Traveling Geeks

Backstage Pass- Tom Foremski says disruptive tech linked to fault lines

Kinda spooky idea, but Tom Foremski suggested to me that fault lines and disruptive technology appear in the same regions of the world. Speaking of disruption, we were at Reboot Britain when I recorded this clip and were struggling because hundreds of attendees were sharing a wi-fi connection and it was pretty difficult to find enough bandwidth to squeeze up a podcast or video to the Traveling Geeks web site.

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“Because I listened to Al Gore!,” Lisa Devaney. #WDYDWYD? #TG2009

Lisa Devaney, Hai Media Group

My Traveling Geeks Meme: WDYDWYD? What is it?

Lisa playing with Legos – Bonus Material!

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Traveling Geeks Photos on Flickr by Susan Bratton: London and Cambridge #TG2009

Here is a link to all of my photos (please, tag and comment away!) from the Traveling Geeks blogger junket.

Thanks to all whom I met and to the new friendships I’ve made. I have been thoroughly impressed with the tech scene, the quality of entrepreneurs and the start up scene in London and Cambridge.

If you have photos to share, please comment below.

CLICK HERE TO GO TO FLICKR SETS FOR TRAVELING GEEKS

Susan Bratton Traveling Geeks Flickr Sets

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“I love helping an entrepreneur make something big out of nothing!!!,” Sonali De Rycker. #WDYDWYD? #TG2009

Sonali De Rycker, Accel Partners London

My Traveling Geeks Meme: WDYDWYD? What is it?

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UK Diary: Wednesday – Time-Off For Good Bad Behavior

Following lunch with Skype, the Traveling Geeks have the rest of the day off.

I spend a good chunk of my free time posting and catching up with my online persona. Then I’m off to the Southbank Centre for a cup of tea and a couple of glasses of wine with some friends from my university days.

In the evening Renee Blodgett invites me to “Calendar Girls” at the Noel Coward theatre just off Piccadilly Circus. Robert Scoble and his sidekick, producer Rocky Barbanica, join us part of the way through the play.

Afterwards, Renee complains of a scratchy throat and heads back to the hotel. (We learn later that one of the panelists at the Guardian media event the prior night came down with swine flu. Renee and fellow Geekettes were sitting in the front row.)

Robert and Rocky head off for a taste of the old country (McDonald’s) then come back and join me for late night drinks with an old pal from San Francisco now living in London, Heddi Cundle (@HeddiCundle).

I like to say that Heddi makes you dizzy. After the initial shock of contact it doesn’t take long before they are big fans of the Cundle experience.

After closing down one pub we walk the cobbled streets over to Covent Garden where we find another one that’s still open.

The next morning, a rather slower moving Robert says to me “I’m blaming you!”

—

Don’t miss Thursday on UK Diary: The absolutely mental experience of the “Europas Awards.” All hail Mike Butcher!

Traveling Geeks… scandal!

My God, Scoble, Did You Think We Wouldn’t See These?

What happens in London when a group of American blogger types heads over to geek out? They get drunk, put on wigs and get friendly with the locals, apparently. Former Guardian columnist Paul Carr (@paulcarr)
sends us links to a disturbing group of photographs, likely taken about
five minutes apart. What was Scoble, the poster boy for RackSpace’s new
Building 43 project, thinking?

“Because Content is the new Electricity, Open Source is the new Power Grid & the UK is the place to build it!,” John Newton, Alfresco #WDYDWYD #TG2009

John Newton, Chairman and CEO of Alfresco at Accel Partners London Traveling Geeks meeting.

John Newton, Chairman and CEO of Alfresco

My Traveling Geeks Meme: WDYDWYD? What is it?

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“As tech & product developers; I get access to amazing stuff in the lab long before it gets in the outside world, AND get to work with the people that make this stuff real,” Patrick Pordage. #WDYDWYD? #TG2009

My Traveling Geeks Meme: WDYDWYD? What is it?

Patrick Pordage, Marketing Communications Director, Cambridge Consultants

“As tech and product developers; I get access to amazing stuff in the lab long before it gets in the outside world, AND get to work with the people that make this stuff real.”

Cambridge Consultants

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UK Diary: Tuesday – Back To Soho and Dinner With Agency.com

[Being a Traveling Geek takes stamina. I challenge any traditional journalist to keep up with our daily agendas. Not only are we interviewing people and staying up late writing, editing video and posting but we are also being interviewed by others, taking part on panels, and reporting on the same panels, and taking part in lots of other inside-out media activities.]

Our fourth event for Tuesday was dinner with Agency.com and assorted clients and friends — in Soho at Soho House. It was great to be back in this vibrant part of London because this is where I got my start in journalism in 1982.

It was a great place to work and a great time to be a young man around town, with plenty of small bars, restaurants, cafes, and after-hours clubs.

We sat at a very long table and we introduced ourselves and spoke briefly about what it was that attracted us to social/new media. I managed to get video of most of the replies, my apologies because I missed a couple of people.

http://www.blip.tv/file/2353961

Please also see Susan Bratton: DishyMix: Susan Bratton Podcasts & Blogs Executives

UK Diary: Tuesday – Guardian Newspaper Media Panel . . .

We left BT and managed to hail a few black cabs amid the rain and made our way over to the Guardian newspaper for a panel on the future of media.

I was thinking that maybe the death of newspapers is just nature’s way of helping us all to reduce our carbon footprint.

Some of our fellow Traveling Geeks were on the panel, our Geeketes were at the front of the room, which must have had a distracting effect (see photo – by JD Lasica) while the rest of us were mostly at the back Twittering onto a big screen at the front of the room.

Here was my take on it, an extract from: A Guardian Newspaper Media Panel, Twitter, From Back to Front And Beyond…

The Butcher of Fleet Street

I was sitting at the back of the room next to fellow TGer Craig Newmark of Craigslist. And inevitably, the panel’s moderator couldn’t resist asking him to stand up and explain himself for killing the newspaper industry.

Craig is mightily fed up with this question. And I agree. It is not his fault that the newspaper industry is in trouble. But Craig handled it all very well, throwing in a line “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition,” which drew laughs and distracted the panel from further pursuit of a tired line of questioning and drew the discussion back to the favorite subject of the day: Twitter.

Ayelet Noff posted a video of the event:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FUs9acyk4o&feature=player_embedded

Here is JD Lasica:

The podcast just went live. Stream or download (Time 51:13):

(You can also listen to it, naturally, on the Guardian site.)

A few highlights

The entire 51 minutes is well worth a listen — I think it’s one of the smartest podcasts I’ve been a part of. A few snippets:

• I returned to the problem of newspaper culture that punishes, rather than rewards, experimentation, innovation and failure (without which innocation is impossible). But harping on newspapers’ failures is like shooting dinosaurs in a barrel.

• Sarah Lacy suggested that we may see 10 metropolitan cities without a daily newspaper by the end of the year. (I think the time frame is more likely on the order of two to three years.)

Time for innovative news models

Here is Jeff Saperstein:

…The Barbarians are at the Gates in every sector of the communications industry. Advertising agencies are being decimated by the Google model, Encyclopedias and paid resource media have been annihilated by Wikipedia, Network television conglomerates have been supplanted by Cable subscription channels and digital narrowcasting, and the movie studios are enraged by You Tube and other web sources to download feature films outside the movie theatres, on and on with the music industry and I-Tunes , etc.

In other words, the journalism industry is not unique in its economic viability being challenged. The Internet/digital media content delivery model is not just a hiccup, but a tectonic shift. Our Traveling Geeks are players and informed commentators in that shift.

The Guardian Dialogues « Traveling Geeks in London

Here are some of my Tweets during the event:

– Blogging and traditional media have a lot in common – lack of a viable business model 🙂

– Paper or electron is shouldn’t matter. Newspapers need to transition into news services imho…

– The media is dead long live the media! We have more media in more forms today than at anytime in history!

– Newspapers have been communicating in 140 characters or less for hundreds of years: In news headlines!

– The panel has seems to have an “us verus them” attitude. Surely media today is about “us and them” which is a good thing

– If a blogger blogs in the blogosphere does anybody blog it? Takes time to build an audience

– Blogs build credibility over time, they don’t get it just by being. It takes time to build a media brand

– Bloggers aren’t all very free wheeling, they have reputations to defend just the same as regular media

– News has always been a collaborative venture, taking the story further. Why should it be a problem today?

– Why is there a distinction being made between blogger media and newspaper media? It’s all media.

Next stop on this rainy Tuesday: Soho and Agency.com dinner