Her husband ran for President last time around (and probably will next time too). But, last week at the ConvergeSouth conference she sat down with Maryam for a 14 minute interview where she talked about being a geek, a mom, a cancer survivor, videoblogger, and more.

This was Maryam’s second interview. Maryam (my wife) stole my last job and she’s well on her way to stealing my current one too. That’s OK, she stole my heart too. At least Maryam will let me run camera.

Elizabeth was really a gracious interview and admitted that she’s now using a PC cause she had both a PC and a Mac and her Mac was the only one stolen. We didn’t talk about political stands or positions, by the way, it wasn’t that kind of interview.
Maryam has more on her blog.

There’s a new gadget videoblog, thanks to CNET. Hmmm, I’ve seen co-host Veronica Belmont before. Oh, yeah, she’s Ryan Block’s girlfriend as seen in my tour of “the Engadget Cribb.” Gadget love runs deep in that house! I read this all on Andy Plesser’s site where he has an interview with FM Media’s Chas Edwards. FM Media, founder John Battelle told me on Friday, has been expanding very rapidly. One blogger I know said he just got a $2,000 check for his blog from FM Media and that FM Media just had its first million dollar month of sales. Battelle also told me that they are rapidly expanding into audio and video too and that they’ve gotten some hosting deals that are dramatically lower than the $.14 a gigabyte fee I quoted before.

Anyway, Patrick and I are on our way to Berkeley to hang out with Dave Winer. Talk to you later.

Sue Polinsky, the conference organizer of ConvergeSouth, the conference Maryam and I spoke at yesterday, gave us a tour around Greensboro, North Carolina last night. We started in front of Woolworths.

Out front are four footprints.

The significance of what four people did here on February 1, 1960 can’t be understated.

They sat at this lunchcounter.

And waited for service.

And waited. And waited. And waited.

That’s how the civil rights movement in the United States started. UPDATE: at least that’s what the plaque out front says, although other events, like Rosa Parks’ bus ride, happened earlier.

It wasn’t lost on me as we continued our tour that at one point a couple of police officers passed us. One is white. One is black. Working together.

And the evening was punctuated even further when later in the evening we met an editor of the local newspaper. He is black.

Neither of those things would have been seen here in 1960.

Four people changed the world. It’s a reminder to all of us to speak up when things just aren’t right. Or take our place at the lunch counter and wait for service.

Their footprints are cast in bronze and laid in the sidewalk in front of the store where they changed history.

I remember reading about them in school when I was a kid and I had no concept that someday I’d be visiting the store where they changed history.

Thanks to Ed Cone, Ben Hwang, and Sue Polinsky for inviting us to Greensboro and giving us a tour around town. It was a fantastic day.

On Friday we were given a key to the city. That’s the first time I’ve been honored that way. I thought they saved such things for dignitaries or really famous people. Me? I’m just a blogger. But it was a thrill and quite an honor.

After listening to Elizabeth Edwards speak (really great, non-political speech on value of communities) Maryam and I hosted a session we titled the 10 ways to a killer blog. Luckily people took notes. Here’s Daniel Conover’s Xark notes and Anton Zuiker’s notes.

Edwards was a real thrill to meet. She stayed in our session, which was most gracious, and then gave Maryam a nice interview, which I taped. After the camera was off we asked her if John was really going to run for President and she said that unless something bad happens that’s the way it’s headed.

She’s seen more than her fair share of bad, by the way (I was reading her book). She’s a breast cancer survivor and her oldest son died in a car wreck. Something about her struck me as very real and down-to-earth. Probably cause she’s weathered these tough tests.

I heard that several people decided not to come to the conference because Elizabeth was speaking. That was their loss. I don’t understand that kind of behavior. I always learn something from people who are different, or believe differently, from me. It was punctuated cause Elizabeth didn’t utter a single political word the whole conference, including in Maryam’s interview.

Anyway, thanks to Greensboro. Your hospitality got to us. Wish we didn’t have to go home so soon.

Damn, I don’t even have time to sneeze the next four weeks.

This week I travel to Seattle to interview a bunch of folks at Microsoft and other companies, and interview Woz on stage at the University of Washington.

Then next week we head to Converge South in North Carolina, where we have a meeting slated with Elizabeth Edwards, among others, and Maryam and I are giving at least one presentation.

The third week of October we’re going to film and post a new show — from San Francisco — which we’re calling “the Lunch Show” for now (it probably will get a better name later). If you wanna be on, please drop us a line — Irina and Eddie will host this daily show from the lunch room of Technorati! Geeks with something cool to demonstrate are what we’re looking for. We’ll film that from noon to 1 p.m. every day and hopefully have it up by 6 p.m. — we’ll see how that goes, doing a daily video show isn’t going to be easy. But we’re excited that Dave Sifry and club have supported the project wholeheartedly and we have lots of fun guests lined up (with more — like you — needed).

The fourth week we head back to Seattle for the Blog Business Summit where we just learned we’re going to be guests on a private Lear Jet trip to Walla Walla (the guy, Steve Broback, who hosts Blog Business Summit is taking several bloggers to dinner, courtesy of Greenpoint Technologies who is a VIP jet completion firm and is sponsoring the trip — details here on the Blog Business Summit’s blog).

I’ll bring my video gear along. It’s quite something to get a ride on a jet that I never would be able to afford otherwise.

I guess I just did a “PayPerPost” here, didn’t I? Well, if you’re gonna sell your soul, why settle for only $2.50? My soul costs more than that. A ride in a Lear Jet is getting closer.

I’m on the phone with Rod Edwards and he’s the sole person involved in BlockRocker. This is a cool mashup — all based on geotagging, which is the use of location data. For instance, I could stick my photo on a map by using geotags. I like how he built some cool tools for people who want to add geotags to their posts, it’s really easy. You just find your location on a Google Map that he’s embedded in his page and it spits out the HTML code that lets you geotag your posts. Here, his tool created this HTML code:

See this post’s geographical context.

I just copied and pasted that right into Wordpress and have an instant geotagged post.

Anyway, Rod is the kind of guy I like to get calls from. Passionate about doing something cool on the Web and builds tools to help other people get into his world. That’s great evangelism.

Former Senator John Edwards is using BitTorrent to distribute content, Taegan Goddard reports on his Political Wire blog.

Oh, that has got to chafe the recording industry’s behind.

Why? Because it demonstrates there’s a legitimate purpose behind BitTorrent. It also will drag in tons of non-geeks who’ll try it out for the first time and discover they can distribute all sorts of stuff here, like HD video from their camcorders.

For instance, check out the Scourist. These guys take cool traveling trips, and put up their videos. They are slow to download. But if BitTorrent were in place (or, the easier to use RedSwoosh) then distributing stuff like this would be a breeze and wouldn’t cost anyone huge money.

One thing this shows is that John Edwards is positioning himself as a technology literate guy. It’ll be interesting to see if, and how, he uses that position if he runs for President next year.

I was standing in the back of the hall yesterday when former Senator John Edwards was speaking at Gnomedex and thinking back over the dozens of conferences and events I’ve attended over the past three years. From the big bucks “Demo” or “CES” to the very fun and little Reboot or IT@Cork.

Gnomedex stands alone for one reason: it is the only conference where every attendee has a computer out and on.

What’s funny is that Gnomedex seems like a goofy, unimportant conference. After all, the logo of Chris’ face is on everything. And only 400 people can attend. And, it’s just an unimportant blogging conference anyway, right?

But, we have that little issue of every computer out and on.

That shows this audience is different than any other audience I’ve seen any conference build. It’s like being at a press conference at times.

Kudos to John Edwards for recognizing that there’s an interesting audience here. He got a free ride cause he was the first to come and visit. The next politician who comes to a conference like this will be treated much harsher, especially if he or she doesn’t stick around afterward.

Al Gore, someone commented to me out in the hall, stuck around the TED conference the entire conference. Little things like this are what get people to really become committed to a cause or a person.

That said, Edwards was funny and made us feel good without really saying that much. He’s going to go far.

Congrats to Chris and Ponzi for a wonderful event. The party in the Museum of Flight museum last night really shocked a lot of people. The group I walked in with had no idea how good this museum was, and then realized that Gnomedex had stepped up its game quite a bit too.

Lots of blogging and photos are on Technorati for the Gnomedex tag.

The Seattle PI’s Todd Bishop has a good report on John Edwards’ visit to Gnomedex.

Melodeo starts up tomorrow and with a bang. Former U.S. Senator John Edwards is one of the first users.

What’s different about it? They have nice support for mobile phones. I played tonight with it on a Nokia phone and the service helped me find several podcasts and listen to them.

It’ll be interesting to see which distribution network ends up being important. This one is certainly one to watch.

Chris Pirillo and Ponzi told me last night that journalists are begging to be let into Gnomedex now that Senator John Edwards is doing the keynote. They told us that every ticket is a press pass and that they don't give away free tickets and that journalists are welcome to buy a ticket, but one problem, Gnomedex is sold out. So any other journalists who want to come are gonna be forced to sit in the cove. "What about if Steve Ballmer dropped by?" I asked. He said he wouldn't get in either unless he found a ticket on eBay somewhere. He did say that some journalists, like Todd Bishop of the Seattle PI, had the good forsight to buy a ticket before they were sold out.

I'm glad Chris is sticking by his guns and treating everyone equally. I know it's really tough to turn away "big name" journalists. 

I met Cali Lewis yesterday. Don't know her? I didn't either, but her story tells you a lot about why I am jumping into Podcasting and Videoblogging and Second Life with both feet.

She started her videoblog in December (she does the Geekbrief videoblog). A mere six months ago. Today she is getting millions of downloads a month. Yesterday she and her husband and partner told me:

"We just quit our day jobs to do this full time."

Now what I really noticed was the joy on her face.

Oh, by the way, I'm talking about competitors again. She's working for Adam Curry, who runs the Podshow network. They already are doing some of the most interesting stuff right now and, if Cali's story is typical, are seeing rapid growth.

I forget who said it, but I learned long ago that an industry will only be strong if it has great competitors in it. Imagine a mall that only had one shoe store. How boring. The most vibrant mall has dozens of shoe stores. How can they all survive? Easy, their competition draws more people into the mall.

But what Cali is showing us all is that you can get a low-cost video camera, make an interesting show in your nights and weekends, and within six months get such a large audience that you are quitting your day job.

Yesterday I was talking with Amanda Congdon, one of the co-founders of Rocketboom. Her videoblog is now seeing about 300,000 viewers a day. That's, what, a year or so old? Did you know that advertisers are now paying her $85,000 per week? That's almost as much money as I made in an entire year of working at Microsoft.

Now, I have no delusions that I'm either Amanda or Cali. I'm not half as cute as either of them, for one. Nor am I as smart. Or as visionary. I'll just have to work harder (which is going to be very tough, since Amanda tells me she and her team are working nearly around the clock right now to put together their three-minute videoblog).

But I had the same smile on my face when I told Cali I just quit my day job too to work in this new media industry.

+++++

On Thursday I was sitting on the lawn in the front row at my son's graduation from Elementary School. One part of the graduation that effected my decision was when the teachers read off what each kid would like to do when they "grow up." I loved some of their ideas. Veterinarian. Policeman. Actress. Videogame designer (whoa, Bill, hire them now!)

Anyway, my son was so cute. He said he wanted to be a famous blogger like me and work at a big company like Apple or Microsoft. That made my heart warm.

But it also made this decision clearer. I only have a couple more years left before Patrick wants nothing to do with me (that's how almost every teenager behaves, it's just natural). Maryam and I were definitely tired of the every-other-week flights and drives to see Patrick. Being closer to him just was a major part of this decision. Microsoft, by the way, offered to move us down to Silicon Valley, which was very flattering (thanks Jeff and Vic) but I just knew that if I stayed at Microsoft all the action would be up in Redmond and that would be tough to manage.

This morning I saw Vinnie Mirchandani's post about his hanging out with his 12-year-old son and it reminded me of Friday's lunch with Jonathan Schwartz where we talked at length about our kids and the kind of world we were leaving behind for them.

One of the strongest arguments that Sanjay, Vic, and Jeff gave me for staying at Microsoft was the family that had built around me. All of us have kids and we had lots of great discussions about what's important in life. In a few minutes I'll be leaving to go pick up Patrick, who is staying with us for the summer. I can't wait to see him and that certainly played a huge part in this.

++++

The BMW. One thing about the BMW. It has a jack to plug in a cell phone or an iPod. Now, it's a rich-man's toy, right? But what that tells me is that there's a huge growth in the distribution channel for podcasts coming. Why? Cause what the rich man can buy today you'll be able to buy tomorrow.

Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple, taught me that. I remember in 1990 when he had bought one of the valley's first dye-sublimation printers. It was a color printer that cost $40,000. I thought to myself then "I really want one of those." Today, about 16 years later, a $70 printer does a better job than his did. So, if you're not rich and you want something that a rich guy has, just stick around!

But, back to the car. It made me realize that there's a new media-distribution network being built. We're still in the very early days of that. I feel like we have lived through the first few years of Television. Or radio. And I can see nothing but incredible growth ahead.

++++

This morning on some of the blogs I see people saying that Microsoft is clueless for letting me go and that they don't care about this new stuff (or that they won't "get it").

I have a totally different viewpoint. Did you not see on Engadget that Microsoft is working on a portable media player? I can't break wind about it, but when Microsoft comes into that market it'll create new opportunities. New media distribution channels. Translation, that product will create new "Amanda's" and new "Cali's." And it's not the only one coming. I've seen and heard about some really awesome stuff coming soon from other companies as well. That all spells OPPORTUNITY for all of us.

Oh, and then there's the little thing about Google vs. Microsoft. When two big companies are struggling to build audiences to stick advertising next to it creates new opportunities. Startups can zig and zag where big companies just can't take advantage of new opportunities the way someone like Cali can. Remember, she didn't exist six months ago. SIX MONTHS AGO!!! And who the hell is Amanda? She didn't exist 1.5 years ago. Now she's been on CSI and big huge media companies are vying to get near her brand. What a world!

++++

Will I lose my audience? That's a question I've seen on the blogs.

Yes.

Huh? You will unsubscribe if I don't give you a payoff. For many of you Microsoft was that payoff. Yes, Microsoft is still an interesting company for many many people in the world. When I was at my mom's funeral, what did we end up talking about at lunch afterward? Microsoft. Everyone had an opinion about Microsoft. Everyone knew who it was. What it did.

PodTech.net? Huh? Who are they? What are they? Why do I care?

Over the next few months if I don't give you a payoff you'll leave. That'd be OK with me, I didn't do this for the audience. When I started blogging there were only a few hundred blogs that I could find. I never thought it'd get to the point where I'd help build a media property that had 3.5-million unique visitors last month (http://channel9.msdn.com).

But, when life hands you a metaphorical equivilent of a gold coin you better do something with it. Invest it in something else. If you don't I believe that's unethical. My ethical system says that you should reinvest your talents and your luck to make the world a better place.

++++

The team. One of my interviews was with Karen Edwards, who is on the management team at PodTech.net. She was, if I remember right, the 17th employee at Yahoo. She got her job by writing to the kids who started Yahoo and saying something like "you need me to build you a global brand." They took a chance on her and she did just that.

She isn't the only superstar at PodTech. You'll hear about others after I get there (I start July 5th).

Just about a year ago John Furrier interviewed me at the Supernova conference. I thought he was the nicest guy who I had ever met. That was important to me. Why? Cause nice guys attract great teams. I've seen that with Sanjay, Vic, and Jeff and many other experiences in my life. It was very important to me that I join someone who was nice.

Speaking of which, I've gotten to know John's family. I thought John was nice, but his kids and his wife are even nicer. And they play an important role in the company too. You'll hear more about that next month too.

++++

Silicon Valley.

On Friday I started up my videocamera and filmed as I went into one of my last conversations with John and his team before making my decision. I passed under the sign that said "Sand Hill Road."

It is the dream of many entrepreneurs around the world to come to Sand Hill Road and talk a venture capitalist out of a few million dollars to start a company.

I've never worked for a venture capitalist before. When I mentioned the companies that were backing John Furrier to my friend Buzz Bruggeman, his voice dropped and he said "wow." (They were USVP and VenRock). Now, if you know Buzz, you know he knows everyone in the tech industry. So, I knew then that John had gotten the best.

John later told me how he did it: he interviewed a bunch of venture capitalists. He said that process taught him a lot about how clued in each firm was, and how much they'd help PodTech along after the money came.

I'm sure we'll talk a lot more about what it's like working for a venture-backed firm.

++++

My wife. Maryam. She was involved in the discussions too. And, even, was my negotiator. She told me during one of the negotiations "shut up, will you?" Heheh. It's always good to have someone on your side. John said at one point during the negotiations "you're a shark." She answered back "I'm a guppy."

I love my guppy. Maryam and I are a team. More on that team later in the week.

++++

Christopher Coulter. Oh, Christopher, my arch-nemisis. Last week he wrote a rant about the podcasting and videoblogging industry and how lame it was. He had no idea I was considering taking a job in that industry.

I thought to myself "oh, it'll make him mad? Even better!"

So, blame this all on Christopher. Heheh.

More later, journalists are calling left and right. Thanks so much for everyone's support!