UGBT: We're Half Way Done People!

Ok, so I'm mostly recovered from the Pacific Northwest UGBT sandwich with Gnomedex in the middle. The trip was amazing-- fraught with tiny amounts of sleep as it was. As usual, I made what feels like even more lifelong friendships and met some entrepreneurs and "human routers" that I hope to watch for years to come. I have a lot more I want to say about it and a lot about my observations at the mid-way point of the tour too. And of course some pictures and video. But you'll have to be a little patient as BusinessWeek needs a column, a September keynote needs some TLC, Mr. Lacy needs some TLC, Tom Chapman needs an edit on his upcoming SarahLacy.com guest post, and Yahoo needs a few very, very full days.

In the mean time, I wanted to give a HUGE shout out to FiveEdge Media who designed a UGBT site for me! Since the tour is ever-evolving, it'll have more details on it very very soon. Like tomorrow. But please send me pictures to upload in the photo gallery from past a future stops and weigh in on future stops and tweet-ups at will! Most of all, keep and eye on the site for details on your city! As the tour has ballooned in size to 15 stops, we still have seven to go! We've added Houston and Las Vegas to the list, because, well, we're softies. But we cannot add any more this year (I mean it this time!!!) We hope to do a smaller, college-centric tour when the book comes out in paperback in 2009, so vote on the site if you think we should hit your school!

Thanks again to John Weiss and the FiveEdge team. They did this work FOR FREE because they believe in the Portland tech scene and other nascent tech scenes around the country, and the mission I'm on to get out and discover them-- not to mention reinvent how books are promoted.

I'll leave you with one of my favorite pictures from the tour: Olivia and Danielle Morrill pretending to be Rocky and Bullwinkle. I'm not quite sure why Olivia's rendition of Bullwinkle is so angry, but I think it has something to do with that blue drink. (Called an "Adios M-fer") I'm posting embarrassing photos until Olivia delivers me a post on Facebook's UI she keeps promising...