I’m back from Foo Camp 2007 but omigod, I’m so sleepy that I’m seeing double. I stayed up until ~4 a.m. Friday night and 5:30 a.m. last night, and breakfast started at 8 a.m. Some of the late night time was chatting with people and some of it was the Werewolf game. No way around it — getting up for work tomorrow morning is going to suuuuck.
I think Foo Camp is off-the-record, so I’ll make only one observation that anyone could make from public photos. Jay Adelson of Digg looks like he was separated at birth from author Neil Gaiman:
Adelson’s hair is longer than his picture, so the resemblance is even more noticeable. They also both strike me as bemused at the world. Jay and Neil, you guys should meet each other.
Okay, I’m off to bed. Thanks to Tim and the O’Reilly folks for a fun (un)conference.
Update: The Foo Camp on/off-the-record policy is nuanced. Talking about the general experience as a participant (“I got my laptop laser-etched!” or “They stock the restrooms with Make magazine here!”) shouldn’t be a problem. The preference is that sessions not be recorded/live-blogged (so that people can be spontaneous), and that anything said in confidence should be kept that way as if it were under NDA. People should to be careful to check with other participants to make sure that any commentary preserves the expectations of whether the conversation was public or private. When in doubt, assuming something is off-the-record is the safe policy. If you want to get a flavor for Foo Camp though, Kara Swisher did a short video about it.
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http://neil.fraser.name/scripts/img2html.pl?img=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mattcutts.com%2Fimages%2Fjay-adelson.jpg&cmd=Convert
Here is something to perk you up – click on this linK….
Look at the photo – BUT A’ha, it is not really a photo
It is pure HTML (look at View Source)
Nah, Dustin Hoffman and David Schwimmer, surely!
Speaking of Neil Gaiman, are you much of a Terry Pratchett fan Matt?
Waiting in anticipation for his next book!
Hi Matt
Long-time lurker, 1st time commenter.
I’ve posted over at my blog about something I’m starting to see as a need not yet filled by any of the search engines. It involves combining internet resources (ones specifically chosen) with local private sources and then returning results based on relevance.
The link is above.
G.
Uh they don’t look anything like each other… ?
> I think Foo Camp is off-the-record
Huh…wonder why Jason C. was semi-live-blogging FooCamp…
http://www.calacanis.com/2007/06/23/foocamp-opensearch/
If you hadn’t said anything I would have thought they were both the same guy.
I pity the FOO…sorry I just couldn’t resist…
Matt will their be a podcast for the wordpress meeting this year?
You talkin’ about seo and all
Brian White
Thanks for the link
Matt,
Great to meet you at foo. Thanks for teaching me werewolf, it was a ton of fun stumbling my way through the whole thing. I am certainly going to have to learn how to play. The nuance and gaming seems like it can get quite deep.
See you around.
Zach
Both of them look like Martin Short
I’ve been invited to this year’s Foo Camp. Since it sounds like a great time and there’s a bunch of other folks going I’d like to talk to, I’m accepting the invitation.
My purpose posting this entry is to let other campers know I’ll be there and try to hook up and chat a bit beforehand.
Matt
Btw, have you heard lately from our young friend Adam “Free hugs” Lasnik. Pls, if you meet him say hello from me
they do look like each other..oh i so love gaiman’s writings
anti emo, I don’t know. I’ll try to cover what I talked about on my blog as well to help bloggers/WordPress people that couldn’t make it.
Zach, it was great to meet you too. I can’t believe you schooled me by pretending to be the Seer on your first game of Werewolf. You’re a natural.
Harith, he’s back from SES Toronto and we’re both digging out now.
Matt,
I am just wondering, How long are you going to ignore those 15 or so Realtors you banned for no good reason other then you and Greg Boso are “buddies” from your little conventions?
Hey Raspy1,
Even though we are on the same side I don’t think the above comment is the best way to get results. I am sure Matt has seen all of the posts about the subject on the other threads. My guess is that if he is allowed to comment on the subject using “Boso” and “little conventions” won’t get him to act. I could be wrong. We shall see.
Get some sleep Matt,
Sounds like a cool trip so far
Hi,
I have really no idea on this. Can anyone help me up? It would be really great, if i get an overview on this
Getting up for work is going to suck?? Come on Matt, don’t tell me you don’t hav flexi timings….. We are planning to introduce flexi timings in our office, jst to avoid employees getting bored of the same old 9 – 6 routine.
It is kind of sick how we humans spend all our links back and forth frm office jst for some money and fame. Well can’t avoid that.. that’s what human tendency is.. so flexi is in.
I mean, it’s kind of sick how we humans spend all our lives back and fourth…. Not ‘Links’.. Boy! SEO is getting to my head..
Ah! Werewolf (aka Mafia), my favorite!
ok, lets get down to it…
Surely iPhone was a topic? Anyone getting one? What about you Matt?
Well, they surely went to different schools together. But Neil’s looking a bit like a young Barry Manilow there.
–Mike
Amber – the wired magazine website (http://www.wired.com/) is absolutely choc-a-block with buzz about the i-phone at the mo – check it out.
Matt
Okay? So where have I been that I have never even heard of Werewolf/Mafia?
Talk about feeling out of the loop!
Matt
While you were on that 5 weeks vacation and Adam was in Canada, Google Search Quality Team and Crawl/Index Team have been busy doing a GREAT job on the serps. More relevant and less spammy serps!!!
May be we need to send you and Adam on another 5 weeks vacation
Off the record secret Foo? Maybe you can talk about these claims:
http://www.forbes.com/2007/06/28/negative-search-google-tech-ebiz-cx_ag_0628seo.html
??! Interesting link Joe-duck – dunno what the rest is all about.
Joe Duck, he ha responded:
http://blog.outer-court.com/forum/100871.html#id100891
They do look rather similar. I thought they were the same person as well, just one picture with a better hair cut.
Matt, the weird thing is that Neil Gaiman, UK comedian Ben Elton, and your favourite Threadwatcher JasonD, were all separated from birth.
Great Matt!
Well do you always travel…You seem to travel every now and then…Heck lot of tough life for you.
Btw the pics are cool!
Those two guy on picture really look like twins. Who will say that they never met… This is more like some movie story.
First off, I just stumbled onto this blog–great stuff! I’ve thought for several years that the time it takes me to sort through search results to get to the gems has gone downhill since Google arrived. Sometimes I long for the days of Mosaic when i got a listing of all the new websites that were published that day. There was no weeding through 100 pages of search engine optimized crap links with zero content then–if it was a WWW page, it was something that someone truly thought was valuable or entertaining enought to post for others to use or enjoy. There are only two ways out of the garbage bin that is the internet today–either more human involvement in search engine results, or far more intelligent algorithms within the search engines that can separate the garbage posts from the ones with real content that someone has actually thought about before posting. Glad to see Google is opening up to using human feedback!