A message from Heathrow Airport…

Heathrow Airport. How I love thee. With thy little tax-free shops that are still too expensive, and the hidden power points by the columns that took me hours to find the first time I flew from here. I commend thy expensive wifi! I celebrate thy Bagel shop! But soon I must leave thee for San Francisco…

Ah, San Francisco – my spiritual home. Geeks as far as the eye can see in every direction – all my peers from the time of my first creative tinkerings online. I love going to San Francisco. It really cheers me up. And all that time stuck in a plane when you’re allowed to potter around and think about things and write stuff up. I’m almost looking forward to going headblind from lack of net access, because I think I might actually be able to catch-up on some writing I’ve been meaning to do. Dead time in the Interzone is good.

And what to do while I’m in San Francisco? Well, obviously I’ll be eating and lounging around a bit, but I also want to spend some time drinking from the nerdy wellstream and reinvigorating myself. And that means, big discussions and new perspectives and stuff. So if you’re interested in any of the following, feel free to e-mail me ( at tom {at} the name of this website) and maybe we’ll be able to find some time to chat. Things I’m interested in at the moment:

1. Supplementing and enhancing broadcast with social software (or social software in general)
2. Programme information, distribution and future post-broadcast media consumption
3. Social Software for Set-Top boxes and assorted other connected home entertainment systems things
4. The Age of Point-at-Things and identifiers / URLs (see also Matt Biddulph’s ‘Application of Weblike Design to Data
5. Weblogs and Mass-amateurisation and all that general palaver

Other nerdy wellspring opportunities to catch up with me: I’ll probably be at Supernova on Tuesday and Wednesday, hanging out with the O’Reilly crew and trying to push myself to think in unexpected non-work-related directions. I may also be wandering up to PARC to see a few social media types, and I’m hoping to get to see much-missed friend Cal Henderson‘s impromptu one-day workshop on Building Flickr. So if you’re going to be at any of those, look out for me. I guess this probably doesn’t sound like much of a holiday to some people, but I’m really looking forward to it. Probably because beyond all that stuff – lurking in the shadows, with their faces lit up by screenlight – are all the people I don’t get to see enough.

Anyway, my plane’s probably boarding about now, so I should probably close the laptop and get myself ready. See you on the other side…