It's memorial day weekend and I'm headed out east with most of the family. We've had a house on the east end of long island for about a decade and we generally only use it from memorial day to labor day. But during the summer months, it's a great place to be.
This summer, we've got a new blog to keep everyone up to date on the happenings out east. It's called Curbed Hamptons and it launched yesterday. And there is also a twitter feed you can follow to keep up to date on the latest goings on out east.
Both come from the crack team at Curbed who also produce Curbed, Racked, Eater, and Gridskipper. In the spirit of full disclosure, The Gotham Gal is an investor and an advisor to Curbed and so we've got a vested interest in the success of all of these blogs. Check them out and let me know what you think.
We got here around noon, had a nice lunch in a bistro that reminded me of Paris, took a long walk around the Old Port, and then I took a long nap (I needed it after yesterday's extended day trip to Austin, Texas).
We are only here for 48 hours and already have dinner reservations both nights, but if there is something you'd like to suggest we do, see, or eat, please let me know in the comments.
I don't think we did Milan justice. Josh and I missed the opportunity to see AC Milan play Udinese because we didn't plan ahead and the girls would probably have preferred a fashion week to the pre-christmas weekend we spent in Milan.
But there's a lot to recommend about Milan. The Duomo is beautiful and the christmas markets that filled up the Via Dante and the surrounding streets were colorful and fun.
The food was hit or miss. The hits include panninis at De Santis and a dinner at Bebels. I want to thank everyone who twittered Milan restaurant suggestions to me. We ended up sticking with the reservations we had when we arrived. If we had stayed longer, I would have liked to try a bunch of them.
We stayed at the Four Seasons and enjoyed fantastic service and comfort. It turns out Posh and Beckham were staying there as well but we did not get a sighting. That would have been fun.
I don't think Milan can compete with Florence, Rome, or Venice in terms of things to do and see, but it has plenty of the classic italian charm. I'm glad we stopped by for a long weekend and I suspect we'll be back. If so, I'll make sure to add San Siro to the itinerary.
It's been a rough year for everyone and while I've been more optimistic than most (and still am) about next year, it's been rough on me too. The past few weeks in particular have just ground me down and I've been feeling sick but working anyway, trying to get year end stuff done.
I'm happy to say that I got through the year end grind and that I'm now on my way out of town, along with my family, for our annual year end vacation. We were planning to go to India but called a last minute audible and are now headed to europe for two weeks. Hopefully, we'll be going to India next year instead.
As always, I plan to blog a bit during vacation, about what I am reading, where we are visiting, and the occasional observation on the news and the tech scene.
I'll also be checking email once or twice a day, but I've turned on the out of office notification and won't be responding to email unless it's something that can't wait until I'm back.
Tonight on the flight out to SF I found myself sitting in the last row in coach. My seat did not recline but of course the seat in front reclined all the way to my lap
And to make matters worse a husband and wife were occupying the other two seats of the row and the husband was quite large and sitting and sleeping in the middle seat.
I could not sit comfortably facing forward because the man to my right was taking over half of my seat
I could not use a laptop because one would literally not fit between my body and the seat back in front of me
So here's what I did:
I turned my body to face the aisle, knees sticking into the aisle, and sometimes my legs were too
I put on headphones and turned on my ipod. I listened to relaxing music like sigur ros, thao, and bon iver. Gotta keep the heart rate low and a chilled out vibe
I put on a neck pillow and tried to sleep. I got some nodding off but no real sleep. People kept bumping into me and slamming the door to the rest rooms
I read quite a bit even though the reading light to my seat did not work
And I worked on my blackberry, a form factor optimized for the 4 sq ft work space. In fact I am writing this post on the plane on my blackberry
Every time the big guy leans on me, I gently push back towards his wife
And I spent a good amount of time hanging in the back with the flight attendants
I could have watched the movie, a cute funny film called Son Of Rambow. But I'd seen it in the theaters. Its good but not good enough for a second viewing
Mostly I tried to feel as small as a little kid and to relax and tune out my surroundings
It worked out pretty well.
I am passing this advice to all of you because I don't plan to need it again. The next time this happens to me, I'm walking right back off the plane
This is no way to spend six hours. Anyway, I think the Obama adminstration is going to outlaw it in their review of gov't interregation techniques
I am taking my new 3g iphone for a spin at the gym this morning. This will be a brief post because I can't type on this thing for the life of me
There are some nice things about this phone I like the twinkle twitted client,I like the geoloxation features,I like that I have all my smartplaylists available to
I listen to,and I love the mobile browser
The typepad app is ok I like that it's easy to take or add a photo from your library to your post
But until/if I can learn to type on this thing at anywhere near the speed I can type on my blackberry,it's primary use will be laser saber fights with my son
On June 17th, I left my office, got on the A train, and headed to JFK to grab a flight to SFO. Since that day almost two months ago, I have spent six nights in my home in NYC. And it’s not over yet. Between now and labor day, I think I’ll spend another six nights in my home in NYC.
Between June 17th and Labor Day, I will have been to 14 different locations, visited London three times, San Francisco twice, and taken countless flights and trains.
There are some of you out there for whom this is normal. Certainly sales and business development people, investment bankers, consultants, and others live this kind of work life and it’s normal to them. And there are people like Joi and Esther who live on the road and I have no idea how they do it.
Traveling is not normal for me. Back in the late 90s, I never traveled. The joke was that I’d look at a deal if it was between 34th street and Canal street, between 1st Avenue and 10th Avenue.
I don’t like to travel. I don’t like flying, I don’t like staying in hotels, I don’t like jet lag, I don’t like missing my exercise routine, I don’t like waking up and not knowing where I am. I am a creature of habit and feel like I am at my best when I can lock into a routine.
But gradually over the past couple years, I’ve embraced travel and have come to terms with it. It really started with the work I did personally in the aftermath of the bubble to get a handle on things. I learned to deal with stuff I didn’t want to do, starting with air travel. I still don’t like to fly small planes, but I can get on a commercial jet without any apprehension. I don’t like it when the plane bumps around, but I’ve learned how to chill out and deal with it.
The big-time travel that our family has been doing since our youngest was in second grade (2002) has also been a big part of my about face on traveling. We’ve been all over the world and we’ve had a blast. I want to do more of it, not less. I want to see as much of the world I can see, experience different cultures, languages, tastes, and smells.
And then there’s our business. When we started Union Square Ventures, Brad and I were not focused on location. We wanted to invest in the best web applications and services we could find. But we knew the NYC market cold and had a reputation there. We knew we could win deals and make a name for ourselves quickly in NYC. And that’s what we did.
A couple years ago, we started looking outside of NYC and we’ve now made four investments in San Francisco and are looking to make more. We’ve made one investment in London and are open to making more. You can’t invest in companies if you aren’t willing to spend face time with them. So that means travel and the more companies we invest in outside of NYC, the more I’ll travel.
Honestly, I am torn about it. I still hate to be away from home. This summer has taken a toll on me. I am out of shape. I’ve hurt my shoulder and it’s not getting better. I’ve lost weight. I have bags under my eyes and people tell me I look tired all the time. I am tired a lot of the time.
But I am also energized. In June, I was a bit burnt out on the web. I wanted to be inspired. This summer has inspired me in a bunch of ways. We’ve closed a bunch of new investments while I’ve been away that are taking us in marginally in some new directions. Our firm runs like a well-oiled machine when I am away. I can focus more on other things. I have met literally hundreds of entrepreneurs in Europe who are bucking the odds and doing it the hard way, staying at home and showing that you don’t need to be in silicon valley to change the world. And last but not least, I’ve got a brand new blog and a new domain.
I’ve also been able to have my family with me for much of this travel, particularly in Europe. As my kids get older and start fending for themselves, I hope the Gotham Gal will do more traveling with me. Travel sucks, but it sucks less when you are with your family.
So I’ve become a traveling man. I guess I’ll have to start really using dopplr.
This is our first full weekend at the beach since memorial day. We picked a good one. We started it off on friday night with a beach bbq with guitars and singing around the fire under the stars. It doesn't get much better than that. But if it does, it's the annual sand castle building contest on Atlantic Beach in Amagansett.
I was thinking that I’d write a post summarizing our month in Europe on the plane back today. But then I realized that I’ve said it all already on this blog. Sure there is value to summarizing and wrapping it up, but I’m not big on the rehash to be honest.
I like to blog in real time. If it happens, I like to talk about it at that moment in time. It’s fresh in my mind and it just comes right out. It takes a lot less work to get it right.
The Gotham Gal used to travel without a laptop. She’d go on these trips, take a ton of photos and a ton of notes. Then she’d spent the first couple of days back home blogging about the trip.
That changed a year or so ago. Now she takes her macbook with her and blogs the trips in real time. Well, maybe not real time, but at the end of the day or start of the next one. It’s made a huge difference. She posted maybe thirty posts during the month we were in Europe. And anyone who wants to travel to London or Paris would be well served to read them. And our family and friends back home were able to follow what we are doing on her blog. One of our daughter’s friends texted her about something we’d done last week. Our daughter asked how he’d heard about it. He said “I read the Gotham Gal.” That gave us all a chuckle.
With my mobile phone, flickr, twitter, tumblr, twitpic, and a host of other services, I sometimes take it a step further and actually blog in real time. I wrote at least five and possibly as many as ten blog posts on my blackberry on the metro or the tube or waiting in line somewhere on the Europe trip. It’s simple. You send TypePad an email and it gets posted. There’s a new super simple blogging service called Posterous that does everything via email. We’ll see more things like this.
If you do all of your blogging on tumblr, then you can actually create a pretty amazing real time blog with almost no work. I like to mix it up, posting some stuff to tumblr, some stuff to twitter, some stuff to this blog via typepad, and some stuff to a few other places. It’s a bit harder to keep everything straight that way and I really think that real time blogging a trip on Tumblr is the way to go. I’d like to try that sometime.
One of the great things about real time blogging is it flows into the real world pretty quickly. The other day the Gotham Gal blogged about a store she liked in London. A person who is involved with the store commented on her blog about the store and made some other suggestions. Which impacted her next day. That wouldn’t work so well if you waited until you got home to blog the trip.
And of course, twitter is huge when you are on the road. I got advice on coffee in Paddington Station, where to get a UK blackberry charger, and a host of suggestions on life in Paris via friends and followers on twitter on this trip. People say that only people with a lot of followers on twitter can use it that way and currently that is mostly true. But with the acquisition and integration of summize, I hope and expect that people will start following locations and keywords in the same way they follow people. Then a person with no folllowers on Twitter can ask where to get a good cup of coffee in Paddington Station and my friend @wilstephens who commutes in and out of Paddington every day and should be following that keyword for a bunch of reasons, can do the same thing for the person with no followers that he did for me.
Blogging has a reputation as an ego centric activity for people who want to be heard. And that is certainly true and a big motivation for many people who do it. But blogging can be valuable in many other ways. Our blogs helped our friends and families keep track of us while we were in Europe. They will be a valuable source of information to travelers in the future (thanks to google and our collective google juice). And they were a valuable way to get information and connect with people in europe while we were there. And blogging in real time makes all of that work a lot better.
We are leaving Paris today. Taking the eurostar to London for a few days and then back to the states. I thought I'd say goodbye to Paris with a list of my favorite things about Paris. I got the idea from the Gotham Gal who is composing a similar list.
Here my ten favorite things about Paris in no particular order.
1) The Bread - From croissants to baguettes and everything in between
2) The Coffee - A great cup of coffee on every corner
3) The Weather - Much cooler than July in New York City
4) The Language - I love to hear it spoken and like to try to speak it as well though I do it badly.
5) The Velib - We biked all over Paris. I think I used the Velib almost every day we were in town.
6) Mobile Broadband Underground - The Metro is great, with Internet it's the best subway system I've ever been on.
7) Eating Outside - We have so few places in NYC to sit outside and eat and drink and watch the scene. In Paris, you get that everywhere.
8) The River Seine - Many european cities are built on rivers, but few are as lovely as the Seine.
9) The Pompidou - We went to many museums during our stay but the Pompidou is by far my favorite.
10) The Apartment Buildings - I love the look of the parisian apartment buildings. This is a photo I took of one from the Promenade Plantee. They are so beautiful and they are everywhere.
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