Last Day in Winnipeg

Winnipeg Coffee and Code

Winnipeg was the seventh of eight cities that I’m visiting on the TechDays cross-country conference tour (I’m visiting the next and final city, Calgary, next week). TechDays visits take up the better part of the week, with setup and speaker dinner on the Monday and the conference on Tuesday and Wednesday. Thursday is usually reserved for a little get-together of my creation called “Coffee and Code”.

Microsoft tech evangelists John Bristowe and Frederic Harper work alongside Imaginet guy David “Wessty” Wesst at Winnipeg Coffee and Code.

When I was an independent software consultant (from 1998 to 2000), I found working at home all the time to be very isolating. While there’s a lot to be said for the freedom of working on one’s own hours and one’s own terms, the built-in human contact that comes from a traditional workplace is a benefit that you don’t appreciate until it’s gone. So I started working at a laptop-friendly café on Queen Street West called Tequila Bookworm, got the human contact I craved and even made some new friends (plus a friend with benefits, which even with all the ensuing drama was great fun).

When I got hired by Microsoft as a mobile worker, I thought I’d bring back some of that working-from-a-café experience and started holding coffee shop work events that I dubbed “Coffee and Code”. There wasn’t much to it: instead of working at my home office or a co-working space like the Hacklab (where I have a membership) or the Centre for Social Innovation, I’d work at a café. I would announce the location and invite people to join me, either to work alongside me for a couple of hours or just drop by for ten minutes to have some coffee and chat about Microsoft, programming tools, the state of the industry, the weather, whatever. Coffee and Code has been recognized as a Good Idea™ by both local management as well as the folks in “Corp” (Microsoft-speak for the big-shots at the headquarters in Redmond), and it’s helped me stay in touch with computer programmers, help answer their questions and even been a place where they could write software.

Yesterday’s Coffee and Code took place at the Second Cup in Winnipeg’s Osborne Village, which I’m told is the city’s “go-to” neighbourhood. It was decidedly a little slower than most of the Coffee and Code events we’ve had in other cities – typically they get at least a dozen attendees over the five hours – but we did have a couple of people drop by, and the relative quiet let us get some work done.

John looks disapprovingly at my big-ass computer
with decidedly non-regulation decals.

Alycia’s and the King’s Head Pub

The late John Candy and his favourite food.

My coworker Rick Claus suggested that for our last dinner in Winnipeg, we should hit Alycia’s, a Ukrainian restaurant with a reputation for making the best pierogies. “John Candy used to divert his flights to Winnipeg just to have ‘em!” he said.

Alas, when the taxi dropped us off at Alycia’s, we found they’d closed early. The place had its lights on and the “OPEN” sign was hanging in the window, but when we got to the door, the door was locked and we saw that all the chairs had been put on the tables. The cab had already sped off, leaving Rick and I to trudge down the long suburban street in the prairie winter cold to find a warm place to call and wait for another cab to take us back downtown. Guess we’ll have to sample their pierogies on our next visit.

In an almost-filmic moment, a bus going in the opposite direction passed us. Its destination sign read MISERICORDIA in bright orange letters.

“Sounds like the name of a Tom Waits album,” I said. (It’s a hospital.)

We managed to find a convenience store and called a cab. It showed up about ten minutes later, and ten minutes after that, we were at the King’s Head Pub. Not long after that, we had beer and Brit-style pub grub:

The Accordion Guy in his native habitat.

We both had butter chicken for our mains and drank Fort Garry Dark, a nice local brew. Rick ordered curry chips for his appetizer. When I saw that they had scotch eggs, I had to have them for my starter.

Scotch eggs (also called “picnic eggs” and “snack eggs”) are underappreciated British cuisine. They’re hard-boiled eggs, wrapped in ground sausage, covered in bread crumbs and deep-fried. Here’s a close-up view of our food:

The breakfast of champions!

All in all, a pretty nice (if not exactly healthy) end to our Winnipeg trip!