Ensight – Jeremy Wright

Well, I was late for a flight, my connection was late, I missed my bus in San Francisco and it took me nearly 15 hours of travelling to finally get to Napa. And I even arrived full of energy, and in good spirits.

This could be helped by the fact that the only car available for immediate driveaway at San Francisco International Airport was a convertible Sebring Touring. Okay, it’s no Mustang or anything, but when you’ve never been to California, cruising the highways with the top down and the music blaring should be enough to make anyone’s day. And it made mine.

This area of the US is gorgeous. Maybe it’s because I’m Canadian, but I always felt that, besides Ireland and New Zealand, Canada was clearly the most gorgeous place on earth. And I’ll even debate whether Ireland or NZ are more beautiful.

Flying into San Francisco took my breath away. The lush green mountains, loads of trees and the ocean… Driving from the airport to Napa was great. Sure, some of the buildings were crap (industrial areas), but you couldn’t ask for more beautiful scenery. It’s too bad San Francisco’s in the US, otherwise I’d move in a heartbeat (I’m gonna get a smack when my wife reads this…).

So, anyways, arrived at the resort. It, too, is beautiful. It’s exactly what you’d expect a high end Napa Valley resort to be like: manor house, loads of “cottages” (mine is a full suite with a kitchen and everything… crazy…).

Can you tell I’m feeling overwhelmed, and I haven’t even gotten to the conference yet?

The Conference

So, after checking in I asked where the conference was. They didn’t know. They said there was no such event listed. Apparently they had it listed under the organizers name instead, which took us a little while to figure out. They then directed me to the wrong room, so I just wandered around the hotel until I found it.

I must have ESPN or something.

I managed to find the area, and plumped myself down in the middle of Dan Forbush and Constantin Basturea’s session on communities, blogs and wiki’s.

It was interesting to watch. Dan is very… He makes me think of a college professor, in a good way. He’s engaging, very story oriented, expansive in his speech. And sometimes he rambles, but you don’t really mind. I could tell the audience was fairly engaged when he was talking through the wiki concept (I missed the blogs and community side of things).

Constantin tried to do a demo, but I think he was a bit nervous, and the fact that he wasn’t mic’d didn’t help. Halfway through the group had some questions, which was interesting. Roughly half the people here are PR folk who are very low on the scale of blogging knowledge. They have communications, PR and corporation relations down pat though, so it’s interesting to hear them think out loud about how blogging and wiki’s can relate to their businesses or their clients businesses.

Some of the questions directed at Constantin were pointed, and some of the other audience members got involved. I’m not sure how useful the session was overall, but it should provide (if nothing else) another technology that people can go home and chew on.

While that’s good, my hope is that today’s “practical” sessions and workshops will do more than just give people something to chew on.

I’m going to try and blog the sessions I’m involved in from 2 perspectives: important points that hit me, as well as “takeaways”. Action items or research items that people in general should be looking at or considering, given the subject matter of the session.

Hopefully I can fulfill this, and hopefully it’ll provide some value to folks along the way.

The Evening

The rest of the evening was basically a social mixer.

Which is interesting, because I’m actually a naturally shy person. I’ll open up after a few minutes, but it’s not as easy for me to do as it was for others (like Stowe Boyd).

Speaking of Stowe (which is odd, since I met him at the very end of the night): wow. Every now and again you run across someone which makes you stop your conversation and re-evaluate if you’re on the right path. Stowe gets a “look” which does just this. I’m sure it’s because he’s thinking about something along a different angle and a different train of thought (or it could be because he was checking out my fancy duds).

But that look made me think. And anyone who can make you think with just a look is worth stopping, shutting up and listening to.

I’m going to try and do more listening today to the very smart people around me.

Anyways, back to the mixer. I met loads of folk. I met a bunch of PR bloggers like Evelyn (very cool), Anita (very smart) and Elisa (very engaging). We had an hour long conversation which was diverse, without anyone (except maybe me… bad Jeremy. Bad Jeremy!) overpowering the conversation. There were enough different opinions to keep things on the edge all the time.

It was interesting, because talking to them I realized that in spite of whatever profile, influence, whatever I might have, I still have a hell of a lot to learn about working with companies, billing, time management, etc.

Realizing you’re an idiot is great for your humility.

Earlier in the night I spent some time with x from Six Apart (try and find out his name). He’s in sales. Great guy, very smart. He had a lot to say, in a quietly forceful kind of way. I could have listened to him talk all night. I also talked to Andy Lark (found his last name, linked to blog), an ex Sun blogger. Had a great chat with Robert Lowry, the Director of PR from Novell, and Fergus from Nooked.

I’m sure I’m forgetting people (like Jeremy Pepper who’s one of the funniest and easiest to talk to people I’ve met at the conference).

And I think I want to forget my chat with Dan Forbush. Dan’s great. Very smart. He’s the kind of person you could listen to all day. And his mind wanders while he’s talking. In one conversation we covered American culture, wikis, the future of blogging, the convergence of entertainment and computers, neuroscience and unitarianism. And I think that was in the space of just 5 minutes.

I’m sure there’s lots of great people I’m not mentioning. And I’m sure most of the people I’ve met won’t appreciate my tert characterizations of them. If you want to know what I really think of you in more words, just ask.