09:56, Thursday 2 Mar., 2006 Link

O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference 2006: Tomorrow, I get on a plane and head for San Diego. I was a bit nervous that, with the new bubble, it'd just be me, a dozen Yahoo! employees, and 450 VCs--but actually the attendee list looks pretty good. I'm presenting, with Ben, my new project: playsh, the Playful Shell.

It turns out the date of the presentation is 6 months, to the day, from when I had The Idea. It was called "calcify" then, and arrived fully formed half-way on the Northern Line between Euston to Kentish Town, a ylem-crusted crystal of modernity, protest, human process, the absurd, and code.

Over the following 13 days I wrote 3 prototypes to check different technical aspects, and talked to Ben who was naturally (at least) 4 years ahead of me. Given that, he had to be in on the whole thing. Without his experience and ideas, I'd still be stumbling around in twisty little passages (it's kinda hard, designing metaphysics one or two levels down from where I want to be). By the end of that time, I was sure I'd could get something working, and we had our proposal to submit. And now here we are.

Okay, okay, okay. Here's the pitch: I made a thing. You should come see. You will be underwhelmed, I assure you. But the presentation will be fun; there will conversation about both code and philosophy (as if there's even a distinction!), and you have my promise that I will do at least 1 thing in public that I have never done before.