“Sheesh, Steve Jobs hasn’t been dead for a day and he’s pulling that stuff up here already?!”

St. Peter said “oh, that’s not Steve. that’s God. He thinks he’s Steve Jobs.”

5 Opening Gala at the Yerba Buena. 4PM-8PM

6 Double IPA Festival in Hayward. Noon-ish.

7 Beerunch before the @ESBale Stupid Bowl & Home Brew Festival. http://mateveza.com/beerunch

8 Triple Rock Sour Beer Festival 4PM

9 Triple Rock Barrel Aged Festival (afternoon) followed by the Tionfest at Toronado

10 ??

11 Paxton Dinner somewhere. details here. or it’s Oyster Fest at Magnolia and Sierra Nevada at the T.

12 Bill Brand Tribute at Drakes

13 Barleywine at Toronado

14 Brewers Tea at 21st Amendment followed by the Celebrator 22nd Party

GET HERE!

so if you don’t follow the twitter (or if you do) you might want to see some of the images that get posted from time to time. these DO NOT show up in the feed on the bottom. maybe they will someday. but I doubt it. there’s a new link on the side so you can see what I’ve seen without having to find this post. one of the things I’m totally surprised about is the number of people who actually look at the them. the count isn’t that big but it’s consistently like around 100.

another thing I’ve learned is that there is a difference between what I want to show using a phone camera and my other (sadly lost) camera. I am very much more selective in what goes up from my camera compared to my phone. there are things that would never see the day. but pictures from that thing are about RIGHT NOW not right as soon as I get home, find the cable, resize, upload, label, comment and share.

here’s the link to pictures from that thing.

later John.

Parties and dinners are the other gatherings that you must attend. Dinners put you with others at random places around a table. By the time dessert shows up you have 5 new friends or a new deal or other opportunity that you might not otherwise have landed.

When the parties are over the next place to be is at the hotel bar. People that you might have missed will be there. Order whatever you are having and a water. You need to make sure you drink water. It’s easy to forget. Buying the round for your group isn’t required but it will gain you respect. If somebody else is buying be respectful and decline the offer if you aren’t planning on staying.

Sessions are interesting to a point but it’s not the reason I go to these things. I watched Kenji and Craig do a talk on compressing video and watched Brian Hogg’s talk on “Building a TV studio in a Basement.” The “keynotes” were things that I made the effort to go to but then didn’t stay to listen for long. Not because the speakers didn’t have interesting things to say but because the hall talks are always more interesting. One comment that I heard was that the person wasn’t learning as much as they had the year before. Meaning they’d actually been learning, using and contributing to their own knowledge lots in the last year.

Ideas are all around. I came back with a show idea that I totally want to produce. There was also time to talk about what needed to be changed or added for shows that I’m already doing. Pretty much because this is your only context this is going to happen. It’s a good idea to take notes as you go otherwise you won’t remember them. Maybe that’s just as well too. Some of the things I was talking about making were pretty crazy.

The “show floor” didn’t take long to cover. There were more “aggregator” companies, several mobile solutions, 4 new portable recorders, a mixer that at first glance was “rad” but had several fatal flaws. There were lots of candy dishes, pens, widgets and gizmos for hand outs. This isn’t why you’d come to the PME.

Here’s some highlights from the show floor:
Four new portable recorders. Marantz, M-Audio… after seeing all of these I decided that the best product is the last year Zoom H4. It really does everything that I want it to do.

The Roland M-16DX mixer was interesting. It breaks up the interface and the controls from each other allowing you to put both in a more usable location.

There was a fascinating iPod based game that let four people compete against each other. The premise is that you have card that asks “play a song with ‘feeling’ in the title” or “play a song that is about crickets” then you scroll your iPod to find the song then press play. The device in the middle that connects all the iPods will light up blocking the other players. If you get the song wrong you lose a point and if you get it right you advance. Works with ANY iPod. Just so you know the device doesn’t know what you played just that you played. It’s to everyone to figure out if you are correct or not.

Be careful what you pretend to be because you are what you pretend to be.
Kurt Vonnegut

His works always put me in a mood of altered states. My mom would notice this and say “you’re reading Vonnegut again aren’t you?” I wonder if his words would do the same thing if I revisted the stories today.

Video starts here.

One or more nights spent in each place.

The drive up followed the weekend at the podcast expo which left me a-buzz thinking of opportunities. There is lots to do in the next week which includes tech supporting my stupid car that developed an oil leak. Hopefully it won’t be as expensive to fix as my stupid jet.

The day ended crossing the Bay Bridge as the sun was setting glowing orange and purple. All I could say was “I’m home!” I turned up the volume. Then made a left on 5th street.