Stranger in a strange land; me at The Venetian, 28 April, 2007. After the Web 2.0 Expo, it was off to Las Vegas for Microsoft’s MIX conference, an event to promote the company’s web technologies. My travel, including accommodations at the Venetian on the Strip, was being paid for by Microsoft New Zealand. My wife...

In April 2007, I traveled back to San Francisco for the first Web 2.0 Expo, which was being pitched as a trade show. I arrived on Friday, April 13. I would be moderating a panel at the event, entitled “The New Hybrid Designer,” and I suggested the panelists meet to discuss what exactly a “hybrid designer” is...

There had been rumors of a combined phone and iPod device coming from Apple, but what Steve Jobs announced at Macworld on January 9, 2007, blasted away all expectations. Using his trademark showmanship, Jobs calmly announced that Apple was “introducing three revolutionary products,” which he described as an iPod, a...

On Friday I made my way from San Francisco to the TechCrunch ranch in Atherton, about forty-five minutes south down the 101. Mike was as busy as usual. I brought up the RWW Research idea that I’d chatted to my friend Fergus about, but he was too absorbed in his own expansion plans to care. Simply put, he was on a...

In early November I was back in Silicon Valley to attend the annual Web 2.0 Conference, now renamed Web 2.0 Summit, and with the theme of “Disruption & Opportunity.” The name change was because the organizers, O’Reilly Media and John Battelle, were expanding and had added a companion trade show, Web 2.0 Expo, that...

Me and Alex Iskold, a few years after he began writing for Read/WriteWeb; photo by Mike Dunn During the second half of 2006, more and more of my focus was on building up Read/WriteWeb. In July 2006 I announced a major redesign of the site. The previous design had been a thin two-column layout on a white background,...

At the end of June, 2006, I boarded a flight to Seattle for Chris Pirillo’s Gnomedex conference. For the second time, I got lucky with the weather in Seattle — it was the middle of summer and gloriously sunny. The event was being held at the Bell Harbor Convention Center, right on the waterfront, and I was staying...

For the rest of the week after the Digg podcast call, I attended the 2006 Supernova conference, run by a business academic named Kevin Werbach. It wasn’t as good as the Web 2.0 Conference. In too many cases, panelists and speakers just talked about their own products or companies, and the event was targeted at...

In June 2006 I flew to San Francisco for my third US trip. I arrived at SFO just after midday on Monday, June 19, after another sleepless twelve-hour flight from New Zealand. Mike Arrington was hosting me at his place in Atherton again, for which I was grateful. I’d also asked if he could pick me up from the...

ReadWriteWeb screenshot, August 2006. After Microsoft Search Champs in Redmond had finished, I began my journey back to New Zealand. My first layover was twelve hours at the San Francisco airport, so I’d arranged for Marc Canter to pick me up. I was helping him with a couple of reports as part of my ongoing work for...

Microsoft campus, January 2006; photo by author. It was a cold but sunny Wednesday morning and a Microsoft charter bus pulled into a complex of red brick office buildings, all no more than three stories high. This was Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond, located about twenty minutes’ drive from downtown Seattle. The...

Josh Porter and Richard MacManus at the Seattle Central Library; photo by Fred Oliveira. In the second week of January 2006, I got married to my partner of nine years, Maria. We had a 4-year old daughter, Rosabelle, who was one of the flower girls at the ceremony. The following week, I was on a plane to the United...