I've been predominantly offline for the last week and a half and my inbox now has a mammoth number of unread, and unreplied-to emails. I am currently sitting in a wifi cafe with no damn wifi (although, of course, when I post this I will obviously have relocated), which very effectively slows down the replying process.
Anyone fancy a nice job as my PA? I can offer you biscuits as recompense… Anyone? No?
More likely is that I will vanish from IRC and IM for the next week or two. If you want me, phone me, or hunt me down and see me in person.
Off again now, up to London in preparation for the New Media Knowledge seminar, Blogging: A Real Conversation. Starts at 2pm tomorrow, at 01zero-one, Peter Street, Soho, London W1F 0HS. I'll be giving a deeply subjective view of objectivity. Be there, or miss the chance to heckle me something awful.
I will likely be incommunicado for most of the next three days. If I owe you an email, and I probably do, I promise I'll get onto it as soon as I get back.
Nearly fell asleep in the bath earlier, so ended up taking the nap I really didn't want to take. Now it feels like mid-afternoon when it is in fact mid-evening, and I'm guessing that the can of Coke I just drank won't help. Jetlag wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that I have so much work to do tomorrow, and then have to leave for London on Monday.
Whoops.
Sitting here in departures in JFK, after a ludicrously early start and a flight over from San Francisco, during which I watched Henman fuck up Wimbledon for another year. Can't believe I've missed the first week of tennis – what poor timing. Not much battery left on the laptop, so figure I had better use it whilst I am still awake enough to do so.
I have to say, I am sorry to be here. I really fell in love with San Francisco – it's such a great city. Not that I saw much of it, to be honest, because I spent most of my time in meetings rooms and offices and the conference. If you're wondering what happened to my 'holiday', Technorati Live 8 happened to it. As I was in San Francisco, and as Technorati needed a temporary geek wrangler, they asked me to help out. It was great fun to work with everyone at T'rati – they are not just cool people, but fun as well. They're doing good stuff behind the scenes there, and I hope I get the chance to work with them again.
If you have been following my Supernova posts over on Strange, then you'll know that I had a fantastic time at the conference. I have had really good feedback from the Business Blogging Workshop that I moderated, so that seems to have gone down well. I have an audio recording of the sessions and will post that as soon as I can. I don't think anyone recorded my second appearance with Ross Mayfield and Mary Hodder in the Backchannel Round-Up panel, which was about as chaotic and all-over-the-place a panel as I have been on.
Some of the sessions were really great – highlights included stuff about telecoms/VoIP and Linda Stone's session on attention. But, as usual, the best bits happened in between sessions in the hallway. I finally got to meet David Weinberger, who is just the loveliest man and with whom I wish I could have spent a bit more time talking about the future of blogging. Joho the Blog was one of the first blogs I ever read, along with Nic Dafis' Morfablog and Neil Gaiman's blog, so it was so cool to meet David at last. (Of course, this means that of the three biggest influences on my early blogging 'career', I have only Neil yet to meet. Anyone's guess if that every actually happens, of course.)
I also got to yap at everyone and anyone who would listen to me about business blogging and the like. You can see me in action on CNET, talking to David about how I think blogging will develop and how it will affect people's lives. I was also interviewed by Internet News about marketing and blogging, and did a podcast on PodTech.net about business blogging. I also did another video interview with Jonathan Marks about blogging, and as soon as I have know if/when that is available online, I will let you know.
[On the plane now, battery holding out.]
Shock of the trip, however, was the email I got telling me that I featured in the top 150 blogs, as published in/on AlwaysOn. Chocolate and Vodka is one of the 50 'Honourable Mentions' – i.e. blogs that didn't quite make the top 100 but which for some reason someone found fit to mention in the list anyway. It's kind of odd to think that this little blog, so aimless and rambling as it is, should make it on to anyone's list, so I'm chuffed. Welcome to anyone who came here via AlwaysOn.
Getting about a bit, eh?
Anyway, have acquired a new client whilst in SF too, which is great and if all goes well it might mean a few more trips to The City. More news on that as and when. It did mean, however, that I had to cancel my day in New York, so apologies to Dan, Andy and Michael for not being around when I had hoped I would. Next time, I promise.
Huge thanks to Adam Hertz and Maciej Stachowiak for being most gracious and lovely hosts and for providing me with unlimited wifi, and to Kevin Werbach and Jeanne Logozzo for inviting me to Supernova and for giving me both the opportunity to speak (twice at that!) and the damn fine excuse to go to San Francisco at last. And thank you to everyone I met – everyone was so friendly and charming. I feel like I finally found my peer group.
Session went ok, I think. Hard to tell from my vantage point, but it seemed ok. Too tired to blog now. Need sleep.
Is having to unpack, because somewhere are the earphones to your iPod. Somewhere, probably at the bottom of your very neat, very tidy and soon to be not very immaculately packed suitcase.
Today I move house again, to the Palace Hotel in downtown San Francisco, ready for the Supernova conference. I will hereby admit that I am nervous about tomorrow. Being on a panel is a piece of cake – you just sit there and answer questions. And if you don't know the answer you either say you don't know, make it up, or answer a similar but not entirely the same question that no one actually asked but to which you actually do know the answer. Moderating is a different kettle of fish because a bad moderator can totally fux0r a panel and so you have to know your stuff and know how to moderate.
When I did the open space session before Northern Voice, it taught me that winging it is all well and good, but it would be better if I actually knew what I am doing. Today I'm going to try to think about what the hell I am going to be doing. If I'm lucky, I may even figure it out before the fact, too.
The story goes, and I think it was Jonas who told me this, that the guy who built the Sutro Tower made it look the way it looks because he liked the idea of the Devil looking down on San Francisco. Get it from the right angle, and you can certainly see Satan.
Anyway, more pics on Flickr.
Well, Friday night, and just got back from seeing Batman Begins and whooeee, it's great! Christian Bale is surprisingly good as Bruce Wayne, and Michael Caine does a good turn as butler Alfred. It's got the darker edge that Batman really needs to succeed these days, and manages to avoid being camp. And a nice line in wry humour too. Too tired right now to do a proper review, but you should go see it. Even if you hated past Batman films, see this one because it kicks ass.
Anyway, all is well here. Staying with my friend Maciej in the Castro, which is a very different area of San Francisco than Adam's place. This is much more in the middle of the city, more vibrant and, well, noisy. Got bugger all sleep the first night but we moved the futon into the back room and that's much better.
Meetings have been going well, and are all done now until I get to New York next week. A weekend off now, and then Supernova starts on Monday.
Can't believe how fast this trip is going. Friday already. All going too fast. I really like San Francisco, it's got a really European feel to it. I feel like I've settled in nicely now – I pretty much know the public transport I need to know, and I'm sorta getting used to the money. Nearly. Actually, the money sucks – the notes all look the same and the coins are all weird sizes. But I still feel like this is a place I could quiet happily live.
Of course, if I did move here, I'm sure I'd be yearning for Europe within seconds, so I guess simple visits will be best for the foreseeable future.
