Polo, Partyin', Surfin' & Schmoozin' -
My Excellent "NDA" Adventure

(this time, complete with photos! -- see link at bottom)

Date: November 19, 1998

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My Recap of Red Herring Magazine's "NDA" Conference
(November 2-3, 1998, LaJolla, California)
"Secrets by the Sea: The CEO Forum on the Future of Technology"
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Dear Clients, Partners, Friends, and Vicarious Conference-Attendees:

Welcome to another report from your friendly neighborhood branding maniac and certified conference
junkie. This time, gang, it's the story of my wonderful trip West to take in Herring's first "NDA"
event in LaJolla. Yes, it was tough duty--but someone had to cough up the 3000 bucks, huh?
Well, I did, and it was worth every damn cent, friends. Not so much the content--the
"experience"!

So now, in the spirit of sharing that is the Internet (information wants to be free, you know), you get to
hear the high points of the conference--the serious part....mixed in with some good stories--the fun stuff
that always happens on these trips. (Hell, if you only wanted to read about the conference, you could do
that in the magazine or on the sponsor's site!)

Anyway, this email started out as another of those 'sound-bite' things I do briefly recapping the
getaway/schmoozefests I go on 4 or 5 times a year. But, this was an especially good event....so my report
grew, and grew, and..... Well, what can I say? I gathered a lot of good stuff! I like to think I'm a good
listener, so that's what I do at these events--taking voluminous notes. Kinda like Scott McNealy--he
knows what his job is ("I'm a quote machine"). Well, I'm a sponge.

Now, I usually come up with a theme for these reports. Before I chose the one above in the subject line, I
was thinkin' this one could be 'Trains, Planes, and Longboards' (the train ride was a hoot, then the damn
thing broke down--more on that later)....or maybe 'Point Loma to the Bay Bridge'.....'Two Nephews and
a Niece'.....'Polo, Partyin', and Prognosticatin'....or 'Secrets, Sunshine, and Surfing'. Take your pick.
As you can tell, the conference itself--that's the 'Secrets/Prognosticatin' part--was not necessarily the major
highlight (hey, it was only 2 1/2 days out of 7!).

Nonetheless, the conference was good, especially for a first-year event. And very well put on by Herring,
as usual. (How do they do it?! They had just put on Venture Market East in Cambridge the week before.)
But, as for all these gigs, it's not about the content--it's what happens during the breaks, the people you
meet. And I met some really great folks.

The conference program was organized around ten trends, seven technology related. Basically, the idea
was that we paying customers would get a preview of what was to be detailed in the December Red Herring
(now out)--except we got to interact with the gurus and experts they called on to help define the trends (and
have a lot of fun at the same time).

Gee, at the Monday night party at the San Diego Polo Grounds, I even got a goal in the golf-cart polo
match. What a hoot! Julie, my driver (an experienced polo player), was a real maniac! She drove, I
handled the mallet. After several collisions, twisting and maneuvering dangerously through the traffic,
we broke into the clear! He shoots, he scores.... The only thing more fun was listening to the color
announcer they had on the PA. This guy was a riot--as in, "he..could..go..all..the..way!" -- and he went
on and on with his banter, for an hour or more. Great party!

But back to business: what follows here are the high points of the meeting and the 10 trends as I captured
them....with editorial comments thrown in here and there. (And I'll warn you now--it ain't short.)

-Tony Perkins sets the tone...

Herring's erstwhile founder & editor-in-chief, whom I ran into right away upon checking into the Sheraton
Grande Torrey Pines on Sunday (immediately noting I was the lone wolf from Minnesota), opened
Monday morning by declaring the conference theme to be "Anything Goes"--pointing out with pride that
their giveaway is a backpack (loaded with stuff), while the "Agenda" conference's was a walking stick!
("That oughtta tell ya something," he says.) Then, in honor of the nearby nude Black's Beach, he declares
the conference subtheme: "Get Naked!" (figuratively, of course).

-Trend One: Platforms Proliferate....featured a look at Sun's newest initiative, "JINI"

Sun gurus John Gage, Chief Scientist, and Bill Joy, cofounder and VP research, opened the event with
some interesting insights, jabs at you-know-who, and a pretty impressive demo. Joy says there are 20
years left in Moore's Law....the last 20: microprocessors on a motherboard with personal disks--$1 trillion
in value.....the next 20: systems on a chip with personal/embedded networks and network services--and
even more wealth. Biggest problem now: reliability and simplicity. "The new utility model is right for
services--the web changes everything...the focus is now on the network, not local machines."

Sun's new "JINI" initiaitive (pronounced like genie) is a Java-centric software initiative designed to make
inter-computer communication simple and reliable....[We saw an impressive demo, which they said was
written in just a few days.]....release-one source code is now available on the 'Net...and Sun has a JINI
event scheduled for January with 40 companies participating....Bill called the intellectual property a
"community model"....Linux-like....not a traditional licensing model...."JINI is a community object
layer, doesn't displace existing OSes." The take is that JINI will speed the coming new world of pervasive
smart devices.

-So what era is it we're entering, then?

Bill Joy says it's the "Era of Pervasive/Ubiquitous Networking & Computing." [Okay, nobody ever said
engineers can do branding--it could use a little honing--but you get the idea!]

-Reminder: Unix is just gettin' there, NT ain't even close....

John Gage noted that, unfortunately, the demand for software exceeds our ability to produce it...and that
"our nation depends on fragile software." Bill Joy then reminded us that, while mainframes tend to stay
up for a decade or more without unscheduled maintenance, Unix machines are actually starting to approach
that standard....but NT--are you kidding? He suggests we all go read about the growing list of
documented crashes at http://www.unix-vs-NT.org

[Which reminds me of Scott McNealy's latest barb at Microsoft a week or so previous, upon MS'
announcing that they're writing a new smart card OS....he says it will spur a whole new growth business
for Levis--we'll all need larger pockets to carry the damn cards around!]

-Why Java is where it's at....

Because, according to Joy, while it's 2x faster for writing undebugged code, there's more! "For writing
*and* debugging code, it's 4x faster. And, since it's similar to C++, we essentially have one million
programmers out there."

-Will the Web invade your living room? And, if so, who will control it?

Two players that want bring it to you are a service company, ICTV, and a chip company, Broadcom.
For $9.95 a month, ICTV will provide high-quality content to cable-connected homes at 10 Mbit speeds,
saying "the ordinary TV is an appropriate display device." The ICTV CEO notes it's a huge market--
60% of homes don't have a PC--and also that they're "not competitive with cable modems in the den."
Broadcom claims its system on a chip will enable Internet TV...including "entirely new classes of
media not existing today"...like customized video content, where you choose the camera angles you want,
or a different announcer...and even if or how you'd like to gamble on a sporting event...and that there'll
be a "coupling of transactions with this customized content." Cable companies, Broadcom's CEO
claims, can "control this paradigm shift at both ends"....they can track site usage and transactions.
He notes there are already 500,000 cable modem users, and that they only thing holding back the cable
companies is an interoperable standard....

-So what would all this have to do with "home networks" finally taking off?

...well, the telcos are hardly sitting still, he says. They're pushing a standard called "VDSL," and they
could end up driving "the integration of all communications apps" into the TV...telephony, voice mail,
etc...so that the TV is "always on." Which could become the 'home network' that until now has been slow
to become reality. So, who will win, Broadcom's CEO asks, the telcos or cable companies? He doesn't
care--his firm wins either way.

-Switching gears...What's the biggest impediment to technology adoption?

This little pearl came from Dan Rosen, GM for new technology at Microsoft. He showed a simple graph,
with a rapidly rising curve representing increasing processor speeds, and a flat, horizontal line overlaying
it--which was quite instructive--labeled "human ability." The point: it doesn't change! And that, he says,
is the major "mismatch" in technology adoption...and why "the home PC will soon have to listen, speak,
see, and learn." He also believes bandwidth will still be limited for home PC users in five years, "because
they won't pay more than $25 a month." And people will continue to resist revolutionary changes.

-And the most natural user interface of all is....

Why, the human voice, of course. The CEO of Lernout & Hauspie, a global leader in advanced speech &
language solutions, not only gave a very cool demo of speech recognition technology, but talked about a
coming world where speech and natural language technology will be part of the OS. And, where today we
have semantic nets, soon we'll have content and neural nets. The "instant translator" will become a
common handheld device, and "speech and linguistic technologies will change the way we work and live."

-So you want to design UIs, huh?

The creative director of frogdesign inc., designers of such wonderful, user-friendly products as the
Macintosh computer and the Sony Trintron and Walkman, gave us an overview of what they see as the four
components for designing interfaces: enabling technology, a common visual language (mixing the analog
legacy of industrial design with new digital "words"), content, and emotional resonance. Yes, that last one
is the magic, folks....making it fun, interesting, cool...."even for our client SAP," he said. Yes, it can be
done! Then, he showed a downright *exquisite* new stereo remote control they just designed for a
European client, Dual. They've also done four Windows CE projects, and expect to be doing more.

-You say information is overloading you?

Oh, yeah? Try dealing with the MS-DOJ case! But we saw it all neatly mapped out, courtesy Cartia
Inc....who has a very cool interface for dealing with mega-information. And it took their software only 5
minutes to create the "ThemeScape" of this humongous database. Not only is this "map interface"
something everyone can relate to, it even lets you do full Boolean queries....and a single map can visually
depict up to half a million documents. [This was one of the better visual presentations at the meeting.....
but a disclaimer: Cartia, a Mpls-born company now based in Seattle, has been a client of ours....we helped
them rename the firm, formerly called ThemeMedia....I got my first chance at NDA to meet their capable
new CEO, Mark Goros, whose presentation drew a lot of interest.]

-What makes a great brand? eBay speaks (better listen)...

Meg Whitman says it's about this: "What's the benefit you couldn't get before? And what's the emotional
connection?" (Nicely stated.) Tech people tend to forget about the latter, which for eBay, says Meg, is "the
thrill of the hunt, person-to-person connection, and personal validity and success"......I don't know about
you, but I never feel quite so validated as when I clear stuff out of my garage! [Someday--when I have
time--I'm gonna score big on eBay with my antique camera collection and my killer sheet music
collection....do I hear a bid?]

-And how about that other "e"? (eToys)....

Well, Toby Lenk was a damn site better this time than his talk-only presentation at Summer I-World
(maybe the quality of the audience had something to do with that?)....quite a show-and-tell, including a
killer TV spot we'll soon start seeing. Anyway, he tells us that eToys now carries 50% more inventory
than a Toys-R-Us superstore....and inventory is indeed the magic word. Why? This category is
different--there are no wholesalers ("eToys must make the inventory commitment"). The other interesting
thing Toby had to say: this is "mission-critical" stuff we're dealing with here"--kids' birthdays, etc
(nothing to fool with!)

-What's the next-generation technology of the 'Net?

Why, XML of course.....if you didn't know this, you might possibly be brain-dead....but Dave Pool of
DataChannel reminded us that XML is "transforming the Web into a giant data base"....and that "XML will
become the EDI of the Web".....

-So how many new e-commerce sites are coming on line?

According to iXL, it's 25,000 *per month*--driven mainly by startups...but large companies are acting
aggressively as well, and outsourcing is rapidly replacing internal efforts. It's now "a requirement to have
a fantastic site" according to Bill Nussey, COO of iXL in Atlanta (now 1200 employees strong)....and the
"full-service EC site is replacing the customer relationship."

-And now for another cool new paradigm in computing...

Courtesy John Seely Brown, chief scientist at Xerox PARC: "calm computing"....a rebalancing, he
says..."taking computing out of computers--technology that gets out of the way".....he says it's needed to
"achieve a state of flow in the digital age".....so we can focus on what matters. [Now, if this isn't fodder
for a whole new slew of startups, I don't know what is!]

-So, what did the guru of the 'vertical portals trend' panel have to say?

Well, not much.....in fact, I'm still trying to find something in my notes from Halsey Minor's talk that was
significant.....obviously, CNet must think this 'vertical portal' (destination) thing is important, because
they've been involved in a "six-month strategic process" to try to figure out what to do. But what exactly
are they doing? I strained to listen, awaiting some words of wisdom, but got precious little. They have a
mission statement--but I'll be damned if I got much more than that. And they'll have "Expert Guides"
(either internal or external expertise), but that's certainly not a new idea. [Oh well, times are bound to get
more interesting for CNET, with a scrappy new competitor in Earthweb, whose IPO was just going to the
moon as I wrote this.]

-What term can we use and abuse now that 'portal' is going by the wayside?

Opinion: this whole 'vertical' thing is getting way overused....it's really meant to imply a 'destination' site
(now that being a 'portal' isn't deemed enough)....in other words, a place to go to get something done.
But, hello--doesn't that cover, like, a huge percentage of sites out there? Is this turning into another
useless, empty buzz-concept? And what a weird array of speakers Herring had on this 'trend':
Animalhouse.com, a college site [who says they reach 1200 campuses--uh huh, sure]....Deja News,
'The Discussion Site'.....Epicentric, tools for the portal administrator....and Netscape, which last I looked
was trying to be a major portal....or are they a 'destination'? Gee, could they be....two, two, two mints
in one? [More opinion: I had hoped for better from this session.]

-The most interesting trend for me? "Web Services Displace Software"....

Ray Lane of Oracle (president & COO) calls this "the next frontier--the remote app" (otherwise known as
the rented app). Oracle's actually been offering their Business Online service for about a year, providing
business apps across a network, where they "do the hosting on a professionally managed back end." But
they're now embarking on a pilot using their new "8i" technology and are "partnering like crazy with
telcos, ISVs, and ASPs"....the latter being a new business category he cited: "application service
providers". He says analysts are predicting 30% of ERP apps will be served up this way by 2001.
Companies will start with financial apps, then HR, SFA, call centers, then utimately the whole back end.
There's a new "outsourcing infrastructure" coming, with many new, nimble players entering a business
IBM and EDS have known for years. (He says "those who can do data centers well will prosper.") He
closed with Bill Gurley's description of this phenomenon: "The Death of Software." [Now there's one
that gets people's attention.]

-Ready for a couple more great sound bites?....

Dave Peterschmidt, CEO of Inktomi, followed Ray Lane, telling us "he's all wrong" on this trend, but
never really explaining why (and his old buddy Ray was already gone). But Dave reiterated that we're
seeing a whole new paradigm in running our companies...focusing on "what is the strength of the business
and outsourcing all else." He went on to say Inktomi's search technology actually gets faster as the Internet
grows, and that, hey, "terabytes are chump change!"....proudly proclaiming Inktomi is now "the definitive
power source on the 'Net"....soon to be processing 80% of all Internet searches. Inktomi is also in the
comparative-shopping technology business, and Dave closed by noting that analysts predict online
shopping could total about $37 billion by 2001.....oh yeah? guess again, he says--"John Chambers
[Cisco] thinks it will top $200 billion!".....who you gonna believe?

-Will the 'consolidation' trend continue?

Bound to happen, according to the impressive panel of M&A and IPO experts who discussed this
trend....Paul Deninger, CEO of Broadview, says there were 2500 tech M&A deals in '97, while the
run-rate for '98 is heading for 3000, and the average deal size is up 40%....he noted that while some 2/3
of IPOs in the last 4 years are trading below their offering price, the flipside is 1/3 are above....and that the
IPO really is the beginning of a whole new process: "starting up all over again." In regard to consolidation,
he noted that there are now 1800 companies listed on the stock exchanges with valuations of $2B or less,
and "they're all candidates for consolidation." Why? "It's exceedingly hard to build a public company
today--scaling is critical."

-How do VCs/big investors look at IPO vs. acquisition?

Sequoia's Mike Moritz, of Cisco and Yahoo! fame (and mucho other IPO successes), says a surprising 10
of their portfolio companies were acquired over the past year, including GlobalCenter by Frontier (and I
don't think they got hurt). Scott Ryles, tech group head at Merrill Lynch (a major player in both IPOs and
M&As) says that, with an IPO, you're really "betting on the value of the company two years out."
Denninger of Broadview noted that a company's first acquisition "has a high probability of failing"...but
some firms, like Cisco (now with 60+ acquisitions), have shown they know how to do them right,
integrating their acquired firms very well, and keeping a surprisingly high percentage of the acquired CEOs.

-The IPO outlook, and advice for those considering...

The Merrill Lynch guy says the IPO market will be a good in 1999....[he hesitated, but two weeks later is
probably feeling pretty cocky about his prediction]. Broadview wouldn't hazard a guess, but noted that
companies spend way too much time worrying about IPO market timing, and not nearly enough focusing
on what their value will be 2-3 years out. Merrill's Ryle says he looks for "ABS" with 'Net companies--
Audience, Brand, and Scale...and "SSS" with software companies--Solution, Salesforce, and Support. He
also notes that LBO firms are moving into tech--but then "every ecosystem needs a scavenger," he pans.

-A little insider story about an IPO that turned into an M&A deal...

Interesting thing about the IPO process: it "tees up the acquisition process, too," according to Merrill's
Ryle. Companies look at those filings as opportunities to start shopping....which is exactly what happened
to another panel member, Charles Conn, CEO of Citysearch. His firm was in the IPO process, actually
doing the road show, when it got a proposal to be acquired by Ticketmaster. He and the company went
through two difficult weeks agonizing about it, but ended up deciding it made sense. Going it alone
didn't. Why? "There's a huge premium for being No. 1 in an industry. If you're number 3, you're a
consolidation candidate." A thought that Mike Moritz of Sequoia Capital immediately picked up on--noting
that Yahoo! actually bet a No. 1 position would be greater than the sum of all the others....and we all know
what happened there, huh?

-"The Garage Closes" (another trend discussed)...Is the richly-funded-startup
frenzy threatening innovation?

Gee, all the money chasing ideas, which are fewer and farther in between....and the heightened sense of
urgency to develop faster solutions (not necessarily better products)....has some people wondering if
we've seen the end of the garage startup. [Others like Guy Kawasaki, with his new venture Garage.com,
might disagree, or note that it's just a different kind of garage now.] Gary Rieschel of Softbank Ventures
says VC partners at his firm now must manage 10-12 deals at a time, so they just can't spend as much time
with each one as they like...."Time is compressed--there's no time to build the culture anymore." Sunil Paul,
CEO of Bright Light (who just raised a bundle), says the model is now services. "No time to play with a
breadboard. Build an audience, develop customer service--that's how you build brand." And David
Liddle, a partner with Paul Allen in Interval Research, says there are basically two types of new business
concepts..."Brave New World" and "Faster, Better, Cheaper"...with most investment going into the latter
these days. Yet, Sunil Paul says it's the Web services companies--Priceline, eBay, etc--who are the "brave
new world" companies. Liddle deftly noted that "the cleverness now is in developing unique business
models--that's where the brain cells are going." Peter Ziebelman of 21st Century Internet Venture Partners
(whose startup When.com launched at NDA) put things in perspective nicely, when I asked the panel how
the current environment affects company launch strategies. He said his approach is "Awareness" first (to
keep competitors at bay), then "Differentiation" (for the launch), then "Defensibility" for later. Softbank's
Reischel, who earlier commented that "when you circulate your business plan, you find 10 others are
working on the same idea"...added that it's very hard to keep a secret: "you blow your cover when you
announce the company." Guess that means you better have a plan before you do and get it right.....

-"High Tech and Washington Embrace" is a trend?

Hard to tell listening to Tim Draper, a definite highlight in what I thought would be a real snoozer of a
session. Here's the net-net soundbite of this one: "Government is now 40% of the GNP. Time to reclaim
the castle!" Tim is a real piece of work, and a budding activist of some note. He's already on the
California Board of Education. How much of the education dollar gets to the school, he asks? "Only 15%!"

-And a few more sound bites, before we headed into the closing reception...

The CEO of eFusion, Ajit Pendse, says "3 cents per minute IP telephony is here." And Sky Dayton, CEO
of Earthlink, says his VP of Ops' objective is now to make his service "dull and boring...always on...five
nines (99.999)." [Now if he can only work on those busy signals....iMac sales have been very, very good
to him.] And the President of Subscriber Products at QualComm (now San Diego's largest employer), says
the "phone is the network computer!" [You gotta see the new "pdQ Smart Phone" he showed! I want one--
Palm III OS, 8.2 ounces, with phone/email/Web on one device...and speed dialing for all of it. Oh yeah...]

-Interesting people I met and talked with (besides the speakers)...

-Rick Smolan, author/producer of the "Day in the Life" series photo books (most of which I own), and a
very nice guy. His new book, "One Digital Day," was one of the many cool handouts we got in our (very
heavy) backpack. (Patricia Seybold's new book "Customers.com"--still warm, they said--was another. It
includes a great case study of one of my favorite 'Net firms, iPrint.com.) In the van going to Sunday
dinner at LaJolla's Marine Room, Rick pointed out something very interesting to me. When I said I'd put
his book on my Amazon affiliate page, he noted, in a friendly way, that we "Amazon Associates" make
more from a book than he does! (15% vs maybe low single digits) Hadn't thought of that one before. But,
hey, Rick--you make up for it in volume! Gee, if I buy any more of your books, my coffee table will
collapse. But they are fantastic!--my favorites, of course, being "Day in the Life" of Australia and Hawaii.
Rick, I wanna shoot for your next one! I'm good, really! Writing is just a sideline...
-Jim Moriarty, former marketing head of Pandesic, now VP marketing of NetBuy, up the road in Aliso
Viejo--and a surfer, recently moved back home to Cardiff-by-the-Sea. Hey, dude--we're gonna meet up
again and go surfin'!
-Dwayne Nesmith, a cofounder and VP-Ops of Viant, one of those "new-breed Web integrator"
firms....coming on strong, opening offices now throughout the U.S. A very eloquent guy, and I'm
hearing lots of good things about his company.
-Bernee Strom, who has one of the most interesting backgrounds I heard about. The founder/inventor of
VCR+Plus...now an independent investor and startup management advisor, involved in such ventures as
Priceline.com. Hey, Bernee--you're in Iowa, I'm in Minnesota--as the only "level-headed Midwesterners"
there, we gotta stay in touch and keep this NDA crowd grounded in reality!
-Steve Packard, CEO of Infernet.com. His company runs the most popular travel site in the UK. And he
has a whole lot of interesting things up his sleeve. I thought Steve had the distinction of coming the
furthest, till he told me there were a few others from 'across the pond', including one from Switzerland.
-Kevin Dorren, CEO of Orbital Software--a displaced Scotsman now based in Palo Alto--has a crew of
happy developers back home in Edinburgh. So he seems to have the best of all worlds. A very bright
guy--and you know you're getting old when you see how young this guy is.

And there were many others, all very nice people...
-Gerry Smith, CEO of ChangePoint in Toronto. Another great Canadian software company! Gerry played
golf-cart polo, too, and whooped it up even louder than me!
-Scott Russell, General Partner, Softbank Ventures, San Jose. He and fellow partner Gary....well, let's put
it this way--collectively they "da man"! Need any more deals to look at, I ask? Are you kidding....
-Andrew Bonanno of GE Capital's Equity Capital Group, in charge of Internet ventures. He ran the New
York Marathon the day before--I got tired just hearing about it...
-Chris Byrne, Director of Intellectual Property, Silicon Graphics. I told him, gee, I really didn't mean what
I said about your sucky new acroynm--I mean, official new name--"SGI"! He was surprised I even knew
about it. But he has a whole lot more to worry about than trademarks.
-Jessica Switzer, President of Switzer Communications in Corte Madera, CA. Jessica could use a
naming/branding partner--hey, I have an idea! Yeah, I could do some naming work in Califonia--how
about this winter?
-Taher Behbehani, CEO of ioWave in Washington, DC...."Total Digital Wireless Solutions". Hey, we'll
definitely talk smart cards soon, Taher--maybe at CardTech in the spring.
-Wen Liao, Director of Marketing, Fantastic Corporation, NYC (ya gotta love that name!) A former Jupiter
analyst seeking fame and fortune with a company she began following there.
-Stan Fung, General Partner of Zero Stage Capital in Cambridge, MA. These guys must have so many
deals coming out of MIT, gotta be like shootin' fish in a barrel--huh, Stan?
-Gisele Verheyden, assistant to the CEO of EASDAQ, the European equivalent to Nasdaq, based in
Brussels. She not only has to keep up with her boss, but manages their Web presence as well. (They
don't offer real-time quotes yet, but hoping to soon.)
-Richard Levine, who manages demo & training for the speech technologies company, Lernout & Hauspie,
Burlington, MA. This guy not only does fantastic demos (you gotta see, and hear, one), but knows his
cigars, too!

Okay, got another half hour or so? I said I'd talk about the other parts of my trip. Here goes.....

-"The Train" story: So, anyway, before all this NDA stuff, I'd been stayin' in Altadena at the wonderful
house of my famous oldest nephew Mark (house painter to the stars)....and I decide (on the suggestion of a
client) to take the train from the downtown LA station--which turns out to be an unbelievably cool, art-deco
era architectural delight called Union Station (which you just gotta see!). The train is called "The San
Diegan." And it was fun....."Pacific Class"--cost me a whole 34 bucks....big, comfy reclining seats, and I
get waited on and served, too. Hey, it was a relaxing, pleasant ride...cruising through all the interesting
little train stations--Fullerton, Santa Ana, Irvine, Anaheim--then the spectacular ocean views, right along
the beach starting at San Juan Capistrano. Hey, it was great, and the waves were excellent (dude). So,
I'm reading a business plan (what else), sippin' on a chardonnay....feelin' like, well--does it get any
better?--when, we suddenly grind to a halt, somewhere north of Oceanside, in the boonies that is Camp
Pendelton. Yes, they tell us, the "brand new technology" engine pullin' this thing has decided to go
down. No problem, so we sit for a while....the guy who's runnin' the show, who I've just had a great
chat with about bookstores, real and virtual (I'm wearing my Amazon shirt), gets on the PA and says it
shouldn't be too long. Meanwhile, the counter in the dining/bar car, where I'm now sitting taking in the
view, backs up bigtime with thirsty travelers. But, soon we start moving again....for about 3-4 minutes.
So the guy comes on the PA again: "I got good news and bad news: the bad news, it's really broke now.
The good news--we can coast to the Oceanside station!" Swell, but then he tells us it ain't gonna be fixed
real soon. So I 'de-train'. Hey, I gotta get to the Sheraton Grande Torrey Pines in LaJolla for the
opening NDA reception! No problem, I figure--a taxi. Yeah, sure--about an hour later, I finally
commandeer one and get a great ride to LaJolla, costing me damn near twice the train fare. (But hey,
nonetheless, I would do that train thing again.)

-What Else I Did On My Trip To California: Went surfing twice! And no wet suit for this guy! My
nephew Mark and I had a great investment-strategy session Wednesday, at LaJolla Shores Beach Park and
back at the hotel hot tub. Then, it was check out time, and off to see my youngest nephew, Joel--a junior at
at Point Loma University, a short ride south. We had a great time long-boarding at Ocean Beach, then off
to Junior Seau's sports bar for dinner. Mark drove us back to Altadena, where I spent Thursday working
at my "GTA West" office at his great place, emailing my brains out, and--among other things--updating
two Web sites and talking to a Mpls Star-Trib reporter about an EC story he was writing.

-Heading North for More: But I had this Tiger Woods thing going--I just had to "do more". So, I'd
booked a flight to San Jose early Friday morning from Burbank, to call on a company up in Redwood City
that I've been checking out, iPrint.com. Had a great meeting with them. Then, gee, realized I had about
four hours to kill before my return flight.....so,

-Gotta Hit the Big City! So I calls my niece, Tsia, who's been living in San Francisco for several
years now, and I've never taken the opportunity to get together with her. I call, she answers! She's
working for a Web entrepreneur now...she's his assistant...and his sites include www.web-radio.com
and www.dot.fm. Sounds very cool, I say. So, yeah--we'll have lunch--meet ya at The Fairmont (right
near where she lives). We'll have lunch at the top, or across the street at the Mark Hopkins. No dice, both
closed for lunch. So, we grab a cab to the Embarcadero. Have a great lunch at the Towns End restaurant,
have the waiter take pictures, talk a lot about her bosses' Web businesses, etc....then I looks at my watch.
Geez--I gotta flight at 4:00! Forty minutes later we *finally* find a cab back to The Fairmont!! And I'm
feeling, like...kinda energized, shall we say...about hittin' the road? Hey, I had a client to meet up with
again in downtown LA about 6:00 and, dammit, I wanted to be on that 4:00 from San Jose to Burbank!
Oh, sure--I don't even end up getting on the 101 till about 3:15 and, despite the fact the flight's running
late, there was no way. Luckily, I make the next flight, and I'm into Burbank at 7:00, talking business
downtown at the Westin 4th floor outdoor patio bar at 7:30. Whew! (It was a fun evening, with a great
new Web startup client...but that's a story for another report.)

-Do You Get the Feeling I Pack a Lot into My Trips? Why, yes I do. Gotta get my money's
worth! But to really get the full picture, you have to see the photos!  Nothing planned, mind you--I always
carry a little Advantix camera with me, and we just started shootin' stuff...  Hey, Rick Smolan, eat your
heart out -- it's "A Day in the Life of a Web Consultant," dude!  (Okay, a few days then...)

That's all, folks. If you've read this far, you probably need help--you're spending way too much time
online. And probably need to hire a good consultant to help you get your work done....

cheers,
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Graeme Thickins, Founder & President
GT&A Strategic Marketing Inc.
*Minneapolis *LA *Anywhere
612/944-1672, Fax 612/944-1673
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"Branding & Marketing to Win
in the Knowledge Economy(tm)"
http://www.gtamarketing.com