My Three Days Hosting Live TV

I just got home from TechCrunch's second New York Disrupt Conference, and as detailed on this blog already, I was pretty exhausted from the travel and the pace. But it wasn't hard getting the adrenaline pumping each day. The conference was one of the best ones we've produced to date.

It occurred to me the other day that this is the happiest I've ever been working full-time for someone else. No one is more surprised at this than I am. I put off joining TechCrunch full time for years, in part because of my book, but also because I wasn't sure the massive egos of Arrington and me could fit under the same roof. And when AOL bought TechCrunch, I didn't think I'd last a month. 

But Disrupt reminded me of every reason why TechCrunch is such a great fit for me. In short, it's all about the entrepreneurs. There was so much positivity and support around the companies launching, and everyone got so emotionally wrapped up in who they wanted to win. And doing backstage interviews with the finalists, just before we found out the winner, it was clear how much the platform had already helped their companies. That's an amazing and humbling thing to be a part of.

That sense of community and really rooting for great entrepreneurs is always what I've argued has made TechCrunch so succesful. In my previous jobs for traditional media companies, I hated the cynicism, the desire to shoot down anything just because it was new or differnet. Until of course, it hits a clear tipping point and then everyone pretends they believed in it all along. That doesn't serve readers in any way, and TechCrunch is the opposite of that. 

But the other reason I love working there is they give me a big platform, pay me a nice salary, but let me do pretty much anything I want, whether that's flying to Nigeria or blogging from home in pajamas. I don't know another job like that in the media world. There's almost always a trade off with one of the three: Platform, pay or autonomy. It feels too good to be true. Hopefully, it lasts for a while. (At least until I give into that itch to write another book.)

The vareity also allows me to do a lot of different jobs in one. For Disrupt, I got to do three days of live television hosting the livestream backstage. I wouldn't want to do TV all the time, but for three days it was a lot of fun. Our head of TechCrunchTV, Jon Orlin, was in his element, building out an insane backstage studio and basically producing more than 24 hours of live programming. I'll be posting some of the interviews people may have missed on TechCrunch this week. You can watch most of them here. 

I'm bummed I won't be able to do it again for a year: I'll be giving birth (or preparing to or recovering from giving birth) during San Francisco Disrupt and on stage during Beijing Disrupt.