And we’re back
Rusty and I are back from our 4-day road trip to the Carolinas. It was a good combination of planned and spontaneous; I just wish we’d had a few more days.
First we went to Greensboro for ConvergeSouth 2007. We got there in time for about half of the final session of the day, wherein Jason Calacanis demonstrated the power of Twitter by Twittering his phone number and then Robert Scoble called him. Based on what I’ve heard and read, people seem to be split into two groups – those who thought this was cool/amusing/impressive, and those who thought it was obnoxious. My reaction falls somewhere in the middle, but leaning toward the “obnoxious” side, I think. Part of that is just because I’m non-starstruck with Scoble.
Speaking of which… well, I’ll get to it in a minute. Friday night we went to the ConvergeSouth barbecue at David Hoggard’s house (and they actually had veggie burgers!) and met BlogHer co-founder Elisa Camahort and contributing editor Laurie White. They were both so nice, funny, and down-to-earth; I really enjoyed hanging out with them. Oh, but how this relates to Scoble… well, somehow he came up in conversation, and I mentioned being disgusted with his behavior at ConvergeSouth 2006. Elisa said she’d seen he and Maryam give the same presentation at a different conference, but they were very much co-presenters. We wondered whether she had seen them after I had, and maybe Scoble took my criticisms to heart. Later that night I did some research on Google and it turns out, Elisa did see them after I did. Ha!
Saturday we had a good time at ConvergeSouth; I liveblogged Elisa’s keynote and did a bit of Twittering throughout some of the other sessions. Of course, the inevitable J-School/B-School session – otherwise known as “journalists vs. bloggers” – got ugly pretty fast; but I’ve yet to be in one of those sessions where it doesn’t turn ugly. At 1:00, I led a session entitled Podcasting and Beyond. It seemed to take the folks there a few minutes to understand that they weren’t just “the audience” and I wasn’t going to talk at them for an hour; once that became clear, we had a good discussion. I recorded it and will put it up as a podcast soon.
Sunday morning, we left Greensboro and headed to the Carolina Raptor Center. This is a place just outside of Charlotte where they rehabilitate injured birds of prey. Their goal is always to release the birds back into the wild, but some birds aren’t able to be released, due to the nature of their injuries. These are the permanent residents at the CRC.
I highly recommend this place to anyone who has even the remotest interest in birds! (Which should be everyone.)
After leaving the raptor center, we decided to head to Columbia, SC. We’d been meaning to go there eventually anyway, so we figured there’s no time like the present. Columbia turned out to be a pretty neat town. We didn’t have as much time as we would’ve liked to walk around taking pictures, because it was almost dark by the time we got there, and on Monday I spent most of the morning doing research at the courthouse. I’m trying to track down some family history there… but I’ll do a separate post about that. Rusty did sneak away and photograph two Kress buildings for me, though:
We’re planning to go back to Columbia the weekend of December 8th. At that time, I’m sure we’ll take five million photos.
On the way back home, we stopped in Augusta for lunch with my parents. It was a totally last-minute decision, so I was glad they were available for lunch!
So that’s what we did on our 4-day vacation. I love road trips, and I’m already ready for another one. Hopefully we’ll be able to get in a few day and weekend trips between now and December.