Why am I not linking to Dave Winer’s podcast where he had Steve Gillmor and Jason Calacanis and Doc Searls on? Cause I heard there might be a lawsuit involved. Heheh.

Well, that’s enough from the front porch of Chico Hot Springs where there’s a cool band playing. I gotta call out to Bridget Cavanaugh too. She keeps showing up at every event I’m at in Montana. I think she’s stalking me. Seriously, she’s in PR here and she gets invited to the coolest stuff (and told us about this party tonight at Chico which is working out pretty well).

Since we’re living mostly off the grid up in Montana (IE, not hooked up to the Internet) it’s an interesting thing to watch what people can’t do without.

Me? Email, my WordPress comments, and TechMeme were the first things to check.

But WTF is Dodgeball? Damn, everyone in my van is on that. Freaking cell phones were dinging every few minutes all the way here. Whhhheeeee, we know where Tantek is (he’s one of the top users in San Francisco of Dodgeball). We know what parties Eddie’s friends are at. Every single one of them. Very freaky. But very addictive. Especially on a long roadtrip where we’re jealous of those who are at the cool Wiki and WordPress conferences.

When I get back on the grid I’m signing up. Seems stupid but it was a lot of fun.

What caused me to write this? Guy Kawasaki and Seth Godin are talking about the no-bullshiitake test for Web 2.0 technologies.

Mine? If you go off the grid and get nervous about missing it you know it’s bad.

We’re having a ball here in Montana. Spent the day soaking in the Chico Hot Springs with a few geeks. I’ll bet the pictures will be on Valleywag sometime soon. “Fat white guys soak in bubble pool” will be the headline.

Heh.

Anyway, I already found the wifi in the state and the two biggest geeks. Had dinner last night with Greg Gianforte, CEO of RightNow ($110 million in revenues, publicly traded). He indeed was as interesting as I expected him to be. But the total shock was meeting Andrew Field, CEO of Printing For Less.

He told me his mechanic firm fixed my mom’s car in the 1990s and she was their best customer.

Small world. He has 150 employees. $24 million in revenues. Privately held, but the buzz around the party we were at last night said he was heading toward going public. 

Both are hiring. And quickly too. Greg says he’s hiring a new employee every day right now. Maybe that’s why they call it “RightNow.”

Anyway, that’s enough geek talk. These two CEOs will be dropping by my mom’s house this week for “OffTheGridCamp.”

Tomorrow we’re going to Yellowstone. Talk to you later. Hope things are going well for you.

Oh, David Petersen of XML.com came out to visit us in Salt Lake City (so did a few geeks from the Mormon Church) and he’s put up some photos and recordings of the interesting conversation we had.

Thanks to Steve Sloan for taking nice pictures of Maryam, me and Patrick at BlogHer.

Michelle Quinn at the San Jose Mercury News interviewed me about my new job and I hear it’s on the front of the business section but they don’t distribute that paper in Montana, so I’ll have to be happy with seeing the bits online.

Oh, PayPerPost is paying bloggers to take potshots at me. Wonderful. Someone doesn’t agree with your approach to blogs so you build your own mob to attack. I love how this guy doesn’t disclose he was paid to write this blog post (someone else sent me the “hit notice” that they have out on my head).

Yeah, I’m not at WordCamp. We have our own WordPress camp going up in Montana, though. But I’m bummed that Matt Mullenweg isn’t at MY camp. Heheh.

Hope your week is full of geeks and fun.