Or alternatively, another kind of amazing friend is the one who tells you that they will beat up the horse that threw you, and even though you know that they never would – and you wouldn’t want them to either – it’s still very sweet.

Other good friends will buy you lap dances in unrelated incidents. I have some pretty awesome friends. I have also made new friends on the internet of a feminist bent. I like them.

What else? Kane came to stay this past weekend, and Heather’s coming tomorrow. There’s derby on the weekend and apparently there won’t be any of the slow derby bullshit, which is good. There have been  a lot of parties. Thanks to Sunday movie nights with the Lovehawks, I’ve done pretty well on the #11in’11 front. Work is busy. Social life is busy. Money is tight due to car repairs and continuing to pay off my credit card debt and just, you know, life. I like that it is turning into autumn, although I like sunshine too. Gin has become the drink of 2011, apparently, with all the G&Ts at New Year’s, and now the Gossip Ginger Gimlets and Gossip Girl Wednesdays.

Webstock was amazing but of course you already knew that. It was so great to see all the good people from out of town that I only get to see like once a year like Walter, and to learn so much and talk so much that I thought my jaw was going to fall off. Turns out, $100 trip to the dentist later, that it’s stress which makes me square my jaw. Ahh well.

I don’t really feel like I’m accomplishing a great deal, but I don’t feel like I’m not, either. I’ve dealt with all this uterus bullshit. I’ve got my work back on track after stuff that we won’t go into. My protective streak for people may cause ruckuses, but nothing that’s not fixable. I am managing to hold on to and repair relationships with people who are important to me. I am doubtless behind in my communication with people, but hopefully this post will help. Essentially, apart from the horse-riding metaphor, there isn’t really all that much to say. And that’s okay.

It is strange being in an office again, having to sit in an uncomfortable squeaky chair and digest piles and piles of new information. It’s no six-page site that I’m rewriting, unlike other work that I’ve done for So Content before. And there’s a whole office full of people who all have their own working styles and customs, and I’m the stranger here so it is me that has to adjust to other people’s music. At least my eyes are starting to be able to deal with the florescent lights now. But for all my complaining about the superficial things, it is good to be working again, to feel smart and clever and valuable.

Other changes are happening, with the lease being up on Immoral Terrace at some time in the near but not near enough future. Paying for the rent on the whole house by myself will not be fun. As a consequence, I will be having to move home with my parents for a couple of months in order to pay off that debt, and also the rest of the debts that I have accrued over the past year without a steady pay cheque. I can’t wait until I don’t owe anyone money again, even though that’s a couple of months away. And then I’m going to be subletting a room in my Vitamin Cupcake’s house for a couple of months while the adorable Kate and Jason travel. I am making lists of where all my furniture and possessions will be heading – into storage, to Ngaio or to be shipped out to friends. Tom is taking the bar out of the Tiki Shack, so that will live on a little bit. We had a goodbye shindig in there the other weekend which was lovely, piles of people piled onto each other basking in the warm glow of my heater. That mattress has served hard time, alright. The lovely Smoo has promised to come back and help me move things to the tip later. He’s gone too. End of a long era. I think I miss him already if you will allow me to get soppy for a second.

People from the past have popped up recently at odd moments. I discovered something about someone and it’s still on my mind. It was somewhat of a headfuck.  Heather is coming down for my Triple X party, which I am very excited about. Less exciting is turning 30 in two days’ time. I have the grey hairs to prove it. However, at least there’s a Webstock Mini on my birthday to ease the pain, and then on the following weekend I will be helping out at FullCodePress again like I did last year. I have to meet up with Sue tomorrow to get a dress to wear to it – either one of mine that she’d borrowed, or one of Megan’s. It is handy having a wardrobe extend like that.

Along with the cold and various housing issues has come an increase in the number of television programmes I’ve been watching. Of note lately have been marathon West Wing sessions that just make me miss Good Tom and wish that I was Alison Janney, as well as contemplating becoming a cater waiter due to Party Down, and wondering if I am more pathetic than Kenny from Eastbound And Down or not.   I think that I am not, because I continue to have people who love me, and also people who want to do me, occasionally. Ask me sometime and I will tell you a very amusing story about polylove and children and how I don’t believe that the two should mix. Oh, and speaking of casual sex, you should come to this:

CJ told me today that since the other two people who received funding from the Midnight Note to go to Webstock didn’t bother responding to her requests for a thank-you write-up, she wouldn’t post mine, so here it is anyway:

My previous experiences at Webstock had shown me how amazing a community full of love could make an conference. Receiving funding from the Wellington community via the Midnight Note to attend this year only reinforced that message. Having struggled with unemployment for a while now, Webstock was exactly what I needed to remind myself why I want to stay in the web industry. Speakers engaged and challenged me, and talking to people at the various functions around the event made me realise that I am still talented and know what I am talking about when it comes to new media even if I am not currently receiving a wage for it. Because the Midnight Note was a community initiative, I was determined to try and contribute something back to the community, so I organised a pre-webstock tweetup for people to meet each other, helped createWebstock Bingo and also set up an anonymous twitter stream calledWebstocklove in which anyone could declare their love for any part of the event (or person there). I’ve written up my professional take home messages in greater detail at joannamcleod.com, but to everyone who contributed to the Midnight Note, to the organisers and speakers at Webstock and everyone else that I engaged with over the week: thank you from the bottom of my heart. I had the most mind-expandingly awesome time and I am inspired and full of hope again.

It’s pretty much what I already said on Hubris only with less swearing and fewer drunken Silverstripers, right?

I have an obsession with Polyvore right now that’s ridiculous. Kim and I are getting married when I’m 42.5, so check out what we’ll be wearing. If you’ll look good in one of the bridesmaid outfits, perhaps you can join the wedding party.
This is the outfit I picked for her:

Kim & I are getting married by johubris featuring Diane von Furstenberg tops

This is the outfit she picked for me:

Jo & I are getting married… by Ms Constantine featuring Tarina Tarantino jewelry

This is what my bridesmaids will be wearing:

What my bridesmaids will wear by johubris featuring Converse shoes

I spent quite a bit of time at Amie’s today doing some data entry for her (well, it’s really a win-win situation for both of us, which is number one awesome) so I really must go have a bath if I can find the right plug (the sink plug is a bit too small), or a shower if not. But I thought you might wanna hear from me. Hi!

EDIT: PS – if you subscribe to me on RSS and don’t get full feeds, delete it and add this RSS feed of mine instead. Sorry about that! I finally figured out it was Feedburner fucking it all up, not wordpress. And if you’re not using RSS – why not?

1. Webstock
2. Kat & Kane
3. An assortment of things
4. Pretty Pretty Pretty
5. Why I hate having crushes on people, or words to that effect.

I wrote on my professional site about what I learned at Webstock, and I wrote a lengthy thank-you for the Midnight Note site which might get posted at some stage, so at this stage, I can now talk about all the gossip behind the scenes in a non-professional way. Which means talking about ice cream. And how at the pre-webstock tweetup that I organised there were three people I’d fucked, and a couple of others I’d pashed. And how Starla Jo was all “oh, thank you so much for your tweets on New Year’s” and I was like “….huh?” and she was like “You wished me and Thomas another ten years of happiness” and I was like “oh, good for me!” No recollection of that at all but that’s the first time that I’ve ever been told about drunk tweets that were nice, so good for me. And how the whole shebang was dedicated to Darren and Amanda who were getting married the next day, and how they met at my Halloween party, and how if you ever want to get married, I should get a crush on you and someone of the opposite sex at the same time, cos it’s happened yet another time since I ran away from Auckland at the end of 2003.

Oh, in hilarious webstock gossip, on the Thursday night, I got this email:

I said I’d look for you and introduce myself, but once I saw you I
decided not to. You are too gorgeous.

I mean, if you hadn’t been twittering about orgasms I *so* would have
come over and flirted, but I knew as soon as I spotted you I’d be
spending the entire night trying to get into your pants rather than
actually listening to what you have to say. And I didn’t think that
would be cool.

So, next time, when I’m not already thinking about sex, I will say
hello and tell you how wonderful I find your writing (I *adore*
sex-positive women), and then if there’s some flirting or geek talk or
strip clubs I’ll be happy to participate.

Ummm, what? It’s a very strange thing when people feel like they know me from reading my twitter stream, or reading Hubris, because duh, they don’t know Joanna at all, just Jo Hubris’s posturings. I might appear to be open about my life but I don’t feel like I’m asking for emails like that from people I don’t know. But enough about that for now.

Obviously Webstock was all kinds of awesome, as I had expected it to be. I was sitting with Julie, and she was like “wow, talking to you is like hanging out with the Mean Girls” and I was like “it’s so fetch, right?” but honestly, if it looks like a whore and walks like a whore, then what are you supposed to say? (Reason number six thousand and twenty to hate the guy: he made me deal by turning into a bad feminist). That aside, it was lovely to catch up with so many people who I only get to see once a year at Webstock and to absorb all the awesomeness, and to watch people using the Webstock Bingo and Webstocklove channels that I set up. I sent out plenty of messages myself due to a million and five geek crushes. Why are all the good ones (and bad ones) married?

After the official bubbles & beats, we went up to Mighty Mighty for more drinks because people said that Kevin Rose was going to be there, and who doesn’t want to marry a millionaire? Someone had stickers and they thought we should write our names on them, but since we were already all wearing nametags, I gave people other names. We got a Rod Drury, and a Kevin Rose, and a Mark Zuckerberg and a Tom from Myspace before I started to run out of names. Later at the other end of the bar, I got in a conversation with Lisa Herrod who’d spoken earlier that day about accessibility, and was super stoked when she tweeted later that she’d hire me in a second if I lived in Sydney (and if she was hiring). It was really awesome to be reminded that I do actually know what I’m talking about sometimes. And in that vein, her husband Lachlan who had also spoken but I hadn’t seen his talk except for the end where he mentioned Waferbaby (who you might remember from Melbourne 2001, if those entries were actually online, but they don’t appear to be. Odd. But to summarise I met him when I was staying with 0 at Nirvana), ordered a castlepoint, so I told him that it was one of the top five drinks in town, and later on twitter mapped out a path as to how he could have the other four in one day. In fact, we were supposed to go get margaritas for breakfast at 8am on the Friday, but I decided to get one more hour of sleep. I was very impressed that he went though!

On Friday night after more Webstock awesomeness was the ONYAs. I borrowed a dress from Megan that I felt gorgeous in, and after some reshufflings I spent the evening telling gossip to a nice woman from Australia that actually may have been a little terrifying because I had a lot of it to tell and there was also a lot of wine. Then there was an amazing light show. Then we went to the Malthouse and people from Silverstripe were so drunk that I thought that they were speaking Norwegian, and other people were so drunk that they fell over, and really, I felt quite sober comparatively. I got to talk about Mad Men with Peter lots. And I got home sometime after 4am after dallying with that nice girl from last year who went to the bathroom and never came back. Webstock is awesome. I should have written about it a lot sooner and also not today when I’m in a really sulky mood.

In fact, I’m so sulky that I’m not going to finish this entry. Night kids, let’s hope something goes my way in the next couple of days or so, yes? Please?

Today Anji came over because she had the day off, and it was sunny, and she weeded my garden, and I did two loads of washing, and cleaned out the tiki shack, and the mouldy towels and mats and cardboard boxes and other sundry rubbish from the garden, and hiffed loads and loads of weeds over the fence into the nothingness. It was hard work, I tell you. So I am very tired. It was great hanging out with Anji though because I could talk about the things that I can’t talk to anyone else in Wellington about, and this makes me feel all Barbara Kruger like, and all altruistic and stuff, because my silence is other people’s comfort and all that, but also, again, pitchforks and torches. But we had a lengthy discussion about my tendency to sleep with people that I have no risk of falling for after I’ve had my heart broken (see this and this and this (although that one backfired) etc) in an attempt to safeguard myself again. Etc.

And then to continue on that note, I went for a drink with the girl from Saturday night tonight,  and we were having a grand old time, and then boy #2 from that night also showed up and I found that hilarious because they were all not talking much and I was talking lots, and I adore Johnnie at Hooch so much. But I was very sober, so I took off to bus home and be talked to by strange women on the street surprising me out of my loud Interpol head noise. Tonight I’ll rest my chemistry instead.

Sydney and FullCodePress

So, as you will no doubt recall, I tried out for Full Code Press, and didn’t make the team, so the lovely Tash suggested that I come along anyway as volunteer. It meant a flight at some ridiculous time in the morning, but also my first Koru Club experience in 15 years or so. I love Air NZ’s newish inscreen entertainment screens, especially since a flight to Sydney involves stupidly long amounts of time on the tarmac. I got to meet all the Code Blacks people that I hadn’t already met, and it made me chuckle how we all had webstock satchels.

My hotel wouldn’t let me check in early, so I went and had a walk around Darling Harbour, having breakfast, reading the (tabloidy) paper, drinking average coffee and enjoying it being t shirt weather. I went back up to the hotel and they still didn’t have a room ready, so I sat sulking in the lobby for a bit before I rode the monorail and went and got a very nice pedicure inside the mall. And then, finally, I could check in. This was my room:

The bedroom looked out into the super huge giant atrium, and the living room had these awesome nighttime views:

I like views of the city at night. I also like getting to finally have naps, and wake up and have Kate B be there, and I like going swimming with her, and then drinking wine with her and looking through her portfolio. I like that her web work is pretty much the opposite of mine, it being all advertising, all flash, whereas I am all advocating for accessibility, in theory if not quite so much in practice.

Anyways, so Kate and I sorted out our hair and jumped in a taxi to go and meet up with her friend Rob and The Mayor of Newtown, at a pub called Cooper’s that was not dissimilar to the Southern Cross with its outdoor terrace. There we compared handwriting, broke glasses and spent a very long time trying to decide where to have dinner. The Mayor’s initial suggestion of a place across the seat was vetoed by Kate on account of the bad lighting, and my criteria was that it needed to have wine. Eventually we set off for a different Vietnamese place, but it was closed, so we went to find a different one. King Street is almost exactly like K’Road, in terms of architecture and people and shops and eateries. We found a Vietnamese restaurant that may have been called Viet Maison, which had a Tiki-Bar although I didn’t see that initially, and OH MY GOD, we ate the most fantastic food – soft shell crab with garlic butter, salt & pepper eggplant, crispy pork hot pot, duck pancakes, lemongrass tofu, coconut rice, oh my god oh my god oh my god. It was so fresh and amazing. I want to eat there every day. Can’t we swap half Wellington’s Malaysian restaurants for some more Vietnamese places? Please? Kate broke another glass, and so we went to another bar called Zanzibar. The Mayor bumped into a friend of his who was in a band and owned his own tiki shack. I’d had enough wine that I was struggling to not imply that the friend was in INXS. It was 1am before I knew it. It was very much fun.

The next day was FULLCODEPRESS so I found my way down to the Conference Centre, and then into the Exhibition Centre, which is the largest building I have ever seen. It’s like, a kilometre long, at least. The FCP stuff was taking place in the middle of all the shiny technology exhibits, so it looked like this:

I hung around for a bit while they were just getting started, and was given access to the official FCP blog, and then I went and met my cousin Jacinta for lunch. She took me to a really lovely Thai place past Chinatown, and I shamed myself by being unable to finish my chili and basil tofu because it was too hot. Laaaaamer.

Another swim and a nap later, I was ready for the FCP lock-in. My role was to blog and twitter about it using the #fcp09, to talk to the nice judges, and to try and sniff out mysterious smells in the media room. It was lots of fun. I also enjoyed making Clint from Rainbow Youth dance for me. Okay, so I wasn’t really helping anyone very much at all, except in my capacity as entertainer. I still felt good about being involved. But not so good that when 2am rolled around and people started sleeping that I didn’t feel stupid for being there when I had a nice hotel across and up the road waiting for me, so I found a security guard to let me out and had a heart-pounding but brightly lit walk back.

I had wanted to get back to FCP by 11am in time for the finish, but that zopiclone, she is a hard task mistress, and it was not to be. Instead I went and ate barramundi in the sunshine. That was lovely – trying to find the FCP annoucements was not so much fun. In fact, I felt somewhat like I was in The Twelve Tasks of Asterix when he needs to get a piece of paper signed. Not a single “information” desk in all of the kilometres of building actually had the information. In fact, a couple of them gave me unformation, and sent me miles off in the wrong direction. Luckily I eventually found some of the judges, but not before I had discovered a conference called “What causes happiness?” (apparently, cupcakes for afternoon tea causes happiness) which would be a nice counterpoint to the conference I’d see the next day at the Powerhouse Museum called “Depression in older people”. Anyways. I got there just in time to hear the judging, which was really really interesting to find out what makes a site good, according to the experts. And The CodeBlacks won! Hurray us! And hurray charity, as I wrote about in my work blog. Etc. So really what I should write about now was the cat-herding required to get everyone to the Pump House for drinks, and then off to the Spanish area for dinner, but everywhere was full so we ended up in a really old Greek restaurant where the lamb was tasty but I suspect that the vegetables had been cooking probably since it opened in the olden days. People appeared to be flagging so I taxied back to my hotel, but they actually stayed up drinking until 2am. Good for them!

The next day was a nice sleep in, a leisurely checkout, then freshly squeezed juice to treat my swineflu/airconditioning flu, and i set off to the Powerhouse Museum. More walking. I was determined to get there because I’ve always been impressed with Seb Chan’s work, and I really enjoyed it, although the ghost figures it used were spooky, and there were a lot of school children loitering about. Who are they to enjoy the culture? Pah! I was hungry and their cafe was uninspiring so I walked down to the madness that is Paddy’s Market, purchased a light shade and two Chinese cigarette posters (in case we ever start an opium den in the tiki shack), and kept looking because I didn’t feel like foodcourt Asian. In fact, I walked all the way back to Darling Harbour and made my way down all the cafes, looking for a plate of fish’n chips that would be under $30. In the end, I came to a place with an adequate bbq, and beers that I guzzled down, but because I had so much time left and I didn’t want to walk anymore, i plonked my fat ass down at the Lindt Chocolate Cafe to eat a degustation plate by myself. Mmmmm. I left with a sea of brown floating around in my eyes, it was so intense. Back to my hotel to collect my bags and be collected by the shuttle driver, and into Sydney Airport. I made my way directly to the MAC counter as soon as I spotted it, where with the lady’s help I purchased a Russian Red red lipstick, but she lacked a matching liner and advised me to look at other brands. I also bought a compact of colours from their special collection that no doubt I did not need but I dearly wanted. I pulled up a seat at the bar, and strangely enough, the other NZers found me there. I watched In Bruges on the plane, and thoroughly enjoyed it, along with the pie I got. I also thoroughly enjoyed getting home to my own bed.

Cupcakes and Mini Webstock

Now I’m not sure if you remember, but after Webstock earlier this year, I made cupcakes for Tash and Ben and Mike and Deb to say thank you so much for their hard work. Well, it turned out that they liked them so much that they hired me to make 100 cupcakes for their third birthday party. Here’s a photo of how some of that looked:

Because I am slightly insane, i decided to make six flavours – vanilla w chocolate frosting, mocha, lemon & cream cheese, mixed berry & white chocolate, gluten-free chocolate and almond, and vegan pina colada. I ended up pretty much drowning in batter and my stomach hurts just thinking about the leftover icing in the fridge!

The Webstock Mini night made it all worthwhile though. It was a lovely chance to get really dressed up, hang out with my besties, try to corrupt Alan, and heckle people drunkenly via Twitter. Even if i did end up drink at the Malt House – at least they had signs up saying they were renovating the male bathrooms and were hopefully removing their incredibly misogynistic urinals.

#GOVIS09 and twicking up

That was the Tuesday. On the Wednesday I was at work until after 11pm, duvet and all, struggling to sumarise 18 months of work into one 34 minute slide presentation. According to the Twitter feedback, I did quite well (scroll down) – or here or ,here – the problems of multiple identities! Once I managed to get some proper cafenet access and had a chance to read all that, well, I was just completely blown away and may have had a little cry. I definitely had a hugely swollen head and cut’n paste the praise into an email I sent to my whole family. It was just so amazingly nice to be acknowledged for the work I do – even though, or especially because there’s like 40 days left of me working there. It’s a tiny bit of a “oh, are you sure you’re doing the right thing, SSC?” and also a “I know that I am smart and talented and can be employable”. There were drinks, and I met a stalker who brought me wine then there was dinner at Roxy. It was tasty and entertaining, even if I had to talk to Australians for ages. Oh god the pain of it all!

The next day at the conference, I felt much much more secure and safe and smug, and more people wanted to talk to me. I even started calling myself a ‘social media expert’ but you must believe that I was saying it as if I was saying “I’m Rick James, Bitch!” Nat’s closing speech was of course my favourite of them all since I missed Matt’s but his was very highly regarded too. It was fun. I learnt things.

And then there were drinks. And more drinks. And a lot of fish on sticks, and hot roast beef sandwiches, and homemade pistachio ice cream, and more drinks, And then I ended up going to Hummingbird for the Tweet Up, and then I went to China Delight for dinner with the Toms and some new friends, and then we went to Hummingbird for a drink or two more. Alisa left my old work to manage the bar there so it was nice to catch up with her.

My weekend and the future

There has been a lot of sleeping and trying to stay warm. There has been feasts at Siem Reap. There’s been a lot of twitter time. There’s been a lot of duveting. That’s really about it. Tomorrow I go for an eye example, since glasses are still subsidised at work. Then on Tuesday I’m going to EAP to plan for the future. After that, well, who knows? I could use some quiet times but I’m not seeing a whole lot of that happening any time soon. I am more confident about being hireable based on GOVIS though. Career highlights are nice.

Sleeping and so forth

It is odd to have bedded two people in such a short space of time, (although my record is still 3 in two weeks in 2003) because of the contrast between the old and the new. It’s also redonkulous that I’ve bitched and moaned about wanting to be able to actually have sleepovers, but when it comes down to it, I had to leave a warm bed and go out into the cold cold night because of how I am physically incapable of sleeping without taking zopiclone. Doing a line-by-line comparison would be amusing for me but also totally totally inappropriate, so I will just leave the public exposure of private things to the contrast between my necklaces clacking together as my head moved back and forth, and the moment of having a lover gently unclasp my necklace, which seems to be even more of an intimate act.

The day we got our official letters at work about how we’re losing our jobs, we were given a speech that tried to compare it to Napolean’s retreat from Moscow, like that was a good thing, because hey, 22,000 people survived that. 380,000 people died, but…

I dropped a frying pan on my toe before. It’s really sore. I’m hiding out in bed, consequently.

Kat & Kane are coming down next week, hurrah! Heather came down the other weekend and it was fabulous.

It keeps me a little bit entertained watching my automatic knee-jerk reactions in which I actively seek out validation from a number of sources if I’m feeling let down or neglected by one. There has been a lot of feeling like I don’t get any attention lately. That’s a consequence of no longer sleeping with someone of course, but it’s taking a long time to get over. Mostly I miss the friendship though.

I tried out for Full Code Press but didn’t make the team. I was a sad panda but the divine Tash suggested that I come along as a volunteer instead, so I’m going to Sydney on May 11-14.

I had other things to say, but I can’t remember what they were. I say a lot of things on Twitter these days. I also don’t say a lot of things. Oh you know what I mean.

My dreams are still far too vivid and encapturing. I feel like I’m smoking opium or something, or at least what I imagine it might be like.

I’m trying to do a good deed a day but in typing that out I realise that I haven’t done any good deeds today.

And finally, after years of looking, I bought some new sunglasses yesterday. This means my old ones which I bought on May 1, 1999, can be retired after almost ten years of hard work. I don’t want to say goodbye, but they’re so scratched and beaten up that it really is time. So here, let me present a digital tribute of my old sunglasses all around the world from as long as I’ve had a flickr account:

In Fiji in 2005

At Hyperion Wines in Matakana when we went up for the BDO in 2008

In Samoa in 2008

Reflected in Canberra in 2008

Outside the Tiki Shack in 2008

And I spent aaaaaaaages looking for older photos, but couldn’t find any of my sunglasses, but I did reupload all these terrible quality images from my old journal for your pleasure.

2. At the afterparty at the Embassy, we played Crowd Bingo. I won the most challenges I think, but I was still somewhat surprised when Kowhai jumped on my back. I made Alan listen to a thousand long stories about how everything is connected and revolves around me (the guy who won my dinosaur is I think the younger brother of the first guy that I ever said “I love you” to, albeit in a Tori Amos & Cindy Sherman-quoting email sent on Valentine’s Day in 1998. The younger brother didn’t like me at all based on IRC, because I laughed “ha ha ha” and he thought that made me really sarcastic. There were more of these types of story. Some of them involved diabetes. I’m surprised Alan put up with it all. Hadyn tried to take credit for my Crowd Bingos so I punched him. He twittered that I’d found Jim. People with iPhones all have herpes. Perhaps the greatest achievement in the bingo was Kowhai getting Ze to sign a card for Miss Fur, but we will come to that later, probably.

3. I told pretty much everyone that I loved them, although I’d already been twittering that all day. I told Matt Jones that I was going to marry him instead of Tom Coates. Sarah and I had it all worked out between us. We’re going to wear kaftans and and play majong. It’ll be brilliant. I made people hold my glass so I could hug people with two arms. I must in particular throw out mad love for Jeff who I hung out with for much of the night, and also for anyone who didn’t run in terror from me despite the booze and the enthusiasm I had flowing out of me like river about to burst its banks. I suspect also that my cleavage was more than terrifying, because it was a new dress (Yup! Sweaty and gross and it got worse at Vintage).

4. Vintage was hot and sweaty, but I found myself a seat and taught people how to play Front/Back. It’s a bit similar to Marry/Fuck/Kill, but simpler – you name two people, and someone has to decide which person they’d have fuck them in the ass and who they’d go down on. The first time Lisa and I played, it was Mike Patton vs Eddie Vedder. I decided I wanted Eddie to make sweet tender love to my heini, and Mike Patton to fuck my mouth as dirtily as possible. It’s a beautiful game. The funnest part was on Saturday when I asked Dylan “Good Tom/Bad Tom?” and he was too embarrassed to answer. I met some very amusing boys from Auckland and they indulged me in playing for a long time, talked to me about Marcus Lush and Newsnight and just generally kept me entertained, until they had to leave. I managed to find other friends though.

5. Me and a lady friend and two guys found ourselves with nowhere to drink after Vintage closed, so we went to Mermaids strip club. The guys paid for our entrance fee, bought us drinks and gave us laminated mermaid dollars to tuck in the thongs of the dancers. Yeah that was me, smashing the patriarchy. I talked to one of the dancers for a while, as it appeared to be her job. She didn’t take her top off and looked down on the dancers who do. I thought that was a bit weird. I couldn’t stop looking at things through a feminist window. The white bits on my dress glowed and I felt like it was 1997 and I was at a rave. She had a really nice ass, even if I’m not an ass girl, but I really wanted to see the redhaired stripper come out again. I had been drinking for 12 hours. I woke up the next afternoon and all the lights in my room were on.

6. Somehow I managed to make it out to the Cuba Street Carnivale, three colours of eyeshadow on and plastic flowers woven into my hair, It was so lovely to see Dylan again, and I love the people cheering for the wind blowing the bunting around. I don’t like Olmecha Supreme so we went and had cocktails at SFBH because sitting down is nice,and then went and watched the parade from Marion Street. It was pretty average, but there were some scantily clad ladies to oggle, which is always nice, because obviously I haven’t done enough of that lately. And then when we were waiting at the bus stop for a taxi, a guy ran past with a bagguette tucked under his arm so we were all “ahurhur hur hur” like a Frenchie.

7. Yesterday I had brunch ostentainably by myself, but Hadyn happened by, and then I saw Dylan too, and then I went and hung out with Lisa for a bit, who was still VERY VERY EXCITED that she got to meet Ze Frank at the carnival, and then there was an attempt at a nap but I was so excited that I’d get to nap that I couldn’t sleep.

8. Today I couldn’t face work, but I did three loads of washing, tidied the house, cleaned the bathroom, made cupcakes and delivered them to the lovely Mike & Deb and Tash & Ben to thank them for the awesomeness that is Webstock. The cupcakes are in boxes decorated in glitter goop that’s all smeary and dreadful but I’m hoping that they’ll thin it’s Outsider Art.

9. I am so excited about all the knowledge in my head, and I hope that it means that this year is going to be awesome. I fell from grace so hard in 2008, in so many ways. I hope I can regain some of that long lost grace. That is all.

10. Oh hai! If I met you, and you liked me, please let me a comment and we can like, hang out or something.

I should warn you that I am a barrel of all kinds of emotions today. Webstock is the highlight of my professional life each year, because so many of the things I learn are so directly applicable to the work that I do, but it’s also about my extra activities and communities like the Wellingtonista (I wrote the Beginner’s Guide to Wellington for the Webstock Site). I have been pleasantly surprised over the course of the day and also last night at pre-drinks at the Southern Cross to have people go “ohh, you’re in the Wellingtonista!” really excitedly, or even “OMG you’re JO HUBRIS!” from Twitter. The latter girl was rewarded with spare trading cards (my wad is so big it hardly fits in my envelope any more, if you know what I mean) and then when she suggested that I should have my own card because I was such a personality, I was like omg, let me give you all the cards I have in my hand. Except I won’t, because we have a community of shared knowledge that we need to build on.

That paragraph above appeared to be very long. I did have some free drinks before (trading surplus cards for drink tickets was a great idea, and yes I’m that confident that i can do that) and then there was sake at dinner, but mostly if I sound slurry, it will be because of the zopiclone fighting it out with the two coffees.

I FUCKING LOVE WEBSTOCK SO FUCKING MUCH. There, I’ve declared it. I won’t be doing the point by point all my notes here assessment. In fact, I might just step out of webstock all together, and talk about how on Tuesday I took my car in for my warrant. The place was right opposite a Dick Smith’s, so I thought I’d go in and buy a universal remote control because my DVD remote is so completely fucked it physically hurts me to make things go on it. Anyways, so I got it home, and it was all “Dude! Check out my DVD! It’s like, SUPER EASY” so I was all like, okay, sure, so I put it on, but I had to use my old remote to get it to go, and that was aaaaaargh, and then it turned out that manual was much more helpful than the DVD anyway. I managed to tune in the power on/off button, but none of the other keys were working, and while I was sitting on the wood floor in front of the tv, swearing madly at it, George decided that would be an appropriate time (when El and Smoo were off to Aussie the next day) to tell me that he has found a cheaper flat and he’s moving out.l
I swore at the remote control, went to my room, and had one of the worst breakdowns I have ever had, in terms of condensedness. I was hyperventilating and the lack of oxygen made my scalp tingle and the front of my face go numb. I had the metallic taste in my mouth, I was howling out loud along with the tears that did not stop for half an hour, I thought at one stage that I was going to black out and kind of hoped that I would. the thoughts going through my mind was “I am such a fucking smart girl, why can’t I figure out that remote?” which of course was linked to “I am such a fucking smart girl, why was I not capable of delivering a better performance assessment at work, why did I not support my intern better, how could I have allowed myself to fall for someone completely wrong for me, why have I subsequently been begging them for attention when obviously they are trying to cut off my air supply like I’m a troll, why can’t I keep a flat together, what the fuck is wrong with me?” and I howled and howled and every time I thought I’d settled down a bit, my body locked up, so I’d make a move, and I just started crying more and more, The part that was fun though, that I texted back to a concerned sisterly text was that I was blowing my nose on my really big really heavy dark brown Egyptian cotton bath sheet, so I was like “I’m blowing my nose on a bear!” (and speaking of which I so need one of these bags!). The physical aspect of the crying was kind of terrifying, the input of the oxygen and the way it wasn’t going out again, and I was high, and I thought about putting my head between my legs, and my boobs got in the way, and that didn’t make any sense, and quite frankly, it was really not a good time. Until I was like “umm, actually, I think that remote control was actually officially uncompatible with my DVD player, since it’s a DVDr, and then it was easier to see that no, I’m not actually a complete failure at everything, and I actually had a conversation out loud, taking the voice of my counsellor on.

So it was a good rich cleansing cry that has been building up for a very long time (readers of my twitter have obviously seen that), but still today, in Ze Frank’s presentation he talked about how one of his readers asked him to write them a cheer-up song for a situation that sounded really similar to the way I’d been on Tuesday night, and he started it up, and I cried and cried because it was exactly what I needed Luckily the lights were off in the hall at the time, and of course I twittered about it and saw everyone else saying that they’d cried too. Powerful. I shook his hand later and told him he made me cry. Looking at Twitter, an awful lot of people feel that way.

I want to talk more about other things, like venn diagrams (people at the conference that I’ve slept with, people at the conference I don’t want to talk to, and how they overlap but only a little bit and so I’d have to throw in another ring about something), and how much Star Wars sucks, and the free coffee, and the free ice cream, and how much I’m caught up in the trading card game because I’m going to win a baby dinosaur, but it’s like, midnight and tomorrow is going to be INTENSE and I have to replan my outfit since the motherfucking thong in my birki jandal broke, but i realise that I haven’t even mentioned how AWESOME the last half of the Fur Patrol gig that I made it to was, and how I cried again when they were singing ‘Silences and distances’ which is all “Please don’t make this hard – at least be willing to try” and the night was perfect, and the air was blowing hair, and everyone was lovely, and we humped Lisa a lot and I just so adore getting Alan drunk, and Craig Terris has cut his hair to look like Carlos D, so I’m wondering if he also likes to bang fat chicks, and therefore I can get herpes off him and give it to the whole iPhone world. These jokes will make no sense to you, I’m sure, but as my final “this is how awesome Webstock is” for the night – I bitched on Twitter about how i had no handcream and I was twittered back to inform me that there was 8 Hour Cream at the front desk. SUCH BRILLIANT CUSTOMER CARE. <3 <3 <3 and there’s a whole ‘nother day to go tomorrow in which I may just marry Tom Coates. Watch this space.

I think I love you. Can it please be Webstock every day? Even if we would all die from over-knowledging, over-caffinating and over-drinking?

I got home today sometime after 5pm. It’s been a hell of a week. I will update more when I have napped.

• The Innovation Workshop
• Day One
• Day Two

The Innovation Workshop

My first Webstock twitter (The WS is to send it to the Webstockbo so that everyone subscribed could read it): ” Ws I am late for my Scott Berkun workshop. I find nothing innovative about mornings! “

Despite having stressed out about the bus being late, I stopped off at the Dixon Street Deli for coffee, before heading off to the Town Hall to check in. The lovely Jeff was on the door, which is always a good way to start, and things got even better when I was handed my webstock bag. So sexy! And so filled with intriguing things! I took my bag and my coffee upstairs, and found Amanda waiting in the foyer for the workshop to begin. I flicked my way through the brochure, marveling at the beautiful design of it all, and tried to figure out what talks I wanted to go to. And then the workshop began, and things came alive again.

I should say here that I had been having a really rough couple of weeks at work and in my life in general. This is why there’s been no updates on Hubris. Moving proved to be such a stressful experience that I stopped going to the gym and stopped taking my meds properly. It was of course that stupid downward circle spiral that I periodically get stuck in. I wasn’t sleeping, I wasn’t functioning, and that coupled with the rather large project that I’ve been struggling with at work, and how hard that’s been to launch has made me pretty despairful. Before Webstock began I forced myself to fill my pill box properly, so that I could go back to 30mg instead of 20, and so yes, there’s that working in my favour again. That said, Scott Berkun was so fucking amazing that even if I hadn’t been on my proper dosage, I still would have had my world utterly rocked.

He started out by showing us slides of things we see every day- big macs, arches, browsers, google, and an assortment of other things, and asked which of those we thought were innovations. Then he explained how they all were, and that every successful innovation will eventually be taken for granted, and that its value may only be obvious after it has been created. He also suggested that if people are using the word innovation, it probably isn’t happening. I have pages and pages of notes that I don’t want to write out in full here (I’ll stick them on my work wiki though) but essentially, he talked about the process of innovation, and where things fall down. That was really great for me, because I was able to slot in my work project, and go “oh wow, apparently I’m not the only one who ever has any problems”. That sounds simple, but it has been really hard to see. He also mentioned that old “Genius is 10% inspiration, 90% perspiration” saying, that you would normally expect to see on the poster of some lame cow-orker, but it didn’t sound trite or cliched from him, it sounded like the truth. Oh yes, perhaps I am buying into a cult here or something, but it was just SO GREAT.
@johubris says <3 the branding, <3 the sandwiches and most importantly am feeing good about my big project again! 10:34 AM February 12, 2008

I was sitting at a table with Amanda and with Mike Brown and Anna and Belinda from SPARC, so it was nice to know people around me. I was introduced to Kris, and it turns out that he’s the brother of the guy I work with. Small world! At one stage, we all had to contribute random words, and then we had to pick three and create a new company with them. We created Robert’s Ecoterrorist Adventures, it was awesome. And he made us come up with ideas for the worst cellphone in the world, so that we could work backwards from there to create a great product. Really nice ways of changing thinking.

johubris Ws the couches at the town hall are for napping on, right? Being re-enthused by scott berkun is FTW,but i’m so tired! 12:54 PM February 12, 2008 from txt

At morning tea we had rolled sandwiches and friands. There were mountains and mountains of friands, but the sandwiches ran out quickly. They were mighty tasty though. At lunch we had a buffet that had the added distinction of having a written-out menu by the plates. It’s always nice to know what you are eating. I mention this because everyone who went to Webstock in 2006 talked about the food. And also because I like to talk about food. The conference rooms were nice because they were old, and stately, instead of being all bland like you might expect. I wrote pages and pages and pages of notes. Scott asked if anyone was having a bad day, and I didn’t raise my hand, but when he asked if anyone was having a bad week, I did. He got the whole room to applaud me and then asked me what story I wanted him to tell. Awww. Thanks Scott! Not just for the applause, but for just the sheer awesomeness of it all. Without transcribing all my notes it’s probably really hard to express just how inspiring the talk was, so I suppose you’ll need to take my word for it, or check out his work yourself!

johubris ws I wish it was Webstock tomorrow, and that I didn’t have to wait until Thursday for more awesome learning and company! 09:26 PM February 12, 2008 from web

The conference proper

Again, I was running late, but I stopped to get coffee anyway, not quite realising that the lovely Peoples’ Coffee people would be making free coffee all day long (we asked, and one of the charming baristas said his record was drinking 30 double espressos in one day. Woaaaaaah). I found a seat for myself at the back and chuckled at the Pulp Fiction soundtrack pumping over the sound system to hype up the crowd. Mike Brown did the introduction, showing a photo of CJ and the end of this series of twitters:

• Jo Hubris: I have two dates on Valentine’s Day. But they’re both work-related. At least there’ll be booze at Webstock, right?
• Maupuia: @johubris oh hell yes there will be booze! 12:08 PM January 10, 2008 from web in reply to johubris Icon_star_empty
• Ceej75: @maupuia and there better be hotties cos its v day!
  12:14 PM January 10, 2008 from web in reply to maupuia
• @ceej75 there will be enough alcohol that everyone will seem a hottie 12:21 PM January 10, 2008 from web in reply to ceej75

Hehe!

Nat Torkington

I’ve never met Nat before, or read anything of his work, but I’ve heard a lot about him (mostly because I’m jealous I didn’t get an invitation to Foo Camp), so I was really interested to hear what he might talk about. And now I know a whole lot about the Crimean War. My only note from his session is “www.overcomingbias.com”, so I suppose I really should look up this site. What amused me the most about his talk was that for some reason he’d chosen to use some really weird font for his presentation, and hadn’t checked it, so half the letters didn’t show up. Despite that, he was a great presenter, and I was really interested in what he had to say. Even if I’m not entirely sure what it was now that there have been so many talks on top of his. Oh, looking at the book, he was talking about the past as a way to predict the future. That makes sense.

Molly Holzschlag — Why Web Standards Aren’t

I work for the government, as you’re no doubt aware, so it is important for me that any sites that I work on conform to web standards,and that they validate (Hubris doesn’t validate, by the way, but that’s the flickr and twitter codes that fuck it up, as far as I’m aware). Other than that, standards really aren’t my area, so I admit to tuning out a bit during this talk. Molly was clearly very very passionate about it though, and CJ said that the Webstock IRC channel was lighting up during her talk because she was saying some controversial things. Awesome! And the line that I took away from it is that web standards isn’t validating like editing isn’t spellchecking, which is a fantastic simile for someone word-obsessed like me to understand.

After Molly spoke, it was morning tea time, with little sandwiches and mountains of mini sweet muffins. I caught up with CJ and Frances and looked around at the various booths set up by sponsors, deciding to investigate them further at lunchtime. And then, because I was trying to make sure I had a written-content focus, I went to see

Rachel McAlpine – Look Ma, no quills!

To be honest, I was rather disappointed with her presentation. I felt like it was a little bit all over the place, and didn’t really have a focus or direction. I did come away with a few tips, like that 20% of people have a low literacy rate, that only professional communicators are trained to communicate and that everyone else is just thrown in the deep end as we’ve moved away from blue collar work, and that you should check your work’s readability with a Flesch plugin.
johubris Ws dear webstockers, remember to get cash out at lunch to buy valentines for CJ and I at Craftstock! 11:25 AM February 14, 2008 from txt

Peter Morville – Ambient Findability and the Future of Search

My very first note from Peter is “Don’t throw away your org chart, but provide other options too”. Oh hell yes. I’ve struggled in past jobs looking after websites whose navigation has been built around the organisational chart, which makes little sense to anyone on the outside. I want everyone in the world to know that often isn’t a very good idea! He also used the line “a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention” which is so true. As our haystacks get bigger, how can we make bigger needles?

And then it was lunch. Mmmm lunch! I loaded up my plate and went and talked to Belinda and some nice people from the National Library. Someone was eating ice cream, and so I found my way to a freezer full of it, sweet little tubs from Kapiti. Mmmmmm! I had a big decision to make in regards to which talk I should go to after lunch, but luckily, I decided to go to:

Liz Danzico – The Framework Age

Damn! It was so fantastic! The idea behind it is that assorted Web 2.0 aps provide a framework for communities to grow off, like jazz music has a loose frame compared to that of classical music so there’s room for things to happen. She talked about social patterns, and hacking of public signs like the New York Subway (adding in “downtown” to train routes that don’t specify things), and oh, it was just so so wonderful. She brought all these random strings together and wove them into a beautiful tapestry, and I could have listened to her talk all day. But unfortunately, it was only 50 minutes long. I really need to look her up online and see if I can get more ideas out of her.
johubris Ws Liz is talking about how classical music leaves no room for participation. @ceej75 is man-hunting, @darren is playing bingo. WEBSTOCK IS SOFA KING RAD 01:47 PM February 14, 2008

Kelly Goto – Getting unstuck. Moving from Web 1.0 to 2.0

Kelly’s talk was all about ways of finding your “AHA!” moment, and moving into “the flow” when you’re just working on the highest possible level. She was a total bundle of energy, and was one of the many presenters who made me go “Damn, I want to be her when I grow up!”

Michael Lopp – Primal software development

Michael works for Apple, and he said that they don’t do secrecy – they do theatre, which made me laugh almost as much as when he asked how many people had iPhones, and when a whole bunch of people (like seriously, many many people) raised their hands he was like “hmmm, they’re not available here though…”. He had some good ideas about the types of people that you should have on a project team, although it did have a bit much of an American perspective – if you work for government, you don’t get to hire & fire really. But he had some great ideas about getting the job done.

Jason Santa Maria – Good design ain’t easy

I think this twitter sums up the awesome power of Jason Santa Maria:
Ws wow, for the first time since i was 18 i’m thinking design might be nearly as important as actual content! Go Jason! 04:47 PM February 14, 2008 from txt
His slides were beautiful, as was his idea that design tells a story. I learnt about the golden ratio of 1:1.618, and about the rule of thirds, and just marvelled at the pretty pictures. It made me happy to see Fray up on the screen cos it made me remember the olden days a million years ago of The Vision Project and how we wanted to be them.

And then, there was a fireside chat between Rowan Simpson and Sam Morgan. I liked that Sam admitted to ripping off many other people’s ideas and designs, but I was absolutely furious when he was talking about his micro-credit work, and said that they don’t lend money to men because the men would just drink and gamble it away. Way to move forward with helpful stereotypes! And he was so clearly a National supporter, and that made me bristle.

Then we had Powerpoint Idol, where presenters had to talk on a random assortment of slides, including lots of Lol Cats. Lol Cats were a reoccurring theme, of course. I liked the judging panel, of course.

And even more than the judging panel, I loved the cocktails upstairs, with Wellingtonistas selling crafts, and fun people to talk to. Eventually I went to the Phoenix Foundation with CJ and other assorted Silverstripers, and that was wonderful. We’d taken a Canadian we met (Hi Johnny!) along, and so I was like “here, the Phoenix Foundation is my country’s gift to you in exchange for the Arcade Fire”. It’s good to share. Wellington SO turned it on!

Day Two

Again, it was a rush to get there on time, and again, I opted to pick up coffee first, correctly anticipating huge lines at the Peoples’ cart. I found myself sitting at the back by myself again, but I knew by now that wasn’t a big deal, even if I did briefly have school cafeteria flashbacks over lunch with seating indecisions. But nevermind my ridiculous insecurities! On with the show!

Russell Brown – Creative Deficits & Publishing Realities

As a regular reader of Public Address, a lot of what Russell spoke about wasn’t new to me. He talked about Keith’s fisking of Deborah Codswallop, and other times when the community came together, and also about how it’s a site where commenters actually behave – at least most of the time. The part of his talk that took my interest the most was regarding online advertising, because that’s something we’re starting to give some serious thought to over at The Wellingtonista, because while we don’t want to be sell-outs, we would dearly love to have a proper site design and an entertainment fund. It’s just a question of how fifteen people who all have day jobs can walk the fine line between editorial independence and actually getting some ads on that don’t compromise our values. I need to have more conversations with Miss Biz and also Russell to resolve this.

Other interesting tidbits from Russell’s talk included the fact that 92% of New Zealanders don’t use RSS, and that he wants historical data and trends out of government websites. Another note that I have at the time was “I wonder how many of the audience here now are hearing impaired”, because for all the main speeches, there were wonderful signers standing at the side, signing away, and believe me, some of the speakers would have really made them work hard with the speed at which they spoke. Although of course, perhaps the signers were actually really crap, but I doubt it. One of the speakers did say out loud that he was wondering if he was being editorialised, but I can’t remember who that was. Anyway, I thought that was just another sign of how fucking awesome Webstock was, the way they were making it accessible, and I hope that the signers were videoed so they can be a resource as well.

johubris @verymiao Russell Brown is namedropping u (as Ball) in relation to his Webstock speech about moral panics about “bebo suicide cults”. Random! … … 08:59 AM February 15, 2008 from txt

Simon Willison – OpenID and decentralised social networks

I don’t use an OpenID logon, but I found this talk much more interesting than I expected, to be honest. I thought it would be very technical, but actually, it was a lot more about the ideas of trust, and perceptions of trust and who you feel comfortable giving your password to. This relates very very strongly to the GLS, and if you don’t know what that is, you probably don’t have to worry about issues of government and authentication. I wonder if there is a way to take the good work that people have done on OpenID and run with it. What I loved about Simon’s speech was the way he personified all that he was talking about, so that OpenID was like “Hi Simon!”.
johubris Ws I just refered to Webstock as ‘this festival’ rather than a conference, and that’s so true. So much love! 10:50 AM February 15, 2008 from txt

Then there was morning tea. CJ and I went and had our photos taken in the very sexy Verb.Ltd photo booth, and collected our robots, but apparently the photos of us were too ugly to go online, even though we hit the green button. That’s a shame, cos I thought they were damn cute. Ahh well.

Tom Coates – Designing for a web of data

johubris Ws Tom Coates saying “darter” instead of “dater” and using the word “thrusty” is reinforcing his cute hotness. 10:57 AM February 15, 2008 from txt

Your site is not your product. Your territory is anywhere your network touches. Tom’s presentation was really really lively, good looking (He said at the end he was using Gotham Rounded Bold, for the font geek in all of us) and he talked extensively about twitter, which is something that I get. Hurrah! Plus, he had such a jones for data, it was very endearing.

johubris If i was a dirty bitch, i’d say i wanted Tom Coates to open up MY ‘data source’. And i am dirty. 11:41 AM February 15, 2008 from txt

Luke Wroblewski – Web page heirarchy

What I love love loved about Luke’s talk was his many ‘Before’ and ‘After’ shots of websites that he’d worked on. It so clearly displayed how he’d made changes, and why. Although what I didn’t like about his talk was thinking in my mind about Hubris and the Wellingtonista, and how they could be a lot clearer than they are right now. Oh well!

Amy Hoy – Usability for evil

Amy used Hitler examples! Therefore, she wins! Also, the audience were the winners, because she was fricking hilarious, while still managing to be very informative and on-to-it. Did you know that ads work better if the pretty lady keeps some of her clothes on and is presented to the left? Well now you do! Although I do question whether New Zealanders turn right when they go into shops. I seem to always turn left. Is that to do with the way we drive on our roads?

Anyways, she talked about the five types of evil that can be done, and made me yawn by saying the word “yawn” (and now as I write this, I’m yawning again) and talked about emotional buttons to add things to orders. She was great. I am terribly terribly embarrassed that I only met her the next day, half wrapped in a towel, but I suppose that’s a story for later.

The 8×5 sessions

Mike took his clothes off and I filmed it, but I think other people took better videos. Sam Farrow from NZPA made me furious, as this twitter will demonstrate:
Ws apparently news 2.0 uses Comic Sans and stereotypical crime. DO NOT WANT! 03:01 PM February 15, 2008 from txt .

EDIT: I have explained myself quite badly here. Let me paste in an email I just sent off:

Thanks for your email. I think it was certainly more well thought-out than my hasty twitter deserved in response, but obviously my flippant remarks should be better explained.

On the subject of comic sans, well, I just have an irrational hate for it as a font, especially when there were some presenters who had some truly beautiful fonts. I didn’t get the self deprecation in it, which is no doubt my bad, I was probably far too tired and over-stuffed with ideas at that stage to be a very good judge of sarcasm or irony.

As for the idea of stereotypical crime – I suppose I had this idea that Webstock was this magical shiny happy land, where everyone was working together for the greater good, but your use of a South Auckland crime as an example reminded me of the many frustrations that I feel with mainstream media in general – especially the way that Maori and Pacific Islanders have their ethnicity pointed out when they commit crimes and Pakeha don’t. And yes, I know you didn’t use any ethnic identifiers, so it’s possibly my own biases showing through when I presume that you were talking about them when you refered to South Auckland. I’m going to also put a little of the reason for my hating on Sam Morgan’s throwaway comment from the day before about how they don’t give loans to men because they’ll just drink it away. Whether or not there’s statistical evidence that says more crimes happen in South Auckland or that men drink away loans, I don’t feel like it is particularly helpful to continue to say that, unless you’re specifically talking about ways to deal with those problems. I like the idea that we’re all likely to kill or drink away our money much better than targetting specific groups, so I wish that you had used a different example is all. But again, as a representative of the NZPA, you were copping the flack for all media in general, so look at that, I’m doing exactly the thing that I hate.

I’m really sorry if my post came across as a personal attack, and I’ll fix this up. It really wasn’t meant in that way. It was just some rough ideas tossed out into the wind that I obviously didn’t explain well enough. Thank you very much for taking the time to write to me about this, it’s much appreciated.

Jimmy Hendrix came out to play on a ukelale. I can’t spell. I like the idea of the 8×5 sessions, people covered a really diverse range of subjects. I just kinda wish that more women had volunteered to do them. That aside though, I really appreciated the number of women speakers at Webstock in general, and the number of women in the audience. I thought that was hugely encouraging and awesome.

Then Scott Berkun spoke again, and it was as awesome as his workshop. I enjoyed looking around the room at everyone whose energy had been flagging during the 8X5 because afternoon tea was delayed, and seeing them being woken the fuck up, as one twitterer put it. Fan girl squees all around. And then we got afternoon tea.

Damian Conway – Web 2.odium

I wasn’t a huge fan of Damian’s Powerpoint Idol presentation – I thought it was just too obvious to go for something on sex (yeah I know, right? Me saying that is weeeeeird), but his odium was fantastic. He took the point of view that we were elitists and we wanted to protect the web from the evil Morlocks by making it not accessible or proper (what’s a morlock? I must go look it up) so he gave us a list of 28 or so ways to fuck the web up. He used humour to teach! Just like those teachers that Edna Krabapple beat to Teacher of the Year! Except actually funny. And useful. I think no matter how brilliant everyone at Webstock was, they’re probably guilty of doing at least one of the naughty things on Damian’s list, so it was very useful indeed.

But oh man, it was a long talk, and it was already time for cocktails but we still had one more speaker to get through.

Kathy Sierra – Cognitive Seduction 2.0

There seems to be a bit of a strange cult around Kathy. The first I ever heard of her was when she was getting threats online so didn’t go to a conference, and it was really hard to get those thoughts out of my head when she was talking. Admittedly also, many of my thoughts were on the bar. It had been a loooooooooooooooooong day, and my brain was overflowing with thoughts. I did like that she suggested we should give users a “WTF???” button.

And then, that was that. It was all over! Or at least the talking part was. We were released out into the foyers where waitstaff circled with trays of drinks, and massive pyramids of seafood could be found. I made my way upstairs where it was quieter and easier to get wine, and found myself talking to the Silverstripe boys, CJ and Jonny again. It was fun, we talked and ate snacks and drank and good times were had. Finally around 9pm, the doors into the main hall were opened up again and we found ourselves in a totally transformed space:

So pretty! Thanks Google, I hearby pledge to do all my searching with you in exchange for that glorious dinner. Prizes were awarded, more speechifyings were made, and wine and conversation flowed. I was expecting a buffet-style dinner, but oh no, this was fully plated goodness. Behold my beef fillet on polenta:

That’s a terrible photo, I know. Did I mention the wine? And the dessert trays with lemon tarts, noughat and something else that was also delicious? I wandered around in between courses and afterwards, talking to people and embarrassing people who gave me stern “I’ll talk to you later!” eyes. I caught up with Brendan and also Mark, who I’d known online in Vision but didn’t realise was the same person when he did his 8×5. And then it was time to go to Vintage Bar for the after-party.

I love Vintage, it’s such a pretty bar. Lots of fun was had. I talked to people I haven’t talked to for a million years, without oddness. I made new friends in the bathroom. I talked to Keith Ng lots. I talked to an assortment of new people, and I’m not sure I could match all of their names to their faces. And then there was a kiss on the stairs, and I found myself going home with one of the key speakers of the conference, except by home I mean to the Museum Hotel. And here again we find evidence of the awesomeness of the Webstock planning people – Russell and everyone else might have complained about the wifi in the hotel, but daaaaaaaaaaamn it was a nice place. The bath was as big as my couch, so big in fact that I had to take a splash. I was brought pasta and wine in the bath. SO FUCKING RAD! Best choice of speakers ever, dear Webstock. People are fantastic. I have mad love for my flatmates at this stage too:

progcunt My flatmate is awol and we,re thinking of calling the police 11:05 AM February 16, 2008 from txt

Around 12pm, I got woken up by a knocking at the door, and figuring it was housekeeping I wrapped a towel around myself and went and opened it, hiding half behind the door because the towel wasn’t that big. Amy Hoy was standing there, and she was like “oooooooooh… have I got the wrong room?” and I laughed and said no, and she was like “well okay, do you guys want to come for lunch? Meet in the foyer at 12.30″. I was like sweet, and passed the message on, but then went back to sleep. It was a mighty comfy bed. I only woke up sometime after 4pm when Kat rang me to make sure I was okay. She wouldn’t have been so worried about me if she hadn’t bumped into Hadyn and Amy, who reminded her of my tendency to jump into the harbour at night. But anyways, I tried and failed to throw up discreetly, and went home to my Kat and my cat, both of whom were pleased to see me.

In conclusion: I LOVE WEBSTOCK! Greatest collection of people ever, superbly put together, so inspiring and invigorating, and just wow. I wish it was 2010 already…

I think it’s also official that I am not just in a weekend come-down. For the past couple of weeks I have been saying to myself “I will always have depression but I won’t always be depressed” on account of how it’s been more than three occurances but there’s the euphoria too. But then there’s the gap where the euphoria of initial pillage was and it’s the “oh, so this is what it feels to be normal huh?” but then there’s the gap underneath where the normal is supposed to be. I didn’t go to work yesterday, because I couldn’t get out of bed, and also my throat was as swollen as a 17 year old virgin’s balls. I found myself at Lyall Bay in the afternoon, in the water cursing at the waves every time they failed to drown me. I wanted the cold water to wake me up, to make me grateful for being alive, to make everything feel real again, but instead I was angry because I couldn’t cry, because I was feeling numb, and because the lure of the water out to where it was deep and green and peaceful was stronger than it should have been for someone who is in theory on the mend. And of course just when I was about to start yelling and screaming out loud, no matter how much I was trying to supress myself because while I’d been the only one in the ocean when I started, two ten-ish year olds had shown up and were squealling at the waves too by that stage, I turned my back on the ocean and didn’t jump quite in time and a huge fucking wave crashed in to me so hard that for a moment I thought it’d broken my arm and that made me laugh lots and lots and cry “AHA TOUCHE!” at the waves. And so I left the foam behind and went home in a daze.

Today I made it in okay, but everything went downhill from there.At lunchtime I decided to be oh so very girly and go shopping in an effort to make myself feel better. I went to Farmers and laughed at the new labels they have in their fat section, because if you wnated to spend $130 on a skirt, would you really buy it there? No no sir. At least I hope not. But then I found a totally cute (yes, that is my phrase for everything now, and no I will not be changing it this week) grey tweedish skirt for $50, and a matching shortsleeved jacket for $60 (the skirt is curved to fit curves, with netting petticoat trim and a slight fishtail, the jacket is semi puffed sleeves and two buttons, and is two sizes smaller than the skirt, as if I needed further evidence of the pear shape of I. If you can’t picture it, I should say it’s sort of late 1940sish, pre Dior-new look but not all with the “oh there’s a war on” strictness), so I bought that on the grounds of if I get fired from work soon I will need some nice clothes to go to interviews in. Half of me doesn’t think that I will need them, of course, but then there’s the half that thinks I am worthless and useless and that everyone hates me and that I am a burden to everyone who knows me. It was nice to not have that half for a while, but meh. Oh, but of course when I got to the register, it turned out I’d left my wallet at home. When I got on the bus in the evening, after spending half an hour crying in the toilets after discovering that all the work I’d done int eh past couple fo weeks may be lost due to a syncing problem (euphemism), I got on a Lyall Bay 03 instead of a Lyall Bay 06, so had to get off and then because I was wearing my uncomfy mary janes I thought I’d walk back to Mt Vic and bus it rather than walk through the horrible Hataitai tunnel. Of course, I just missed a 5 getting to the bus stop, so i decided to cash in a voucher I had from Coruba for a free 4-pack of testing taster RTDs (I said free, right?) and while I was waiting for a guy to actually serve me a 2 went past. Then I lost my earphones and had to go back to the store to get them, then i had a long wait for a bus, then there was a long queue at the 4 Square and my avocado was $3.50 and and and oh man, badness. So tonight has been all about orange juice, frozen vodka ands peach schanpps and you know what? I think my flu has retreated a little. And Sue made me buy two pairs of shoes from Torrid, and also a ticket to Mini Webstock. And I don’t care. Somehow my credit card bill will be paid off, and my depression will get better, and we’ll figure out something at work about syncing and oh, blah.