Podcamp Hawaii 2008
October 26, 2008
So, I kind of, sort of, went to Podcamp Hawaii 2008 at the Hawaii Convention Center on Saturday. I say kind of, sort of, because it was a 2 day event, and I showed up for one of the last sessions on the second day. Doh. Well, the first day was on a Friday and I couldn’t take off of work to go. I couldn’t sleep Friday night either, so getting up early enough Saturday was also a challenge.
I was going to chicken out and not go, but I knew my friend from high school, Renee, was going to be there and I hadn’t seen her in over 10 years, so I just had to go! We recently reconnected via Twitter too!
They had a ton of different sessions dealing with all kinds of online stuff. Yea, I am a professional describer person. 
I wasn’t going to go initially, mostly because I am just so shy nowadays, but then I saw that Congressman Neil Abercrombie was going to be giving a presentation and since I’ve never really heard him speak before, I just had to go!
First of all, I have never been to the Hawaii Convention Center so that was a new experience for me. I still remember all of the controversy surrounding the building of the complex all of those years ago. I still don’t know how they are doing on bookings, but I don’t think the place is as busy as everyone hoped it would be. The place is actually very pretty and much, much larger than I thought it was. There are all kinds of escalators and passages to different areas of the complex – I actually got lost briefly trying to find Podcamp. I should have taken a video of what seemed like a 3 story escalator ride, but I forgot. Doh.
The place actually looks like it would be a great concert venue, but I doubt anything like that would happen there.
It was a bit surreal going to this conference though. It was weird walking into a room because when you did, people would look at you and they would get that face like they are trying to see if they recognize you from somewhere and that was kind of funny. I recognized a lot of people though – people who’s pictures I’ve seen by lurking through the photo sets of various Hawaii geeks! Going to this thing also made me realize just how painfully shy I am sometimes and how much self confidence I’ve lost over the years. I wonder how I can get that back?
Congressman Abercrombie’s presentation was really good too. It was just so refreshing to hear a politician be passionate and speak his mind. He was also pretty freaking funny too. At one point he made a joke about how all of the names of these various social networks all sound like sex toys! How awesome is that? It then made me have a really bizarre thought that I was around people, whom I bet 99% of them have actively sought out net porn. LOL!
I wish I had videoed the speech since he made a couple of really good and interesting points that I would like to hear again. I could probably look something up on the net, but I’m tired right now. He made an interesting point about the importance of reflection and how microblogging makes him stop for a moment to reflect about what he is doing instead of just go-go-going all the time.
He also made a comment about how there will always be special interest groups, but you have to be able to discern if the special interest is in the public interest, or something like that.
After that presentation was over, I headed over the main auditorium and caught the last 5 minutes or so of Matt Mullenweg’s WordPress presentation/Q&A session. Matt is the founder of WordPress! I kind of glimpsed at the schedule previously, but I didn’t realize that he was going to be there until after Congressman Abercrombie’s presentation. I heard he gave a preview of WordPress 2.7 which should be coming out soon and he also made an announcement about wordpress.tv which should be launcing pretty soon. WordPress.tv is going to be a site set up with all kinds of videos that will show you how to do all kinds of stuff with WordPress! OMG! How exciting!
There was a final session Q&A after Matt’s presentation, but I didn’t stick around for that. I was tired and I had a bunch of errands I wanted to run since I was out already. I headed out to Costco to pick up a few necessities and gas at Costco Iwilei was $2.69/gal! Holy Crap! I was going to fill up the tank, but the lines were hella long. I mean one of the lines almost reached Dillingham Blvd! Eek! I will either try again tomorrow, or just wait until Monday.
I also went to Best Buy and got one of those clear cases for my iPod Nano too! Hurray! I have a case! I was storing it in a sock, but this will be much better.
Well, it’s past 2am now, I’m pooped.
Filed under: Whatever
