This past week has been a blur.

Back in September and October while we were in the midst of working on the Obama campaign, serolynne and I were encouraged to apply to speak on Technomadism at the O'Reilly ETech Emerging Technology Conference.

The awesome folks at O'Reilly accepted our proposal, and were excited about us being on the agenda. They even featured us in an interview for the O'Reilly Radar as part of the build up towards ETech.

We would be sharing the stage at ETech with big name CTO's and CEO's and a whole host of well know visionaries and leaders. Would people really want to see our travel photos and hear about our experiments in lifestyle hacking?

Apparently, yes.

Our "Tales from Technomadia" session on Thursday morning went over extremely well. We had a great crowd, and several people told us that we were one of their highlights for the whole week.

Wow.

We are just two geeks and a kitten living in a moderately teched-out trailer. Are we really that interesting? It is humbling to have people telling us how much we inspire them.

But we do encourage people to think about different ways of living, and that indeed strikes a chord. ETech has been all about finding new ways to look at the world, new approaches to problems, new visions.

In addition to giving our talk, some of the other highlights from my week at ETech include:

• Refactor your Wetware - An in depth look at how the brain works, and how to use your own better.


• Learn to Make Cool Things With Microcontrollers - I feel inspired to go build some cool stuff now!


• Ignite ETech - Featuring an exploration of the pneumatic tube "internet" of the late 1800's. Wow!!!


• Design for Urban Green Space - Eye opening talk about the potential for urban gardening.


• Priorities for a Greener World - Where to focus future efforts for the best possible return.


• Robots: The Next Ten Years - Prediction made: robot teams will be competitive playing soccer against human teams at the World Cup level by 2050, and perhaps by 2025. Wow.


• Jackhammers, Polymers, and Diamonds: New Applications in Explosives - She didn't blow anything up, but Christa Hockensmith was amazing. She will be hosting an Explosives Camp this summer for high school students - perfect for any kids hooked on MythBusters-style explosive science.


• Using a 17th Century Instrument to Create the Music of the 21st Century - Zoe Keating's performance was AMAZING, particularly when combined with the incredible LaserVision visualizations. I love it when art and technology collide in such a beautiful way.


• Robot Cars Solve Everything. Well, Almost. - Not only do robot driven cars have the potential to save millions of lives, they also have the potential to save vast amounts of energy too. Amazing stuff happening here, and coming sooner than you might think...


• Viral Forecasting - Amazing big-thinking science is aiming to head off the next pandemic before it even starts. Wow.

And there was more... Late night Werewolf games, fascinating hallway conversations, and all sorts of incredibly interesting and inspiring people about.

My summary of ETech 2009: It was a great experience of both inspiring others and being inspired. I loved it!

On Thursday night serolynne and I attended a meeting of The Abundance League in San Francisco.

A week ago, I had never heard of this organization. But an email forwarded to me from a friend about this month's topic - "traveling on purpose", intrigued me. I was particularly interested in one of the featured speakers, Todd Sotkiewicz, the general manager of Lonely Planet - my favorite travel books!

As full time purpose-driven travelers, how could we miss a topic like this?

Easily, it turns out.

Thursday afternoon rolled around, and we really weren't feeling up for venturing in to the city to check out some unknown organization. It would have been easy to stay at home catching up on projects, and maybe watching a DVD.

Inertia is a powerful force.

But then I noticed that the roster of special guests had been updated, and now also included Doug McConnell, the host of OpenRoad.TV.

Doug has always been one of my traveling inspirations. His prior show, "Bay Area Backroads" was some of my favorite Tivo fodder, and I always used to say that he had the best job in the world. I had considered it a good omen when I ran into him and his crew filming on Treasure Island during the beginnings of my own nomadic journey back in April of 2006.

The universe had spoken. I couldn't miss a chance to meet both the GM of Lonely Planet, and Doug McConnell!

And I am SO glad that we broke free of our stay-at-home-inertia and went.

Rather than a lecture style setting with a speaker and an audience, the Abundance League runs their meetings as a talking circle. Everyone gets to share, and there is a lot of time for mixing and mingling.

And mingle we did. We spent extensive time talking with Doug, Todd, and dozens of other absolutely fascinating and inspiring people. And - it was extremely energizing to be held up as inspiring in our own right. Todd even used us a running example during his talk.

I couldn't be happier that we ventured out on Thursday night. The overall message of the night was to "just go", whatever the adventure ahead that is calling you.

I couldn't agree more. Do it!

Last night serolynne and I met up with some friends at the New Wave City 80's dance party at DNA Lounge.

Lacking much in the way of appropriate 80's attire, I wore the T-Qualizer T-Shirt that Cherie had gotten me for Christmas.

The shirt is cool, but I could never have imagined what a hit it would be.

Throughout the evening, random strangers kept coming up to tell me how amazingly cool my shirt was, pulsing along to the music. One girl asked me where I got it, and when I told her it was a present from Cherie she actually gave Cherie hugs of gratitude!!

All night long, men and women alike were checking out my chest! And literally dozens of people came up and asked me about it.

Outside the DNA Lounge when we were leaving, a large group actually told me that they had been dancing all night to the beat of my shirt.

Egads!

As cool as the T-Qualizer is, I never would have imagined what sort of impact it would make. I have seen similar shirts on sale for a few years now, even at mall kiosks and Spencer Gifts. I would not have expected it to be such a surprise hit in such a hub of geek culture like San Francisco.

And besides, the T-Qualizer isn't even a real graphic equalizer - it only pulses to overall loudness, the frequency bands are not independent. I would have expected real audio geeks to have noticed this... ;-)

But... The T-Qualizer certainly has proven to be a fun and effective shirt. Cherie scores big points for giving it to me. The best sort of presents are the ones you never expected, and which exceed all your expectations! Yay!

serolynne and I have been playing around with the mobile application Loopt lately, and it is pretty cool with a lot of potential for the future.

Loopt lets you share your location with your friends, so you can see who is nearby. It also lets you take pictures that are linked to a map, and share these photo/map posts via linkages to Twitter and Facebook.

The official Loopt blog actually profiles Cherie and I today as an example of how you can use the Loopt / Twitter integration to share travel updates broadly. You can read their blog post about us here.

Loopt is pretty cool, and it works with a huge range of phones and carriers (not just the iPhone). You can see the list of supported phones here.

If you would like to play around with Loopt too, I would love to have more "friends" to track to make it interesting.
You can add me to your friends list using my cell phone number: 408-667-9022.

Apple actually featured Loopt in one of its iPhone TV commercials:

See you on Loopt!

I've been meaning to post this for a while now...


A few months ago, I received the following comment on this photo found in my Flickr set:

Hey did you guys know this pic is in a jeep commercial? I was thinking about getting a tab and have seen your pics before and as I was watching Jeep videos on you tube I ran across a jeep commerical and recognized this pic. Didnt know if you guys knew already or not but I thought it was pretty cool.

Here is the commercial, as featured on YouTube:

How cool that one of my photos was selected for inclusion. Not only that, it was the very first one featured!!!

I was a little surprised to find out about this second hand, but I believe that Jeep still has the rights to the photos from when they bought some from us last summer.

Coolness!

As I posted about a few weeks ago, Jeep bought twenty-two photos from Cherie and I for its "Have Fun Out There" advertising campaign.

It looks like they ended up using thirteen of them. Can you find them? (Click here for the answers...)

This mosaic ran as a huge two-page spread today in USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The LA Times, and The New York Times.

It will run again in the same papers on 8/24.

Coolnees, eh?

Personal Historical Note: The last time one of my photos was featured inside USA Today, the front cover photo was of the World Trade Center collapsing. This time around, the cover photo is of a herd of buffalo - in South Dakota! Hmmm....

A few weeks ago I was contacted via Flickr mail by Jeep's PR agency:

You have some great shots! I especially love the ones of your Tab and Burning Man! I sent you an email a little while ago about using some of your photos in a Jeep ad. You're photos have a great feel and show the true spirit of Jeep.

Coolness! And to think I was just about to let my Flickr Pro account expire...

Ultimately, Jeep decided to buy 20 of our photos (including many taken by serolynne) for their upcoming "Have Fun Out There" campaign.

They just sent me details on the first print dates:

08/03/07 - New York Times, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal
08/13/07 - New York Times, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal

Though the photos will be just thumbnail size, this is still pretty exciting. Here are my favorites of the twenty that Jeep picked:

My voice has been echoing around the Internet and the airwaves lately.

Simply Digital Podcast: When I was passing through Nashville in December I met up with my friend Michael Ashby, and he took the opportunity to interview me for his technology podcast "Simply Digital". That show has at last been posted online, and in it we have a great chat about everything from my travels, nomadic life, mobile technology, and Burning Man. (click link to go to the Simply Digital site and listen to the show!)


Michael Ashby and Analog Dave hosting Simply Digital on location in my Tab...

Episode 12: Interview with Chris Dunphy

This week, the Simply Digital gang take their first podcast “on the road”, even if they only made it as far as the driveway. Chris Dunphy, a self described technomadic flying geek, happened to land in Simply Digital “studio” for a quick interview.

Chris is the former Director of Competitive Analysis for Palm and then PalmSource — in other words, his job involved traveling the world, meeting interesting people and buying every interesting gadget he could get his hands on. A geek’s dream job to say the least.

He has always had a passion for travel and when the opportunity presented itself to pursue that passion and spend a year or so just traveling, it was an opportunity he just couldn’t pass up. So lately Chris has been traveling the United States and using all kinds of different technology along the way.

Lucky for us, Chris stopped by for a few days and we were able to record an interview with him. This recording was made inside Chris’ Tab Trailer as the rain slowly fell outside.

GeekSpeak on KUSP / Podcast: This past Saturday while out visiting California for a week, serolynne and I drove down to Santa Cruz to spend some time with my old GeekSpeak crew. I knew that they intended to have me on the air as the featured guest, but Cherie was taken by surprise when five minutes before airtime Lyle asked her to also guest-star. What fun! (click link to go to the GeekSpeak site and listen to the show!)


Wyatt prepares to stand in for his dad as host of GeekSpeak at KUSP in Santa Cruz.

NPR: GeekSpeak is being picked up to be hosted by npr.org as an official National Public Radio podcast - and we've been told that this past week's show is the first one that will soon go live on NPR's site. Cool!