March of the Penguins

We're kicking off the main conference portion of Disrupt this morning. I can't believe it's finally here! This is one of the biggest moments of my career so far, and I haven't exactly had a sleepy career. I've invested plenty of effort and money to pull crazy things off before-- but typically it's a solo project like a book. This is the biggest thing I've ever done that required a team of people and will bring together so many other people.

As such, I have a million people to thank-- principally Mike Arrington and Heather Harde who trusted me enough to invest huge parts of the company's resources putting this conference together. It's that sort of faith in me that's made me intensely loyal to both of them. As I've said, the team also deserves huge credit for making this a reality. Tanya, Jeanne, Susan, Vineet, the editorial team here on the ground and Jon and the TechcrunchTV crew have all been working around the clock since we arrived to make the impossible possible.

There are a lot of firsts we're pulling off with this event. It's the first time TC has done an international Disrupt conference. From what I understand it's the first time an international tech conference here will have simultaneous translation for attendees as livestream in English and Chinese-- something that's technically been near-impossible to pull off. It's the first time a US tech blog has launched a major event on the mainland. Most exciting for me-- in about two hours Tencent CEO and co-founder Pony Ma will be interviewed on stage by a foriegn journalist for the very first time.

I had a near-panic attack last night when his flight into Beijing was cancelled. Fortunately he was able to get a later one and we had tea last night to talk about the interview. So I finally have real evidence that the most powerful and most elusive person in the Chinese Internet scene actually exists. He even brought a penguin dressed like a rabbit for my son. (He and I are both year of the rabbit.)

Wish us luck today! This is a big moment for TechCrunch.