Finally, Some Solitude

What a week! It was like running a marathon at the speed of 100 meter dash, two tasks if you have ever seen me (with a coffin nail in one hand and Nokia phone in the other) I am utterly incapable of. It was the week of the big launch, and the big launch party. And while all that was going one, paying attention to regular duties, making phone calls and finding time to write.

At times if I found myself running on fumes, some fantastic beans from Blue Bottle perked me up. And when the start-up life got a bit overwhelming, GigaTEAM picked me up, and pushed me to the finish line. Barry, Chauncy, Dave, Emily, Katie, Max and Nitin did a great job to get GigaOM ready for the big relaunch on Wednesday. And then it was time to party!

A big party which was entirely made possible by tireless efforts and planning by Nicci, Allen and Gibu of my co-hosts, Sharpcast, a great mobile photo sharing company out here in the Valley. I still did not get the whole rabbit hole joke, but like me, Sharpcasters wanted to party and get smashed and hopefully we succeeded.

Mighty, which is pretty cool space out in the Portero Hill neighborhood of San Francisco was packed wall to wall with well wishers, friends and just folks who wanted to party. There were many I forgot to invite, mostly because I was doing a 1000 things at the same time. (Hey Marc, sorry buddy! Won’t happen again.) And there were others who surprised me. Like uber early stage investor, Ron Conway who joined in the festivities.

Toni Schneider and Matt Mullenweg of Automattic; one third of 30Boxes, Zoomr Boys, Involvr gang, Janglers, Mr Dash-ing, Salim, Mary Hodder, Wagner “Second Life” Au, Technoratis, and tons of my journalist friends including dashing Mr. Fromenski and Web 2.0’s elder statesman Dan Farber. Rafat “The King of Paid Content” Ali flew in from LA. Ryan “Engadget” Block and his lovely friend, Eric “Da Phone Scoop” Lin, Kevin “ranking the tail” Burton, Niall “No Live” Kennedy, Nick “He is Here” Douglas, Chris Messina, Lovely Ms. Hunt, and Jackson “Too cool for collars” West were some of the new-new media guys in attendance.

Of course GigaTEAM was in full attendance, including our newest team member Liz Gannes. I wish I could have spent more time with everyone, but couldn’t, for there was this insane fear about what people might think about the new design, Yankees were losing a one run game, and how the site was holding up. Vishesh, a good buddy of ours, got us a Bacardi-Coke, and it was stress be gone. Pooj and Diana got me another drink…… and off we went. Elizabeth got me balloons, and Ideacodes handed me a cigar. Life suddenly was fantastic. Now I get it why companies celebrate the

The party is now a distant memory, the site is humming along, even though we are making some incremental changes, and adding new features. The weekend is the time to respond to all the emails, and get some R&R. Next week is going to be quite crazy – but that’s not for another two days.

But before I go, I would like to thank all of you who sent in your well wishes, and comments. I appreciate every single one one of them, and will strive to make the site better.

Later….

Party photos by Thomas Hawk, Dave McClure, and Dan Farber. Sadly, no photos by Scott “the chronicle of netmania” Beale.