Susan Bratton is doing a meme — WDYDWYD — Why Do You Do What You Do during the Traveling Geeks’ week in London and Cambridge. She asks interesting people to put their name and URL on a piece of paper, and then give a short statement of “why I do what I do” and she photographs the person with their paper. Susan has been doing this all week and you will find her WDYDWYD memes interspersed throughout the blog.
Backstage Pass- Login, login, login
I estimated last night that I spend 1/3 of my time trying to debug and solve connectivity issues[1] both at home and on the road. Though perhaps when I’m at home, more of that 1/3 goes toward updating software[2].
Please note – This video isn’t intended to put anybody on the spot, but when Susan was having so much trouble on Monday getting connected to wi-fi at the Reboot Britain meeting, it just seemed like old times to me! At big meetings like this (several hundred people) the wi-fi is frequently the crunch. Just getting an IP address, and then being able to stay connected 30 minutes or more, can be a challenge. To their credit, the venue did have really good wi-fi signals in all of the rooms at the conference center! However, I stayed on my BT Mobile Broadband connection the entire time (the little illustration is their USB modem device), and though the bandwidth was challenged (inside a brick, steel, concrete building) it was reliable.
[1] Connectivity includes finding wi-fi, dealing with “blocking” problems (more on that later), spam overload, and helping others get connected (which is major).
[2] I probably update a program every 2 days. This isn’t just Microsoft Office, but dozens of other programs I use. I use MacUpdate as a paid service to notify me of updates, although I’d say that 1/2 of the programs I use will automatically alert me when updates are available.
Backstage Pass- London taxis
Twelve traveling geeks and one cameraperson. Going hither and yon. How do we get around? Well, it’s a combination of cab and walking. London is remarkably compact and I was surprised at how easy it was to get from one spot to another – which on the map looked like it would take an hour, ended up taking 15 minutes. (Last time I was in London was a long time ago, and I walked and took the tube, but I had forgotten how close things were.) So we pack 5 geeks into the first cab, 5 into the next, and then a third, until we are off to the next engagement. Here’s the first cab out of the hotel on Monday morning, with Robert Scoble presiding.
Life Imitates Google Earth (TG2009)
In a stroke of Alice Through the Looking Glass, I arrived in London after an overnight flight, took the Heathrow Express (fast train – 15 minutes from the airpor to central London), then switched to the tube (subway) for a short ride to my hotel. (JD Lasica was with me.) Arriving at the Barbican tube stop, which is where we emerge to walk two blocks to the hotel, I stepped out onto the street. This was my reaction (see video below) – didn’t know which was real, the real or the Google Earth (Google Street View, actually). Kind of deja vu because everything looked entirely familiar to me after having gone around the block many times on Google Street View to try to determine the best walking route to the hotel. You can tell from my excitement that it was a real revelation to discover that I could “go to a place” in the virtual world, use the virtual world to make decisions about a route, and then have it actually play out properly in real life. Amazing!
Backstage Pass- Howard Rheingold
Howard Rheingold, who I’ve known casually for a few years, is one of my heroes. Not only does he write well, about current social media topics (Smart Mobs) but he is an artist at heart and like me a child of the 1960s. Though Howard paints (and wears painted) shoes and gardens and does a lot of work from his idyllic Mill Valley (CA) location.
Howard will be a speaker at some of the events we’re visiting, but he’s a listener too, so dear UK native, be sure to get together with him and let him know what’s happening in London and Cambridge.
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