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Geek Week AZ

I had a meeting today with some of the all-stars in the local tech and business event planning community. The foundation is still being laid and nothing is set in stone, but we discussed ways to work together to make all the tech and business events in Phoenix bigger and better.

In Phoenix, we have quite a few great events, and while some are bursting at the seams, they could all use a little more exposure. Ranging from 80-600 attendees, these events have the potential of collectively drawing crowds of 1,000-2,000 people (with 5,000+ in the not-too-distant future) if they strategically work together.

The general concept is to plan the events around each other to make what could be called a festival of conferences. Each participating event would still organize its own content and have its own committees, but there would (ideally) be an umbrella committee that works to line up the venue and festival-wide sponsorships.

Imagine if we could all take a week off and enjoy back-to-back events like PodCampAZ, AZ Entrepreneurship Conference, Ignite Phoenix, BarCampPhoenix, Startup Weekend Phoenix, and even BIL Conference.

This type of event would draw people from all around the Phoenix metropolitan area and even people from out of state.

There is much to be done before anything like this can happen, but the meetings have started and it is getting closer and closer to becoming a reality.

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Changing the World

I talk to a lot of people who say their goal is to “change the world” or “take over the world.” I fit into the former group, because I don’t think one can take over the world without things getting messy.

Changing the world is an interesting subject, though. There are many motivations for wanting to change the world. For me, it is immortality, or at least one perspective of it. Not to get too religious here, but to lay the foundation, I’m an atheistic, worm-food-when-you-die kind of person. I don’t believe in classical immortality (living and breathing forever), but in an existential sense, you can be immortal to everyone else.

Think about yourself for a second. When you die, perhaps those thoughts (of you, by you) go away. Think about the people around you who you know. When you die, they are certainly impacted, although they remember you. Now think about everyone else, mainly those who know of you but have never met you. When they think of you, it is in relation to something you have said or done that impacts them. Unless they hear about your passing on the news, the thoughts of who you are no different if you are dead or alive. To them, you might as well still be alive. If what you do has a great enough impact on enough people, stories of who you are and what you’ve done can be carried along to people who might not have even been born in your lifetime.

Change the world. Create or do something that is forever remembered. Be immortal.

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Fame

I recently read an article online about John Travolta’s son passing away. I don’t spend much time reading about celebrities, but I came across the headline on the CNN.com home page.

Fast forward to last night. I was at the airport, working on my laptop, and I overhear a wife to her husband, “You heard about John Travolta’s son?” He replied, “Yeah, he died. He had a history of seizures and he hit his head.” I found it fascinating that not only did they both independently know about what happened, but some very specific details.

That’s what it’s like to be famous. You suffer a tragedy, and tens of millions of people — or possibly even a hundred million — read about it and discuss it in places like airports in the middle of the night.

Some people seem to want to become “famous” and I’ve even heard people accuse me of having that as a goal. Personally, I don’t see the appeal of being renowned in this way.

I understand where people can get the impression that I want to be famous. I promote myself and I am trying to become well-known. However, there is a distinction in becoming an industry expert. I don’t have any interest in being followed by paparazzi, having people know about my personal life, or even recognize me on the street.

What I do have interest in is being regarded as an expert by people who I respect in the field. My goal is not to be “famous,” but to be someone people go to for advice.

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Sofa Jumping

SofaJumper.com

I traveled every month of 2008, sometimes multiple times a month. To cut costs and to make more travel possible, I’ve started crashing on friends’ couches. My employer BitGravity will cover a couple nights at a hotel when I visit the Burlingame headquarters, but I can save them money and stay longer (1-2 weeks) if I stay with friends.

The best part about it, though, is the fact that all of the people I stay with are really awesome individuals. There is always so much happening and so much to catch up on.

On a recent trip to New York, I found myself staying with a different friend every night, because most of my friends were traveling, hosting other visitors, or otherwise unavailable. In a conversation about this exciting couch-hopping trip (9 nights, 8 different places) with Mike Germano, he suggested that I tell the stories of these incredible hosts as I hop around.

And so, SofaJumper.com was born!

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A Goal For 2009: Blog-a-day For a Month

I made a video-per-day for a month a year ago, and it proved to be an invaluable exercise for all my future video production endeavors, especially live video. It also helped with my public speaking confidence and clarity. During that month, the videos themselves varied in quality and usefulness, but quite a few people told me they enjoyed most of them.

If you have followed this blog for long enough, you might remember that I was featuring blog posts from Phoenix bloggers every week for a couple of months. I may or may not get back into that, but when I travel, it’s hard enough to keep up with what’s going on in Phoenix. Reading all the Phoenix blogs I can find, filtering out the most interesting ones, and blogging about them proved to be a little more than I could squeeze into my schedule permanently.

I usually do these types of exercises with no end date, but this time, I’m going to make it exactly one calendar month. Starting today, I’m going to write about something every day. I might not write every day, but something will be posted every day here on this blog — meaning I may write stuff in advance and save it for days I don’t write. Also, since it is mostly about posting regularly, the posts may be short and they may even be video.

After January 31, I can guarantee I will not keep up the blog-a-day, but after that, my average posts per month will hopefully be higher. That’s part of the reason I call this an exercise. If you can run a certain speed when you’re out of shape, running every day for a month will very likely result in a faster pace thereafter. Until you get fat and lazy again, that is!