D Conference Archives - Graeme Thickins on Tech

The appearance of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates on the same stage, which we’ve been anxiously awaiting for some time now, happened late yesterday at the D Conference in Carlsbad, CA. This event is the ultimate annual digerati place to be, and could only be pulled off by Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher. Photoforpost053107 It was a tough ticket to get, as usual, sold out months in advance. A press pass? Hah! I could only dream. The closest I could come was knowing someone who scored a pass — for example, my editor at Conferenza, Gary Bolles (see below for link).

But the piece de resistance of the event — the onstage appearance of tech’s biggest two names — by the accounts now posted on the All Things D site, and just published by the Wall Street Journal (may require subscription), show that it was a rather friendly, mutual-admiration-society kinda thing. Schmaltzy even? Well, yeah. Then again, I guess these guys are getting old enough now that we can’t expect fireworks all the time anymore. But, hey, it was sure some, nice friendly reminiscences! Gee, sniff, thanks for the memories, guys… 🙂 They actually come across as, well, human. Fancy that.

Here’s the highlight video, as posted at the conference site. And also check out Conferenza’s great recap.

Well, it wasn’t a part of Web 2.0 Expo, but while I was here, I wanted to catch a big wing-ding last night at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View: Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher’s launch party for their new Wall Street Journal AllThingsD.com web site. So, we bolted from Moscone West about 7:00 pm, with Aaron Fulkerson of MindTouch at the wheel. It looked like a Volvo, this car he rented, but I think it was actually a rocket ship. Either that or Aaron has received some serious tutoring in Formula One racing in his day. Tha man pushed it. But then we were running quite late for this gig. It was wild ride down the 101, white knuckles all the way (mine). Somehow we got there safe and sound, after almost losing it on a really sharp turn on the freeway exit, while he was telling me he once saw Steve Miller perform at the ampitheater close by. Anyway, it was great event, and we were glad we made the trip. Quite crowded — I’d say a few hundred people, luminaries everywhere. Couldn’t figure out why I was invited… 🙂 Here are some pix, first a few shot in the computer display area, including some with Aaron.

And here’s a shot of Walt (center) and his assistant Katie Boehret (far left), along with a couple other scenes in the lobby area of the venue, which is really quite nice (my first time there). But they don’t do justice to how crowded this party was…

Finally, after a couple glasses of some really great Pinot, I grabbed this shot of the whole AllThingD team. Everyone was there to celebrate all their hard work getting the site ready for its imminent launch. The second shot below is of Katie Boehret chatting with a guy from the Participatory Culture Foundation (sorry, forgot his name), whose mission is to build an open and democratic television platform. The third shot is of two guys from Google who work in new biz dev — Tom Sly, whom I met at Demo ’07, and Ronny Conway, son of legendary Silicon Valley angel, Ron Conway. Told him I’d met his dad, way back when. (Way to make a guy feel old, Ronny!) Fun guys! And the best shot I saved for last, of me doing my pose.pngth-famous-person shot with Kara Swisher. It was a fun time! Just wish I’d have thought to hit up Kara for a press pass to their next D Conference, coming up in May…. 🙂 Man, would I love to blog that baby.