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Busy schedule this week + my unwillingness to spend $10 for in-room Wi-Fi access at a $300/night hotel = a bit of catch-up to do.

Some notes from my New York City visit for Media Summit 2006…

Great quote from Kevin Roberts, CEO Worldwide, Saatchi & Saatchi, during Wednesday’s “afternoon keynote:”

The supermarket is the only place in the world where you still hear Phil Collins.

As someone who enjoyed Phil Collins’ cameo on an episode of Miami Vice, my laughter was bittersweet. But it had the audience rolling.

From that same panel, someone I need to learn more about: Andrew Lippman, Senior Research Scientist, Director, Digital Life, MIT Media Lab.

TV, Internet Convergence Yields Cultural Chasm bundles comments from two different panels, including the one I was on, about how the numbers get in the way of selling online advertising, especially advertising on/around video content. My comments were brief, and focused on making things simple. Nothing is, yet, in the video swath of the online advertising world. The trickle of dollars will become a flood as simplicity emerges.

Conference did not have people blogging away, that I could tell. Big difference from Bay Area conferences, certainly. Maybe people were listening more?

Nice dinner Wednesday night, hosted by WiderThan, which I had never heard of before (mobile applications, parent company is SK Telecom in South Korea). Never knew that Children’s Television Workshop had been renamed to Sesame Street Workshop. And did you know that Snuffleupagus has been visible to everyone (not just Big Bird) for years? Always surprising what you learn and where you learn it.

Everyone at the conference assumes the gaps in the access grid will be filled in shortly. But until then, perhaps Hilton could revisit their policy of charging for Wi-Fi in their rooms? Next time I travel for business, I will make a point on this utility (not a feature, a necessity).

Barely saw Vin Crosbie, met Dorian Benkoil in person. (Some of his notes from the Summit.) I did get to connect with a variety of folks, which I enjoyed. And it wasn’t the same crowd which seems to move from one Bay Area event to the next… very appreciated.

My next speaking gig is in late March at OMMA Hollywood in Los Angeles.

How surprised was I to see Julie, then Narendra, then Nick walk on screen at the end of Rocketboom this evening, on my TiVo? Very.

Nice work, folks. And 30 boxes is interesting, too. I’m not ready to pronounce this calendar the greatest thing since sliced bread, but I’m eager for some advancements in this area. And the competition is about to get fierce, from all reports.

Best feature in waiting? Ability to email items to my calendar. I’m impatient.

Last year, in the Super Bowl Sunday road race, I edged under 19:00 for the 5K. Two years ago, I didn’t note the race, although I did run.

In this year’s 5K race, I moved a bit faster, and came in under 18:30 by my watch. Nice. Update Feb 6th: Official results were even more encouraging, with a 18:28 finish (5:56 pace), 17th place overall, and 7th in the M19-39 age group.

However, while running the race, I didn’t feel confident I was going to even beat 19:00, which is my (current) milepost for “not too badly out of shape.” The reason? I think the mile markers are not spot on, so my splits at the first (6:20) and second (6:15, gently downhill) mile were disappointingly slow. The final 1.1 miles did not go by in 5:51, which is what my watch split shows. Sure, gently downhill (mostly) and I tried to accelerate a bit at the end, but I’m not exactly known for closing speed.

So, I still don’t know if this race is a full, measured 5K. I hope so, but… anyway, it was the same course as last year, so the trendline encourages me. I know it can’t last!

The weather was gorgeous, and it looks like it will continue for a few days. NYC weather doesn’t look terrible for mid-week, but it won’t match the San Francisco Bay Area.

So I stayed away from blogging on Saturday night, and I didn’t surface on Memeorandum, as I did with last Saturday’s post. I truly think the combination of Saturday evening + linking to one of the A-listers almost guarantees you a spot on Memeorandum, as long as you post some original writing.

A beautiful weekend all around San Francisco… I did the right thing.

I finished Robert Sawyer’s Factoring Humanity several days ago. I enjoyed it, as I did the other Sawyer novel I read last summer. Also set in Toronto, Factoring Humanity blends human interaction — a marriage between university professors that family crisis has damaged — with three of the most challenging scientific problems in the world. (One wasn’t enough?) The novel is set in the “near future,” but it feels very “near” in most ways.

The scientific challenges:

• Artificial intelligence
• Quantum computing
• Search for extraterrestrials and understanding them once found

The husband creates a computer-based artificial intelligence program (Cheetah) which disappoints him in its inability to reach “humanity,” but the AI demonstrates more than expected. The husband is clearly quite a computer scientist, because he’s also nearly achieved quantum computing, to the point that he’s offered millions of dollars to sell his research to those who hope to take advantage of the ability to break the highest levels of current encryption. How he even has time to write the grant proposals to get money for his grad students and still do research/teaching of his own is beyond me!

But the wife really delivers, as she deciphers the alien messages that have been puzzling researchers the world over for years, and goes on to build the device described in the messages, and… well, read it yourself. I’m deliberately skipping a key, interesting subplot.

The strange part of this well-told tale is that many know the alien intelligence story quite well already. It’s Carl Sagan’s Contact, at least as performed by Jody Foster in 1997. Sagan wrote the novel (Wikipedia, with spoiler) from which that movie was made. The story is not identical, but the way in which the excitement of unveiling the meaning of the message and then making contact is described, the similarities resonated immediately. I wasn’t upset, but I do wonder about influences (this wasn’t mentioned on the author’s website).

Karma does win out. I introduced Vin to Sawyer, and he’s gone through several of Sawyer’s books. When I return Factoring Humanity to Vin, I’ll be asking for others.

The Matador was quick mental candy. If you’re in the mood for that (we were), it suits. Just don’t raise expectations. Metacritic shows a score of 65, generally favorable.

Scoble riffs on Dave Winer’s wishes for the venture capital industry with The “ventures” we need…. It’s a top 10 (OK, 11) list, but #7 reaches too far.

7) Venture ideas. I’ve hung around the industry now to realize that there are a few people who generate far better and far more ideas than anyone else. Microsoft has one of those guys. His name is Eric Horvitz. He owns the most patents at Microsoft and I believe he has about twice the number of the person who is in the #2 spot. Now, you probably couldn’t afford him full time (I’m sure that other multi-billion-dollar companies even regularly bid against us for his time) but you might be able to, say, rent Dave Winer or Steve Wozniak or, even, Matt Mullenweg, to come out and give you some ideas for a day. So, “venture IG’s” (Idea Generators) will be sought after.

Ideas are not what’s lacking. Execution, talent, stubbornness, focus, and leadership are the currency, in combination, which convert into excellent businesses. Ideas are sprinkled, for free, throughout the industry. Yes, having an idea first counts for something… a slim head start. Not much more.

The rest of the list is a reasonable extrapolation of where things might go. But let’s remember that people (and their organizations) don’t change as fast as the technologies which make this type of “venture” possible.

I’m looking forward to attending the 2006 Media Summit – New York on February 8th and 9th in New York City. I’ll be representing CNET Networks on a Thursday panel, “Internet Video, Advertising & Marketing: The Next Generation of Consumer Reach.”

Between CNET Video (RSS feed) and CNET News.com Video (RSS feed) and all that’s going on with GameSpot Video and ZDNet Whiteboards, there’s a lot of possibilities. I’ll keep it short and sweet.

Most important reason to mention this? See who I might bump into in New York, despite the tight turnaround.

Just came across this NYTimes article, “Like This? You’ll Hate That. (Not All Web Recommendations Are Welcome.),” courtesy of Scott Karp.

LivePlasma has been around for more than two years. I’m biased, but I have to wonder if this attention was triggered by the Big Picture, which was created in collaboration with the LivePlasma folks.

Nirvana is still out there. Point me in the right direction, please.

I haven’t been reading Paul Montgomery before, but I just came across Feature lists for News 2.0 (via Steve Rubel), and that’s one nifty chart. I wonder how all those News 1.0 sites measure up? 😉

When you get into feature checklist mode… it’s time for someone to make qualitative judgments about the entire experience. I have heard of several of these, but not used them all.

There’s also a useful link to Rich Skrenta’s post from a week ago about the funding going into news startups.