‘Appy Hour’ During WWDC ‘09

The mobile team at Spark hosted an ‘Appy’ Hour gathering as a great way to mix and mingle with folks in town for WWDC.

We decided to do this at Pat Kuleto’s newish Water Bar. It’s really close to the Sparkpr offices and is swanky, yet classy.

The scene was a buzzy one, with clients EA Mobile and Shortcovers showing off their new Pre apps. Also, Bart Decrem of Tapulous decided to give an impromptu press conference around the news of a new Tap Tap Revenge game with uber smoking hot artist Lady Gaga as part of a giant Universal Music Group deal.

We enjoyed the amazing Bay Bridge view and of course enjoyed many fine wines, champagne and oysters. There is just so much of an app explosion we had to celebrate!

A fine set of folks on the balcony

We had at least 45 folks and 7 clients there as well as our friends from AdMob, which made for an incredible evening.

Lots of press friends came in from out of town as well as the locals. Great to see John Dvorak, the original Cranky Geek himself, after so many years. See him below with Sascha Segan.

This is just one of the best parts of PR. With good wine, sharp company, nibbly bits & a gorgeous atmosphere everyone is happy.

Planning an “Appy Hour” for WWDC

There are few things I enjoy MORE than planning a little party. Especially when I have the chance to mix up the peeps in the room. THEN, it’s all about facilitating a lovely good time. Making sure you have top-notch booze and delicious tasty bits in a dramatically gorgeous setting helps, too.

So that is what we are going to do at some fancy new Pat Kuleto restaurant overlooking the Bay Bridge coming up here real soon.

This time, it is with a handful of folks who are pushing the envelope to make our mobile phones a helluva lot more useful. This naturally includes some Sparkpr clients, like EA Mobile, GetJar (new! yes!), Tapulous, Tiny Pictures, waze, Zhiing, (BOTH just launched, actually!) and a few others. I think our friends at AdMob will make it by, and some VCs checking out this crazy space.

It also means we get to hang with some extremely cool and highly intelligent press people. It’s amazing how many gadget blogger types are on the invite list!

And we can all dissect, step on, cogitate and thrill over whatever the Apple (and Pre!) news of the day will be.

Good times. More later!

Another CTIA down

It must have been my 10th CTIA.  This time I was there with a lot of other Sparksters and a lot of our clients which made it really busy but very exciting. We even threw a late night “Last Call” drinks party to get everyone together at cheezy Cleopatra’s Barge at Ceasar’s Palace.

These events are great for PR people because we get to really support our executives who are promoting the latest thing AND are able to put lots of names to faces, which is more and more impt these days. Oh, and there are open bar parties which keeps things lively. Opera rocked it this year at the Wet Republic, an airy cocktail lounge by all the pools at MGM Grand. Great DJ, good drinks and tasty bits, and comfy deckchairs and couches to relax into for jolly chatter with whomever was around you. Nice people and had a great time hanging with old colleague Rick Loughery and reminiscing about our days working on the Skype acount together and talking mobile PR shop.

The big news theme was around mobile application stores. Miscrosoft and RIM announced theirs, as expected, and someone told me Samsung launched two! Finally, apps are going mainstream.  It should become less and less difficult to tell the app story now which is quite a relief to me.

The Palm Pre and Google Android phones did not make news but remained big topics of speculation. Of course, all things mobile-y from Apple were referenced ad nauseum. I think the Apple WWDC will actually be a giant event, sell out earlier, and draw more attention than ever this year. This is the only place to see Apple’s direct participation in the industry, which is such a shame. I wish it wasn’t such a closed party all the time. It is frickin’ $1,300 to go so not sure it will be happening for me, even though most of my clients have apps here. Maybe we can work something out. TBD.

Still enjoying my Day One iPhone, but the battery problem sucks more and more. It is impossible to attend a trade show and stay constantly connected without needed to recharge by 1:30pm. This is bad. According to this review in PC World, the Pre will have a removable battery, and a few other tricks that iPhone does not have. Wonder if I will wander?

Once the 3 day event was done, my best friend growing up @drgooey got me hooked up with her masseuse friend David at Encore, the newish Steve Wynn hotel.  Now this was a good $150 spent! The spa is amazingly beautiful, spacious and luxely decorated for maximum rejuvenation. Powerful steam room, lots of lounging areas with iced cucumber water on tap everywhere. The ladies there wore bathing suits in the hot tub, which was a drag. Uppity chicks.

Then Gooey picked me up in her truck with 6 little beige doggies packed in. Screaming at me in the Limo line at the Venetian to “Come ON!” and all the weekenders (mostly Europeans it seemed) stopping and starting at the commotion. She whisked me off to the town’s outskirts where she lives on an amazing compound called Cactus Joe’s– a nursery for palm trees, all kinds of cactus & other succulents, lots of pottery and colorful ceramic garden decorations. We had a little bday party for one of her friends and enjoyed relaxed conversation. Not a bad way to end Vegas. I think I’ll be back!

Twitter has Fuct My Blog

Sorry, but it’s true. There is just no real value add in bothering with updating this thing when you have Twitter and amazing photo upload services like Radar.net. Srsly.

Blogs have now become a trip report service.

I am a fervent believer in limiting expressions of many kinds to 140 characters. Our society needs this kind of enforced discipline! Leave it up to extreme social geeks to lead us to it! Go Ev & Biz!

You can follow me @clocklear. Heh.

PS: If someone can ’splain to me in regular speak how to get my Twitter feed automatically integrated into this here blog, I will forever bow down at your feet.

Lisa Hempel’s Blog

YAY! Lisa started a blog.

She was the one who encouraged me to do the same over a year ago (Jan 1st 2008 to be exact).

Welcome Lisa! I expect tons of great stuff from you. That pesky Twitter thing can get in the way, tho.
And thanks for inspiring me to add Tweets to my damn blog. Gonna do that now!

More Bush Street Art

I saw this posted on the entrance to downtown bus terminal in SF.  Naturally, I was moved to chuckle aloud amidst the other silent working stiffs who ride to the city from Oakland.

Have a feeling this one won’t get peeled off very quickly.

Big Obama Day

Some friends took over the public street signage situation early, early this morning in downtown SF. The many Bush St. signs were improved to read OBAMA on the most exciting day in the world. Lots of press covered it, including Laughing Squid (who was totally tipped off and first to post, I believe), SFist and even sfgate.com did a nice piece encouraging folks to upload their own pictures of the signage change. That was really cool to see!
My whole office stopped all action to watch the festivities starting at 8:15ish on the flat panel in our lobby. We were collectively riveted, teary, exuberant, and expectant all together.
I like Obama’s consistent message that everyone must do their part. This, I totally believe in. It’s been a long time since such a generic but impactful call to action has insisted upon by a leader to our slack ass general public. It is the wake up call we all need to turn this strange bloated boat around.
I am also SO excited to see the new administration embrace and deeply utilize social technologies to stay connected with their friends, families, and constituencies. This is huge.  Barack sure as hell does need to keep a grip on that Blackberry of his!

Feels good to honestly say WOOT for USA!

Xmas Deluxe

 

Toasting you in the new year!

The  PipToads have really enjoyed a fabulous holiday season and NYE is right around the corner. Not getting on a plane really reduced the street level, and with two 4 day weekends back-to-back, it really felt like we could relax.

It started with a spontaneous lunch with one of my most dear college friends, Bob Lasher. We got a same day reservation and stole away to the Water Bar and had a glorious time catching up over  a festive array of seafood and top shelf Champagne.

 

A grinning, debonair Bob Lasher!

 Next was all the fun of preparing for the Christmas holiday itself! We bought our tree at Long’s Drugs this year (so much cheaper) and decorated it early in the month. Clara Mae loved playing with the ornaments. She is also infatuated with all things Nutcracker, after seeing a very polished, over-the-top performance by the Houston Ballet with Doug and his mother. And no, she is not a Santa but she does LOVE to play dress up as one.

Clara Mae's 3rd Santa suit so far....

Bob McMillan and Anna Dow invited us over for Christmas Eve at their amazing flat in North Beach. This is becoming a lovely tradition when we are in town. This year, we attended Christmas Mass at the Saints Peter and Paul Church, the giant place right in the middle of Washington Square Park. GiGi performed in the liturgy, so we were excited to dress up and go see her and sing hymns and feel reverent in a gorgeous old building. It was VERY San Francisco. The pastor was Asian, the parishoners a TOTAL mix of tribes and cultures, and then there was us. The children were invited to the front of the church to hear a lesson, lured by candy ring pops. Of course, Clara Mae was motivated to go up there alone.

 

Clara Mae and GiGi, evil and good

The next day was full of presents for Clara Mae. We decided to skimp on each other and shower her with a few big presents. All she really wanted was a “Barbie Family”. She got that, a new bicycle, the classic Candy Land and Operation board games, tons of clothes, new charms for her bracelet, and more costume and toy boxes. The girl is lucky and so blessed by generous grandparents!

 

Holiday Sparkle Barbie-- that is all they had left at Target

Biking in the house

Whattup with Apple?

Must say, the shocker today was Apple’s blunt withdrawal from the whole Macworld trade show, Jobsnote and all.

This seems fishy. Of course, I found this out reading Twitter mid-day. Strange time for news, BTW.

Ryan Block and Dylan Tweney and Lisa Hempel all commented rather quickly. Then Dan Terdiman was out fishing for commentary from the likes of Timmmi Pratt.

I would guess Steve’s health has lots to do with it. Since when did Apple think it was overexposed? Please.

Have a feeling they will launch their own, Apple managed event. And make an iPhone event to own the mobile conversation in addition.

What do you all think?

Will miss the days of palpable excitement amongst the throngs of the faithful. When the geek run proud! Just glad we had the ability to prank the whole thing with klowns like we did the year the iPod was launched, and Santas other years. Salon covered our klowny antics to a tee, too. Flambeau the Klown was clasically quoted saying, “Clowns are to Macs as Santas are to Microsoft.”  Fucking brilliant in a bent and twisted kind of way.

We came up with a bunch of faux slogans and put them on buttons to hand out. One was “I hub u”, since this was the year Jobs came up with the marketing term “digital hub”, which is exactly what the iTunes has come to be.

Whooo-wee! Now those were righteous crimes!

Burning Man LLC Loses Harley! NOT

Harley in Action with classic EAT FUCK KILL button 1997?*

Wow. Just read Harley’s see ya letter to BMORG. Funny how modern the word broke out.

UPDATE- many months later. Harley is still there! I guess she got whatever she wanted. Good for her!

First, Danger Ranger twittered it, then the letter was posted to Tribe and naturally Scott Beale Twittered it, too. And surely all shit has broken loose on ePlaya. She has been there 17 long as years. This is a magnificent loss to those left holding the Burning bag. Harley is a friend, we do playdates together and all that, so of course I totally sympathize with her stated need to spend more time with her family. Totally get that. I sincerely hope and expect all the amazing, trail blazing experience she gained growing a human and city infrastructure around a world class art freak festival to result in the super fat job of her choosing. The girl should have major options available! Go Harley!
Dropping LLC members was only a matter of time. I wonder if they have groomed a “Tier Two”, as we used to call it. Joseph Pred, John “Nettie the Horse” Nettle, Absinthia, $teven Ra$pa, Yomsa, Hellga and a couple others of us who were very involved around ‘98-’99  used to talk about serving that role. The idea either did not go far or did not go over from what I can barely recall. Muscling into that inner circle is near impossible. But the job those folks do to keep Burning Man alive is an incredible one, and requires a TON of work, tenacity, and inner strength. Will be interesting to see who can dare fill Harley’s shoes.

PLAAAAAYAAAAA!!!!

* This photo was not credited, but came from BMan site