Theology of (my) Work

I heard a talk at Urbana called "Theology of Work" and it discussed God's plan for work and how we serve God in our work and how we can follow God just as radically as engineers as pastors.  Good talk - except - when asked, the speaker concluded that there was no place in Christendom, or anyway for Christians to justify using their talents for fashion design or, specific to my question, for footwear development.  He didn't realize it, because really it was a question he'd never thought about, but his whole talk previous to that had actually supported such work by Christians.  I want to use this space below to explain how I my work as a footwear developer can be in God's perfect will for my life.  I will talk very specific to my case, but many of the principles can be broadly applied.
THEOLOGY OF WORK:
- We were built to create value (this is what the speaker used to bash fashion - no value added)
- Work for the common good (this is where sustainability comes in)
- Work in community
- Relate to God through act of working
Those were the 4 main points from the talk and I didn't write verses for them because I didn't think it was that controversial at the time.  After the fall, the first point was expanded from simply creating value, to also restoring and fixing the broken.
WHAT SHOULD I DO?
When picking where I should work, there are 3 things to look at (which I had thought of months before on my own...):
- What does this world need to look more like heaven?
- What are my gifts and skills?
- What are my dreams and desires?
The common answer to those 3 questions is a good place for you to start looking, but definitely not the be all end all.
Now that we're through the background, here are my specific thoughts.
THEOLOGY OF FOOTWEAR DEVELOPMENT:
Working as a footwear developer definitely fits in with my skills and my passion.  The harder questions are, "how does this help people?" and, "does it need to help people?" and, "does it create value?"
God created us.  His creation was "good."  His creation was beautiful.  I won't go into this, but I think being beautiful is in and of itself already justification enough for something to exist and have value, even if that was all it was good for.  Captivating by John and Stasi Eldrege discusses this in depth.
Another thing I'd like to point out is that proper Christianity is not dualistic.  We sometimes operate under the assumption that the physical is bad and that the spiritual is good.  Not true.  God created a physical universe and it was good.  Just because an item seems purely material with no intrinsic, spiritual benefits says nothing to how good or bad the item is.
When God created this beautiful creation, he made animals in all sort of bright colors to attract mates.  For millennia, cultures around the world have recognized different visual cues or appearances as admirable.  Many of the aspect of our appearance that we control are simply ways to express outwardly, different things about how we are inwardly.  It is really amazing and cool that we are able to make these associations and effectively communicate simply with a new look.  Modern shoes are an excellent way to express things about yourself.  This is even easier now with brand image.  I can express things about what lifestyle I value simply by wearing PUMA red racing shoes in contrast to the newest Nike Jordans.  These things are all good.  Yes, they can all be distorted, and used for evil.  Just because something can be used for evil, does not make the thing bad.  Let's follow up on that.
One of my biggest concerns with footwear is the obsession people make it.  Materialism takes over us and we make idols from our footwear, especially expensive footwear.  Take a look at this music video from Macklemore that covers this topic.  Brilliantly done.  This is seriously wrong.  This world is a mess.  Footwear companies rise and stand on the sinful obsessions of the consumers.  This is an incomplete thought though.  Your obsession may be sinful, but you can enjoy footwear without sinning.  The company doesn't make that distinction though, that's up to you.  Not only can you enjoy the product without sinning; many use the product and need the product, and don't even think about or care about the product.  We all wear shoes.  Moving past those people though, the real problem is when  your obsessive desire pulls your finances, or your thoughts away from where God wants them to be.  From my personal experience, there are times when God says, "Ryan, go ahead.  That's a nice pair of shoes, and you'll appreciate them.  I know your heart is in the right place.  Go ahead and buy them."  There are also a lot of times when I'd like to get a pair and God says, "no Ryan, I'd rather you didn't invest in those.  I have other plans right now."  Submitting our material possessions to God is a good litmus test of his importance in our lives.  There have been times when I was ready to by an $80 pair of shoes and God stops me saying, "nope Ryan, not this time, but since you're so ready to part with that money, why don't you give it to support this missionary?"  I've been able to pull back and do what God said.  Every time this happens I know, that at least for that day, God has the number 1 place in my life.  As long as God has the first place in my life, I can work with shoes.  When those positions get reversed, I had best get as far away from shoes as possible.
SIDE NOTES:
- The footwear world is a small world that I can reach while many other Christians can't.
- Performance footwear helps people to stay active and take care of their bodies (which God values).
- Many footwear companies manufacture and sell their products globally, allowing me to make a global impact, hopefully for Christ.
- A "normal" job is an opportunity to make lots of money and give lots of money.  There's a lot of needs and I want to help the church meet those needs.  The question is: am I doing this job for God or for me?  Answer that honestly.
CONCLUSION:
This was a little scattered - accurately reflecting what it looked like in my head before it spilled out.  Working is good.  Shoes are good.  Beauty is good.  Quality is good.  Many of these things have been corrupted and make bad, but God can redeem all things.  Christians in every sector can make this happen through trust and obedience to God.  We simply cannot use a career as a copout to living a typical life.  We are still called by God.  Dependent on him.  Live his will, and his life, not mine.
That's all.

Boston

So I realize I abandoned you back in May, but it's not entirely my fault.  You see Germany doesn't really have summer, so I had to skip it  ;)   Well I suppose the bigger part of it was less and less access to internet and more and more to get done.  It did enjoy those last months in Germany.  When it came to a close I baked three cakes to split between 2 going away parties.  One party in German, with friends from Erlangen, and 1 party in English with people from work.  Soon enough I was home and my family was getting more hugs from me than they knew what to do with. 

So during the year I was working on a running shoe related project.  The running team is in Boston though, not Germany.  I had met a few people from the team but not the majority, and few of them knew what I was up to.  We arranged that after my internship finished up and I went home, that I could visit the Boston office for 2 days enjoy everything that goes with that.  I had never been to Boston before but have been wanting to visit for some time.  It's a beautiful place.

I landed Wednesday night and took the train into town and found my hotel, which was really a bed and breakfast called The College Club of Boston.  Delightful.  I believe is used to be a women's college.

After a recommendation from the gentleman at the front desk I met with Andrea, who used to study with me, at the Parish Restaurant.  I enjoyed a meal called Elephant Walking on Eggs "Sandwich from the Mountain".  Then we met Adrian and he drove us the harbor to explore.  He showed us this red line painted through the city called "the Freedom Trail" that leads you past many of the sights of Boston.  Getting pretty late though so we all headed our separate ways.  1 perk of Boston, I already know lots of people who live there.

Thursday morning I rose and enjoyed a good breakfast with no deli meats (a German peculiarity).  I then walked the 45 minutes through town to PUMA as an excuse to see more of Boston.  I got to work at 9, found out I was presenting at 10, and promptly was toured through the office to meet a million people (or meet their desks for those who weren't there) in quick succession.  The meeting started 15 minutes late because that is the PUMA way, and because designers were involved.  In the end, the seats were filled, and hardly even standing room left.  It was a great way to start off the day.  I spent the next two days meeting people, and seeing how things work in the Boston office.  I went for a run with two of the other developers at lunch just like in Germany.  One of them used to log 100 miles a week in his prime.

To conclude the trip I got to go to the preliminary round of the Red Bull 2012 Cliff Diving World Series Boston.  Pretty crazy stuff.  The Olympic high dive is 10m.  This was 27.

Then I flew home.

That's all.

oh and I got 2 new pairs of shoes in Boston  ;)

Nike Flyknit

So I realize that I work at PUMA but I can't help but recognize genius when I see it, this time from Nike.


This shoe is knitted, which means they can put more fabric exactly where it is needed and take it out where it's not.  It doesn't need lining.  The laces are wired directly to the outsole.  I imagine the materials are super cheap but super quality, and since you are not cutting the shapes out of a roll of fabric there is practically no left over scraps aside from a few inches of string.  They are coming out in July in time for the London olympic games and I can't wait to try on a pair.

Go here for nike's version.  There is another video and more thorough comments.


On a side less important note, it also looks sweet so they will be integrating the technique into their lifestyle shoes too.

The Fastest Car

Here it is - the car in which I've gone the fastest in my life to date (200 kph/125 mph)

Here is the carpet at the hotel we stayed at in Switzerland... special.

Here is the main street in the tiny town of Mutenz where we were.

All set up for Christmas.  The globe ornaments of the tree had polka dots.  I don't know what the deal is with Mutenz and polka dots.

The Rennbahn Klinik - Swiss olymbic medical center started by Dr Segesser, one of the leading scientists in the are of footwear.  He's been around as long as footwear science has existed.  I doubled my understanding of running shoes in 5 hours with him.

Learning too much!

     It is a pleasant Saturday after a hectic but enjoyable week.  This morning (well 11:30...) I went running for an hour, and can honestly say I enjoyed every minute of it.  I like it when that happens.  Anyways, all the important people in my department are in Vietnam this week and next week, developing shoes on site.  Interns aren’t permitted to go, so I’m holding down the fort for my division.  A fair amount to do, but it’s less stressful knowing your boss isn’t going to walk in any second.  The most exciting thing this week though was the progress made on my “Best Practices of Running Shoe Design” project.  I don’t remember how much I’ve talked about that so far.  Basically it is a presentation that a designer, developer, product manager, or anyone else could read with little prior knowledge on running shoes, and then come up with a great biomechanically sound design and eventually shoe.  It should smooth over the disconnect between the folks doing research and the people actually making the new shoes.

     This past week, on Wednesday evening, another intern and myself got to take a drive to Switzerland.  The Rennbahn Clinic located in Basel Switzerland is one of the top clinics in the world attracting both recreational and professional athletes from all over Europe to come for professional advice, gait analysis, etc.  They see a lot of patients, and do a lot of research.  They basically know everything there is to know about running and soccer biomechanics (soccer is Karen’s project, the other intern).

     In summary, we arrived in the evening and got settled in to the expensive hotel that PUMA paid for, took a short tour of the area (self guided tour, pictures coming next week), got a great nights sleep, got up in the morning, checked out, went for breakfast, headed to the clinic, misjudged the time we needed, had an hour to kill outside in the cold (but with a great sunrise), finally met two of the owners of the clinic who are two of the top pioneers in the field, and then asked them questions for about 5 hours (I tested their ideas on my run this morning), before they took us to lunch (which would have been super expensive if we’d had to pay for it!), and sent us on our 5 hour drive back to Herzo. Yes, that was a run-on sentence.  On the way back, driving a manual VolksWagon Golf Variant I hit 200 Km/h (125 mph), drove through 9 or 10 roundabouts (traffic circles), and got good practice with stop and go traffic trying not to stall the car.  When I did stall though, the engine automatically restarted which was nice.  Also, at traffic lights the engine would automatically turn off to save energy.  Eventually we had to get gas (about twice what it costs in the States), but were at a loss at how to open the gas door on the side of the car...  I searched all over for a lever by my seat.  Karen came around with her little flashlight to look some more.  Finally I found a lever, pulled it, thought I heard something pop open, though the gas door was still shut, before Karen discovered that if you just push the door, it pops open!  Side note, the popping open that I thought I heard was actually the hood of the car.  We drove the last 50 miles with it open a few inches.  Oops... kept the engine from overheating I reckon  ;)   - In the end, we arrived back in Herzo just in time to go to the Internationale Studenten Treff where we were baking Christmas cookies.  Delightful!  I’m making some more this weekend with my mom’s recipe to bring to work on Monday.

holidays, shoes, and the like

It's been a bit since I've written.  Life goes on though so here is the scoop.


November 1st - German Holiday - no work! Prayer brunch with SMD.  In addition to prayer it included weißwurst (white sausage) and Bretzeln (soft pretzels) both with sweet mustard.  Weißwurst is super traditional in Bavaria, though the feelings about it are quite mixed.  I enjoyed it though.  There is some debate about the proper way to eat it.  It's rather soft so it is encased like many sausages to hold it together.  The question is whether you poke a whole in the end and suck it out, or slice it open and scoop it out.  I went for the slice and scoop method.  The other didn't seem socially acceptable.


That afternoon I joined a few friends at their apartment complex and we made Christmas cookies.  They don't have thanksgiving here so Christmas is already on everyone's minds.  They are rolling out all the Christmas decorations at the mall right now actually.  I left the christmas cookie pics at home, so apologies there, but we decided against bowls and instead piled the flour on the table and shaped it like a volcano and put the wet ingredients in the top and then mixed it with hands =) with lots of love.  The girls made their cookies with steel... but they still tasted okay.  I finished the day with a trip to a cake shop with a friend.  We ate outside and froze to death.  Most of the cakes had some sort of alcohol in them.  Germans are pretty obsessed =)


Next evening was SMD, which was swell but let's move to Thursday.  I went to the international student group (IST).  We learned some Bavarian words and expressions.  They say "That is sausage" to say "it doesn't matter, it's all the same."


The other main thing that was exciting for me was finally meeting with the head of innovation for PUMA and talking about my project with him.  Turns out he graduated from Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh!  Anyways, another intern was already doing a project on soccer cleats and they mentioned that they might give me the same project for a different kind of shoe.  I was so scared they were going to assign me to cricket or handball!  In the end, it's RUNNING!  I was thrilled.  Running biomechanics is even cooler than soccer in my opinion because it's so advanced but so regular so you can study it really well.  Running is primarily done in Boston so they'll be teaming me up with someone there to talk with.  They mentioned maybe sending me there which would be sweet, but then they remembered the Boston guys are coming here in a few weeks so there is now need... schade (what a pity).  We'll see what happens but I may end up training for a marathon depending on how this project turns out.


Check out Octobers PUMA magazine here!  Unfortunately some of the info is only viewable from PUMA locations...  Talks a lot about the new 32 year old CEO of PUMA, Franz Koch.  He has a longboard!  Also Volvo Ocean Race!


K I gotta run enjoy the sun before it sets (at 5pm!)

Welcome to PUMA

So I reckon it’s about time to talk about PUMA.  First impressions, very classy, stylishly designed buildings.  Bold, but not obnoxious.  Lot’s of red, white, and dark grey.  Everything clean.  I can’t just take pictures everywhere for secrecy’s sake, but I’ll get some up over the next few days.  There are two main buildings in Herzo.  I’m in the one on the edge of town that is larger, and conveniently attached to the PUMA store and Factory outlet store which I just visited today finally.  I do have a discount, but I won’t have money till my paycheck comes at the end of the month so I’ll just have to wait.  Difficult I must say!

Second impressions, at my desk and explored the nearby rooms, it was overwhelming how many shoes were everywhere.  Boxes of shoes and prototypes.  Shelves labeled country after country after season after year after category of shoes at different stages in development.  I’m sure there are over $100,000 worth of shoes on my floor of the building when you consider that most of them are prototypes.  That basically just means only 3 pairs were made for testing etc, and since they aren’t at the stage of being mass produced yet, they cost a fair penny to make.

As I was walked around the office and introduced to people, it was amazing to see that the daily work of such a small group of people (relatively) could be recognized and known by so many millions.  I mean, I would say there are at least 1,000 pair of PUMA’s at the RIT campus alone, and I’ve met the people already who have designed over half of them as well as the however many million other pairs around the world.  The downside to all of this is, that to run such a big system so well, there is loads of bookkeeping and database organizing etc...  That’s what I’ve been learning this week.  There is a lot of dry, necessary, background understanding required before you can do anything interesting.  My boss is on vacation this week and his boss is sick, but when one of them gets back, I can expect to learn more about what will be expected of me over the next 12 months.  I don’t expect to really know anything until next week.

Here’s something cool.  I guess in Germany you’re supposed to work 39 hour weeks, but PUMA says, “no, let’s do 40, but we’ll save up those extra hours you’ve worked and give you extra time off at Christmas.”  That way, everyone has off from Christmas to New Years, without even using vacation time!  

the South Side - Erlangen style

Here's a look at my side of town.  I think it used to be a small city that got swallowed up by Erlangen.  These are on a walk I took from my house.

Construction on the church. excuse the lighting.

There was a guy in that car staring at me.

Typisch.

The river through town.  The line across it is the Herzogenauracher Damn.

We're on the upstream side.

I came back and saw this shoe on my landlords car.  Also the hideous chair in the back? 

Yes, it was in my room but I told him he could give it away =P

Did I mention that I work at PUMA now?  Those shoes are 5 years old.  Also turns out the standard sample size at PUMA is a US 9 for men's shoes, which means I can get lots, my size cheap before they are on the market.  Even other PUMA employees with bigger feet have to weight for production =)

I'll blog about PUMA soon.  For now I'm just getting comfortable.  Everything is fairly slow since my boss is on vacation this week and his boss is sick.

Bye,

Living Quarters

So here is where I live.  It’s quite comfortable I find.  Not everything is in good taste, but it is almost all good quality.  There is a huge grandfather clock too, although we don’t run it because the bells would chime through the whole night.  There is a beautiful original painting on top of the wardrobe (pictured).  The center of the wardrobe has three shelves fronted by glass - the optimal location to showpiece my shoes.  On top is also a radio that would have been terrific back in the day.  It has preset channels, can adjust the highs and lows, gets FM and AM plus 2 other frequency ranges, that I don’t know the names of.  There are also lace curtains, which bothered me at first because they offer zero privacy.  I found that peculiar because Germans are super into their privacy (in order for google to bring ‘street view’ to Germany they had to provide individuals with the option to blur out their houses!).  Well, the landlord was showing me some things and pointed out the steel shutters that can be lowered like blinds on the outside so that even in broad daylight I cannot see my hand in front of my face (with the lights off of course).  The only things really missing?  internet and dryer.  I’ll manage just fine without those I think though

Other bigger picture details, I live in a house on the edge of town.  The house used to belong to a grandmother with two daughters and a son.  Daughter 1 grew up and moved north to Bremen for work I believe.  She had a daughter named Muriel.  Daughter 2 bought half of the duplex next door to her mother.  Grandmother’s son, Reinhard, moved into the other half of the duplex with his wife and son.  Daughter 1 came into possession of her mother’s house, presumably upon her death, but still lives far away.  She rents out half of the rooms to her brother Reinhard, and half to her daughter Muriel, who just moved in 2 days before I did.  Reinhard wanted the house for his office because of the 30 yard commute to work.  He doesn’t need all the space though so he is subletting one of the rooms to me, plus bathroom and kitchen access thankfully.  Before Muriel came, Reinhard had been renting the whole house would would sublet to 4 interns/students at a time.

Oh and I almost forgot, they like spiders in the corners because they keep down the fly and mosquito populations? yes, that’s what he said.  I always thought screens were a better solution for that but... they don’t believe in screens here.  They do believe in fresh air though so the windows are all open year around.  I don’t have any spiders in my room so I’m not too concerned.

 Black and gold - duvet and sheets (I can store things in the box spring).

 Painting, wardrobe, shoes, radio.

The view kneeling on my bed.

Inspired

This article was what set me on the path to being an engineer at PUMA. Open picture in a new tab, then click to zoom in and read away!

Shoe Design

So I was like, "I should learn to do computer graphics of shoes, since I have CS5 and all." Many, many hours later, after drawing on paper, scanning, illustrator, photoshop... we have the final rendering. Click on it for an up close. Here's the link for the tutorial here.

It's not all about the design, it's more about the rendering. I might have picked different colors otherwise but overall I like the shoes and would wear them. This is warm up to the co-op I'm doing with PUMA starting in September. Maybe I'll do a PUMA shoe next instead of just generic.

What's in a Shoe?

It fascinates me. Cars are legitimately impressive machines that allow us to do so much more than we ever could before. People value them. They're valuable. I think any culture that had the opportunity to have them, would see their value and be on board.

On the other hand we have a pair of beautifully designed shoes. They've had shoes for centuries, millennia really. Sure they're helpful, but not on anywhere close to the same scale as a car, but nonetheless, we live in a culture that says cool shoes are important, valuable, and not because they help you do more, just because they're cool! Who said they're cool? Who knows, doesn't matter. I've gotta get me those. I'll pay $5 to get some functionality, but I'll pay $80 to get me some cool. Ask someone from a tribe in the Amazon, and they won't be able to tell you if the $5 shoes or the $80 one is more valuable, it's all the same. The value doesn't come from it's function like a car's does. It's purely assigned by our opinions.

That fascinates me. That's all.

HodgePodge

Nothing in particular inspiring this post but I need to write again. The weather was actually fairly terrific yesterday. It only rained before I woke up and then again in the evening when I was mostly indoors. In between I saw the first dry roads this week and got to use my longboard.

My money transfer from the States finally came through after 5 weeks of being ridiculously frugal. I suppose that was good practice and will help my money last, though I immediately bought a scarf. Amazingly, it's predominately dark green with strong accents that allow it to work with clothes that are both in the gray/black/white family and things that are shades of brown. Usually that color combinations is contradictory because everyone knows that black and brown don't usually work together (or gray and brown, note that this website is on the brown side so there are no blacks). Most of my wardrobe can be broken into those two categories and the items that can go cross-category are particularly valuable. I mostly only packed brown though because I only had room to bring brown shoes.

And speaking of brown shoes, I set my scarf on my brown leather boat shoes that I wear everywhere and someone commented that it would smell like feet. Well, it didn't. Then I decided to smell the shoes. After the use those have gotten they deserve to smell, and they did, but they only smelled of leather (and I love that smell). No feet smell at all. Note that well, alway take the chance to have leather shoes.

Last week I found my home church for my time here. It's called FIT Gemeinde. Its a group of perhaps 20 people which is much smaller than other things I've seen but I think since I have 4 more months it will let me connect quicker and deeper. One of the things I didn't really expect to find in Europe, just from what I had heard, was the Holy Spirit and I figured I would miss him while I was gone. That was one of my main concerns for if I were to ever live here long term in the future. He is definitely here though so no worries. I guess it's like Elijah when he thought he was all alone and God's like "hey now, there's 7,000 other people following hard after me, not just you. I can draw people to myself. There's no place that is above me." I guess I should expect that God is awesome enough to make awesome believers all over the world in every culture. That said, there falls another barrier keeping me from living in Europe. Maybe I should make a list of barriers to help me better look at my time here.

Lastly, a family in the church invited me to Christmas and New Years with them so that will be enjoyable. I hear that in Germany they really celebrate Christmas, but very differently than we do. Lot's of Christmas markets to go to in every city. I'll write more about it as we get there.

Photo Project I

Constants Here

Not New

Just a bigger part of my life Now

Bad Shoes II

Joel saw my previous blog entry and made me buy the shoes... the ones in the last picture were 9.5... here is Joel's size 15 next to my size 9.5 boat shoes. Joel, I anticipate you wearing these with a kind of fascinated dread.

Bad Shoes I

So I've been doing a good bit of shoe shopping and having quite the time at it. I need brown dress shoes to match my suit... anyways, obviously name brand quality stuff is expensive, but you would think that off brands would be able to produce lower quality but good looking shoes. Unfortunately that's not the case. Cheap shoes are cheap because the people designing them have no idea what their doing. These shoes were on sale for $15 because they are black and white fake crocodile skin! Who would actually buy that wanting to look good/dressed up? Knowing what I know now about how long and tedious the design process is from experience this summer, how did these make it to the shelf without 1 person stopping and pointing out the hideousness?

- ok I'm done -