BarCamp Seattle 2009 was a lot of fun today. Things got off to a great start when I ran into and caught up with a bunch of friends in the local tech/startup scene. A lot of the usual suspects were on hand, and it’s always nice to hang out with them.

I started things off by giving a talk in the 11:30 session on GTD – Getting Things Done. I’ve been on and off the GTD wagon for several years now, and used to give training sessions at a previous company, so I know the theory pretty much backward and forward. There were about 40 people at the session, and I felt a little nervous before I got into the swing of things. However, A few people came up afterward and complimented me on the talk, which made me feel a lot better – thank you, you know who you are!

A few other highlights from Day 1:

– The raucous laughter coming out of the Lightning Rant session. It sounded like they had a *great* time, and I can’t wait to hear more details tomorrow.
– I met Daniel Escapa, who works on my favorite software product of all time, OneNote. His name didn’t register with me at first, but I’ve read Daniel’s blog on and off for a long time. Great guy!
– I met Arianna O’Dell, who is the founder of FlyBy, an online music site. They have an interesting business model – free music with the occasional visual advertisement on your iPod.
– Had a chance to catch up briefly with Sarah Schacht, who runs Knowledge as Power, and is a strong advocate for government transparency. It sounds like things are going pretty well for KAP right now.
– Talked to two startup CTOs who both declined to talk about their products or companies. Funny, because I thought stealth mode was so 2007.
– Finally met @missrogue herself, Tara Hunt, who was attending and who also is in the middle of launching her new book, The Whuffie Factor. It’s a book about social capital and how companies and individuals should participate in the new world of online communities. Looks like a good read!

I look forward to going back tomorrow for Day 2. I’ll report back more after the end of the day tomorrow.

The title of the post is supposed to be a homonym of Capote’s “Holly Golightly” – did I succeed in the reference?

Not many thoughtful posts lately. I’ve felt just sort of cruddy, wiped out, and majorly stressed out, which sort of saps the creative juices. Not even the fattest bottle of Absolut or lengthy row of ice-cold Stella Artois can get the writing going when your mind stubbornly refuses to be present.

I went into work early this morning, but my mid-morning I felt cruddy so I took the rest of the day off and had a four-hour nap, which was delicious, and which did the trick – for today anyway. We’ll see how I feel tomorrow. I’m missing tonight’s Seattle Tech Startups meeting in preference for resting and storing up my energy for tomorrow. The first kickball practice for the work team is tomorrow afternoon, so we’ll see if I feel up to going to that. I’d like to suit up and get out there and kick some butt, work off some loose, unproductive energy, and have some fun, but not if I continue to carry around this wiped-out feeling.

Mentally: I suppose “not present” is as good a way to describe it as anything. I’ve been able to focus in bursts, and get my work done, but once the work day is over, I’m off to la-la land. Just a ton going on that takes time to process; by this time next week or next month things will likely be 100% back to normal. In the meantime, I’m distracting myself with programming tasks, and have been having fun learning PowerShell and re-learning F#, both of which take a certain amount of brain power.

I’m looking forward to BarCamp this weekend as a sort of forced exposure to the kinds of people and conversations that I love – motivated techies, optionally with beer – even though I might otherwise bow out based on how I feel right this moment. This wiped-out feeling will pass by the weekend, I’m sure, and I know I’ll have a TON of fun at BarCamp, so there you go. No reason to stay home. I have to remember to bring business cards for all the new people I expect to meet. There’s a fun period of about two weeks right after a conference like this where you make appointments for coffee or lunch with all of the new, interesting people you meet – I’m looking forward to that and expanding my horizons a bit. Lately I’ve felt insular or static in my thoughts and in my daily habits. Exposure to new people will help bust me out of that rut.

I was thinking about giving a talk, but my friend Marina is also thinking of giving a talk on the same subject, and since she does that productivity / effectiveness stuff for a living, I’m going to cede the floor and listen to what she has to say. After all, nobody pays me to tell them how to get productive! Looking around my house right now, I can tell why. Lots of little household tasks have been piling up, and I haven’t much felt like doing them. That’s got to change, and soon, or else I’ll be so far behind I’ll never catch up.

That’s all for now – thanks for listening! Reports from BarCamp will be forthcoming following the weekend.

I’ve not been writing much lately – the urge to express myself has sort of blown out of me like air from a floaty toy at the end of summer – but I am looking forward to BarCamp Seattle ‘09, which will take place this weekend at the Adobe Conference Center in Fremont. Much like MindCamp last November, BarCamp is an unconference for techies, geeks, activists, journalists, and many others. It’s basically going to be a big camp for smart, motivated people.

My motivation is down a little bit this time around, for reasons that have nothing to do with BarCamp or the tech scene in general, but I’m guessing that when I arrive at 10 AM and get a whiff of the energy and enthusiasm of the other 200+ attendees, that I’ll get right into the swing of things.

I have a couple ideas of presentations that I would consider giving. One is on GTD – Getting Things Done – which most of you have heard of, and I know that some of you are devotees of the method. Another would be on …. well, I have another topic in mind, but am not going to share it until I decide if I want to give it or not. Hate to be so cloak-and-dagger, but there’s a lot going on under the covers that I’d rather not blab about with the internet public at large. Careful readers may be able to divine some of what has been happening lately, and how I’m feeling in general, but for the most part it’s boring and not worth public airing.

On a good note, work on my side projects continues to flow along. Programming, being one of those activities that can totally absorb one’s mind while doing it, is actually good for someone who has a lot to think about. A few hours can go by with nary a side thought. Speaking of which, I’m ensconced in a local favorite restaurant (Serendipity) with a Stella and am about to dive in….see you on the flip side!