This year’s Admonsters excursion (to conference #17 to be exact) took me out to the environs of Albequerque and Santa Fe at the Hyatt Tamaya resort in Bernalillo, New Mexico. We decided to make this a family affair since very soon Amy will be on a no-travel regimen (due date is October 31, only 10 weeks away). Amy’s parents also joined us for a bit of R&R&Sam. To top that all off, Amy’s aunt (who is from Albequerque) and uncle came down from Denver – and their son Jonathan came out from LA. So all in all it turned into a little Handelman/Siegel/Gardenswartz reunion.
We had a great dinner with Bobbi’s 90-year-old father and the rest of the clan on Friday night, headed up to Santa Fe on Saturday along with 100,000 of our closest friends for the annual Indian Market and Art Show. It was a madhouse, but a great way to see the full scope of what the area’s artistans have to offer. One celebrity spotting, Curtis Stone of TLC’s Take Home Chef. Despite rumors of both Oprah and Dennis Hopper being seen around our hotel, neither was confirmed.
Meant to post this a while back. I was in San Francisco for the recent Ad:Tech Conference. This was the view from the hallway of my hotel- an amazing panorama from the Golden Gate Bridge (far left, out of frame) to the Transamerica Building, Coit Tower, Alcatraz and the Bay Bridge (far right, out of frame). A truly amazing view. The show was excellent as well, and I spoke to some very bright folks involved in the burgeoning ad business. DoubleClick was showing off their Exchange product and new logo (very Web 2.0 green), there were more ad networks than you could shake a stick at, and video ad syndication plays were everywhere.
The blog has been unusually quiet of late, owing mostly to the fact that we’ve been extremely busy on all fronts. 2007 is shaping up to be a very busy year, and the first few months have been spent on the professional side planning and preparing for many many projects. That made last week’s getaway to San Juan, Puerto Rico all the more wonderful. The photo gallery is here.
Amy, Sam and I took advantage of a slew of frequent flier miles and jetted off last weekend for a week in the sun. Sam got sick, as did his proud papa, and the long time out of his own element seemed to be too much for Sam, as he demonstrated some of the very first full-blown tantrums we’ve ever seen. The cure was just getting him home – as we pulled up to the house in our taxi, he said ‘Home!’ and was just super happy to be back with his toys, crib and kitty cats. The people in Puerto Rico were super friendly, the food and drink was great (although they didn’t seem to offer many veggies), and the beach was just gorgeous.
Speaking of which on the cats front, we had a little scare with the elder statesman of the house, Chaos. He got a case of mild pneumonia while we were away, and ended up at the vet on IVs and what not, but is now home and doing much better.
So this post is more about food than anything else, but let me highlight the beautiful little dumpling morsels seen above, caught through a window of a joint in Koreatown. As far as work goes, I spent most of last week at meetings in the city, punctuated by a couple of fun dinners with coworkers and friends. First up on Tuesday and Wednesday were a couple of Internet Advertising Bureau events. I spoke on a panel discussing ‘New Mediums, New Challenges – How Ad Operations is Being Redefined.’ Former coworker Mike Stoeckel (now of Fox Interactive) was the moderator, and Tim Messier from Weather.com, Jared Iwata from Microsoft and I had an energetic discussion on podcasting, vodcasting, mobile, video syndication, AJAX and the general implications of Web 2.0 technologies on existing counting, ops and reporting methodologies. Wednesday featured more IAB meetings, including a joint publisher-agency ad ops summit at the NYC ‘Googleplex’ which only opened recently – with quite the cafeteria, let me tell you! Thursday and Friday was a return to all things Turner as we kicked off several major ad technology projects that will keep my team busy through January. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the awesome dinners I had while in NY. First at a great Argentinian steakhouse on 9th Ave with my fellow AdOps council members, then a great selection of gourmet pizzas featuring lobster and bacon on one and a white clam topping on another delivered to my old coworker and friend Hart’s place in Chelsea. And finally, a fun outing with coworkers Lauren Gardner and Beth Kuenzi to Koreatown for some hardwood charcoal goodness. That evening was topped off by cheescake (multiples for some of us) at a 100+ year-old bakery in the East Village. Yummy. Photos are here for your salivating enjoyment.
