We love you WordPress! (and Matt’s bitchin’ jacket)
This post also posted on SHIFTsticks.
This past Tuesday I had the pleasure of attending WordPress’s 5-year birthday party.
I absolutely *heart* WordPress. Ever since I switched from Blogger to the WordPress platform, my blogging experience has gone from frustrating to fabulous. Both Chris Lynn and I use WordPress for our respective blogs (both of us for socialTNT and skrapnel, and flackette for my personal blog).
This blog is also hosted by WordPress. So I think it’s safe to say that SHIFT really loves WordPress a heckuva lot.
The party was held at THE tech party haven, 111 Minna in downtown San Francisco, and attracted many of the beautiful people of Web 2.0. In my humble opinion, it was quite possibly the best party I’ve been to at 111 Minna (and trust me, I’ve been to a few!).
Thanks to my buddy Andrei Zmievski for giving me the special “free drink” code. The Hoegaarden was amazing. Thanks to Terry Chay and Andrew Mager for taking some amazing pics.
And thanks to WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg for wearing what can only be termed a bitchin’ jacket. Yeah, it was that cool. See for yourself in the pic below.
Matt Mullenweg in his bitchin’ jacket
(”Matt Mullenweg, founder of WordPress” by magerleagues via Flickr under Creative Commons License)
Me with my good friend Larry Chiang from duck9 and Karim Tahawi from MyCurrency
(reposted from Terry Chay’s Facebook album; Flickr pics to be updated once up)
“Gina Trapani Still Doesn’t Get It”
My favorite quote describing the Gina Trapani situation came from Mary Wallace in the comments to this post:
Gina’s blanket vomit of so many PR names was like the mean teacher in middle school who screams ‘detention’ instead of teaching kids how to behave. Very old school and shows she and the author of the wiki are best at knee-jerk anger, instead of cooperative involvement. I understand being pissed, I understand venting, but a wholesale list of the local pr industry is bitchy and destructive.
I also completely understand Gina’s position; I wouldn’t want to get hit with so many emails on my personal account. She still doesn’t get why her “punishment” was a bad move. Check out socialTNT’s posts here and here explaining the situation.
Her Tweet, below, reminds me of a high school kid who wants to do something rebellious just so the other kids will think she’s cool. Yeah….
“She Likes Us. She Really Likes Us!”
“Chris Interviewed by Hannah Smith”
Last week, Hannah Smith, journalism student at the University of Oregon, interviewed Chris about Twitter and its uses for PR. Hannah posted the resulting podcast on her blog, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love PR. Hannah did an amazing job on the Podcast. She asks some insightful questions and her intro and outros rocked!
Check out her post, or download the podcast here.
Hannah, thanks for having me on your show!
“Facebook’s Brandee Barker Is Cool”
Last night, Marie and I met up with MG Siegler from VentureBeat and Kristen Nicole from Mashable, and went to the Fast Company “Hot” party.
The club, Prana, felt a bit like a temple; square columns lining two sides of a nave-like dancefloor, all bathed in red light. The flames projected on the front stage made me feel like I was in the middle of some pagan ceremony. I half expected to see Scoble qiking the sacrifice of a virgin to the gods of print in order to keep the circs up. It took all my strength to prevent myself from running around with my Flip asking people when traditional media would die.
One of the highlights of the evening was meeting the lovely Brandee Barker, Director of Corporate Communications at Facebook. We chatted a bit about her new boss (he was on Brandee’s shortlist of potential bosses), and the differences between in-house and agency PR (she prefers in house). Brandee plans on checking out socialTNT. Hope she doesn’t get too upset with the Beacon post. I tried to stay constructive and not be a basher.
Above photo from left: Kristen Nicole (Mashable) MG Siegler (VentureBeat) Marie Williams (socialTNT/flackette)
(PS: I happen to really like Fast Company and am completely thankful they invited me.)
“Scoble Reviews ‘Iron Man’ at TechCrunch Screening”
Last night, Marie and I met with MG Siegler from VentureBeat to watch “Iron Man” at the TechCrunch screening. On our way out, we ran into Robert Scoble. Watch as we all review the movie.
“Moooooo! Chris Interviewed by Utterz Founder”
socialTNT was honored to be interviewed by Simeon Margolis, founder of Utterz! Listen to the interview below, or see the full post here.
“Chris Said He’d Dress Like a Woman, But…”
I tried to attend the Girls in Tech event last night to share with socialTNT, but alas, it’s girls only. To no avail, I even promised to dress like a woman. Good thing Marie took the trusty Flip cam and got a couple of great interviews. Look for them to be posted on STNT soon.
Until then, content yourself with this post from fellow SHIFTer, Jany Xu, discussing the various panel topics.
Photo above, from Jany Xu
“We Made Techmeme!”
socialTNT’s “Top Tech Bloggers Define Web 2.0″ post made the top stories on Techmeme. Thanks everyone for your support! It means a lot to us.
“No Women Bloggers?! We tried!”
Today we posted “Top Tech Bloggers Define Web 2.0” featuring Dan Farber (CNET News.com), Marshall Kirkpatrick (ReadWriteWeb), Mike Butcher (TechCrunch), Dean Takahashi (VentureBeat), Scott Beale (Laughing Squid), Josh Lowensohn (Webware).
We got an email from All Things D’s Kara Swisher saying no women bloggers were featured in the post. True, but we did try. Sadly, Caroline McCarthy from CNET and former-Valleywag-now-freelancer Meghan McCarthy both were too busy for a short–2 minutes max–interview. We did feature Mashable’s Kristen Nicole and BlogTalkRadio’s Hilary Leewong in our Daily Wrap-ups.
I’m not a big fan of featuring only old white men, and neither is Marie. My mom is a strong defender of civil rights, especially for women. As a lawyer, she fought so that women could run around bare-chested in Texas. I also worked on my Bachelor’s degree studying race and urban spaces, and wrote my senior thesis on how the Texas history museum only tells a male–mostly white–story.
We want to interview women reporters and blogger, so give us a shout.
