Digital Impulses

All set for Gnomedex 8.0

I Just now finished booking my flight and hotel for Gnomedex 8.0 in Seattle, WA., the annual tech conference put on by Chris and Ponzi Pirillo  Like it has been the last few years, it will be held at the Bell Harbor International Conference Center.  It's running from Thursday, August 21, 2008 through Saturday, August 23, 2008.

This year, I scored a room at the Seattle Marriott Waterfront RIGHT ACROSS THE STREET from the conference center, so I am STOKED.  No taxis or rental cars to worry about, no parking to hassle with.

BooYa!

I can't wait.

Gnomedex 8: Registered!

I just completed my registration for Gnomedex 8.  It is going to be held in Seattle, WA from Thursday, August 21 through Saturday, August 23.

You can go here for more information:  http://www.gnomedex.com

This will be my 3rd Gnomdex.  I can't wait.  Sweet.

Days Inn Town Center in Seattle SUCKS - What a Dump!

I recently had an occasion to travel to Seattle for a tech conference (Gnomedex 7.0) and made reservations to stay at a hotel about a mile away from the Bell Harbor Conference Center near the waterfront.

The hotel I chose was the Days Inn Town Center in Seattle and what I was subjected to over my stay was nothing short of appalling.  The morning that I left, I was offered the business card of the general manager and I took it, making a mental note to write him a lengthy letter upon my return to L.A.

Following is the lengthy email that I sent him:

Matt,

I was given your card by an employee at the Front Desk when I checked out on Sunday, August 12, 2007.  I am taking the time to write to you in the hopes that other people who stay at this Days Inn aren't subjected to the multitude of issues that I had during my stay.

To wit:

- The condition of the furniture in your rooms is dilapidated at worst, shabby at best.
- The remote control for the TV did not work.
- The room STUNK of smoke (I specifically requested a non-smoking room).  The ambiance in the room was disgusting.
- The rug was coming up near the bathroom entrance.
- Having to walk 200 feet to a soda vending machine down the hallway that does not offer bottled water is horrendous.
- Charging $5 a night for parking is absolutely ridiculous and the very definition of "nickle and diming to death".
- I had to wait 2 hours for a room to be ready for me and the attitude of the woman at the front desk was surly.
- My overnight bag was unceremoniously tossed in to a Broom closet under the guise of "we will hold your luggage" for you.
- The connectivity speed of the so-called "High Speed Internet Access" was abysmal.  It seemed slower than the Dial-up service I had in Los Angeles circa 10 years ago. I paid $40 for the connectivity because I had work to do and had no other choice. It's a JOKE to refer to this level of connectivity as "High Speed".
- The Restaurant associated with your *hotel* has a glass roof that seems like it has not been washed in 5 years. It was dingy, dirty and very depressing to look at.  It made for a dissatisfying breakfast experience every morning. Thhe food was bland too, incidentally.
- The Keycard to my room quit working TWICE in the 4 nights that I stayed there.  That involved a 2 minute walk back to your front desk both times to get it fixed, both times after arriving at my room with my hands full and tired from a full day of doing business.
- The outlets in the bathroom only work if the Light switch is ON in the bathroom, thereby causing a glare of light to spill out from under the door into an otherwise dark room if you plan to charge electronics overnight.
- Your Long Distance charges for 3 less-than-30-second calls to Los Angeles, CA were absolute highway robbery.  Nearly $50 for 3 phone calls totaling less than 2 minutes is A-B-U-S-I-V-E.

As I left your hotel and drove back to SeaTac Intl airport, I was in utter awe of the dismal level of service and "shrug of the shoulders" attitude of the staff at the front desk. 

It is nothing short of amazing to me that a hotel that operates in this fashion manages to retain a customer base and even stays open to be quite honest with you.

With the "instant communication" power of the Internet, you and your company should fear the backlash of treating customers this badly. 

I, for one, have a Blog and I have every intention of documenting the dreadful service at the Days Inn Town Center in Seattle so that Google searches for "Days Inn Seattle" will give future prospective clients of yours a good idea of what to expect if they have the misfortune of having no other choice of sleeping accommodations in Seattle.

So, there it is.  Steer WELL CLEAR of the Days Inn Town Center in Seattle.  It's not worth the aggravation, no matter what the price.

Gnomedex 7: A Review

Connectivity issues at the BHCC during Gnomedex 7 Day 2 kept me from being able to liveblog anything that happened there.  I had a few things queued up and they never got posted.  Ah well, C'est La Vie, I suppose...

Anyways, let me begin with a hearty Thank You! to Chris and Ponzi Pirillo for once again pulling off a fun, information-filled, exciting conference.  infrastructure issues aside, they both deserve a tremendous amount of credit for pulling off what has to be a logistical nightmare with as relatively few hiccups as they did.

Although I had some reservations regarding the choices Chris made in his speaker line-up this year, all in all, the speakers were professional if a little self-serving (well, a lot, in the case of Jason Calalcanis) and it mostly went pretty well.

The session with Derek Miller was really tough, as it's painful to see someone as ill as he is making a brave effort to put on a happy face for us at the conference.  This guy really put things into stark perspective at the conference, casting an especially harsh light on the childish tiff between Calacanis and Winer.

Next year, I am going to take a hard look at the roster of speakers that Chris lines up for Gnomedex 8 and will make a decision about attending at that time.  I had lots of fun though, so chances are that I will make the trek out here again, just for the chance to to soak up some of the incredible vibe that forms outside during the hallway conversations. 

Today for example, I got a chance to speak uninterrupted with Marc Canter and Robert Scoble for like 5 or 10 minutes and that was incredible...

In a nutshell, I spent 4 great days in Seattle and had an awesome time at Gnomedex. Here's hoping that next year's Gnomedex has a higher ratio of deeper geek content than this year's event. 

That would be simply awesome!

Gnomdex 7 Day 2

UPDATE @ 9:12 P.M.:  Back in my hotel room about 12 hours later.  Exhausted.  Mentally drained, but in a good way. To say that Gnomedex 7 Day 2 was information overload is well... just, never mind. Man, a lot was discussed today, by a lot of different people on a myriad of subjects...

All of this, of course will eventually trickle over to YouTube where you can actually experience it for yourselves.  In a nutshell:

• Robert Steele, talking about... Well, just look him up on YouTube.  What he riffed on this morning is indescribable, really.
• Darren Barefoot, talking about "giving back"
• Guy Kawazaki, talking about Evangelism
• Justin Kahn of Justin.tv, talking about lifecasting
• Jason Calacanis, pimping his Mahalo "human-powered" search engine
• Vanessa Fox, talking about too much personal exposure on the Internet
• Ronnie Bennet, talking about the perils, trails and tribulations of computing as an elder.

The reason I am doing this now rather than as it happened, is that connectivity at the BHCC was less than dial-up speeds.  I kept losing DNS connectivity and all sites were taking eons to load.

By far the most impressive talk was given by Guy Kawazaki and the least was by Jason Calacanis in a thinly veiled attempt at promoting Mahalo, his latest entrepreneurial venture. He took some well-deserved heat for it and I think Chris Pirillo is also going to have a little bit of hell to pay for letting his $500 a pop paying audience get USED like this.

I'm just saying.

______________________________________________________

Today is the actual start of the Gnomedex 7 Conference.

It is 8:48 A.M. and I am sitting at the Bell Harbor Conference Center in Seattle.  Chris Pirillo is on stage and we should be getting started in just a few minutes.

Trip to Seattle 2007: Day 2

Day 2 of my 2007 Seattle mini-vacation was full, long and tiring, but fun nonetheless.

Renting a Car
After another nondescript breakfast at the cafe next to the *hotel*, I looked behind me and saw a Budget rent-a-car office across the street.  I decided right then and there that I would rent a car and call it a day with the expensive taxi rides everywhere.

I walked over to the office and a little while later I had rented a cream-colored PT Cruiser that was just perfect for my needs.  For $9.95 a day I got a Garmin GPS unit that worked awesome and I had no fear of getting lost anymore.  Perfect for my little jaunt over to Microsoft.

Driving to Microsoft
The drive to Microsoft was uneventful and stress-free.  Once I arrived there, I was only able to see the Visitor center, but that in itself was pretty cool.  There was a lot of neat stuff from the beginnings of Microsoft and some of their earliest software products.

After the short tour, I went upstairs to the company store and bought a few tee-shirts and a Abacus SmartWatch for $99.00.  With that done, I drove back to Seattle and arrived back at the *hotel* just after 1:00 P.M.

A dash over to Target for some essentials
After resting for a while, I decided to find a Target to go get some stuff that I needed.  The nearest Target was about 8 miles away and easy to get to with the Garmin GPS in the rental car.

Traffic on the way back was horrendous and it took me well over 30 minutes to return to the *hotel*.

Gnomedex 7 pre-conference reception
At around 6:30 P.M., I took off for the Bell Harbor Conference Center and arrived there after a few delays due to local traffic detours due to on-going construction and street repairs.  I parked across the street and walked over to the Conference Center to get registered for the event.

The event itself was OK, with good food and lots of people milling around, gravitating around the blogosphere stars like Marc Canter, Chris Pirillo, Robert Scoble, Dan Farber, Doug Kaye, Cali Lewis, and Steve Gilmor.

After a couple of hours and with there being almost no where to walk inside the lobby of the conference center, I decided to call it a night and come back to the *hotel* and rest up for the start of Gnomedex 7 tomorrow morning at 8:00 A.M.

Trip to Seattle 2007: Day 1

I am sitting in my dingy hotel room at the Days Inn Town Center in Seattle, on the eve of Gnomedex 7.0 

It has been a fun, but tiring day, with some aggravations, a lost cell phone and a short visit to Ignite Seattle 4.

Flying to Seattle
The day began about 19 hours ago, when my wife and son dropped me off at LAX for me to catch my flight to Seattle.  The flight itself was uneventful and I felt no air sickness whatsoever for which I am eternally grateful.  I arrived in Seattle at around 8:45 AM and had no trouble locating a taxi to come to Downtown Seattle.

No room available
Upon arrival at the Days Inn, I was confronted with the fact that I was too early to check in and that I would need to kill at least 2 hours before I could check in.  My bag was "stored" (in a broom closet) and I was told to return between 12:00 and 1:00 P.M. to check in.

A trip to Seattle Public Library
So, after a so-so breakfast at the cafe next door to the *hotel*, I decided to take a trip over to the Seattle public library to kill some time.  I had my laptop with me, so I got to the library and walked around and explored for a while before jumping on the free WiFi and googling map directions to get back to my *hotel*.

LOST
Of course, I walked for about 20 minutes and ended up utterly lost, somewhere in the middle of Seattle's version of "China Town", (I later found out that it's called "The International District" by the locals here) and so I had to call a Taxi that showed up about 20 minutes later.

My Cingular 8125 Cell phone LOST
Unfortunately, like a fucking asshole, when I got out of the Taxi cab at the *hotel*, I got a little flustered in the act of paying the nice female cabbie, and I momentarily placed my cell phone on the roof of the taxi cab while I fumbled around with my wallet to get money to pay her.

Sure enough, I alked away from the cab into the lobby of the *hotel* and immediately realized that I did not have my cell phone.  I ran back outside about 30 seconds after the cab had left, and ran out to the street, to no avail.  No cell phone anywhere.  DAMMIT.

Ah, well.  Nothing for it but to contact Cingular, kill that phone and get another one.

A trip to a local Mall to replace my cell phone and get something to eat
After canceling my account temporarily and locating the nearest AT&T retail phone store, I took yet another taxi cab ride to a local Mall where I bought a Samsung BlackJack for $199 with a $100 rebate.  After getting the phone, I walked around the mall for a bit and had dinner at Il Forneao restaurant.  The restaurant was classy and the food was OK.  About $45, including tip.

Barnes and Noble
After dinner, I stopped by Barnes and Noble and picked up some reading material, as the 2 books that I bought for the trip yesterday I left in L.A.

Ignite Seattle 4
After the shopping excursion to the mall, I came back to the hotel and finished setting up my Microsoft NX-6000 web cam so that I can video chat with my family in L.A.  After configuring the camera and resting for a while, I caught yet another cab ride to Capitol Hill Arts Center to attend Ignite Seattle 4, which was a meet-up of local bloggers, Podcasters and sundry other "Web 2.0" types.

Not knowing anyone there, I stayed for a bit and then called it a night just after 9:00 PM and came back to the *hotel*.

Wow, QUITE the exhausting day, to say the least.  And Gnomedex hasn't even started.  Much more ahead, as they say.  I'm off to bed, as I am just *beat.

Well, I just purchased my ticket to Gnomdex 7.0, the premier tech industry conference for bloggers, podcasters, Vidcasters and all manner of Web 2.0/Social Media influencers.

Gnomedex this year is going to Rock!  See you there...

OurSS

Blogging without Thinking: Not the best thing

Folks,

In my haste to post a running commentary on the presentations being given at Gnomdex 6.0 by the chosen discussion leaders, I made some "heat of the moment" egregious errors, mainly not CLARIFYING WHO was saying WHAT: (the format at this year's Gnomedex was for the discussion leader to present his topic and then open up the discussion to the audience members).

Specifically, I posted running commentary on Steve Rubel's Marketing discussion and in making a bullet list of the comments I was hearing, I was unclear about who said what.

Please click on the the following link to read my updated post on Steve Rubel's presentation on Marketing: Update on on a post I made about Steve Rubel's Gnomdex day # 1 Presentation on Marketing.

Also, I should have specified that my boredom was with the topic of Marketing and not with Steve Rubel per se. 

For that Steve, please accept my wholehearted apologies.  I will be more careful in the future when posting a review of something or someone.