I’ve been to my share of tech conferences that either don’t have any music playing or have some horrible mix that the hotel supplies turned up either a little to much or not quite enough. In contrast, I know that Eric Norlin obsesses over every aspect of his conferences, including the soundtrack. He knows his audience well and nailed it this year. He’s published the soundtrack on the Defrag blog. 

Last week I did an hour long interview with Jon Hansen on the Startup Visa Movement titled Diminishing Prospects: How U.S. Policy is Undermining Entrepreneurial Vision. The interview is embedded below and Jon has a longer post up on his blog titled Snakes in a Playpen: Why U.S. Policy Regarding H-1B and EB-5 Visas is Outdated and Ineffective. I haven’t done any long form interviews on this topic yet. I thought Jon did a great job of steering the conversation, pulling out some important perspectives, and helping cycle back to make sure the appropriate points were covered. If you are interested in this topic, I’d love to hear your reaction to this interview.

You may be thinking “what do these things have to do with one another?” Well – they are all in my browser this morning after I returned from my run with Reece Pacheco of Overtime Media. And in case you are wondering, Reece is an ex-lacrosse star who is now running Overtime – which makes HomeField. They are a young company, but are working with about 200 sports teams at colleges across the country to get the video of their games online. Reece met me at the NY Entrepreneurs Roundtable Event that I spoke at on Monday, sent me an email about running, and off we went this morning. Reece – thanks for making sure I got out of the hotel to get my run in.

I had a 19 hour day yesterday – it started when I woke up at my hotel at 26th Street at 5am and ended when I hit the sack at midnight. I had a bunch of meetings, a few scheduled phone calls, was on a panel, and stayed on top of my email throughout the day. I even managed to keep my FishVille fish fed and got my Cafe World food served before it spoiled.

Over the weekend, I read what I think is going to be my “best book of the year.” It’s Zeitoun by Dave Eggars of McSweeney’s fame. Some people just know how to write. And Eggars is one of them. Wow. As I ran around downtown Manhattan this morning thinking about how radically different my run today was from my typical runs around Eldorado Springs and Boulder, I couldn’t help drifting back to Zeitoun. It’s a stunning story about one man – Abdulrahman Zeitoun – and his family before, during, and after Hurricane Katrina. But Katrina was only the foreplay for the book – the real story is what happens a week after the storm when Zeitoun disappears.

I’m in NY all week with a jam packed schedule so I thought it would be a good week to talk a little about how I use Gist since I’ll use it every day to help me deal with a shortened daily information routine. As you probably know, we are investors in Gist and I’m on the board so – while this is fanboy stuff – there are also a few other goals of this post including (a) helping you understand the promise of Gist, (b) enticing you to give it a try, and (c) eliciting feedback from those of you that have given it a try and want more / better / different (e.g. feedback of any kind is good).

Another awesome APOD photo. I wonder how evil and scary the blue horse looks when backlit like this.

I spent the last two days at the Defrag Conference. It was awesome on so many levels including the content, the venue, seeing a bunch of great friends, and meeting a bunch of new people. The conference originated out of an email exchange that Eric Norlin (the amazing guy who puts on the Defrag and Glue Conferences with his even more amazing wife Kim) and I had as a result of a series of blog posts that I wrote in 2006 starting with There Is A Major Software Innovation Wave Coming and Intelligence Amplification.

My amazing day at the Supreme Court continued to bounce around in the back of my mind all day yesterday. I was at a board meeting for a company that I’ve been on the board of for almost a decade – it was the best (as in most productive) board meeting we’ve had in a long time. I’ve written about The Best Board Meetings in the past. One element of the best board meetings is a prepared mind. This is the powerful lesson from the Supreme Court. On Monday (at the Supreme Court), I saw eleven very smart people participate in a very complex discussion that they were extremely prepared for. In one hour they covered an amazing amount of ground. I attribute this to the work they did in advance of the meeting.