First, I would like to apologize if you read this post and it doesn't
have links in it yet. I will be putting the links in once I get
somewhere with wifi. That being said....
WHAT A TIME....omg...It
was AMAZING. As you might of read, I got there early and had something
to eat. The atmosphere was very like a tiki bar. Eventually people got
in the boat in the middle and were singing cover songs. They apparently
didn't know that many, because while we were there they repeated
themselves.
First person to show up is Sam Levin from
Inside Mac Radio.
He pulls up to the bar a few seats over from me. I had my iPod shuffle
on as to attract people who were there for the podcast event. He really
didn't say anything to me. Around the scheduled time Drew walks in with
James aka "The Professor" I walk up to them and they are arranging things on
where to sit with the staff. Psycho fan Jeff had showed up a little bit
before that with some friends and secured a section that was very tight
for as many people as we had.
Slowly people began showing up.
Fans and podcasters alike. I am the world's worst person with names so
I apologize if I don't mention you. However, the next big podcaster to
arrive was
Michael Geoghegan of Reel Reviews .What a great guy. Very personable and down to earth. He described for us his theatre setup that anyone would be envious of.
Michael Butler, the Rock and Roll Geek,
showed up a bit later. We all started geeking it up by people looking
at Sam and my iPod Photo. A bit embarrassing when someone noticed a
picture of some young celeb. I won't mention the name, but it wasn't a
bad picture, just something I don't even know why I had it. Michael
Butler looked thru my music collection and said, "Not bad at all." Yeah
I'm sure he saw some of the crappy top 40 and alternative music on
there that I enjoy sometimes. Oh well.
Dawn was late to
arrive. She eventually got there in all her pink hair'd glory. She was
a very nice person and talked with everyone there. She was having a
great time just talking with people about all sorts of things. Drew and
all of the other main podcasters were talking shop at a table for a
while.
By this time I'd say maybe 20 or more people were
there. Basically everyone that was going to show up had..besides one
person. Well 3 actually.
Adam Curry
of course. He also was joined by his friends he spent time with in
South Beach a month or so ago. What incredible people. This guy was
very excited about podcasting. I had a conversation with him about
where it needs to go, and how we need the content to be easier to
access, and integration of opml, etc. He hinted that a few things were
in the works when I mentioned somethings like integration with existing
aps that we use everyday. I won't get into much details, because all of
this is unofficial, but he said, "Oh don't worry about that. We are
handling that." Podcasting going mainstream would be incredible for the
community. His vision is to increase listenership on all shows as a
whole by 10 times in the next 60 days. VERY ambitious.
So, you
want to know about Adam Curry. TALL! Of course he had his rose tinted
shades, and most recently he has mainly been seen wearing Ugg boots
(hmm me too...wierd lol) So what is there to say. He is everything you
would expect. Charismatic, charming, great hair, a great guy who is
really excited about what is happening in the podosphere, so to speak.
I told him I was the one who did the Mini Source Code, and the one who
bought Dawn her iPod shuffle. She was right there and he said,
"ohhh...so you going to blow him now Dawn?" He was just an all around
funny guy. He seemed to have a great time. There was a bit of a
roundtable talk with Adam, Drew, both Michael's, Sam and then Steve
Gilmore showed up. It was like the podsquad was all together.
Oh
yeah, with Dawn came James "the professor's" wife, moon girl, Rin. I hope I am not
busting any trade secrets wide open. A very nice couple. They were very
nice to speak with.
I know there are tons of people there that I am just blah right now and trying to remember. The couple from
SayYum.com (Devin and Kris)
were there. They had only done 12 podcasts and were in the NY Times
article that came out the other day. This couple was also very nice. He
uses the Archos Gmini and loves it. My best friend, Eric has literally
the first Archos they made and it still works for him. Granted the OS
is slower than modern day mp3 players and it has a TINY screen, but he
loves it. The new Gmini is very nice and has things the iPod could only
wish to include.
Adam wasn't able to stay as long as everyone
else, as that he had just flown in from NYC and I couldn't even imagine
what the time was in England. He had to be jet-lagged like a mofo.
Before he did leave I took pictures of all of the podsquad that was
there. I took a picture with everyone's camera so I'm sure you can find
the picture somewhere. I am going to post them as soon as I can.
I
took a lot of pictures of the whole event and of San Francisco. I am
thinking of creating a iPhoto book with all of the pictures. If you
were at the event and have pictures, please send me the full sized ones
at
NickStarr@Gmail.com.
Let me touch on
Steve Gilmor. An amazing man in all that he has done. Unfortunately, the
Gilmor gang
is on a break right now, He is very much a podcasting evangelist. He
almost seemed like he was passing to torch. He was very passionate
about others creating podcasts and picking up where he left off. So,
get-together with your friends and start talking about technology.
Record a skype call. Do what it takes to get it out there. This seemed
to be Steve Gilmor's message.
When Adam left the crowd started
to thin out. Everyone paid their tab and the wait staff was very nice
and appreciated what a great group we were. We were left with the
couple from SayYum.com, James and Rin, Dawn and Drew,
Michael Geoghegan and one other person. Man I apologize, again I am
TERRIBLE with names. We all decided to take a cab down to a local
diner. Dawn and Drew had been there the night before so the wait staff
recognized them. They had some good food, and we all just hung out and
talked about all sorts of items. Drew, Michael and I geeked it out and
talked about different types of blogging software. It was a very
enjoyable end to a very enjoyable weekend.
I had very red eyes
this morning, and I'm not feeling completely well. However, all in all
it was the most amazing weekend I have ever had. Dawn and Drew kept
asking me if I was having a good time and all. I think they didn't want
me to be disappointed for coming out all that way for just a group of
people hanging out. On the contrary, it was an amazing time. I would
trade the time I spent for anything in the world. If you weren't there
and are reading this, what I have typed doesn't even do justice to what
an incredible evening it was. I hope some of the other people post
details that I might of missed out on and conversations they had.
Please trackback to this post so that people can read the other
stories. I wanted to get talk to everyone and get their website and/or
blog, but that never materialized.
So, for now...I'm out.
Sleeping and getting some rest to get better. Looks like chicken soup
is on the menu. Take care....inkernet.
UPDATE: I completly forgot to mention I'm sure a number of people, so if I did please contact me.
Sam Curtis from a number of podcast projects was there. He did the
Podcat podcast,
SportsPod, and
Laguna Guitar School.
I appoligze about forgetting. I unfortunatetly didn't get to speak with
him as much as everyone else. I apoligize for the lack of foresight.
BTW. he was the voice of podcat....It was funny. Steve Gillmor tried to
get him to do the podcat voice and eventually he did for a few seconds.
So funny watching tech great, Gillmor, trying to get a guy to talk in a
higher pitched voice. LOL.
