More photos on flickr.

My co-conspirator Raphael Grignani and I, with the help of several volunteers, designed, built and launched the Interaction Awards, as a way to recognize and celebrate the great work in our field.

IxDA’s Interaction Awards celebrated their first award winners in a swanky ceremony at the Lord Mayor’s House in Dublin, Ireland. As part of the Interaction12 conference, over 500 people attended the event to applaud 26 inaugural winners, experience the winning projects, and acknowledge the first portfolio of interaction design excellence recognized by the Interaction Design Association.

The Venue:

Raphael and I take the stage:

To mark the occasion, we produced a series of short films about interaction design, our deliberation process, and the winning work, directed by Christian Svanes Kolding, and filmed during the Interaction Awards’ Jury weekend in NYC last November.

Here are a few of the films!

On defining interaction design:

On our inaugural jury:

On our deliberation process:

On what interaction design aspires to:

See more videos profiling the top award winners, and photos from the Awards Ceremony, and see all of the winning projects on the Interaction Awards Winners site. read juror Helen Walter’s wrap up of the awards on Fast Company.

Sunset, Venice beach, a photo by JLB on Flickr.

Puppy, a photo by JLB on Flickr.

Peekaboo, a photo by JLB on Flickr.

This was a few days ago now, but one I’m still feeling several days later. Usually when they say a workout will burn the hamstrings  or the abs, I shrug it off. After Stephen, I didn’t notice my abs until my hamstrings stopped screaming and made room for my abs to be sore. On the board it didn’t sound all that bad, but here’s what it meant:

• 105 good mornings: bending at the hips with straight legs and a barbell on your back, and using glutes, hamstrings and abs to pull back up
• 105 stiff legged deadlifts: bending at the hips with straight legs to pick up a barbell from the floor, and using glutes, hamstrings and abs to pull back up
• 105 knees to elbows: hanging from a bar and using your abs to bring your knees up toward your chest
• 105 sit ups: laying on the ground and using your abs to bring your chest up to your knees

I guess once I write it out it seems obvious. The hero workouts always get you in the end! I did it Rx, which I believe was with 65 lbs? And it took me just under 22 minutes. There was a cut off at 30 finished or not, so I was pretty pleased to be done.

100 ground – to – overhead (50% body weight)
- as soon as you rest the bar, go for a 400m run
- after each run, switch between barbells and dumbbells

How much weight does anyone really want to lift from the ground to overhead, 100x in a row? Certainly not 50% of my body weight, sadly, but perhaps 1/2 of a skinny person would work?  Since I’m having shoulder problems from muscling up my heavier lifts, I decided to take this one a bit lightly, cleaning the weight up and then push pressing it overhead. I went for 55lbs on the bar, and 40lbs with the dumbells. I thought the 20 lb dumbells were a sacrifice because I couldn’t find 25s, but once I borrowed a set  of 25s from someone and found them to be quite a bit heavier than I thought, I was happy to be stuck with 20s.

The way the workout works is this — you cycle as many lifts as you can in a row, and once drop the bar or take 5 seconds rest it’s time to stop and run 400m. I had to row instead, and I’m not sure whether that made it easier or harder, as it takes me about as long to row 400m as it takes a good runner to foot it. After the first 400m, you resume the 100 lifts where you left off, using the dumbells instead of the barbell, then after the next break you go back to the barbell, etc.

Turns out that 55 & 40lbs were pretty light loads. I was able to do 25 clean presses at a time with a pretty consistent pace, taking only 3 400m rows, and I finished the 100 under 19 minutes (18:49), while most people took 25 or 30 minutes. I kept good form more or less, and my shoulder didn’t hurt, so I guess that was idea. But it of course left me thinking I should have done more and it should have taken longer. Lesson here is that no matter how well I do, I’m never happy with scaling.

The 200m farmer’s walk was accompanied by 65lb push jerks and 36 double unders, 4 rounds of each. I’m still avoiding the stress of double unders on my stupid knee, so I had to do 108 singles instead of 36 doubles. I did okay though, finishing 3rd or so in the group at just under 18 minutes.

For a moment I’d considered working out on my own instead of going to class today, and there isn’t a chance in hell I would have worked as hard outside of class. Crossfit is made for people like me who need a clock and at least 1 other person to get anything done.

wallballs 14lb
30-25-20-15-10-5

kettle bell swings 1p
5-10-15-20-25-30

I finished 2nd in the class at 10:51, which was faster than anyone else that day, and really threw me for a loop. I thought for a second I must have counted wrong or skipped a round to have finished so quickly, but I didn’t have a doubt about the numbers as I was going through the WOD, which isn’t always the case. I didn’t realize I was going with any particular speed at the time, I’m sore as hell today, so I guess I did well.