CalacanisCastBeta - Bad Sinatra


CalacanisCast Beta & Bad Sinatra

 

 

Steve Gillmor: So, we’re in the garden of some unknown…

 

Jason Calacanis: Location.

 

SG: This is the witness protection program for Jason who’s fresh from annoying the Demo audience with the announcement of your new conference. What’s that all about?

 

Jason: Was the audience annoyed?

 

SG: No, I‘m just…

 

Jason: Oh, oh. Ok. I can understand if some of the Conference’s producers would be annoyed. But, yeah, we announced the conference TechCrunch 20 and the 20 is not a reference to 2.0 which somebody asked me and I said ‘ No, no, no. 20 as in 20 companies will present. And…it’s going to be a demo-or-die style conference except instead of people paying the whatever …20 thousand dollars or whatever they pay to be at Demo or the twelve thousand dollars they pay to be at Web 2.0 or the five or ten thousand dollars they pay to be at the other conferences or whatever… they earn their spot! And they earn their spot by impressing a board of advisors that Mike Arrington and I are putting together currently. And then they impress myself and Mike Arrington with a really, really great product that is pushing the boundaries. And we don’t care if it’s a product out of Yahoo or the latest version of Digg or two kids working out of their dorm room at UCLA or a company from Europe… We don’t care. We only care that it’s absolutely spectacular and totally entertaining with what they’re presenting.

 

SG: Do you think that there are going to be 20 of those?

Jason: That’s our hope. I think that if there aren’t 20 of them I think that because we’re going to put a flag in the ground we might inspire some people to do something absolutely amazing. And, and…pin that amazing announcement around the TechCrunch 20 Conference.

 

SG: So what does this got to do with your Entrepreneur-In-Residence at Sequoia?

 

Jason: Ahh…it has nothing to do with Sequoia, although I’m sure Sequoia will be involved on some of level. I’m sure some of the folks who will be there…. I’m sure that they would like to be involved. I’ve talked to them already. They’re supportive of it but it has nothing to do with Sequoia in terms of what’s being run. It’s Mike Arrington and I wanting to create a forum for entrepreneurs and new companies as well as existing ones too to show off really innovating stuff to take the focus off the money.… to get rid of the payola component to this and really have a fun time and really see some innovative stuff. And…what does that have to do with me being an Entrepreneur–In-Action or resident…you know, my job is to look for great companies. And at some point I hope to have to start another great company so maybe I’ll find a company that I can be CEO of at this company? Maybe I’ll find one I can invest in? Maybe I’ll get some inspiration out of the process? I mean, this has to do more with us wanting to do something that Mike and I would think it would be fun to work together on. I mean, Mike and I have actually become friends and you were actually there that night and you were actually the person who suggested we work together so, umm…the conference wouldn’t be happening if you didn’t encourage Mike and I to work together - frankly.

 

SG: So why? I mean, I remember that night. You were very persistent that this was an opportunity that he should grab. Then it seemed to, at some point later, become more into something that you actually wanted to do.

 

Jason: Yeah, well, when you remember I was bouncing around Sand Hill Road and was meeting with a different bunch of venture capitalists trying to figure out what I was going to do next with my life after leaving America Online, AOL and I had a great meeting that day with Mike and so lets go ahead and get a nice steak dinner. We went out and had ourselves a nice steak dinner and smoked some not-Cuban cigars and it was a ---you know Mike’s business, TechCrunch, reminds me a lot of what I did with Silicon Alley Reporter back in the day. I grew that in to a $12 million a year business. And out of that $12 million, about $7 million of it was conference business. Three million of it was the magazine. Two million of it was online and the magazine business of it broke even while the conference business end of it ran at about a 30-40% margin and, you know, the online end of it ran at about a 50% margin or something like that. So at some times the magazine would lose money and so when I looked at Mike’s business he’s got this online component which is this nice business, it’s profitable. But the conference business is what makes it real to people and I think that the opportunity for Mike is, frankly, to have a multi-media company. Actually not multi-media, but multiple media company with the space between the words. Not concurrent media but separate media elements going on so a conference is something that he can pull off very easily. So I encouraged him to do that. I explained everything I knew about it to him at that dinner and told him whatever advice I could give him and I would just tell him everything that I know because I’m out of that business and I’ve gone on to other things and so I’m always a fan of giving as much knowledge as I can and…

 

SG: You say you are out of that business. Were you in that business before?

 

Jason: Yeah, I did huge conferences in the Silicon Alley days. The biggest one we did was Silicon Alley 2000 and you know we had Shaquille O’Neil speak at our events and we had Jim Clark and, you know, Sergei Brin did a fireside chat with me. We had Mark Cuban…

 

We had the biggest people in the industry…Jimmy Page, The Black Crows, I mean this was during the first, the web 1.0 era and I think the biggest conference we did was it did $2.6 million and it cost us about $700 thousand to throw so it was incredibly profitable and it was a great event. But I never, ever forced young entrepreneurs or anybody to pay to be on the stage. The only exception to that was sometimes we’d have a lunch sponsor like a law firm or something and they would get to, you know say hello and thank you for letting us sponsor the lunch.

 

But the main panel, the entrepreneurs, they earned their way onstage. So, I looked at the conferences as the same way I looked at the magazine or email newsletters…there was a wall between, a cChinese Wall, church and state, between advertising and editorial and I think what’s happened in the conference business is its become so lucrative that the wall is gone and the people would prefer to just maximize the money. So, they’re taking money from you above the table and saying ‘pay for a great conference’ and then they’re taking money away under the table here to put the people onstage. I mean, it is happening above board. People know its happening so its more like people are taking money away from you to come to these events, they’re taking money away from the entrepreneur who presented the event.

 

To me it doesn’t feel right. If you paid for your ticket you deserve to see the best things and not just the best things that can afford to pay the fee and if you’re paying than maybe you should be coming for free. It’s a little bit too aggressive I think and you know what? People have the right to build whatever business model they want.

 

SG: So, so which one are you going to do? Which one of those are you going to do?

 

Jason: Our model is pretty simple. You know, we’re going to charge people a moderate price for the tickets. We’ll have some sponsors…but all 20 people presenting are not going to have to pay. They’ll be picked based on their merit. Now, of course, there’s going to be people who say, ‘Oh, there’s going to be favoritism. You’ll only pick what you like and who you like’

 

Well, of course we’re going to pick what we like. That’s why it’s OUR conference! It’s Mike Arrington’s and Jason Calacanis’ and if you want to create the Steve Gillmor and Dan Gillmor conferences you can do that and somebody can create the you know, Nick Denton and, you know, whoever else’s conference ---

 

SG: Thanks for putting me in that category.

 

Jaosn: No, no I put you in with your brother I didn’t put you in with Nick Denton.

 

I’m saying the point is I am a big fan of the market shorting everything out and I think that we have a better model. I think our model is going to result in better companies presenting, the audience having a better experience, and ultimately, a better long-term business.

 

Will we make as much money? No, of course not. Do we need to make as much money? No. I mean, I’m not doing this and Mike’s not doing this to make money. We’ll probably make some money, but we’re primarily doing it to make a point which is we really have a problem with Pay Per Play. We have a problem with the payola thing. It really is----

 

SG: So you’re really not just talking about Demo? You’re talking about all of them?

 

Jason: I’m talking about all of them and let me just say this. I think Demo does a good job. I think Chris ___ is great. I’ve gone to the conference. I think it’s a great conference. However, the price when it started, and Dave Winer it was part of starting it, you know he did a blog post about that today and….you know, nobody paid! And over time it’s become more and more about the money, in my estimation, than about the quality of the products. And I’ve stuff where I’ve said to myself I would never let that on stage. It’s just not that good. As a matter of fact it’s bad. So I think that this conference is going to be better for entrepreneurs and better for the audience and I don’t think Demo’s going to suffer that much for it. Or Web 2.0’s, their Expo is I don’t think going to suffer from it. I think the market has room for different models just like some people do paid postings and some people don’t, you know? Some people do advertorials and some people don’t. Some people do covert marketing and some directors will do product placement and some won’t. It doesn’t mean that there isn’t room for many models, there is room for many models but I think ours will be best.

 

SG: That reminds me of the old days, it feels like a little bit like Woodstock. Do you remember?

 

Jason: Yup. Yeah, I mean Woodstock was great. I only remember half of it. It was a long week.

 

SG: Yeah, right you don’t remember. You weren’t there. You were 12, right?

 

Jason: Are you kidding me? The traffic was backed up to the point of New Paltz and I had to…we walked! No kidding. I had to walk all the way from New Paltz all the way to----

 

SG: Oh I remember.

 

Jason: And…then we got picked up on some bikes. We got some bikes and we biked the rest of the way. It took us two days to get to Woodstock!

 

SG: But, the reason why everybody did that was that it was all the right people in one place.

 

Jason: Yeah, and there was sense of a community and we’re in this together and we’re doing something new and that something…something’s gonna happen! You know…that’s why it was a happen-ing. Something was going to happen and I think this is going to be a happening in the 60’s sense of the word. Something’s going to happen at this. Something big. And…you know, you might wind up seeing the next Google at this event or the next YouTube because Google and YouTube, and Digg and a lot of the great companies out there would never have been able to pay the $18,000 fee.

 

Kevin Rose was broke when he started Digg. He would have never paid for it. And by the time when he could afford to pay for it via venture capital money he didn’t need to. And…you know, same with Google, same with Yahoo. Those guys built quality products basically with their sweat and they would pitch at our conference but they would never have been able to write the check. So I think that Demo is …and these other paid conferences…I think they missed all that grassroots, really interesting stuff. And , you know, my hope is that we can have a couple of slots for student projects and also Mike and I have been pretty clear about this and in agreement: If a company gets selected to present and they show us their presentation a few days before the event and its not good, it’s not up to the Mike Arrington level-of-impressive, they’re going to get cut. They’ll be alternates who will take their place.

 

If everybody, all 20 do a great job, the two alternates or three alternates will still get to present. We’ll still give them the chance to present. And we’ll have a BestI-In-Show and we’ll have an Audience-Award and all that kind of stuff so like I said it’s not going to put a dent in Demo’s business, I don’t think. I don’t think it’s going to affect Web 2.0, which is another great conference and you know I’ve been to both those conferences multiple years, I spoke at the last one and I’m friends with Battelle and I’m friends with Chris Shipley. I think they’re great people but, ahh…we’re introducing something that’s radically different and we want to start a discussion about: should people have to pay for these things? And which is better? I don’t know? Let’s let the market decide.

 

SG: So, those are your goals but there are larger themes that - to use the analogy of music: There was a Monterey Pop before there was a Woodstock!

 

Jason: Right.

 

SG: There was a, and this is somewhat similar, there was a board of directors at Monterey Pop: Brian Jones, Paul McCartney, and people who weren’t necessarily visible there but who helped bring in the right people to sort of start some fires. You know, Hendrix exploded there. The Who—

 

Jason: Right.

 

SG: The Who were launched there in the United States so…What do you see as what’s going to happen here? What do you see as the…when you say the next Google, I mean I don’t buy that at all.

 

Jason: You know what? I think that the…

 

SG: I mean Google is the next Google!

 

Jason: Well listen, is Google even Google at this point? I mean can Google be Google? They cant. I mean, nobody can be Google to the point where they’re not themselves. I mean, how could anybody be what they’ve become?

 

SG: Well, you know since we killed The Gang. I mean, we don’t have this conversation anymore. The fact is that I don’t agree with that. I think that Google is and continues to be Google-on-steroids. They’re …they’re revenue has just crossed a $3 billion now—

 

Jason: You know what? It’s not even about the money. They’re oxygen! That’s the way that I look at it. They’re like the deep blue ocean and the rest of us are swimming in it. And you know what? It’s a great ocean. It’s a clean and pure ocean and if we had to swim…if you had to pick an ocean to swim in I’d like to swim in the Google one. My last company, a third of the revenue came from Google AdSense. I loved being a partner with the company. They always treated us tremendously well and it’s a class A operation. You can’t say that about every big company and I think that it starts at the top. You have highly ethical guys who also get it. So, we’re swimming in their operating system now. Just like for 20 or 30 years----

 

SG: Ahhh….don’t try and sneak that in! There is no operating system. There is no operating system but ---

 

SG: We have a bet on this and---

 

Jason: There is no operating system, but we are swimming in their ocean!

 

SG: OK, fine.

 

Jason: The ocean use to be the operating system and now whatever you want to call the operating system or ocean, we’re swimming in it. We swam in the other one. We’ll leave that other one out for now. And we don’t need to be named. I swam in that one for a long time. That was a good run. And now this is going to be the next 20 or 30 years. It doesn’t mean that you can’t have your own boat or it doesn’t mean you can’t have your own island----

 

SG: Ok so, I’ve sort of taken the next Google mantra off the table here.

 

Jason: Well, there’s always a next next!

 

SG: I mean, isn’t that a little, I don’t know, premature right now? Is there something else that you’re trying to do here that’s more informative and less about the individual companies and more about a conversation that you’re trying to do?

 

Jason: Well, you know….Listen, I’ve been a proponent of transparency, radical transparency, honesty, perhaps bluntness and realness and I feel like society’s better when we do that kind of stuff. Like, you know, we all stop being formal and start being real and whether it’s Pay-Per-Post or being inside of a big corporation and blogging like hey these are the products or the features of the products that we have that suck! Like I did inside of AOL. You know, I was pretty upfront. “I’m not happy with the way Instant Messaging client is, or “ I’m not happy with the way uninstall works with some of the software,” And I took the discussions that were going on the real street level and inside of AOL, put them on my blog, and it really pushed them to the front and center. I didn’t start those conversations. I just acted as the bridge that sort of exposed them. And you know…there’s a lot of conversations like that in the tech industry and you know you look at some of the folks like Dave Winer, that guy really speaks his mind and he doesn’t care about what anybody thinks and he’s largely been ostracized by some of the people who control the platform. You know?

 

SG: Who’s that? Who control what platform?

 

Jason: There’s a lot of people who own the conference business and they dictate who speaks and who doesn’t…

 

SG: So are you telling me who’s going to speak at your conference?

 

Jason: No. Not only is Dave Winer going to be able to speak at the conference if he wants to. I would give Dave a slot to present blind. I don’t even need to look at the cards. I know it’s a winning hand. The guy’s brilliant! And, I think the fact that you could have a Web 2.0 conference for whatever number of years we’ve had it or emerging technologies conferences and Dave Winer’s let alone not invited, but not wanted, and not given a slot to speak and really present his ideas to me is criminal.

 

It’s almost like they had an RSS board. They asked me to be on the RSS board and I said , ‘Oh, this is Dave Winer?” and they said,”No, Dave Winer’s not on the RSS board. And I said, “Why would I want to be on the RSS board without the guy who created the RSS and who championed it?” And you know, it’s high time that there was another player in the space and I’m backing Arrington. I think Arrington’s going to do the right thing. I’m not saying the other guy’s aren’t doing the right thing but some folks haven’t gotten a fair shake and Dave Winer’s probably the perfect example of that, he’s a mensch of a guy and I think it’s hurtful on a very personal level for him not to be given his respect and his due. He may be brash and he may be rough around the edges sometimes or blunt---

 

SG: Well, look who’s talking?

 

Jason: But, yeah Of course, listen I get accused of that sometimes too. You know what the thing is, the only difference between Dave and I is probably because I’ve been in two big establishments, Sequoia and AOL, where people need those organizations, I probably get a little of the rub-off effect and people give me a little bit of respect because of those organizations I’m associated with. But if I wasn’t in those organizations I don’t think I would get the same level of respect. I think I probably would be in the Dave Winer bucket. And I think Mike Arrington would be in that bucket if he didn’t have TechCrunch. So there’s a ..you know, the tech industry was supposed to be about outsiders and about innovating and about breaking rules and now all of a sudden it’s like keep it quiet, keep it low-key, don’t rock the boat. You know…pay the fee, pay your PR person, pay this person off, pay that person off and then you can be successful. You’ve got your little dance card punched, you know? And I don’t think it needs to be that way. I don’t want all these entrepreneurs that are coming up to have to play that game so for me it is a little bit religious because you know what…I grew up an outsider and when I was in New York doing Silicon Reporter, nobody would ever give me the time of day. I wasn’t invited to any of the conferences. I couldn’t afford to go to any of them and now that, you know, to a certain extent, I’ve arrived, and I’ve got a little bit of leverage, I’m going to use my leverage to make it open and to make it fair. I’m not going to charge anybody to get up onstage and give their presentation. I’m not going to limit them to five or six minutes…I’ll give them ten minutes. You know, double the exposure. Double the time. Zero the price! And I think that’s really the promise we have here but you’ve got to earn it. You’ve got to be meritocracy! And, I asked Dave Weiner…Mike and I were each gonna in a pick. We still have to work this out but basically we’re each going to pick the equal number of advisors for the event. The first person I called was Dave Weiner. I asked him to be on the Advisory Board.

 

SG: ahhum

 

Jason: Because the guy is a mensch and he’s brilliant. A lot of the success I’ve had in my career is based on his innovations: RSS! Weblogs, Inc would not be what is is without RSS. And blogging, you know?

 

SG: So what about the CalacanisCast? It seems to be a kind of spotty—

 

Jason: It’s a little spotty right now. It’s a little spotty, but the quality is there. People are enjoying the event and enjoying the product. Frankly, I underestimated the technical work involved in this so I’m looking for a full time technical person, you know, an engineer---

 

SG: Well, you know, all kidding aside…this is a vehicle for you over next few months.

 

Jason: Over the next few years! I mean blogging, I think I took blogging really far and it really helped me get my message across and create conversations about the things I was doing. Maybe I was too successful at it because I think a lot of times I got a little too much press from the things that I wrote! I would try to start a conversation but it was always with a smile and smirk and you know, joking… And all of the sudden it would end up in the Wall Street Journal or an analyst report and you know I made an off the cuff remark or statement where I said, at one point, you know, ‘AOL Search” has so many ads that event he AOL employees don’t use it!’ Then it wound up in somebody’s research report! They quoted me and this is like a Wall Street Analyst’s report and then you get the phone call that they’re like, ‘hey Jason, did you read page 64 of this analyst report?’

 

But I think that on the blogging front that it has sort of plateau’d to a certain extent. It’s almost like people expect that, it’s a dial tone. If I’m blogging that’s my dial-tone. But …you know I’ve got to call it in now, I’ve got to phone it in. I’ve got to call it in to a certain extent and it can’t be done with text. It’s got to be done when you hear the tone you’ve got to be able to see the eyebrow raised or the smirk or the frown so I’ve got high hopes for it in my ahh.. I want to get a little studio set up to do it. And I want to be able to do it on a regular basis. Just like blogging and how there was a lot of overhead to blogging at the beginning and then over time the overhead went down, I think where we are right now there is a little bit too much overhead in blogging and podcasting so hopefully you’re going to do more video and I’m going to do more audio. I hope that we can do it regularly and not have to handle technical issues myself.

 

SG: What about the flow of ideas and such? I mean, you seem to be….I don’t know if there is anybody else who’s out ahead of you but it seems like you’re still searching for a feel.

 

Jason: Yeah. I don’t know exactly what the tone should be. I’ve done ones where all I do is just talk into a microphone. I’ve done where I play audio clips that people send me and people really love those. I have that passion and I’m on it! The Not The Gillmor Gang style, you know…ten people on a phone call. You know…hey listen… it’s not called the Not The Gillmor Gang for no reason. I mean it’s not. It’s 80% of—

 

SG: Well then why do it?

 

Jason: Exactly! I mean, to me, that was just a fun stunt to play and… to play!

 

SG: It’s always nice to get the band back together again sort of. It’s basically like the band you know the band gets together and you reminisce and take a load off.

 

SG: Way back to Novemeber…

 

Jason: Yeah. We take a load off and put the load right on… and you put the load right on me!

 

SG: But, I mean, that was a miserable failure. I mean, let’s just be honest about it.

 

Jason: Failure perhaps. It was miserable more than it was a failure.

 

SG: Ok. Now we’re talking.

 

Jason: But ahh… You know I like talking to people but I also like just ranting. So, I like being prepared and so I did a little format of just writing my notes down right around here. Have my cup of coffee and write down my Sunday notes and then just trigger them where I rant until I can’t breath and I take a pause, take a sip of coffee, rant—can’t breathe, start again! So if you hit two or three of those I think it could be a good product. But I don’t know. It’s going to be a very experimental. I don’t know. What do you think?

 

SG: I think it’s …that sounds right. That doesn’t sound like the whole thing, but it sounds like something that will trigger what will come next.

 

Jason: Frankly, I’d like to have somebody … I mean I don’t want to have like a corny reality show but there are a lot of moments and discussions that occur that if I could just get those moments on tape. You know the walk down the hall or the fifteen-minute conference room pickup. You know?

 

SG: It looks like the walk down the hall but it’s actually, you know, synthetic. I think that’s were it’ll work… I mean there are no documentaries.

 

Jason: No, I mean, the fact that somebody wants to produce it means that it’s no longer a reality.

 

SG: But I mean even that we’re just talking , we’re performing.

 

Jason: Yeah, I mean, there’s a production going on. There’s production and then a pause. Production and a pause. So, I mean…if you’re pausing there is a lot of production going on there.

 

SG: Right.

 

Jason: Pre-production and post in some cases.

 

SG: Especially post because the more you can edit with the camera the better you are.

 

Jason: The more you can backtrack it and add to what you just said or edit you say you just said or didn’t….There’s a lot of that going on too. I mean, I wish we had it when we were doing the Gillmor Gang back in the day, I think we should have had a court reporter to read back what was said and then you could just pause the program and say “Hey can be get back what Arrington just said?” And then you can really hone the discussion.

 

SG: Yeah but even he would deny it even then.

 

Jason: Yeah, he’d say that the court stenographer was in on the take.

 

SG: Right.

 

Jason: You know what the stenographer probably would be! It’s not a great paying job.

 

SG: No. I’m not sure I understand the economics of that?

 

Jason: Why wouldn’t the stenographer be on the take is the point? If anybody were in on the take it’d be the stenographer. Nobody expects it.

 

SG: So are you going to explore this dynamic for your conferences?

 

Jason: You know…for the conference… where it’s pretty one-dimensional we really are just going to keep it very simple. Here are 20 companies doing 20 absolutely amazing things.

 

SG: All this… you know, the hallway conversations, the un-conferences, you know they’re all these attempts at trying to stir this pot.

 

Jason: I think what we have to do in this regard is to make everything build to a crescendo. So everybody has to be thinking that: “I’m going to perform at that event and I’ve got to really hit the ball out of the park.” Not unlike a Woodstock where people prepared for a decade to be there. You know, or they prepared for a lifetime for that one moment and those were the seminal moments in some people’s careers those performances.

 

And so if we can get people up to that level of drive and preparation for the event that they want that to be their legacy like, that videotape of me showing my new products, the new version, my new vision. You know, I want people to go back to those tapes and…we may do this for ten years! So there might be 200 of these moments and out of those 200 moments if we can just capture the formation of Google or YouTube, or RSS and you know in Dave’s case… I think we’ve done our job.

 

SG: So---

 

Jason: And imagine if we get some student from Stanford inspired or from UCLA or some city college somewhere. If we get somebody inspired to present up there who never would have even thought of presenting but heard about it, built something, presented it, got funded, and actually changed the world! That’s what that spot can do! And that’s why we’re going to make sure we have the right press people and the right venture capitalists and thought leaders in the audience.

 

SG: Right. Press people. Now who’s that going to be?

 

Jason: I don’t know I just think interesting people who will actually---

 

SG: Are you going to let bloggers in? Are you going to let mainstream media in?

 

Jason: Absolutely, I mean they are going to have to…We obviously can’t let everybody in I don’t think because of physical limitations so I think…

 

SG: So its going to be an elite kind of…..

 

Jason: I think we’re going to have to pick people who we think are going to give the most value to the people onstage. Who are going to give them the most attention? Who are going to watch every presentation, digest it, think about it, and write it. So, if somebody from a mainstream media outlet is going to come there and watch two presentations and hang out in the hall and then not cover anything, I would rather not have then there----

 

SG: S there’ll be a ---

 

Jason: And have a blogger who will, like a Scoble, or folks like that who will actually go to every presentation and write it so people who actually will think about the products at this stage and write about them and think about the entrepreneurs and maybe track them, you know? So I think the journalists and the bloggers will have to earn their slots to a certain extent as well.

 

SG: So who’s going to be in charge of that?

 

Jason: No idea! We’ll figure that out when we get there. I mean---

 

SG: It’s going to be September right?

 

Jason: I don’t know. We’ll work that out for sometime in the Fall. We’ll work that out. We’ve got to find a location. Once we have a location and a date everything starts to unfold from there. We’ve had dozens and dozens of companies and dozens and dozens of sponsors you know, everybody has contacted us already and we don’t even have a date locked in yet. So once we get a date we can figure out how many seats we have and we can start allocating. Yeah and maybe we’ll give 20% to Press. We sell a certain percentage and you know…give a couple of tickets to the people that are presenting so their Mom and Dad could be there.

 

SG: Ok.

 

Jason: Yeah, if that’s ok with you?

 

SG: I have no choice. You know? I’m just-----

 

Jason: How’s retirement?

 

SG: I’m not retired.

 

Jason: You’re not retired?

 

SG: No.

 

Jason: I thought you told me you just came from Florida?

 

SG: So…ahh…you’re not going to do anymore of the Not The Gillmor Gangs? Right? Are you? Right? I mean are you ready to make a promise to that affect? I mean it’s really not a quality product.

 

Jason: I’m not going to do Not-The-Gillmor-Gang. I’m going to do Definitely-Not-The-Gillmor-Gang!

 

SG: Ok (laughing)

 

Jason: So that we can at least definitively say this is NOT the Gillmor Gang. In order to do that we have to get Adam Curry on the show.

 

SG: Yeah. Well, have you talked to him recently?

 

Jason: He called me and I haven’t had the chance to call him back. You know he’s at the Curry Condo, the Curry Condominium, the Curry Castle. I don’t know where he is right now. He travels a lot. He’s got something like eighteen residences like I call I get the butler, I get the house. It’s just a different person that picks up everyday and every place. I mean it’s seven different numbers and all different area codes. Different area codes, different country codes. I don’t know where that guy lives?

 

SG: Well, you’re a good friend of his right?

 

Jason: Oh, best of friends for decades! We’ve spent at least 90-120 minutes together in person over the last ten years.

 

SG: Really?

 

Jason: Right.

 

SG: And that compares to like…say Dave Winer, how many minutes did you spend with him?

 

Jason: 100 hours.

 

SG: So it was quality time as opposed to quantity?

 

Jason: Yeah, I mean…when you’re with Adam it’s just like, you know…(snapping fingers) you just it’s right there! You know?

 

SG: See now this is the kind of stuff you need to do on the show.

 

Jason: No, but that…that’s literal. I mean, the way things are going I mean you can see it. The guys always thinking. He’s fast.

 

SG: Yeah. I’m talking now about your show.

 

Jason: I thought we were taping this for my show? This is not for my show? I didn’t want to do this for my show.

 

SG: Oh I didn’t ask you to.

 

Jason: I need some content.

 

SG: oh and this is not content? Alright then you can’t use it. This is Bad Sinatra….I guess.

 

SG: Thanks a lot.

 

Jason: My pleasure.

 

SG: Ok.

 

Jason: Cheers. Peace in the Middle East.

 

SG: (off mike) Well that ought to get you into some trouble.

 

Jason: Haha.