as a user experience professional intersect with my leisure life as a music enthusiast with too many albums in too many formats!