We're heading out to Austin, TX tomorrow -- hit me up if you'll be out there as well. I'm really excited. I've been dreaming about Iron Works BBQ for the last couple of weeks ;)

alex at blogsmith dot com would probably be the best, or via twitter.

Anyone going? Looks like a few of us from the Blogsmith team are going to be out there next week after all. Hit me up if your going to be in Vegas. Looking forward to catching up with some peeps.

I'm just now over my jet lag enough to think through a few brief thoughts on TC40 last week.

General Overview

Pros:

• Laid back atmosphere
• Fancy hotel
• Demo pit was fun
• Keynotes were excellent, and imo, justified my attendance.
  
• Free swag bag was nice. It's replaced my wal-mart backpack.

Cons:

• At the event, I felt like it could have been kept the TechCrunch 20.. Then some time passed, and I thought it could have been the TechCrunch 10. A week out, and I feel like TechCrunch 5 would have been appropriate. Mint didn't just stand out -- they blew everyone away. It's a sad day when whats supposed to be the best of the best includes three video wikis and at least a dozen companies with no hopes for revenue.
  
• Would have been nice to do the happy hour thing in the lobby on the first day as well.
• Panelists were way, way too soft on the companies. Second day was better. Guy Kawasaki, despite the travesty that is trumors truemors, was fun.
• Some of the presentations were awful. Just awful.

Companies

• Cake Financial has interesting potential, but I'm not sure on the implementation yet. I'm going to have to play with it some more.
• Mint, as you've probably heard by now, is gorgeous and will kick Quicken's ass for most use cases.
• Silvia will be neat in toys.
• The hand motion interface stuff was really neat, but can't remember who-done-it. Viewdle screams acquisition.
• Xobni lived up to some of their pre-launch hype, but I don't use Outlook (gmail up in this hizzy). Their search looked like it kicked ass though, and made me jealous.
• TripIt actually solves a problem, which given the sad state of the presentations, made me happy. It's just not a problem that I personally have.
• I'm excited to see Flock reach 1.0, but... Out of that room, which would be a decent sample of the infamous "1 percent", how many of them are hardcore youtube users, facebook users and flickr users. Probably half or less. Seems like a terribly small market to me.

Favorite Demo Pit Company

• Satisfaction, by far, was my favorite. Maybe it's because of the Spirit Airlines debacle, but I truly believe there is a huge opening in the customer service space. This product is basically customer ticketing rethought. It has a b2b angle and a great consumer level face. Lane Becker, formerly of Adaptive Path, is one of the founders. In Adaptive Path like consistency, the application looks and feels like it's truly thought out. GetSatisfaction.com to check it out.

I went over to Citizen Space to take it all in and find more inspiration for our Orlando efforts. For those who aren't as up on the scene, Chris and Tara have been at the forefront of the coworking movement. They were an original part of hat factory and now operate citizen space along side their consulting company, citizen agency.

What separates coworking from a typical shared workspace is the common sense of values and community. The general feeling behind all of it has a lot in common with the open source movement -- open collaboration benefits everyone more so than not ("barcamp everyday") I've been cheerleading the concept locally since I moved back from DC (around the time I started talking to Chris, actually), and was really happy to be able to visit their space and take in their efforts.

Below are the pictures I took. It's about, I'm guessing, 1000sq/ft or so. Full time members pay $350 a month with no contract, all just month to month. There's a conference room, mini fridge, internet and an overall kick ass vibe.

One of the things Chris and Tara mentioned is that they find the retention rate is really really high for the full time members -- people who have a desk and are leaving their things at the office -- but not quite as high for the part timers. Day passes for folks visiting and looking to drop by are free, as it seems to add to the overall atmosphere. There's a master lease holder (Citizen Agency), and then everyone pitches in from there. An earlier effort involved trying out what sounded like a "parlor fee" to help buy additional amenities and furniture for everyones benefit, but it didn't work out well.

Overall, they estimate that they spent about $8k on renovations/furniture/etc over a six month period, which includes their kickass chandelier.

We also talked briefly about nicknaming our brown bag meetups. Jelly in NY, Cream cheese in philly -- something citrusy in Orlando, though not sure what yet. Suggestions welcome ;)

If your interested in this stuff, I'm sure the topic will come up at barcamp (I may talk about it if the schedule isn't busting at the seems. Word is attendance might push 300 :\), and it will for sure be discussed during my local session at blogOrlando. Alex Hillman, from indy hall in philly, will be joining us for that as well. (woot).

Saturday's game was amazing. A few opening-game quirks (running out of water, for one), but otherwise I couldn't have asked for anything more. UCF gave an amazing effort and almost knocked off the #7 team in the country. A few plays go another way, and that game was ours.

Thanks to the Sentinel for outstanding coverage leading up to the game. I hope it continues -- we're going to need a great crowd for the memphis game!

I'm out in San Francisco as of last night. We're here at the Palace Hotel for TechCrunch 40. So far so good, except the internet coverage is abysmal. Hotel internet is only via ethernet, and is $18 a day. WiFi is overloaded from all the laptops and iPhone's in the crowd. What was supposed to be 400 people has swelled to 1000 all in the ballroom here. High class problems, I suppose ;)

I'll do a writeup on my favorite companies after tommorow. A few of them have been great, some of them.... Not so much. I'm wondering if 40 may have been too many. "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" though, and I'm one of those pesky east-coast cynics.

Mark Zukerberg chats with Mike Arrington for the keynote tonight, which should be good times. I'm really looking forward to that!

Helped Launch Netscape.com

It was June 15th that we put the beta Netscape online. Love it or hate it, we certainly made waves ;)

It was a project I wasn't initially supposed to be involved with, at least, not to the extent that I was. When Jason and Brian took over the netscape.com domain, I was offered the opportunity to go to AOL sort of as a netscape/weblogs, inc contact for Blogsmith. Gavin, Mike and I had been working on Blogsmith for a few months and Blogsmith was a small indie startup still. Moving one of us to the "inside" made sense.

At some point last March, the three of us flew out to meet the Netscape team at the Viceroy in Santa Monica. One thing led to another, and I was asked to be the lead developer for the project through the product launch. The next couple of months were absolutely insane. Kathryn was out in California so I was left on my own in DC and pretty much worked around the clock. We launched the beta on June 15, 2006 and then spent the next month or two cleaning things up. We overloaded the servers, we got hacked, we had less functionality than we initially anticipated, we had scope creep into areas we didn't plan for -- you name it, and we dealt with it, all in a very short amount of time for a project of that size.

My reason for joining Netscape was to tackle the challenge of launching under such a tight deadline. Once things calmed down and things were humming along, Blogsmith happened to be purchased by AOL. I was able to slowly (perhaps without his full knowing/understanding) delegate most everything to Tom (suckah!), and transfer back to rejoin Gavin, Mike and by then, Celly on the Blogsmith project.

I was the first to drop off Netscape I guess, soon followed by Jason and then C.K.. The current team though is absolutely incredible and firing on all cylinders. The developers over there are top notch and working on some amazing technology that will certainly shake things up when its released.

It's been a hell of a year and a half personally, and Netscape is a big part of the story. I'll never forget someone ease dropping on our conversations out in LA, seeing it posted in the Digg comments and then everyone successfully burying it before it gained any strength. Riding segways around Venice with groups of people yelling "Freaks!!" at us and Jason, for some reason, acting like a Robot the whole time. Or discussing the merits of the Viceroy's amazingly delicious bacon with Wil Wheaton. Of course, using the then newly launched Emurse.com to staff up was enjoyable as well ;) (nod to Finke) (yea, I know, a plug.. I couldn't help myself)

I think the biggest lessons I learned was to sleep when I'm tired (oops), how to work with a boss like Jason (notoriously demanding) , script kiddies will always find a way, script kiddies don't like being called script kiddies, when talking to the press you're always on record and most importantly, anything in any amount of time is possible if you have a dedicated and focused enough team. Distance be damned.

Congrats on a successful first year for Netscape.com (the social edition). I absolutely can not wait to see the things planned for the next year. Trey and his team are men amongst men, and Tom's dedication and leadership holds great promise for the entire Netscape brand. Keep it up guys -- NETSCAPE FTW!

UPDATE: I've been quoted in the Netscape article on the same topic, "Happy Birthday, Netscape"

No no, seriously. It's really really hot outside. What happened to our habit of afternoon showers? :(

Gavin and I were up at the AOL Developer Conference last week in Reston, pretty good times and great to see some of the innovations taking place within AOL. Edo from Relegence easily wins the coolest presentation award with some of the raddest technology I've seen in awhile. I won't go into specifics, but that's a very interesting company and I'm glad they're a part of AOL.

I gave a presentation on UCD titled "Mockups are RAD," showing how some simple user centered design principles can greatly benefit rapid application development. I'll stop short of calling it "agile" or any other kind of process, but basically we went through how the blogsmith team operates. It's a "getting real" kind of thing, I suppose. The idea was to split it into 2/3rd's slides and then 1/3rd discussion. It ended up being about 50/50, but the discussion seemed to degenerate into pretty negative we-dont-like-aol-processes kind of talk. I guess I should have expected that, but I still tried to spin things positively. AOL is a giant corporation coming from a client background. Giant doesn't work on the web, nor does a client development process.. Sooo... it'll be interesting to see the culture shift over the next few years.

We got back to Orlando just in time for the shuttle launch. We left the airport and drove out to Space View Park in Titusville. Great location to watch from (it's directly across the river), and an unbelievable day. There's supposed to be something like 20 launches this year between the shuttle and various air force rockets, so it should be fun. This was Kat's second time seeing the shuttle, and she's two for two. With how often they get scrubbed, that's pretty dang good!

Original Weblogs, Inc management currently employed by AOL (in order of departure):

• Jason Calacanis
• Judith Meskill
  
• Brian Alvey
  

Mad congrats to Brian for making the jump. ComicMix.com, his new startup, is a "blue flame" project for him, and I couldn't be more excited to see him doing something he loves full time. Transitioning from a start up mentality to the AOL mentality is brutal, and may in fact be impossible. I'm sure he's anxious to get back into the ring for another go at it.

Again, congrats Brian, and thanks for everything you've taught us.

We've created a google group for the Orlando coworking initiative. This isn't intended to replace the general Coworking group of course, just more of a place to get noisy about finding spaces and hooking up various folks looking to get going.

We have a couple groups that are ready asap, and a number of people who are ready one-day-in-the-future. All are welcome. If nothing else, it's more community building for our town ;)

Check it out here.

One year ago today, after speaking briefly with Brian twice on the phone, I quit my job as a contractor on a military project to join my business partner on a little startup project called Blogsmith. I left the office and went straight to the airport to board a plane for NYC. We were up all night coding the parts of the CMS that were slated to be demoed the next day at Winstock 2005. The next day, we streamed the UCF game in the 75 Rock boardroom while Mike passed out on the floor. I went from a government mandated 40 hour work week, to working a 30 hour day. There was no contract, no written agreements and I wasn't even sure there was going to be a paycheck. Gavin and I figured, at best, we had food on the table until February.

The past year has been a great one professionally. First Blogsmith as an independent company, then AOL for the Netscape re-launch, then back to Blogsmith as an AOL property. We wrote Emurse the July before all this started, which admittedly we had to shelve for a bit, but it too found traction. We juggled 3 major projects this year and I've spent more than 75% of the year living out of a suitcase (I just added it up...). I feel as if I haven't stopped since I boarded that plane to New York. It's been a heck of a trip.

We're here at the Pop Century Resort, 50's style, for another Orlando CodeJam. Celly, Gavin, Mike and myself holding down the fort the best way we know how. It's just us this time around, which for coding reasons, can be pretty nice. Not that all our AOL friends aren't missed. Just.. yea. It's got an oldschool feel to it.

Links:

• Benjamin Franklin's advice for picking a mistress: Ben, you ol' dog you.
  
• OrganizedHome.com: Embrace your inner OCD
• 102 Personal Finance Tips Your Professor Never Taught You: You shouldn't be able to leave high school without knowing this stuff

CodeJam 7 is winding down, and most everyone has already left us behind. Gavin and I are in the "office" wrapping up and preparing to check out in the morning.

Lots of discussions, lots of new people, and a little bit of new code here and there.

Good times indeed.

I'm tired as heck though, and strangely looking forward to going back to sleeping on Gavin's futon. It's probably more of the desperate need to do laundry than anything else. 8 more days until my glorious return to DC.

On the Emurse side of the coin, our friends over at SolutionWatch.com gave us a shout out on their Web 2.0 for Students round up. "One of my favorite applications of the year." -- We're flattered, and thank you for the continued support!

Blogsmith CodeJam (number 7, btw) rolls on. The hotel we're at is great, much much more functional than our previous trips.

Found this picture on the blogorlando flickr stream (chris's, I think?). That's us launching Engadget HD while sitting in on one of the presentations. I'm not sure why Gavin's so sad. I think he was hoping to see Ryan Block's hat as one of the contest prizes.

Links:

• Testing out PRLeap.com - Our exploration of SEO/promotion continues.. Anyone have any clever ideas to share?
  
• TV Squad starts a Vodcast - Jeff Spicoli is going to play Einstien... sigh
  
• 6 ways to fix a Confused Information Architecture - Alert box, take it as you will.
• Free UCF Tickets For Southern Miss - Purchase a UCF/Southern Miss football ticket for tonight, enter "WINUCF" for the special code.
• It's somebody's birthday. - Or.... is it? Happy Birthday Gavin!

This past week, we rolled a whole new set of statistics out for web resumes.

Basically, it's everything you could dream of for keeping track of who, what and how people are viewing your online resume. We'll be adding a few more reports to the selection soon (like search terms), but the new 8 or so options should give people something to chew on for a bit. If there's anything in particular your looking for, drop us a note and we'll add it in. The engine was the work, dropping a new report in on a whim - eh.. not a problem ;)

Still cooking up those big changes in the kitchen. The first batch of cookies will hopefully be done in a week or two, the next one is a full on cake though, and will probably take a bit more time. Technology wise, we're pretty much all wrapped up. We're working on the work flow now though, which in our minds, is the most important part. Gotta keep that usability bar high ;)

Gavin and I rolled over to Rollins College today to take in BlogOrlando. We do a lot of traveling around these days attending events, and it was certainly a pleasure to have one in our own back yard. We finally got to meet up with Ryan Price from the Liberatr Media Network, take in a conversation with Chris Heuer and others, all while working on Gavin's EVDO connection. One of the cool things about sporting your own broadband is that we were able to keep pluggin' away and help get Engadget HD out the gate. Gotta love multi-tasking. Tomorrow's Disney day for the unconference. It's Gavin's birthday coming up as well, and his parents are in town, so.. Not sure yet if we'll roll out there. Annual passes make it easy to stop on by though, so.. who knows.

We both look forward to getting to know the local community some more. It's about time we all start coming together. Props to hyku for organizing the event. Check out the flickr stream here.