Sorry for the lack of posts here for over a week.
My grandmother died two weeks ago, and I flew over to London to be with my family and to attend the funeral service. Thank you to everyone who sent me emails of condolence and kind comments on the blog.
I’ve just arrived back in San Francisco, severely jet-lagged (having only adjusted to GMT on the last day before I headed home, doh!) but I’m so pleased to be back here.
Returning to London for the first time since I relocated to San Francisco was a cold experience – and not just meteorologically (it’s been traditionally cold and wet in London, like it always is). Walking up the path to my old office in the BBC Media Village campus in White City bought back little emotion other than how much I missed working with so many of my friends.
I also attended a number of London events – including Future of Web Apps:London (lobbyCon’ing), Chingwag Live Mobile event and of course Tara and Chris’s Citizen Agency Geek Dinner. Once again it was great to see old friends and contacts but I really didn’t miss the scene and the previous frustrations with the pace and headspace of people in the industry immediately returned.
On the latter point about headspace, I should quantify that by saying attending any event for the mobile sector always makes we want to run up to the nearest brick wall and slam my forehead against it repeatedly.
This Chinwag one in particular was actually a great networking event (congrats Sam, Deirdre, Thayer and co), but the panel talk was marred by the chair’s lack of control as the participants chose to talk only about mobile advertising strategies to 16-24 year olds. Others reviews of the event here and here.
What would have been funny, if it wasn’t so depressing, was the procrastinations about what people under the age of 25 want to experience in their ‘mobile phone value chain consumption experience’, being conducted in a room full of people in their late 30’s and 40’s+. Curiously a number of them really didn’t like the look of me despite the fact that I’m 25/on the edge of target demographic and fairly well clued up I would have thought, with at least some insight into this area.
That industry really needs a kick in the pants…
Anyway, normal service on the blog will resume forthwith, including a couple of interesting posts coming right up…