A few years ago just after launching Blogging.la but prior to expanding it into Metblogs I attended an early incarnation of e-tech and to this day it was still one of the more inspiring conferences I’ve been to. (I’ve said this before but the feeling then was much more “look at this thing I built in my garage, i wonder what we all can do with it” which is very different than today’s version which is more “here’s the presentation about this company which you knew about 6 months ago and here’s how it can make you money” – but that is a different rant all together). Anyway, at that conference I barely knew anyone, and everyone I knew I was meeting in person for the first time. Perhaps because of that I found myself alone a lot and just started talking to people who happened to be around.
Felix Peterson was one of those people. We ended up in an elevator together and later at a lunch table and talked about which sessions had inspired us and what we were hoping to learn in the ones we were about to attend. We both left that conference with loads of ideas and when I ran into him a year later I couldn’t wait to tell him how I’d put so much of that into practice on the blogs. I wasn’t the only who’d been busy as he’d also gotten ideas and launched a product of his own during that year. His project was called Plazes and I’d already seen it and been playing around with it quite a bit just hadn’t realized he was one of the guys behind it.
Over the next we years we traded lots of ideas and stories and have seen the ups and downs of each others companies and lives. It’s been fun and exciting, and I get psyched everytime I see something they are up to. When I was in Berlin a few months back I checked out their new offices and was blown away by the new stuff they were working on. When I saw the the news yesterday that Nokia is planning to acquire them I actually clapped and said “right on!”. Then I realized I was in a coffee shop and felt like an idiot and packed up my stuff and left. But really, I can’t express how psyched I am for Felix, Stephan, and the whole crew over there at Plazes. I know they’ve been busting their ass, and I know they’ve always held on to their vision and it’s immensely cool to have seen that grow through all these stages. They totally deserve this, and it’s super awesome. Congrats everyone!
Comments (1)