Parties Archive

UGBT: See You in Seattle Tonight?

I’m tired. There. I said it. 2008 has been a combo of a sprint and a marathon and now it’s August when much of the world gets to hit the beach, and it’s really wearing on me. Apologies to my friends I haven’t seen in months, and anyone I’ve rudely yawned at in the last few weeks. Things are so bad, Mr. Vinnie (my cat) has started cuddling up with Olivia instead of me—measures Mr. Lacy (my husband) hasn’t taken, thank goodness!

It’s either the worst week or the best week to get back out on the road for my User Generated Book Tour. I’m gonna be positive and say the best week. This tour has easily been one of the best things I’ve ever done personally and professionally, and it’s only one-third done. It’s definitely a loss-leader. And definitely hard to organize. But in just a few stops the definition of what it means to be an entrepreneur this time around has become more and more pronounced, as has the fuller ripple-affect of all the things I spent a year writing about in my book. (And some ten years writing about elsewhere.)

Already a few macro-themes are popping out at me, as different as the individual cities are, and I’ve already got a few larger articles and projects that are percolating as I go. So please, smart entrepreneurs, human routers, friendtors and nontrepreneurs in Seattle and Portland, even if you don’t want a book, come out tonight and Sunday, have a beer and tell me what you’re doing. Tell me why your city is different. Tell me what opportunity the Web has unlocked for you. Those are the moments that make the endless airport security lines worthwhile.

(BTW: Thanks for the shout out Rick!)

Play Ball!

Mr. Lacy and I live just a few miles from PacBell, but we are STAUNCH Oakland A's fans. (Yes, still, despite the team's horrible performance of late.) We actually have season tickets and with book promotion and travel this summer, we have an unusually large number of unused tickets this year. We can recycle them for half-off seats and were thinking about doing a 20-person SarahLacy.com end-of-summer day at the Ball Park Aug. 17. SarahLacy.com will absorb the cost of the ticket and I will personally buy your first beer.

The first 20 people to email Olivia and Olivia at SarahLacy dot com get seats and beer and OF COURSE I'll sign a copy of the book if you've got it. We just thought it'd be a fun way to give back to loyal fans and readers! So email Olivia if you're interested! Even if you're not a huge baseball fan, I promise it'll be fun. And it's free!

Juicy Interviews

I have to say I have fallen in love with the radio interview. That's actually a bit crazy because I loathe talking on the phone, but there's something about pouring your heart out to a niche or local radio audience in a city you've never been to while you sip coffee in pajamas that's just, well, magic. I've done scores of them over the last few months as book promotion, but I never seem to know when they're running or how to link to them. So I thought I'd take the opportunity to link to these podcast interviews with The Des Moines Register's Juice Magazine. Brianne Sanchez asked great questions and I really enjoyed talking to her. I think it comes out in the clips! I'm just so excited about my stops in Omaha and Des Moines later this week, I hope a lot of people come out!

As an added bonus, here's a video interview I did at the TechCrunch party with my friend, Zennie. He is going to the Democratic Convention and was asking us notoriously liberal Valley types what we wanted to say to the Democratic party. I didn't mince words, as usual. I was also very tired from a long week and a long night of schmoozing. Combined with some freakish lunging at the camera, it's not the most flattering footage in the world of me! ;) But hey, I care about the Party!

Advising my dad not to watch-- more so because he already thinks I'm a crazy liberal than my crassness. ;) Ironically my good friend Cathy Brooks said almost the exact same thing in her interview, but she somewhat more tactfully suggested the party grow "a pair." (Warning: It's very interesting but 40 minutes long. I'm about half way through if you want to skip ahead. But you'll be skipping far more important people like Arrington and Scoble!)

Oprah Wishes She Had This Feel-Good Moment!

Every time I say I'll never mention SXSW on my blog again...

So last night TechnoSailor had the testicular fortitude to be the only person after Robert Scoble to actually come up and apologize for the SXSW heckling event. Apparently while I was sweating around NYC all day semi-off the grid everyone discussed and called it the apology of the century! I don't know about all that. But I thought it was an incredibly gracious and classy thing to do.

It seems T.S. didn't know if I took his apology so I wanted to do a quick post to say YES. Life is too short for grudges. Besides the whole incident sold way more books and got me way more speaking gigs. Not that I want such things to happen all the time. But just saying.

Here's are photos to mark (haha!) the occasion. First, "ehh...I'm not letting you off the hook..."

then, "Well, ok."

UGBT: The List

Ok, y’all. The votes are in, cities decided and dates somewhat settled upon. The User Generated Book Tour is so far eclipsing my wildest dreams with most cities hosting several events. Most of the plan is still pretty fluid so there’s time to let me know what kind of event you think would be best if your city has been selected.

Again: There is absolutely no demographic study or statistical research that went into deciding the cities. It was purely based on enthusiasm. Think of it like a school assembly "applause meter" where the principal holds his hands above people's heads and you clap and then he decides who got the most applause. This is the qualitative—not quantitative-- book tour.  And together we’ll see how it goes! Again, props to my publishers at Gotham for funding a haphazard and unconventional tour despite a general industry disdain for tours of all kinds.

The schedule on the jump!

LA Book Events: July 8!

As you know, I've already given up being a good daughter or a good friend who actually, say, calls people, stays in touch, etc. For a while, my blog and twitter were serving the purpose for me, but I've sadly dropped the ball on that too. I just got an email from my very understanding mother that read:

"Sometimes I can tell from the blog what is  happening,  I don't see anything about moving.  Did I miss it?  Is painting the red bedroom connected with moving? About needing a personal assistant--how about one less direction to be going in? Busy.  Busy."

Wow. When my Mom doesn't even know that we moved into our first house things are bad! At the very least, I need to blog more! (More on the assistant in a moment...)

First things first: I wanted to tell those of you who don't know I'll be at two events in Los Angeles tomorrow, July 8. One is at Yahoo in Santa Monica at 4:30 in the Building E Training Room, followed by beer and wine and book signing for all. It's open to the public-- details here. There are free books for the first 50 people, but anyone who has a copy and would like me to sign it is welcome to bring it!

The second event I'm somewhat crashing. It's Mixergy's Drinks 2.0 and Andrew Warner is going to interview me on camera about the book and other stuff. No books on sale at the event, but as always if you bring one I'll be more than happy to sign it! More info here. Sounds like it'll be a packed house!!

Hope to meet loads of you there!

Photos from My Party!

First from Valleywag's nice (shocker!) post about it. Second, from sarahlacy.com on flickr. More on the way!

I'm stunned everyone looks so great given how hot and sweaty it was! A few teasers down below from my brilliant personal photographer Geoffrey Ellis (aka Mr. Lacy). Me signing through throngs of people, then two guys working on being "good" Evan Williams of Blogger and Twitter and Jay Adelson of Equinix, Digg and Revision3. (Although people tell me the "Once You're Lucky" cupcakes were tastier...) Again, my friend Johanna did an amazing job on this party for a shoe-string budget. All you people should hire her!

More from ZAPPOS!

On the origins of the company:

And on its future:

By the way, my friend Tim points out the environmental toll of all that shipping and returning. The problem with taking away the financial stigma is you increase it dramatically. Since I KNOW Tony reads this, dying to know his response. (As is Tim)

ZAPPOS! CEO SPEAKS!

After the crazy-enthusiastic response I got to this post, I've decided to always write ZAPPOS! instead of Zappos. I also decided to do a few interviews with CEO Tony Hsieh for TechTicker. Here's the first piece. I'm still not sure the economics of ZAPPOS! will work long term, but I give Tony a lot of credit for following his own vision and not giving into the capital-efficiency craze. (And my husband is buying some shoes right now...) At least he's building something interesting which is more than I can say for a lot of me-too Web companies. More segments on TechTicker today.

Enjoy!

Blog-Keeping

Wow. So day after launch and launch party. I am in pajamas still with no makeup on which makes me very happy after a week of press and being "on." I just finished edits on the BusinessWeek excerpt from the book which runs next week in the magazine and online on Sunday with a slideshow telling you little-known-facts about the guys in the book. Not that I've written that slideshow. Saving that to Saturday.

Today I've got a satellite radio interview and a panel to moderate down at TieCon. So if you're there say hi! If you're there and want a book I'll have a few for $20....you know those ones that were supposed to show up for my party? They got waylayed. Thanks for nothing FedEx! In case you don't follow me on Twitter, Yahoo's PR agency scoured the city looking for books and we re-sold them at a loss. Sold out of 40 or so in about 30 minutes. Thinking about doing a low-key happy hour somewhere for people who want a signed copy but didn't get to come to the party or got there too late to get one. Would anyone come? I have 150 books that need to go to a good home. If anyone wants a bulk order of signed books, lmk.

Also, my husband took loads of photos last night we'll be posting on the blog soon. We also had a professional photographer. Here's Wired's write up of the party. A little unfair on the criticism of no one "important" being there I thought. They neglected to mention several entrepreneurs and VCs who did attend like Evan Williams and David Hornik. And Mark Zuckerberg is in India so he gets a pass. And Marc Andreessen doesn't leave the house. Besides, I got to spend a year with those guys. I wanted to spend a night with fans and friends. Everyone at the party was just as much a part of the Web 2.0 movement as the guys in the book. So I couldn't have been happier with how it went!