Went Kayaking, Bumped Into Charlie

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A Season For Forgiveness

Forgiveness lesson from flowers (Photo credit: juliejordanscott)

Looking For A Few Holiday Parties
Charlie O'Donnell At His Inspiring Best
Tips From Gandhi
Happy Holidays

Temba Sherpa, I forgive you. Now get back your driving license.

Fred Wilson. I forgive you. Just because. And also because you have a kickass blog.

Binod Shah. I forgive you and your clinic in The Bronx.

Anjan Shrestha. I forgive you and your obsession with public restrooms.

Mike Bloomberg. You seem to be running for Mayor one more time. I forgive you.

Barack Obama. I forgive you. I mean, how about a second term, eh!

Marissa Mayer. I forgive you. I mean, after all those page hits you have given to this blog of mine.

Nabil Mouzannar. I forgive you. Here's to hoping you will find me a few good parties this month.

Pemba Sherpa. I forgive you. Even though your name rhymes with that of Temba Sherpa.

Benoy Thanjan. I forgive you and your misleading last name.

Julie Irving. I forgive you and I also forgive the NY Tech MeetUp. Oh, the long virtual lines.

Tsepak Dorjee. I forgive your singing voice.

Related articles

• Forgive Yourself
• Forgiveness
• Never Forgive
• The Phases of Forgiveness - 2 Corinthians 2:5-8

Biking In NYC

NYC Ave. from Shawn Brown on Vimeo.

Via Charlie O'Donnell

Happy Holidays

Image via WikipediaSean Parker. You have not replied to my email yet. Or was it a tweet? I forgive you. There's still time.

Brad Feld. You have been hogging the mountains. I forgive you.

Albert Wenger. I remember asking you to come alone. I forgive you.

Rachel Sterne. I think I spotted you in Zuccotti Park. I forgive you.

David Karp, next time comb your hair. I forgive you.

And I forgive the Chinese. Let them come.

Charlie O'Donnell At His Inspiring Best

Shane Snow's Contently

I first met Shane Snow last year at the FourSquare Day party. He asked me a few questions. Next thing you know I find myself quoted in Fast Company.

4/16: I Found Myself A Party: Tonight's Gonna Be A Good Night
I Have Been Quoted In Fast Company

I saw him on and off here and there. We exchanged a few tweets along the way.

I saw him in a big way again at the end of the year at Charlie O'Donnell organized big snowball party in Madison Square Park. It was a blast.

Go Easy On Charlie Now
General Assembly: Singing Praises

Weeks later I met him again at a General Assembly party.

"What have you been up to lately?" I asked.

He mentioned the startup that looks like today stole the show at the TechStars Demo Day.

AdAge: Four Startups Marketers Need to Know: Contently ..... This is a writer marketplace for marketers looking to produce branded content. It's like LinkedIn for unemployed journalists looking to use their skills and expensive masters degrees to lure some of the dollars marketers are dedicating to produce their own content. Journos get free profile pages to show their stuff and, on the brand side, Contently is a tool to manage workflow, payments and all the other joys of editorial production. ..... "Ninety-thousand journalists lost their jobs in last decade," said Contently co-founder Shane Snow. "Great writers are out there, but there's no great way to find them." ...... What we love is that this is the exact opposite of so-called content farms such as Demand Media, which pays anyone on the internet pennies for posts on search-friendly topics. Contently is about linking real, trained journalists with brands who need professionally produced content. After launching in beta in January, the company amassed a network of 2,000 journalists and works with publishers such as LinkedIn, Best Buy, Comcast and Mint. Mr. Snow today announced a pilot program with American Express's small-business site, Open Forum. The site takes a cut of all transactions on its site and is on track to clear $1 million in sales this year. Contently closed $335,000 round of funding this summer and is raising $3 million in additional funding.

Good job, Shane Snow.

Fred Wilson: A DJ

Behind every success there is a team. Good job team.

Internet Week: Day 1: Observations

I am so revisiting my decision to camp out at one location for Internet Week. (One Location, Camping Out) I did that one location thing today, and it was not the best of experiences. I mean, it was good. It was pretty good. But I had this lingering feeling that I was missing out. There's a lot happening at other sites as well. I complained a few days back about how Social Media Week has you going all over town, and that is not the best idea, and I am not so sure no more. There is a certain thrill to ending up at a new location.

The Metropolitan Pavilion is a great venue, but it really is just this one big open space. There's the main stage, and there's the AOL stage, and both have bad acoustics. And there is this classroom. I spotted Charlie O'Donnell in there towards the end of the day. He be pontificating. The final event of the day was an Onion event. Onion's three developers presented. Baratunde was apparently back from Georgia and in the audience. The dude had been flooding my Facebook stream with his tweets. Apparently Kevin was on the same trip: small world.

The BuddyMedia stall was the best one. They were serving popcorn. I had three bags. And there was this stall that had this game projected on the wall called swatting birds. I got two workouts playing the game.

Caroline McCarthy On Gender

So I was watching Tumblr this morning - yeah, I watch Tumblr like others watch TV - and along showed up Kristin. I met her at the first FoodSpotting First Friday early this month. I think I might see her again this Friday. I reblogged her.

Then I realized what I reblogged she had reblogged from Caro, as in Caroline McCarthy. And I am thinking, I thought I followed Caro on both Twitter and Tumblr, but she never shows up in my Tumblr stream. What's going on? I clicked over to her Tumblr page. I found out I was not following her after all. I think I followed her at one point and then unfollowed her later.

Two Events: Global Impact With Social Media, Digital Dumbo

So I am doing the Monday morning thing of opening up the email from Charlie O'Donnell. His weekly events newsletter is the best thing Charlie ever did.

Charlie Bit My Finger

Charlie Bit My Finger

Charlie O'Donnell At His Inspiring Best
The Most Popular Dish In New York: Shake Shack Burger, Madison Square Park
General Assembly: Singing Praises

The top commenter at the blog This Is Going To Be Big has been blocked from leaving comments at the blog. It happened around FourSquare Day last year. I gladly shook Charlie's hand at the FourSquare Day Party completely unaware he had gone ahead and blocked me at his blog not long before that.
Image via Wikipedia
"Life is unfair."
- JFK

The Real Time Social Graph, Transient Social Graphs

Image by Laughing Squid via FlickrWhen you say social graph, you talk of friends, as in people you have known, people who were you friends yesterday, are today, will be tomorrow. That is a long tail. And there are many services that have done a good job of curating those social graphs. Facebook, of course, is the grand daddy of them all.

But I see a major void in the real time social graph.

I use several services to plan what events I wish to go to. And that is another space that could use much better services. I use PlanCast, but PlanCast is not populated enough with events. Users find it too hard to create events, and not enough events get created. And not enough event organizers are using it yet. I also use Charlie O'Donnell's events newsletter.

The Most Popular Dish In New York: Shake Shack Burger, Madison Square Park

You have to wonder, how does Charlie O'Donnell figure these things out?

Go Easy On Charlie Now

General Assembly: Singing Praises

Charlie O'Donnell tricked me into it. After the snowball fight ended, he lead a group of us to the General Assembly. I had never heard of the place before.

"Is this your office, Charlie?" I asked.

Cosmic Love: Florence And The Machine

(Via Charlie O'Donnell)

Getting Popular At PlanCast

Image via CrunchBaseIf the CEO of a hot startup himself emails you without any prompt, I think you have a right to feel a little popular. So I got an email from the PlanCast CEO a few days back. It almost felt like the emails I got from Mark Pincus in early 2009. Pincus has become big since, and he does not respond to my emails no more.

I came across PlanCast through Charlie O'Donnell's events newsletter that he sends out every Monday morning. One event linked to its page on PlanCast, so I RSVPd, and ended up discovering the site. I have been hooked since. It is a great place to find events.

I have not added any events myself yet, but that is about to change.

Fred, How About Some Money?

Image by Randy Stewart via FlickrCharlie O'Donnell At His Inspiring Best

Hi Fred. Looks like you are back from your Middle East Peace Tour, aka vacation. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26) And so this might be a great time to bother you. Chances are you are not cranky.

I am writing this at three in the afternoon but shall schedule post it for four in the morning when people are asleep, and no one quite sees it. That is how JFK first wanted to announce that it was Bobby for Attorney General: around midnight. He feared accusations of nepotism. If you do give me money, people might think it is because I am a member of the AVC community. Accusations of nepotism might fly.

Go Easy On Charlie Now

CNN: Tech startups duke it out in snowball fight
Village Voice: Dorky Tech Snowball Fight Today at Madison Square Park

I was passing by Madison Square Park earlier today. It was around 2:30 PM. And guess what I saw on this first big snow day in NYC this winter.

Charlie O'Donnell was being hit by a barrage of snowballs by what looked like a crowd of would be tech entrepreneurs. Charlie fought gallantly like a snow gladiator, until he was turned into a snow man by the mob. The final shot was taken by Shane Snow, real name. (Adam Ostrow, Mashable)

Charlie O'Donnell At His Inspiring Best