Friday, June 23, 2006

How to tune into BloggerCon. 

I'm linking to the MP3s as they become available (about 20 minutes after each session, thanks to CNET). 

Kevin Marks' video webcast feed. 

The song: The Hokey Pokey. 

Another famous Marc Canter sleeping photo. 

Movie of the room during Phil Torrone's session. 

Dan Farber is blogging the conference. 

Phil's photos for the Tools discussion. 

We're live at CNET, we got the tunes playing, people are starting to arrive, life is good. Just got a report that the webcast has been tested and works. 

SF weather: "Highs in the 60s to lower 70s." Cooool! 

I switched to Colloquy, which is a much nicer IRC client. 

Chris Pirillo: Users vs Developers.  

Scott Karp: Digg vs the NY Times. 

Mike Arrington: "No one crafts a sentence like you, Steve." 

Two years ago today: "This time the pros beat the crap out of the blogs in a story about blogs. Something to think about. This time they fact-checked your ass. " 

New header graphic, the Rockies west of Denver shot on a flight from New York to San Francisco.  

How to tune into BloggerCon 

Whether you're remote or local, you can participate in BloggerCon in many ways.

1. Tune into the IRC at irc.freenode.net/bloggercon.

2. Or the webcast. (Murphy-willing.)

3. Doc Searls is the technographer. If you're in the conference room, you'll see his outline projected on either side of the room. If you're coming in over IRC and/or the webcast, you can view the outlines in a web browser through the table of contents. They are also available in OPML, so they are viewable in any environment that works with OPML. One interesting idea to try out is to follow a discussion using the Instant Outliner in the OPML Editor.

4. Listen to some funky music and get yo rear end in motion!

5. Listen to the MP3s as they become available.

6. Kevin Marks's video webcast feed.

Jake Ludington 

Jake is producing the BloggerCon webcast.

Rex Hammock, Terry Heaton, Paolo Valdemarin 

With Robert Cox in the background.

Post partum before startup coffee notes 

It's 4:20AM, I'm awake, drinking coffee, and running over in my head, one more time, the checklist of things we still have to do, which of course are largely the things we won't do. And then there are the things we didn't do at previous BloggerCons that I must remember to do at this one. And the things I'm worrying about, because I know theny went wrong before and I'm wondering what will go wrong this time.

1. What if no one shows up?

2. What if the air conditioning doesn't work?

3. We didn't get signage, will people think that's tacky?

4. What if no one shows up?

5. What if the wrong people show up and the wrong people don't show up?

6. What if we can't think of a song?

7. And on and on over and over.

Face it, I'm a worrier. Someone who doesn't worry can't ship software. But that isn't why I feel unsettled. I actually know why. There's a little bit of a story to it.

About two weeks before BloggerCon I, in September 2003, I returned a call from to brother, he was boarding a plane in Chicago (I think) and he said I'll call you back when I get to my seat. That's when I knew something bad had happened. In the two minutes my mind raced. Was it my mother, my father, was someone sick, had someone died? It turned out it was my uncle. He was young, just 58, and had died suddeny in Jamaica. I decided not to go to Jamaica to participate in the settling of his affairs, I stayed in Cambridge to make sure BloggerCon came off. It was one of the most hyper-real couple of weeks, every minute of it in shock, depressed, but also participating in what would turn out to be a great event.

Now I don't remember the unsettled feeling, trying to sleep at night in the last days before the first conference, or should I say I don't usually remember; but last night at the party, someone unexpected was there, Mark Stahlman, who I had last seen in Negril with my uncle, and he had stories to tell, and didn't know that Ken had died. It stirred up everything, and that's why this morning, there are unresolved feelings to feel, and it's totally appropriate to process them in the hours before the fourth BloggerCon.