Traveling Geeks

Backstage Pass- Howard Rheingold

Howard Rheingold, who I’ve known casually for a few years, is one of my heroes. Not only does he write well, about current social media topics (Smart Mobs) but he is an artist at heart and like me a child of the 1960s. Though Howard paints (and wears painted) shoes and gardens and does a lot of work from his idyllic Mill Valley (CA) location.

Howard will be a speaker at some of the events we’re visiting, but he’s a listener too, so dear UK native, be sure to get together with him and let him know what’s happening in London and Cambridge.

Backstage Pass- Tom Foremski

Tom Foremski is the Silicon Valley Watcher. We met up at Green’s in Fort Mason, San Francisco, to get phones working and try out some tiny Internet-enabled portable devices. Here’s what Tom is looking forward to learning on the London trip.

Why is this a short post? Well, I have to go catch the BART (train) to the airport in a few minutes. Thank goodness for fast Internet connections.

Reaching Theoretical Broadband Link Speeds (in the US)

I’ve just spent 48 hours “beating myself up” over the Comcast (cable) high-speed Internet system here in San Francisco. I say beating myself up because I was so convinced the problem was Comcast that I spent hours on the phone with them, but ultimately most of the problems were in my own network. [Not all, but most.]

In US cities, the license to install and operate cable television networks is a city-granted monopoly. When cable TV was first being installed, each city opened a bidding process, and cable operators bid to be granted the franchise to install and operate the cable system in that particular city. If they won it, they then had exclusive rights. So in San Francisco, we have telephones provided by AT&T (which originally was Pacific Bell Telephone Company) and we have cable TV provided by ComCast (only – no other provider). Satellite TV lies outside this structure and is available everywhere on a competitive basis, but that’s a different issue.

Comcast also delivers Internet connectivity (and telephone service) via their cables. And that’s the rub.

Comcast suggests they can deliver broadband speeds of up to 12mbs (megabits per second). This kind of speed is pretty good, actually, and is lots higher than I can get on shared office connections at my client sites. It’s also faster than wi-fi can provide, so if you’re using wi-fi on your computer, the Comcast speed is kind of a moot point…it only affects me if I’m plugged into an Ethernet connection in the wall.

The thing I wanted to point out is the graph above showing (left to right) that Comcast give you huge speed when you first connect and start downloading a file (for example) and then it slacks off to a slower speed. It gives you the impression of quick download by starting the transfer really quickly – and if the file is small, you‘ll get it quickly, but the rest of the file comes in at a more leisurely rate, although it is in fact pretty close to the advertised rate. In my case the rate was just under 8mbits/second.

Behind the scenes with @garyvee at one of the best wine stores in the world

Gary Vaynerchuk’s dad came to the United States with nothing in his pocket. He worked for less than minimum wage and built up a business, Wine Library, that today sells $50 million a year in wine in a sizeable store in New Jersey.

Today Gary is building on top of his dad’s work and is taking the store global with a video show, Wine Library TV, that gets about 100,000 views a show. I remember when I first saw the impact he was having when I walked into a meeting at Revision 3 and the team was sitting around watching his show and drinking the wine he was talking about.

Here we visited Gary’s store and got more of how he’s using the 2010 web to bash in the skulls of his competitors. He calls it “bringing the thunder.” I call it the most innovative marketing I’ve seen on the web to date. We talked about a range of things from his dad to how he would compete with his show, if someone else had done Wine Library TV and he wanted in on the action.

This is part of our Building43 series of videos. Come over and join the community there, we’re looking for people who are fanatical about the 2010 web and who are looking to help other people and businesses get into this new world.

By the way, I’m a huge fan because Gary has never mislead me and he’s very willing to tell a CEO his/her wine is crap to his/her face (I’ve seen him do it, even after the CEO threw us a party).

Hope  you enjoy, tomorrow Rocky (behind the camera producer at Building43) and me are headed to London to find out what’s happening on the other side of the pond with regards to the 2010 web. Join us on Sunday night at a Tweetup in London.

Off with the Traveling Geeks

I’m heading for the airport, anticipating meeting up with the Traveling Geeks. Look for posts, pix, maybe streaming video next week.

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!

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.

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.