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.
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Posted December 19, 2008
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Blogging On The Road
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
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Posted December 16, 2008
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Blogging On The Road
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
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Posted August 12, 2008
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Blogging On The Road
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.
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Posted August 10, 2008
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Blogging On The Road
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Venture Capital and Technology
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.
You get all kinds of sand castles in this contest. I took photos of a few and they are in a set on flickr. I also reblogged Beach Obama on my tumblog.
The kids did their part with a bake sale to raise money for a good cause.
There's nothing like to beach to ease the strains of a tough week.
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Posted August 3, 2008
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Blogging On The Road
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.
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Posted July 24, 2008
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Blogging On The Road
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Venture Capital and Technology
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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Posted July 20, 2008
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Blogging On The Road
The Gotham Gal and I have gotten excited about The Highline that is getting turned into a park in New York City. We've given money and are trying to help them raise more. I've posted about the Highline on this blog in the past. One of the inspirations for The Highline is an elevated viaduct in Paris that has been turned into a park called The Promenade Plantee. It's in the 12th arrondissement and I've been meaning to go visit it while we are here in Paris.
Yesterday, Josh and I biked (velib baby!) over there and back and walked the Promenade. I've walked the HIghline in NYC a number of times and the two parks are not going to be that simlar. The Promenade Plantee is very much a garden and at times you don't even see the streets around it. The Highline is being designed to take advantage of the cityscape around it and will have much less plantings and more views.
Regardless of similarities and/or differences, I am a huge fan of reusing our urban landscapes and am a big fan of this movement to create parkland out of elevated structures.
Here's a 30 second Animoto video I created from the photos I took on my blackberry. I think it does a good job of giving you a sense of the place.
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Posted July 12, 2008
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Blogging On The Road
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NYC
As I've been exploring the startup scene in europe this month, I've made my home base in Paris with my family. And I've been blogging and twittering a bit about Paris. Yesterday I got this twitter message from Arthur:
Why the Expats Left Paris (from Saturday's WSJ) http://snurl.com/2uhnf thought you'd be interested
It's an interesting piece penned by a writer named Dinaw Mengestu who is currently living and working in Paris. In it Dinaw explains that the Paris of the 50s and the 60s is long gone:
It's hard if not inevitable now to think of that previous generation of
writers and not romanticize them and their lives here a bit: to think
of yourself sitting under a bright light at a table in the back of the
elegant Café de Flore, in shouting distance of Sartre or Simone de
Beauvoir, or to have been on the terrace at the neighboring Les Deux
Magots when James Baldwin and Richard Wright reportedly had a heated
argument about an essay Baldwin had written excoriating Wright's
"Native Son." Such events and conversations seem to belong exclusively
to another era, one that was measured in francs instead of euros, when
there wasn't an American Apparel store to be found just on the other
side of the Boulevard St. Germain.
The essay goes on to explain that the artists aren't coming to Paris anymore because Paris has lost its unique flavor, becoming more like the rest of the world. Or maybe the rest of the world has become more like Paris. Dinaw suggests that artists might be going to Berlin or Buenos Aires instead.
There is something to say for the "easy life" of Paris or BA. I am headed to Berlin on Thursday so I'll let you know after my trip about that city. But I think something way more profound is going on than one city becoming the preferred place for artists to congregate, work, and discuss and debate their work.
I believe the Internet is slowly taking the place of the cafe as the congregation point. It is drawing more and more artists to it as the place to showcase the work, to debate its merits, and to meet and colloborate with other artists.
I am writing this less than three blocks from Cafe de Flore and Les Deux Magots and I can assure you that the Internet cannot recreate the vibe of sitting on the street with a friend and a cup of expresso discussing and debating your passions.
But the idea of a physical place that we "must be" doesn't have the same impact anymore. Right now, I can engage in a debate with friends in Australia, China, Japan, India, Israel, Italy, France, England, NYC, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Chicago at the same time. Or we can post our thoughts to each other (and the world) over the course of a day, a week, or a month, and share our passions with each other and learn from each other.
Our Cafe de Flore is Techmeme or Tech Newsjunk or Twitter or FriendFeed or Tumblr or Flickr or something else. And we are just getting started. It will be interesting to see if the new cafe society produces the kind of work that the traditional ones did.
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Posted July 8, 2008
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Blogging On The Road
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Venture Capital and Technology
Being in Paris today, I thought this was a fitting picture.
It reminds me (and hopefully all of us) that some of our greatest moments as a country have been where we've partnered with other countries to make the world a better place.
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Posted July 4, 2008
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Blogging On The Road
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Politics
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