Jacob and I spoke onstage with Tim O'Reilly at the O'Reilly Radar Executive Briefing at eTech today.  I think I've finally hit the place where I'm very relaxed about speaking.  It's starting to feel pretty natural.  I'm actually looking forward to having the opportunity to give an entire presentation by myself.  We didn't get to see much else today, but we did get to see Jeff Jonas have a conversation with Tim.  Jeff has to be one of the most fascinating people I've ever heard speak.  His company, which was recently sold to IBM, created a system called NORA which stands for "non-obvious relationship awareness".  I won't even begin to try to explain it, because I won't do it any justice.  Check him out if you get a chance.

My travel schedule gets busier every year.  It's usually only for the first few months of the year, but this year is the craziest yet.  I barely unpacked from my LA trip before I had to repack for San Diego - where Jacob and I are to speak at eTech.  My travel schedule gives me so much respect for people who travel for a living.  I have no idea how they do it!  I feel like a zombie... almost unaware of my surroundings but always on the move.  I was only home for 3 days before I hit the road again.  There was a moment on the plane yesterday where I dozed off and when I woke up... there I was, on another airplane, watching Heroes on my iPod, surrounded by strangers (Jacob and I couldn't sit together because of our upgrade).  It took me a few seconds to decide if I had been home at all!

Last night I had a really great dinner, and had the opportunity to chat with some really interesting people.  I'm in LA for work along with some co-workers and invited some friends and business associates to dinner for a little R&R.  It turned out to be one of those rare times where a really diverse group of people end up at the same table with a few bottles of sake, some great food and plenty to talk about.

Our dinner was at Koi, and the group included myself, Bob, Laura and Adam from skinnyCorp; Ian and Tabetha from DeepFocus; Sean Suhl - owner of Suicide Girls; Steve Isaacs - singer for The Panic Channel; and Otto Arsenault and Taylor Cohen who are working on a secret project for Threadless.  The conversations ranged from movies to books to the economics behind disposable income vs. pricing to how easy it is to sell a movie to Showtime for their late night programming.  That, and we saw David Spade walking around the restaurant who appeared to be really pissed off about something.

I sincerely hope I get more opportunities to get together with a unique cross-section of people, who otherwise wouldn't ever end up at the same table.  It really was a great time.