Laughing Meme

We tromped up to our roof with friends and neighbors to watch the fireworks in the rain.

Some of you have heard, some of you haven’t, but Jasmine and I are getting up next week (June 12th) and moving to New York.

The plan is to go on working for Flickr, and fly back to SF once a month or so. So if you could plan your camps/parties/meetups/conferences accordingly that would be swell.

Looking forward to seeing you all on the East Coast. (And while we haven’t really gotten a feel for the new apartment [in Williamsburg], its looking like we might even have something resembling a guest room.)

We’ll be driving back via the not most direct route (which will surprise no one who knows us) that takes us past the Grand Canyon, Austin, and New Orleans. (thats as far as the map I’m looking at goes) So any suggestions for anything from sights, to food, to places to stay, to good people along those stretches, to great audiobooks to fill up empty bits in the road are all appreciated.

The writing was on the wall.

Jack Dorsey: Taking the subway to Union Sq. The NYC one. (July 23rd)

(actually I missed that one, but Twitters from Jack regarding the White Stripes were a dead give away!)

Bit late, but congrats to both Twitter and WeSabe on closing funding with Union Sq. Ventures.

Like Tony said, “All my friends go with Union Sq.”. I’ve been fan (a fan of a VC!?!?) since shortly before their del.icio.us investment, and they continue to fund my favorite start ups.

We walked by their office today, but too busy to stop in and say, “Hi”.

Tony has a bit from this morning’s Brazilian auction

When the digital smoke cleared, the last bidder standing was the coalition of Australia’s Instaurator and Vince Piccolo of Vancouver’s Caffe Artigiano paying a record-demolishing $49.75 a pound (about $79,000 for the 12 bags).

A bold move that will have some scratching their heads, but Vince and his crew plan on selling the coffee exclusively via their recently obtained Clover at $5 a cup.

I’ve been pondering that a kiosk specializing in exactly this kind of thing, would probably be smash hit in Manhattan.

Specialized, small space requirements, appeal to the city’s snobbery. Hook it up to a decent online engagement strategy, communicating and blogging around daily specials, cuppings, and general coffee education. I think it would be a hit. And avoid most of the pitfalls associated with starting a coffee shop (especially in a high rent city) In fact, I even fantasized about starting it, until I thought hard about the initial outlay. And it dovetails nicely with my not so secret desire to see the quality of NYC coffee rise if I’m going to be living there.

“It might seem crazy that we were prepared to pay that price,” said Mr. Piccolo, a 40-year-old former fine-dining restaurant owner. “But when you break it down by the cup, it is about the same price that people would pay for a mediocre glass of wine.”

Actually it’s still considerably less then you’ll pay most places in New York for a mediocre glass.

In the wake of the A16 convergence (April 2000, World Bank/IMF), Jay Sand wrote an excellent document describing in detail the process of setting up and running the events IMC space. This document functioned for years as the blueprint for new IMCs and captured a huge amount of knowledge.

I was reminded of it while reading over Amit’s BarCamp NYC — the Nuts and Bolts, which, while shorter, is also excellent, detailed, and insightful. If you’ve been wanting to start your own un-conference (and who doesn’t!), this is your howto.

BarCamp NYC is next weekend, and with it the East Coast gets its inaugral un-conference. (FooCamp, BarCamp, and MindCamp all being West Coast affairs, and Amsterdam being spiritually closer to the West Coast then anywhere on the Atlantic Seaboard I’m thinking)

Registration is open, attendance is free, accomodation is urban camping.

Also if anyone has a suggestion for a talk for me to give, I’m coming up blank, I’ve handed out a number of excellent (IMHO) suggestions to others, but not feeling the inspiration personally.

I make a point of subscribing to a smattering of regional blogs wherever I might be living. Got any New York favorites?

We’ve been talking about a move to New York ever since I moved back from Seattle, just over a year ago. (Boston, as much as we like it, has always been a way station)

Recent events have moved up our timeline (which had been lazily extending itself for months) and now we’re looking to make a move by the end of the year. (as in 18 days and counting)

Housing

So we’re looking for housing, either short term, or not, immediately, if not sooner. Any tips would be great. (ideally something more then “Brooklyn, baby, Brooklyn”)

Work

And I’m taking this change to seriously start looking for the next gig, which has been on the back burner. If you read this blog you have a sense of what I do, and what I’m interested in.

If you happen to know a team doing cool and innovative work, that could use a LAMP(R) hacker, syndication guru, and/or calendar wonk, put them in touch. Additionally if you know someone interested in getting some perspective on the evolving nature of the Web, the network, or open source from someone who has been engaged in the work and community for 8+ years, I’ve been know to wear that hat as well.

I’ve been telling myself that someday I’m going to make it to Scott’s NY New Tech Meetup, ever since he mentioned it this Summer.

But boy do I wish I was going tonight apparently there will be a demo of

Firefly (decision-support application)

Um, you mean like Pattie Maes’ Firefly, that hottest, sexiest, most buzzworthy, proto-dotcom spin off of the Media Lab? (complete with rockstar founder). The one that was bought, and killed by Microsoft?

Of course, now in our wiser, more cynical age, who would be dumb enough to pour their metadata into a closed system? To trust a company to safeguard the gates of their community?

Just kidding.

Also demoing: apap.us, locl.us and movie.us (Apparently .us has arrived. Or at least someone is hoping so.)