Josh Shear

Yep, that's my to-do list. Thanks, Jeff Pulver.

My Twitter friends are aware of this, but I spent a couple of days this past week in New York City for the 140 Character Conference (140conf). I didn't tweet much from the conference – only those things that really inspired me – instead, I took good old-fashioned notes on good old-fashioned paper. [Full Twitter coverage is here.] That photo above is me organizing my notes before jumping on the train back up to Syracuse. The piece of paper with all the scribbling? That's my to-do list.

Here's the deal with 140conf. It happens in four or five cities each year (well, this is the second year). It's the concept of Jeff Pulver, who is more or less responsible for making Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) technology widespread (if you're reading this, you're aware of VOIP, even if you've never heard of it – it's what Vonage uses, and if you're using Time Warner Cable or another cable service for your telephone, you're using VOIP).

Unlike academic or industry conferences where you have either a person who speaks for 45 minutes or a panel that runs for an hour, this is bang-bang stuff. Most individuals had 10 minutes; a few had 15. Panels lasted 20 minutes. In all, there were about 150 people speaking in two days. The audience already understands the tools and understands why you'd use them; there's no need to do that part of it.

There will be much blogging about the current and future of things in the coming weeks, but I wanted to get started by mentioning some of the people I met and some of the things I have on my list to check out. Supposedly videos of all the presentations are over here, but I'm having trouble loading them. Hopefully I'll be able to get them up on the screen as I go to blog them.

Anyhow, I met Evan Blackford, who is a super-nice and creative guy. We had a mediocre Middle Eastern lunch (Effy's does a nice coffee, though – definitely went back the second morning). I met Cecily Kellogg of Uppercase Woman, who seems to be a lot of fun in addition to being insightful. I'll be checking out and reviewing her blog.

I met David Hendricks and Eric Oldfield of an emerging advertising system called LiveIntent, as well as Andy Oterson, co-founder of eatbytweet, something I will definitely be looking at in the coming week.

I also met Melinda Emerson, a small business coach who runs a weekly Twitter chat – some of you will know her as @SmallBizLady.

I had lunch with a bunch of Gen Y rockstars, including, among others, David Spinks of Scribnia and #u30pro, Sarah Cooley of Postling, and musician Peter Marinari.

I also got to spend some time with old friends in the city, including one who recently started a new production house called Omega Darling.

Coming up on the blog will most definitely be items about Epic Change, Twitter and education, comments, news and more. I also owe Jeffrey Hayzlett (Chief Marketing Officer at Kodak) a donation to the American Heart Association in exchange for the copy of The Mirror Test.