Ahh, you know, it’s that time of year. Everyone’s making their lists and validating them twice. I want to thank everyone that’s given me some of their extra cycles this year reading my various rants and raves. It’s been such a hectic few weeks here I can’t really begin to explain how much is happening.

I’ll be postly lightly over the next week or so. I’m hoping to do a series of posts next week that talk about the “gifts” I’ve received this year - there’s been so many it’s hard to have time to list them all but I will try. And I’ll be making that list, well, from the warmer weather in Florida. I’ve been begging and pleading with my own responsibilites these past few weeks to make it down to see my niece (turning 1 next week) and nephew (turning 3 in 2 months). I don’t see them enough and miss them plenty.

So today, after receiving one of the last checks we’ve been waiting for this year, I just bought my ticket and I’m on the way out in two days. If you’re in West Palm Beach or Lauderdale.. give me a shout - let’s have a drink and be merry!

Happy Holidays.

It’s been a long month on this side of the screen, spanning the country no less than three times in so many weeks. It’s hard to describe what it’s like out there on the West Coast (for those here on the East Coast).

It’s hard to describe just how much work I’ve been sneaking in every waking moment of the day. We’re pushing up on 13 days until our first industry event and we’re hoping to push out the first applet in the system we’ve been building in conjunction with that event.

In the last week or so, I’ve had the misfortune of missing two really interesting events. First I missed Podcast Expo in California. I’ve heard it was a great event. Instead, I got to take part in the wedding for a great friend so no love lost there. Yesterday, I was destined to be in Boston for the Symposium, but, as luck would have it, my car started acting up and I had to abandon that trip at the last minute.

It’s probably all for the best. Life on the road, well, it’s counter-productive in most ways. It feels like you’re always waiting to get to the next place. I’ve really come to enjoy being back at home after roaming for so long. I definitely can tell I am getting more done when I can sit still and work on what needs to be done.

As for my absence blogging, it’s hard to manage at the moment. I’ve been writing tons internally and directed towards my other team members. Once we launch our applet in the next 2 weeks we’ll be putting up a blog as well. That should give us the opportunity to talk a bit more.

It’s Halloween today, woohoo! I’ve not dressed in a couple of years. Doing a little flashback… It’s 2003, I have just completed the code for the OnlineCameo Card (aka SparkCard) and we launched with our first event - Helloween.

For those that didn’t make it (which would include most of you), it was a fun little networking/dating/costume party we held at Lemon here in NYC. In total, we had about 75 people turn out for the event (a collection of friends, some press, and a bunch of strangers we met while handing out postcards in Union Square). It wasn’t a profitable event (wasn’t meant to be), but it did break even so I can’t complain.

They say being an entrepreneur is one of the most exciting (and stressful) things in life. I’d definitely agree, but damn it sure can be fun from time to time.

Here’s the invite, the postcard, and one of my favorite photos from the night.

Well, the Internet Identity Workshop is now over. I’ve sitted at Hello Croissant, using the WiFi from the McDonald’s across the street - whoever made WiFi is a genius ;)

I’m about to get on the Bart. I’m still not done with my demo for TagCamp but I’ve got all night to finish it, haha. I’m using the code I created for QuitFiltering, to some degree, to put a new spin on tagging. It should be pretty interesting if I can get some more of the bits and pieces to work.

Chris Heurer, Mary Hodder, Drummond Reed, and a few others ended yesterday with an interesting conversation about tagging, tagspaces, and XRI - go figure. We’ll certainly be talking through some more of that in the next day and a half I am sure.

Sometimes making something simple is just so complicated.

In case your head has been buried in the sand today, or puddle in the case of us New Yorkers, you may not have seen the release of the video iPod. Apple in its remarkable way has released another iPod that outdoes the Nano (released just a few weeks earlier it seems).

Best of wishes to all those producing Video Blogs as now you have a chance for some serious throughput. I’ve always said that the primary force preventing broader acceptance of vlogs was the lack of hardware. This is a MAJOR step in the right direction.

Of course, the really big news for me was the deal with ABC/Disney. That’s something so big it’s hard to contextualize. Plus, I can now watch TV!

I’ve come to know Pete Caputa quite well over the past year. He works hard at what he’s doing and he has a vision that he’s committed to chasing. I’ve spent quite a bit of time, both in person and online, chatting with Pete about what he’s developing (and what I’m developing).

It is really nice to see something come together, and finally, WhizSpark is getting to that point where the oil is hot enough and the engine is gliding. He’s not made this entirely official yet, but it’s on his blog so I am gonna quote some of it here:

WhizSpark is revolutionizing the way events are marketed and organized.

We are jumpstarting the movement by awarding the following privileges to qualified applicants:

• Free use of WhizSpark’s event website builder and email marketing campaign manager for your own events.

• A rapidly growing network of people and websites to help you market your events.

• Access to special events, free passes and tickets, VIP treatment.

• The opportunity to get involved and get paid when you help plan and promote other events.

Would you like to help lead the way?

All are welcome to apply, but people that meet the following criteria are preferred…

• You plan events
• You promote events
• Web-savvy
• Quick learner
• Team player

Source: WhizSpark.com

There’s a few really interesting things to note here. For one thing, this is a really concise explanation of the offering. Pete’s a wordy guy and this was a pivotal thing to get right (he’s still tweaking). We’ve been group editing our elevator pitch, well, it’s really not simple in any way, shape or form to actually say something meaninul (and positive) in a few concise words - especially when that thing is brimming with great features.

Secondly, Pete’s well aware that his target might not be out there in the blogosphere, so he’s working to configure his pitch to get the message in front of the right people. Surely, we can help him talk to those people, right? I’ve done quite a bit of advising in the last couple of weeks on how to implement blog technologies for various people in various industries. It’s clear that everyone is not inside the cloud, but we’re probably close to reaching a much higher plateau soon.

If you’ve got any insight into how to spread your ideas to the far reaches of the blogosphere, let’s hear them. If you’re an event organizer, promoter or social butterfly, try WhizSpark out for your next event - Pete stands behind his offer and that counts for everything in my book.

For some time now I’ve been slowly telling people about the underlying value of conferences and workshops. In having that conversation, I’ll often relate to people my 80-20 Rule. It goes something like this:

Conferences are:
80% people (the networking)
20% presentations (the actual content)

It’s hard for anyone to really argue with this, though they sometimes want to tweak the numbers. The folks that have a vested interest in the content are willing to pump up the value of the presentations. The people that are shy also tend to align with this thinking. The extroverts don’t even go to the sessions!

Generalizations aside, meeting people face to face is not just desirable, it’s necessary for most things that are going to really stick (IMHO). Fortunately, I’m not alone in this thinking. I came across this link from Dave Taylor (via Business Opportunities Weblog):

The Critical Business Value of Attending Conferences

I definitely recommend you give it a read.

Although I can’t talk about what we’re doing publicly just yet, it’s safe for me to announce now that I’m making a move from Cold Fusion to Ruby on Rails for my future development projects.

I’m currently looking for Ruby on Rails developers (contact me greg AT sparkcard DOT com) that can take on several discrete projects. They’ll be working closely with me to convert databases, translate code from CF to Ruby, and to plan the future of the apps.

For my fellow CFers out there, I’ll simply say that I still love CF, but Rails Rocks. My CF code was written very similar to the way Rails works now so it made a lot of sense. We’re planning to open source at least one major part of our system and that’s going to require something that’s freely available unfortunately.

To add to my decision, I’ve spent the last year and half working at getting away from doing development and to focusing on turning my ideas into reality. Though I’ve always had the ability to code what I needed, that skill also served as a crutch in weird ways. I’m moving to Rails in many ways to guarantee that I can’t write the code - strange I know.

Most of my involvement will be architectural and on the front end as well - a skillset I feel invigorated by the recent buzz surrounding AJAX. It’s nice to see a community of people working to develop better systems in the browser.

More soon.

Just a quick ping to everyone out there in the blogosphere - yes, I’m still alive. It’s really been an exciting couple of months here and it digs me greatly to not be able to talk about how much is going on right now, but change is on the way.

I can catch you up with my travel plans, for one thing. I’ve been on the West Coast so much this year that I can’t get my body clock to return to what resembles normal. Surely, I’ve never been much on sleep, but it’s actually starting to get annoying :) Naturally, the year is just past half way done, but I am venturing West at least once a month for the rest of the year it seems.

Here’s that tentative agenda:

• Aug 10 (Seattle)
• Aug 11 - 14 (Los Angeles) - SparkCasting Shows
• Sept 6 - 9 (Portland) - Podcast Hotel Emcee
• Nov 11 - 12 (Ontario) - Podcast Expo Speaker
• Nov 13 - 16 (Los Angeles) - SparkCasting Shows

More soon.

I’m in a unique situation right now. We’re finally getting an application built to handle large parts of the backend functionality for the SparkCasting system.

I’ve already delivered a functional specification to several .Net developers, but in light of Flash 8’s upload/download abilities, I’d love to consider building it in Flash (my preferred platform).

Anyone up for this type of work?