Well, I’m back from San Francisco, and I gotta say. My time there was twenty-bajillion-infinity times better than last time I was there. Lunch at Google, coffee at Yahoo, rocking out at Macworld, joining podcasts, and partying at the Crunchies. How can you say it’s not a good time?!

I departed on my most epic quest to San Fran on Sunday. It was a short flight over and I was greeted with sun, fun, and Walter Roth. Walter “Wally” was a great guy to hang with for the entire time I was there. Mainly because this man works hard, and plays hard. I settled in at Wally’s house for the entire week as we worked on some top secret projects Sunday and Monday.

We met up with John at the In n Out (John is one of the people financially providing for the startup me and Wally are involved with.) I think we have so many awesome ideas for this platform we are going to build, that people will be blown away. I can’t talk too much about it yet, but I’ll release any info as soon as wally gives me the go ahead to.

We hit up the sushi restaurant that night and I was in sushi heaven. It was a plethora of rice, sushi, and dynamite rolls mixed into an ecstasy of deliciousness. (I heart sushi!!)

Wednesday, I popped by the Zeum in San Fran and was able to talk to alot of great people like Robert Scoble and Calli Lewis as well as meet some fellow online friends (again) like iJustine, Daniel, Karen, and Shooby. The podcast itself went pretty well and I was able to meet up with Bhaskar, Front man for Qik.com. He was so awesome enough to hand me a Nokia n75 and let me cover Macworld while I was in town! I was(and I still am) totally stoked. I can now stream live from my phone. It’s a gift from the gods themselves! *tear*

So I started the stream off by going with my awesome friend Morgan and her brother to a sushi bar and have a good time with all sorts of friends! I met Terry Chay which seems like an AWESOME individual with a very chipper personality. After the get together, we - Crap! I’m talking about food again! Ugh…. Continuing on!

I awoke to Wally excited as ever to go to Lunch 2.0 (ugh. Alright this is food and tech. so…. yeah.) We met at the Citrix building and pigged out on some food and meet/greet with other people that are involved in the techbiz from programmers, to CEO’s! I gotta say that I had a blast talking to the co founder of the lunch 2.0 activities, David Kellogg. It was great to interview him as well as be invited over to the Yahoo offices to have some drinks! I honestly found it an experience to remember forever. I’m a simpleton! I love seeing places like that! We got to talking about maybe setting up a Lunch 2.0 in Salt lake! Cross your fingers! It’s on my list of things to do!

The next morning, I was determined to actually make it over to Macworld and explore the crazy world of Apple. I entered in, got registered, (Thanks Daniel!) and waltzed around mac enthusiasts, mac freaks, and Apple lovers. I was surely not with my PC brethren… I blended in as best as I could by stealing random Apple swag and pinning it to my forehead while constantly saying “APPLZ FOR LIVEZ!” No one suspected a thing…. I was first in line to pop by the Macbook Air section and try out the new Air. I was able to ask all the questions I wanted to Sam (My apple helper) such as how light, battery life, running windows, etc. He was quite flustered when I asked if I could stream myself using the Macbook though. Maybe Steve jobs knows how much of a menace I can be…. I’m onto you JOBS!!! *shifty eyes*

I continued on inside Macworld looking at all the products that I could care less about. Lets stop playing games here. I’m not a mac person. Never was. But I still want to see whats coming out for it. Who knows! Maybe one day this diehard pc user will actually stop using windows and make the switch! In this case, I had no desire to give up my XP over OSX/Leopard. But that doesn’t mean I saw some epic products.

I definetly want to give my Bluefox Award of approval to what I thought was amazing at Macworld. GridIron Flow.

GridIron Flow, is an amazing tracking system that locates PSD’s images, PDF’s and compiles them together. In short a web designers wet dream come true. I’ll keep it short, but I’m able to see what files I used with certain files, preview them, as well as compress all the files used in that certain project together into a zip file! Plus, it has a revert system so I can revert a saved file back to a certain time! I no longer have to deal with fifty revision files for a client! WOO HOO!!!!

Other cool products I saw (You will want to investigate these on your own time. This post is kinda long. Maybe I’ll do a Qik video on them later.) were the new Parallels, tablet Macbooks, and a cheap software package with Photoshop-esk programs. As for that, there wasn’t much wow factor at any other booth. I was extremely excited for the products I mentioned, but that isn’t a good enough reason to make the switch. Sorry Apple!

I did stop by the Google booth and have some fun with one of the representatives:

One cool part of the whole Macworld experience was the Bloggers Lounge powered by Microsoft Office. It was a very lax place where people could post blogs, record, etc. I was able to meet and interview Chet at O’reily Media. Check out the interview here:

Click here to check out the rest of my Qik videos for some products!

I finished Macworld in one day and I came out unscathed! I finished the day talking with Wally’s friend about some charity work over a plate of Thai food. The next day, I was given the opportunity of a life time to go eat with Agent Jane and Agent Starfire (The names are being kept confidential) over at Google. They were so kind and generous after all the havoc I created with my streaming Qik phone. I hope I wasn’t too much of a liability! Walking around Google, eating delicious food, and seeing what the actual campus is like was truly a sight to behold. I think I almost fainted when I saw how well they treat their employees. Note to self: Try to work at Google.

That night, we hit up The Crunchies awards show. Now there is alot of controversy saying that the Crunchies was a train wreck, but honestly, what do you expect?! We are there to have fun, hand out awards, get smashed, party, and go home. If you expect a professional awards ceremony, then you expected WAY too much. Retards. I was able to meet Sarah Meyers again which was fantastic! I wish I could grab some time from here to actually sit down and chat (Shes constantly running around making videos…). Maybe when I’m down there again… Anyhoo, I was also approached by two random strangers that were fans of me and my stream! I was completely blown away because I’m just a graphic designer from Utah, and people find interest in what I do! We got to talk more and they just started a job at the place where I stream! (ustream.tv/bluefox) Small world eh!

As we were talking, they pointed out that Kevin Rose of Digg and Revision3 was behind me. I instantly became star struck. In a haze of retarded slurring, and spazzms, I managed to choke out that I was a fan of Digg.com. He said, “Thanks man, I really appreciate it!” Then the awkward pause happened. I was too blown away because I idolize this man. His tenacity to create and be awesome is what I achieve for every day. I slowly turned around and walked away claiming I was an idiot to myself. The rest of the night was a blast of meeting way cool startup CEO’s and very creative/attractive women. (I’m talking about you Rachel Sterne!)

I was very glad I made it out to San Fran for all of these events. And I thank everyone for making it so much fun! (You know who you are!) As for what’s next, I think I’ll hit up Sundance and see a few flicks. Stay tuned!

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 24th, 2008 at 8:21 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.