October 03, 2004

Sunday, early afternoon, (depending on your time zone) I'm on the airplane heading home. Henry Copeland of BlogAds is three rows behind me. Suzanne and Art Metcalf are several rows in front. The circle of friends and acquaintances grows each time I attend a meeting like Gnomedex.

Saturday Chris was smart enough to give us a little breathing time. I spent mine driving around and actually finding the lake at Tahoe. Before the start of the sessions Nick Bradbury , Scott Johnson and I finally found the answer to the question, "How many programmers does it take to change a light bulb?" The answer is 3. One to plug in the light, one to find a light bulb, and a third to make sure the first doesn't stick his finger in the empty socket.

The extra time was a good thing as we needed all our wits about us for the first session on the future of internet content. The discussion was animated. Jason Calacanis and Steve Gillmor were at opposite ends of the dais and opinions. With Patrick Norton taking exception to what Jason was saying about the roles of writers and editors. Great fun. In the end the Jason presented his case, Steve Gillmor his, and Patrick Norton presented his, then we took a break for lunch all better for the discussion. Dan Gillmor (the quite brother) did his best to make sure the audience was well aware what was going on with the Induce Act.

Wil Wheaton was the afterlunch speaker and mostly read from his books He did the reading with great skill and keep me with him the whole time. The openness and humor of his autobiographical books gave us a glimpse of Wil Wheaton man and boy.

The last session was on making money from your blog. Chris is a great proponent of Google Adsense and brought together a good panel with those that are ready to help you make money with your blog. The final act of the day was an excellent buffet dinner that provided us one last change to sit down like a family. I had dinner with the newlyweds Jackie and Jason Leib. They had piggybacked the conference with a side trip to the altar. They needed a civil wedding to go along with the church wedding they are having in December.

To sort of quote Will Rogers, I never met a geek I didn't like. The biggest surprise of the second day was that Steve Gillmor for all his gruff and opinion, was a nice, perceptive guy who picked up on the passion of all the people at Gnomedex 4.

I think that was maybe three people that I didn't get to meet in the course of three days. To them I say, I'll see you next year.