Category: Geeks

Staying with Doc and Buzz

Last night I stayed in the Sin City Hostel with Paul Mooney, who has been posting pics and writing about his CES experience too. I was trying to save the company money, but found that it was a bit TOO sparse for my tastes. I need at least a power outlet!

Anyway, so I got Doc Searls a room in Ballys and tonight Buzz Bruggeman and I moved in with him which makes a much nicer room affordable. It helps getting approval for expense reports when you don’t kill the group’s budget.

Yeah, I care about expenses. I remember what it was like being a starving small company (when I worked at Winnov I drove down here and stayed in places that usually would rent by the hour if you get my drift).

Yes, Buzz, I did draw the short straw so get the small bed. Oh well. I got revenge, though, before Buzz got up here I took all the available power outlets. Let’s see. One for my cell phone. One for my Tablet PC. One for my Bluetooth headset. One for my shaver. One for my Channel 9 camcorder battery. Ahh, that leaves one for Doc’s laptop and wifi station. Buzz, I’ll trade you some power for your bed!

Anyway, I’ve been snapping an occassional picture with my ssssooooopppeeerrrr dddoooopppeeeerrr new SmartPhone and putting those up on my Flickr feed.

Bill Gates, as he looked on the projection screen at the Bellagio. Mike Hall, MSFTie, talking about embedded devices at the evening press event. Vongo sign. They opened their service which lets you download as many movies as you’d like for $9.99 a month. Walt Mossberg, of Wall Street Journal, spent some time in the Vonage booth talking with executives. Brian Livingston of Windows Secrets fame (his books sell a LOT of copies) came up and chatted. Oh, look, it’s the Engadgeteers! (Yes, that’s a good portion of the Engadget crew hanging around Jason Calacanis. Did you know that Engadget gets more than five million unique visitors a month? Damn!). Hey, what are those penguins doing? Heheh.

Maybe they were watching Engadget’s coverage of Bill Gates speech? 😉

Joe Wilcox over on Microsoft Monitor can always be counted on for lengthy analysis. Here’s his on Bill’s keynote.

I met Michael Gartenberg over in front of the Lenovo booth and I see he’s been writing up the happenings too, especially interested in the Vongo news.

Tomorrow? More balancing a plate in one hand while having conversations with geeks from around the world.

I’m not looking forward to shuttle bus lines and registration tomorrow. Yikes.

Flickr’ing an unusual Mix06 meeting

I thought we were just getting together to discuss our Mix06 conference and shoot a Channel 9 video but Jennifer Ritzinger had invited Anthony Weeks (here’s a picture of Jennifer standing with Jeff Sandquist, my boss). Now, if you followed my trip last year to Target’s headquarters you’ll remember that Anthony “recorded” that meeting by drawing on a wall during the meeting. It was cool seeing him again.

Well, Anthony just recorded our meeting the same way. So, I can finally show you how he works. He listens. He draws. All while we’re having the meeting. Here’s Anthony standing in front of his finished work and here he is working.

Steve Cellini (right) and Ray Winninger (blue shirt). Ray’s the guy who does most of the Mix06 blogs and is heading the content teams. Steve is running the thing (he was the guy in charge of the PDC too).

Here’s the rendition of the first 15 minutes of the meeting. Detail shot of “It’s Microsoft Unplugged.” (We were talking about how Mix should be different than, say, a TechED or a PDC). Detail shot #2 of Big New Microsoft Conference. Detail shot #3 of “the 72 hour conversation.” (We were taking about the role that blogs, RSS, and other communication types will play). Detail shot #4 of “blur between traditional roles of ‘designer’ and ‘developer'” (We were talking about how Sparkle will change development/design roles). Detail shot #5 of “The Web is Inevitable and it’s here to stay.” (I asked Ray if Microsoft was trying to kill the Web. Heheh, I always have to be a troublemaker).

These were sent to my Flickr account live from my new sooopppeeeerrr dooooppppeeerrrr SmartPhone and without checking with anyone. And wait until you see the video we shot!

By the way, Anthony still doesn’t have a Web site. All the business he gets is through word of mouth. And he’s freaking busy from what Jennifer told me.

CES week — where are the best parties?

OK, let’s be honest. Shows like CES are a work hard, play hard kind of gig.

I remember working Comdex for Winnov. We drove down. Hand-carried in all our equipment and booth. Believe it or not, you had to carry it in past the security guard. Union rules kept you from wheeling anything in. Our booth weighed 100 pounds. I had to carry that past the guard myself. The things I’ll do to save a multi-thousand-dollar lading fee.

Anyway, if you’re coming to CES, remember your comfortable shoes! You can walk 10 miles in a single day. Hey, it beats waiting in the two-hour taxi lines.

OK, to the point, we’re gonna work our butts off, so why not have fun in the evening?

Lora is setting up a Tablet PC and Geek/Blogger gathering on Friday evening.

Anyone know of any other things that are cool but open to the public?

Any other trouble we should get into in the evening? Just be warned, it might end up on my Flickr stream! Oh, wait, what happens in Las Vegas stays in Vegas, right? Yeah, right. Heheh.

Naked Conversation in an Apple store?

Dave Winer snapped this picture of Shel Israel and me (authors of Naked Conversations, the corporate blogging book that’s coming out in a few days) while we were hanging out with a group of geeks in the Palo Alto Apple store tonight. The rest of Dave’s photos are here. Yes, that’s my son having too much fun on an iBook (Patrick posted to his blog from the store). I think he should set up an endorsement deal with Steve Jobs.

It was fun, there were quite a few pretty popular people there. We went up to the Apple store employees and said “the guy who has the #7 highest rated podcast on iTunes is standing over there.” They didn’t believe us, even though it was true. The podcaster was John Furrier of PodTech.net. We didn’t even bother trying to explain who Gabe Rivera was (founder of Memeorandum). Just a bunch of geeks!

Hope your Friday evening is going geekingly well.

Eric Rice goes virtual for New Years

I gotta get into Second Life. I hear Wells Fargo owns an entire island there to teach people about their bank.

I wonder if I charged a building or two to my corporate card would that get approved? Hmmm.

Anyway, just saw that Eric Rice is doing a live podcast (don’t we call that audio streaming?) and is gonna be having a party inside of Second Life on New Years’ Eve. I will have to try to join him. I hear Maryam is dragging me amongst friends’ houses in Silicon Valley. Hey, Maryam, only take me to the ones who have wifi!

The CES unconference

CES is coming up next week. Believe it or not, it’s big. How do I know that? Cause finding hotel rooms is tough (we found some, thank you to our readers!)

I’ve been thinking about how to do some sort of event there. I have Thursday night open and was just about to announce something, but then I saw Doc Searls linking to a CES Unconference idea. Ahh, a CES 2006 Wiki! Ahh, a CESCamp! How fun!

So, I’ll bring my Tablet PCs to some sort of event on Thursday evening. I hear the Tablet PC MVPs are looking to get into trouble with me that evening. I’m off to the Wiki to see which event we’ll crash. How about you, what are you going to during CES week? I’m stuck in Vegas from January 3 through January 7.

Want an invite to Naked Conversations’ launch parties

By the way, we’re planning on having launch parties in both Medina, WA (right next door to Jeff Bezos’ house and on the same street as Bill Gates’ house) and in Silicon Valley at TechCrunch’s headquarters (aka Mike Arrington’s house) for our book. If you’d like an invite to one of those, please do contact me. No promises (we have VERY limited space) but we will try to get you in. Those launch parties will probably not be publicized publicly due to the limited space, but they will be pretty nice events. Just email me at rscoble@microsoft.com.