Archive for 'United Kingdom'
I’m packed
If you were to survey the Traveling Geeks this morning (Thursday before travel day) you’d be unlikely to hear many of us say “I’m packed and ready to go.” But you would certainly hear all of us say “I’m excited and will really enjoy this trip!”
Yesterday a half dozen of us met up at Greens restaurant in Fort Mason (a decommissioned US Army base in SanFrancisco, used for troop/cargo ship departures during World War II, that was turned over for public use in 1974) to review the mobile internet devices (MIDs) that Intel is providing for the duration of the trip. We’ll be bringing several of these with us, and sharing them around the group, so you’ll get some reports on how well they work.
But, we’re suffering the same stress that I think many bloggers suffer — namely, we are each working our “day job” and at the same time attempting to get everything lined up for the London trip. I have meetings until 1pm on the day I’m traveling, and then I go to the airport around 5pm for an overnight flight — and yes, I sleep on these flights — if it’s dark outside the airplane, then my rule is that I sleep in order to adapt. But today some of us are still getting SIM cards into the Nokia phones and getting BTMobile data provisioned on those phones, and trying to take photos and movies and upload them to Ovi.com (Nokia) and MobyPicture and Flickr, and on and on.
In my case, I notice a change in behavior year by year. Today I surveyed what is ready for packing, and it is almost all electronic gear and travel information. No clothes are even ready to be packed yet…they’ll be the easy part. What is important is making sure I have the power adapters, plugs, external hard drives, cables, and the three Flip cameras that I will travel with so I can record the Backstage Pass interviews while we’re on the road. I’ve written about being a cyber-nomad, and I definitely fall smack into the middle of that category. Every device I’m carrying has wi-fi, some have 3G data capabilities, and most of them can connect to each other. I am entirely portable and I’ve told my co-workers and clients that although there may be an 8-hour time difference, I will be online most of the time and available unless I’m in meetings.
Speaking of backstage, we now have all of the geeks equipped with Flip UltraHD cameras, and we have two professional cameraguys who will shoot footage – one of these being sponsored by Rackspace Building43.com and the other being provided locally in London. We have agreed to share all of our footage amongst ourselves, so I expect to see some pretty interesting shots, interviews, and to spend many many many hours viewing, logging and then editing, especially upon my return. While we’re on the road we will be busy from 7am to 10pm every day, so there will be little time for editing. Instead, you can expect to see more “live” video and photos on-the-spot and less edited footage.
Keep watching the Traveling Geeks blog for links to photos and video!
Code of conduct and ethics: Transportation and lodging on this trip are being sponsored by various commercial and governmental agencies (see the geeks’ disclosure page), but we are journalists and have no obligation to report on any specific companies, products or services, nor will we allow sponsorship to influence our reporting. Any gear that sponsors give me will be donated to The Dalai Lama Foundation at the end of the trip. I am treating the sponsorships as if they were donations to the Foundation, since I also expect to conduct some interviews for my Many Paths to Peace series while I’m in London (and then Paris the next week). — Sky
Backstage Pass- Renee Blodgett (the magic sauce)
What’s the special sauce in marketing? In the case of Renee Blodgett, it’s a creative approach combined with a lotta hard work. Getting ready to go to London with the Traveling Geeks (which Renee co-founded), she’s working day and night to get a client site launched, while at the same time she’s bringing a new sponsor on board and also trying to make sure that 8 geeks who are arriving a day early will have their hotel rooms all arranged. I was able to spring Renee long enough for a dinner last week, but wow has she been burning the midnight oil to get ready for this trip!
Her online projects are her blog Down the Avenue, and We Blog the World, an interesting syndication of blogs around the world – designed to improve communication between cultures and serve as a platform where interesting conversations can happen.
This article was reposted because of a problem with the syndication software for the Traveling Geeks site.
BRAND YOU Book Signing in Dorking
David Royston-Lee will be at Waterstone’s in Dorking, England on Thursday July 2, 2009 at 5pm for the launch of his new book: BRAND YOU. He will be speaking for 40 minutes before answering questions and signing books.
Traveling Geeks Are Going to London!
Although I just recently returned from Internet Week New York, I’m about to set foot on another exciting, new adventure. From July 5 to July 10, I’ll be traveling around London together with my Geeky friends. aka The Traveling Geeks. The TG’s are a small informal group of technology bloggers and influencers who like to travel to various regions around the world, collaborate with technology innovators and leaders on interesting projects and then share everything with the rest of the world via blogs, videos, podcasts and social networks.
On this trip, we’ll be on the hunt for innovative uses of new technologies in Great Britain, especially by lesser-known companies, and spotlight how those innovations may improve people’s lives. We’ll also compare the thought leadership in Great Britain’s tech industry and compare it with what’s taking place in Silicon Valley. The highlights of our UK agenda include events such as The Traveling Geeks TweetUp in Chelsea, podcast with the Guardian, and The Techcrunch Europa Awards with Mike Butcher.
This exciting group of jet-setters consists of myself, JD Lasica (founder of Socialmedia.biz & Socialbrite.org, respected author), Robert Scoble (former blogger for Microsoft, now works for Rackspace’s Building43), Craig Newmark (founder of Craigslist), Sarah Lacy (Editor at Techcrunch, reporter for BusinessWeek and co-host of the Yahoo Tech Ticker show), Tom Foremski (founder of Siliconvalleywatcher.com), Sky Schuyler (CTO of The Dalai Lama Foundation), Renee Blodgett. (co-founder of TG, marketing consultant and blogger), Jeff Saperstein (co-founder of TG, Author, teacher, consultant).Susan Bratton (co-founder of Personal Life Media), Sarah Austin (founder of Pop17.com), Meghan Asha (co-founder of Nonsociety.com) and Howard Rheingold (teaches at Stanford and UC Berkeley and author of Tools for Thought, The Virtual Community and Smart Mobs).
Last year the Traveling Geeks came to Israel and I hosted them. This time we are going to be hosted by London locals. Should be very exciting. I’m thrilled to embark on this week long geek fest. I’m sure to meet some very interesting Brits along the way. In fact, if anyone is interested in meeting any of us for interviews, please email me at: press[at]blonde20.com and we’ll try to make it happen!
Photo Credit: bobby13
A little more about the Traveling Geeks UK trip
Okay, to view this in context, check out this Backstage Pass by Sky (Jim Schuyler) who's the Chief Technology Officer of The Dalai Lama Foundation.
Backstage Pass- Jeff Saperstein
Jeff Saperstein is a marketing expert, writer, educator, and consultant to governments, companies and NGOs. Building on his contacts with people around the world, he connects experts, investors and students alike with new ideas and resources. In 2002 he wrote Creating Regional Wealth in the Innovation Economy, which focuses on a regional basis, on how innovative practices can lead to the formation of regional wealth. Jeff co-founded Traveling Geeks and will be leading the charge in London as well as a featured speaker at Reboot Britain.
Thank You Britain!
Swinging with Grandson Harry Saperstein, who resides in Kensington
“Never have the Traveling Geeks owed so much to such a dedicated few.”
Badly paraphrasing Churchill, I am stirred by and grateful to the phenomenal people and organizational support who have collaborated, hosted, and worked with us these many months to bring the Traveling Geeks to Britain.
Penny Harwood and Richard Stanaro from Think London initially worked with JD Lasica and me to conceive the trip.
Roland Harwood and Rohan Gunatillake of NESTA, the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts, have been our gracious hosts, sponsors, and collaborators for site visits.
Karyn Barnes of EEI, East of England International, has worked very hard to schedule the Cambridge leg of our journey.
Jess Tyrell and Steve Moore have been our gracious organizers for ReBoot Britain Conference on July 6
Barbara Grull-Cacao from Think London who planned the Guardian Media Podcast and coordination with other media.
Ted Shelton of the Conversation Group spearheaded our Tweet Up scheduled for Sunday July 5 at JuJu’s
Clare Laurie of E Consultancy worked with us to develop the round table discussions for July 9.
London/Cambridge is a natural habitat for the Geeks. We share culture, curiosity, and inclination to see what is new, innovative, and beneficial for the common good. Not to be downplayed, we all know how to have a good time with lots of laughs. The Geeks will be blogging, video streaming, presenting, and conversing formally and informally with hundreds of like minded British kindred spirits through a week of intensive morning, afternoon, and evening events.
We are eager to begin.
Up Next: London
God forbid I sit still for more than two weeks. I've still got my Africa jet lag, but I'm already planning my time in London July 4-16.
The first week I'm traveling with a group of videographers, bloggers and authors called "The Traveling Geeks." I went on the first Traveling Geeks trip last year, which was also my first trip to Israel. Most people know I usually like to travel alone, but every once in a while experiencing another culture's tech scene with people from slightly different media disciplines can be eye-opening. Plus, they needed someone in charge of pub crawling. (Ahem, London readers, leave your suggestions in the comments…) I'll also get to present an award and do my best Michael Arrington impression at the UK TechCrunchies, or as they're actually dubbed the "Europas." I'll be blogging here and on TechCrunch, as I try not to step on Mike Butcher's capable TechCrunch Europe toes.
If you want to hang with us, get your ticket to the UK Crunchies or come to our Tweet-up. Tweet-up tickets are half-price until Friday, if you say you read about it on SarahLacy.com. (Just kidding, they're half-off for everyone until Friday.) Our full agenda is here in case you want to just STALK us the whole time.
Our statement of ethics is going up on the site soon, and I wanted to bring it up since I've been pretty harsh on Pay-Per-Post. No one on this trip is recieving any payment in exchange for coverage. We do have sponsors paying our travel costs, so we could get a diverse group of attendees without worrying about income or travel budgets. We disclose those sponsors here. Our only obligations are to go to the events we've committed to and write about whatever we find interesting.
I love London and spent a good deal of time there last year, so I padded five extra days onto the trip so I can reconnect with friends and meet new ones. I've always got a list of startups to meet, but this trip, I'm particularly interested in ferreting out some London investors who are doing deals in China, India, Africa and South America. Most of the ones I know do more Western-centric early stage tech venture capital. Would be great to mix some European investing perspective into the book, so please let me know any suggestions.
Also, in case you were about to comment about the un-American-ness of my leaving on INDEPENDENCE DAY to go see the very people we declared independence from in the first place, Mr. Lacy has already beat you to it.
A little Q&A re Traveling Geeks tour to UK and my thing
Well, they asked questions regarding all my service stuff and perspective, so maybe worth mentioning a little from the Econsultancy Q&A:
You founded craigslist in 1995 and took it to the web in
1996. That's almost a full decade before 'Web 2.0' really went
mainstream in a big way. What has it been like to watch Web 2.0 emerge
and grow into a mainstream, global phenomenon?
In the sense that Web 2.0 is about collaboration, it feels really good, maintaining and increasing my confidence in humanity.
It may be hard for many people to believe but you still do
customer service for craigslist. Obviously you could have someone else
do this so I'll ask the question: why do you do it?
It feels right, in terms of my commitment to our community and to public service.
It also helps me stay in touch with what's real, which is the same reason a President needs to keep his Blackberry.
You're passionate about open government and have written quite a bit about it. What is open government and why is it important?
Very
long story, but it's about genuine grassroots democracy complementing
representative democracy. People talk, figure out what matters, then
government listens and acts.
It also involves the government telling us what it's doing, so that it can be held accountable.
Backstage Pass- Craig Newmark
Craig Newmark, founder of Craig’s list is one of the dozen Traveling Geeks on their way to London and Cambridge to find out what’s happening in social media and technology during July 2009. Craig is particularly interested in how online services are changing the way government (in the broadest sense of the word) works. See what Craig is looking forward to doing in London!
