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Santa, The Easter Bunny, and…

…Frosty The Snowman. None of these characters are visiting my house. However, last night there was a Tooth Fairy sighting! Brooke lost her first tooth! Quite exciting!

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NYNMA, RIP

It seems that NYNMA as an entity is dead. From their site:

For the past ten years, the New York New Media Association (NYNMA) has had the pleasure of serving the New York area technology industry. Unfortunately, we must now inform you that as of Friday, December 19, 2003, NYNMA has ceased operations due to a significant financial shortfall.


The SIIA which had bailed out NYNMA around two years ago has basically absorbed it and made it SIIA New York.
Having been a board member of the organization, I feel a certain sadness about this. There was an opportunity to turn the group around after the SIIA reorg and create new programs to reach new audiences. However, that opportunity was squandered due to, in my opinion, lack of good management, good marketing and lack of investment in the old, but loyal member base. Even when I resigned and joined NYSIA, I was willing to help NYNMA, but there wasn’t really a person in the organization to listen to the offer. The last few years the group was understaffed and under resourced. There’s more to say, but I don’t want to turn this into a personal attack. It is sad when something you worked on for a while dies, but, after all we’ve been through in the Dot Com Era, such things sting less and are less surprising.
Good luck and good bye.

Update: See Greg Elin’s moving post.

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Hairspray

Got to see the Broadway show Hairspray this weekend, and went backstage to meet see the cast, including the famous Harvey Firestein. My friend Larry Aronson obtained the tickets and was our gracious guide via his friend in the cast. I highly recommend the show! Great fun and energy.
Larry is of note for being the author of the first book on HTML – I guess I’ve known him for around 10 years now!
Also joining us was the fabulous Courtney Pulitzer, looking more wonderful than ever. It is rare that I use “fabulous” to describe anyone, but Courtney rates it. Thanks for a fun night.

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Drinking update…

Joi writes:



So far so good…I haven’t had a drink since I quit drinking. It may just be the novelty, but I’m enjoying myself greatly. [via Joi Ito’s Web]


I enjoyed meeting Joi this weekend and I’m sure he can do about anything he puts his mind to. Though he may need an IRC channel, two or three mobile devices, a powerbook and wifi…. 🙂 Good luck.

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Free(zing) WiFi

So I’m in this Starbucks under the NYU space at the Woolworth Building. I could use the T-Mobile service, but the fine folks of the New York Downtown Alliance provide Free Wifi in City Hall Park. But, as they say, the weather outside is frightful. So I’m inside sipping latte and packets, albiet having to sit by the window next to the door to get the signal from across the street. Everytime the door opens, it is quite chilly. The things we do for bandwidth…