Paul Walsh, the Irish Opportunist

A few people took the time to email me for an update on my (not so) recent trip to San Francisco. I wasn’t going to bother with a blog post, but I had to write a response anyway. So here goes…

The trip started on a positive footing; I caught the plane. Anyone who followed my Qik travels during recent times will testify that this is in fact, a feat in its own right.

In summary

TechCrunch50 was great. Met lots of cool people and attended lots of networking events/parties. My thanks go to Jason Calacanis and Tyler Crowley for my press pass. The most memorable parties included the MAXroam gathering - hosted by Pat Phelan.

Pat getting all domesticated during the party.

Loved the Qik party – thanks to Bhaskar and Jackie.

Had dinner with Sol (Founder) and the rest of the 12 Seconds crew. We talked about collaboration between 12 Seconds and Wubud. Not sure it’ll be possible on mobile, but there must be something we can do on the Web site.

The ‘Smack my pitch up’ was fantastic! Pitches came from Loren Feldman, Rob Loch and others. Wubud was the proud sponsor of this very professional/prestigious party. I think Pat Phelan’s idea was the best but unfortunately he didn’t pitch it on the night – a social network for people with sexually transmitted diseases. Brilliant – think of the tag clouds to help you visualise the most widely spread diseases in a particular area.

Had dinner with Loren Feldman – that’s always a blast.

• I was interviewed by Shel the puppet. I almost feel like I’ve made it now.
• Did a TechCrunch podcast with Mike Butcher, Rob Loch, Paul Carr and Scott Rutherford.
• Ended up with Sarah Lacey’s mobile phone after a night on the town. That same night, Rob and I chased a homeless person down the street after he ran off with Rob’s money. Surreal.
• Eris played a fantastic host and took Paul and I to various fancy eateries.
• Dinner with Zoe and Pat was a much needed relaxing evening. Well, at least until we ended up with the usual suspects afterwards.

Picked up some t-shirts at Twitter HQ.

Jack Dorsey (Founding CEO) and I talked shop about architecture and the issues faced by companies that need to scale quickly. Very cool guy with a very cool company.

Had coffee with Matt Mullenweg who is equally awesome. What a guy. What a community he has built. Matt is the founding CEO of Wordpress – probably the biggest and most successful open source community on the Web. He has kindly agreed to attend an Open Source Summit I’m hosting for 10 to 15 thought leaders from the around the world – sponsored/supported by BT. We talked about how to use Content Labels as a form of content classification for Wordpress.com

Paul Carr and I spent almost an entire day sitting in the sun on Union Square. Isn’t it great when you can work from anywhere in the world, literally. That was memorable. Paul and I found the world’s first ‘low-fat salad’ in the cheese factory - weighing in at just under 500 calories. Only in America.

My favourite quote - waiter at the Cheese factory; “would you like bread while you wait sir”. Me, “while I wait for my sandwich?!”. Waiter “oh… yeah I see what you mean. Me “smile”. Classic. Only in America.

I gave a presention at the Yahoo! office during my last day. The topic was ‘how to enable more trust on the Web’. I demonstrated Segala’s browser extension and Semantic Web application (yet to be made public). It went so well that one of the best known Trustmark providers in the world is now going to partner with us. Fantastic!

Blah blah blah.