Thank you, Foo! Hello SMX!
Pathable was very honored to serve as the social network for O’Reilly Media’s Foo Camp this past weekend, and from all the kind words we heard from the attendees, it was a great success. Foo Camp is an invitation-only unconference, a fun, casual and yet intensely enriching coming together of the digerati. Michael Arrington of TechCrunch has a great write-up (and Kathy Sierra provides some more insight in the comments) as does Scott Berkun, if you want some more background.
Highlights for me included a spirited discussion of the Future of News with Steven Levy, John Markoff, Monica Guzman, Tim O’Reilly, Nick Bilton, (who knew The New York Times has an R&D department?) and more brilliant people on every side of the issue than ought by any rights have been in the same room at the same time, an equally lively debate on Mobile 2.0 led by Brian Fling with Gary Wolf and others and a master class on running a board meeting by Howard Morgan (with great peanut gallery advice from Joi Ito, Esther Dyson, Saul Griffith and others).
Most sobering fact learned: where do high-quality investigative journalists go when they can’t make a living in the traditional news industry? Hedge funds. Save the Gray Lady!
And what I heard from a number of attendees is that with so many smart people in one place for such a short period of time, it’s really hard to connect with everyone you want to. As a result, they were very grateful that Pathable provided a forum for conversation and meeting (and a way to learn names and faces) before the event, as well as a means to follow up with those people you didn’t get a business card off of after the event (because, ya know, it feels weird asking for a business card when you’re sitting around a fire pit comparing scotch at 3 a.m.)
So thank you, Foo and now, hello Search Marketing Expo Local / Mobile! We’re very pleased to welcome SMX to the fold of Pathable-powered events. It’s two-day conference coming up next week focused on driving off-line conversations with on-line marketing. As a big believer in getting people out from behind their computers and interacting in the “real world” (both at conferences and in everyday life), I know SMX Local & Mobile is a great fit for Pathable and we’re pleased to be able to help the attendees meet one another.