Voices in the Fog

For those who are wondering if I’m still in the land of the living, this entry is for you.

There’s been a lot going on lately, and my blogging appears to have suffered for it. It’s all been good, of course. Let’s see, where do I begin?

I’ve spent a lot of time so far this year out West, mostly in and around San Francisco. What started off as an unlimited flight pass for a couple of months has turned into a life-changing series of events. The first leg of my pass took me to San Francisco for a visit to Macworld, motivated purely by curiosity. Neither the tech-heads I met there nor the ever-humourless US customs and immigration officers were buying any of it: they all thought I was down there looking for work. (Ha! Truth is, I’ve had more work that I can handle lately and I really love Montreal.) While in California, I agreed to collaborate on an early-stage startup project based there. I had heard that there was a tech startup conference happening a couple of weeks later in Quebec City, so I went to check it out.

At the conference in Quebec City, I discovered after looking through the bios of attendees that one of my clients, François Lane from Mastodonte Communications, was also there. Since we had never met in person, I sat down beside him at lunch and introduced myself. One thing led to another, and a few days later we were meeting in Montreal to discuss how we could work more closely together. Since then, I have been actively collaborating with François on a weekly basis. A long-time entrepreneur in the Quebec market, he has recently decided to go international–where English, for better or worse, is often the common language. The first fruit of that effort is a white label email marketing application that we have christened Cake. François is sponsoring the One Degree website this month, so we’ve got a little teaser campaign going.

But life is not all work and no play. Oh, no–far from it! I spent Easter doing the tourist thing in San Francisco with a couple other Montrealers who’ve been bit by the wanderlust bug. It was my third time in the Bay Area in as many months, but this was the first occasion I had to really do any sightseeing. I’ve been to BC a couple of times so far this year too, spending time in Vancouver with friends, in Nelson visiting my folks, and in Victoria visting my sister, nieces, nephew, and a couple old friends from high school. I also tagged along with the Mutek crew to their gig in Washington, DC in February, which was great fun and a truly amazing evening of stellar performances. I stayed with a friend I had met at the Mutek festival a few years back, as a matter of fact.

So given that all of this has been going on in addition to my usual freelance workload, you will pardon me if I have been slow to return emails, phone messages and the like. There doesn’t seem to be enough time in the day…