Fred Davis (one of the guys who helped start Wired Magazine, among many other things) and I had a little lunch at the Web 2.0 conference and I told him about Linda Stone’s great dinners (I can’t find a blog of hers, but here she is on ITConversations). She’d have six people over for dinner, which was always amazing, both for the food and the company and the wine, and she’d sit them down and start a conversation. They had a much more profound effect on my life than any other event I’d ever attended.

Fred said he was thinking about the same thing. That having a few people over for dinner often gets the most interesting conversations going.

I also told him I’d like to do a cooking show, eventually. Mostly so I could learn to cook something and impress Maryam. Not to mention that one of our VCs, Paul Matteucci, is a total “foodie.” (He does the fun “FoodCrunch” blog).

I wanted to have a chef come in and show us how to cook a meal. After all, geeks need to know more than just how to run companies or write code.

Anyway, here’s the first version of “Cooking with Geeks”. This is the “cooking” part of the conversation. The “dinner” part will run tomorrow.

Geeks involved are: Barney Pell, CEO, Powerset; Mary Hodder, CEO, Dabble; Henri Poole, founder/director, Civic Actions; Kathleen Lyman, CEO, LaunchMedia; Steve Gillmor, founder of GestureLab (damn, he’s not invisible). Our co-hosts were Robert Scoble and Fred Davis, co-founder of Wired Magazine. Videographers are Eddie Codel and Glenn Gullmes. Chef is Rozana Ogneva of www.AreYouBeingServedCatering.com. Our host is Jeannine Barnard. A second part of this dinner is coming tomorrow.

If you want a short video, this is NOT for you (this one is 50 minutes long). We cook a little bit, joke around a little bit, get serious a little bit.

But, mostly, this is an experiment. What do you think? Where should we go with this?

Because it’s an experiment, it starts slow but it starts going better. One problem is we don’t introduce everyone right away.

We’re not sure how often we’ll do these or who’ll get invited. The only thing we are sure about is when we do one we’ll turn on the cameras and put that up on the Web.

The audio isn’t optimal, too. Gotta figure out how to mic a large group with a minimal crew (read: no audio engineers) while having a frying pan going.

We filmed this back in early January. Sorry for taking so long to get it out.

UPDATE: the conversation gets better at about 22 minutes in. At 28 minutes we talk about social media and the friction between the younger generation and older generation in the workforce.

One thing I forgot? The recipe! I’ll get that and upload it.

Google hiring managers should listen in at about 39 minutes. Fred Davis makes a great point about leadership.

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Truth is, I’m just as big a jerk for not linking to cool stuff as anyone else is. Yeah, yeah, I link up plenty enough. It’s easy to link to people who are smarter than me. Cooler than me. Better looking than me. Have better news judgment than me. Or, just have better access than me. That’s what my link blog is all about.

But, I had it all wrong and 162 comments is all the proof I needed.

I haven’t been looking for different ideas. Different blogs. New people who I don’t already know.

It’s a lot easier to link to Engadget or Dave Winer or Shelley Powers instead of trying to find someone who has a new idea, new way of saying the same old, same old.

I’m running through the blogs right now that were posted to that thread and there are some really interesting people there.

Thank you so much. My life is a lot richer today. That, in the end, is all that really matters. Watch my link blog expand…

Loren, Loren, Loren. I put a damn softball over your home plate and you whiffed it. I expected so much more from you. While bloggers the world over are giddy with excitement over my coming demise all you can do is say that “Linkbait is for losers?” Damn, you’ve gotten soft ever since PodTech joined forces with you. Say it straight up. I can handle the harsh realities of life. I’m already lying under the bus. Drive, baby, drive! 😉

I do have to admit I love it when you say “they have the player so they can fast forward.”