Chris Heuer's Insytes

Amazing what can happen when you rely on trusted friends for finding out about things. I was talking with Michael Arrington from TechCrunch the other day about BrainJams and our ideas for a national tour. On the way out the door he mentioned the Supr.c.illio.us launch party and the little get together Pandora was throwing. Despite having a dinner with friends tonight and the LaughingSquid 10th anniversary party tomorrow, Kristie and I decided to go. Good decision.

Though we are slightly hung over this morning, I remember the whole evening clearly. We had an especially good time hanging out with the Pandora team. Continuing the theme for relying on trusted friends for finding stuff, this is the exact passion of many of the people who work there and the enthusiasts who love the custom radio stations so much. In fact Tim Westergren Tom Conrad said it best – “I really don’t care if I end up making millions of dollars from this company, what really matters if I get to spend my time doing what I love, helping other people discover good music.” Now in case you are wondering, that is THE POINT. Do what you love and the rest will follow. Quite a different theme this time around, and it is not just these cool music lovers who get it, it is more pervasive than that.

The Supr.c.illio.us crew is really a good part of the heart of our blossoming community. While the other day I was thinking how great it would be to expand our circle to include more diverse people, it was great last night hanging out at Annie’s Bar with a bunch of cool people we know fairly well. It just felt fun and comfortable (though doing that drunk interview with Irina is probably something I will regret later – I wonder if Tara has any tips for how I should handle that?)

But in addition to hanging with great friends, we also get to meet some new ones who are also cool people who get it. Had a fascinating discussion with Alex Barnett from Microsoft about some of the Kurzweil Age of the Spiritual Machine stuff, MyLifeBits, Insytes and the real value of attention. As I remarked at the time, it would have been great to have a liferecorder on at that moment… the details are admittedly a little fuzzy. As Alex reminded me later in the evening – it is always great to put a face and a body and an in-person meeting to the blogs we have been reading. I wish I could bottle up that feeling and sell it sometimes – it would make a fortune. In fact, that is perhaps one of the best things about Blogger Meetups, and one of the things that will really drive the BrainJams national tour we are planning.

Late in the evening I had a chance to hang out with Andy who introduced me to his friend Nate Koechley a “Worker / Catalyst” at Yahoo! We jumped in on a discussion around some fairly deep stuff that I vaguely remember. But I do remember talking to him about Yahoo! Maps decision to use Flash instead of AJAX – turns out he had a part in that discussion and provided me an insight that made sense of it all.

As I have been telling all my friends recently, it is great to be here in the Bay Area at this amazing point in time. In that I was in South Beach, Miami during the first boom (in D.C. for the latter part of it), I remember reading WebMonkey, Wired, Red herring and all those other sites that talked about the cool stuff going on out here and thinking, wow, how cool would it be to just be a part of that! Now I know – it really is cool, fun, exciting and fulfilling to be a part of such a vibrant community that knows it can make THE difference in the world around us.

Rock on.