On this day in 1999, I stated my vision for RSS, and asked others to express theirs. [Scripting News]

What's funny is that Dave asked for comments and got 3.  Now, he'd get 30 and several trackbacks, plus the occasional “Dave is trying to control us!” rant.  Thanks, Dave, for starting this whole thing.

I also went back and read the first three messages in the archive from 1998.  Dire Straits?  Music and programming always seem to go together.

I just sent Chris Lydon $20 for his webcasts. I've been listening to the interviews on his website and keeping up with the new show. I've been a fan of NPR and donate to my local station, but I wanted an opportunity to contribute directly to the author.

Without shyness, I also contributed to get his attention: I'd like to interview him at BloggerCon

I received two donations yesterday. One was from Ingrid and
one from a friend a business advisor, Juliet Mee. This gets me to an
important milestone: $200. This gives me enough money to pay for the gas
round trip (25 MPG, 1400 miles, 15 gallon tank, $1.80/gallon) and maybe some
snacks along the way.

I also received word from Wendy that my request for a press
pass was approved, pending confirmation of my press credentials. A quick
phone call to the Springfield Business Journal and we're all
set. Wendy, Clarissa's out of the office until late next week. They want to have her sign off on the whole deal before I send you anything. I'll call you if something changes.

I'll write more later. I'm headed back to the house to fiddle with the
firewall. By the way, Jake's right: Mozilla Firebird rocks. If Safari
didn't exist, I'd use Firebird instead. On my Windows laptop at work, I
have it installed and it's fast-fast-fast for rendering pages.

I just received a donation from Ed Cone to help me along the way.  Ed, thanks!  Count on something from me when this is all over, too.  To visitors coming from Ed's page, welcome.  Current topics in discussion:  Powerbook withdrawl, RSS and aggregators will reinvent the web browser and Send Steve to BloggerCon!

I made a quick phone call to the Berkman Center and talked to Wendy this morning, checking on the status of a press pass to the event.  The BloggerCon folks sound like a cheerful bunch; I'm looking forward to meeting them all in person.

Update: corrected the “Wendy” link to reflect the correct Wendy.

Send Steve to BloggerCon Update

I want to put out an update about money usage for the trip. Some of the money criteria has changed for the better:

Transportation: I had originally budgeted $500 for a plane ticket, but I'm reducing it to $200. I've made the decision to drive, a 2 day trip one way. That adds an additional hotel stay into the budget; more on that later. I chose driving because it gives me the most freedom and frankly is the least expensive. It also allows my wife to go with me. She tells me she'll be happy to spend our money in the shops of Boston while I'm learning all about RSS and how it can change the world.

Lodging: I'm reducing it to $200 from $500. An old friend of mine lives in Waltham and will allow Tammy and I to stay for gratis. Bless you, Jason–you are making this trip possible. The $200 in the budget now accounts for my hotel stays on the road (one night each way).

That brings us to a new total: $500 for the conference, $200 for transportation, $200 for travel day lodging, and $200 for meals–$1100. With $105 pledged, we are now under the $1000 mark left. If Harvard and Dave will allow me to attend as a member of the press (I'm writing two articles for the Springfield Business Journal), then we can eliminate some of the conference fee.

Finally, we'll have a laptop issue. My Powerbook is (nearly) sold, so I'm going to spend some time with my local Apple dealer to aquire a Powerbook for the conference. Failing that, my Handspring Treo and Radio's mail-to-weblog feature will see me through. I'll need a better email client for the Treo, though.

To all who have kind words: encouragement is one of the best drugs you can give the human brain. Thanks!

BloggerCon has changed me. A single event has given me a focus that I haven't had for four years. My sleepy eyes have been trying to open since the fall of 2000 when I stopped doing training for my company and went back to being a technical consultant.

I've always been an idea person. I've been able to string together odd ideas into interesting proposals. Ask any of my friends about my bright idea about a library selling books. I kicked that idea around for two years before Amazon made good use of it. :>

RSS and it's related technology environment has inspired me like no technology before it. I pursued my CCNA, getting half way through it (reading about routing IPX frames over ISDN is a guaranteed cure for insomnia) before I gave up. I sold the books last week and bought “Designing With Web Standards” by Jeffrey Zeldman and “CSS: A Definitive Guide”[Amazon Link] by Eric Meyer. I'm saving money for a proper install of Frontier on MacOS X and am working through an oldie but goodie: “Frontier: The Definitive Guide” by Matt Neuberg. I bought it from an Amazon affiliate with a good rep and it came in good condition. It's amazing how much of it is still correct.

I've spent the last week explaining RSS, content syndication and XML to everyone who would listen. More often than not, I found myself explaining why content syndication has changed how I use the web. Of course, business wanted to know how to exploit the technology. I avoid conversations that talked abut advertising, instead focusing on the use of RSS and a delivery format for internal information: HR benefits, marketing info and sales stats. In my current company, we use web servers, databases and HTML to deliver content. In order to tell people, we send out mass emails that most don't need and don't remember. With RSS feeds we could eliminate the notify email and make broadcast information more manageable. After this conference, I'll become the local expert and evangelist on RSS, XML and content syndication. It will be the biggest thrill of my professional life and the biggest opportunity.

Finally, in this oddly structured post, I'd like thank Dave Winer for his efforts: popularizing RSS, Radio Userland, DaveNet, moving the spec to Berkman and BloggerCon. Before his inspiration and infectious enthusiasm, I never would have done this, this, this or this.

I'll be away from computers and technology for the next couple of days. It's my annual family reunion and I'll be manning the grill for roasted sweet corn. Expect some updates on Sunday.

I'm selling my Powerbook to allow me to upgrade to a newer machine and raise some funds for BloggerCon. My brother is deploying out to sea (he's a meterologist with the Navy) and he needs to sell his desktop machine. I'll set it up as the Radio server, allowing me to post from any web browser and read news. I still have my Handspring Treo, so moblogging will keep me busy on the road.

If you are interested in a great Powerbook at a great price, email me.

Send Steve to BloggerCon Update

I've got a little more news this morning. I received a $100 pledge, carrying the total to $105.00! That's a significant vote of faith–thank you.

I spent some time talking to my local NPR affiliate this morning about the conference and the opportunities for news or feature stories. Not only did they express an interest in the content, but had some great questions about how they could use the technology on their website. We set up a meeting for next Friday where I'll do a short presentation.

To be sure that donors understand, I'm committed to going to the conference. I will be attending, even if it's my own money that's spent. It's rare to be at the right time and place when opportunity knocks. Considering how loud it's knocking, how can I resist?

Next week, I'll be posting the Keynote/PowerPoint presentation I'll be using to woo sponsors and unveil a revamped layout for the category pages we're using.