Times Square and the TOC conference

By some stroke of mad luck, my company decided to send me on a whopper of a business trip. They decided to fly myself and a few of the VPs to New York to attend the O'Reilly Tools of Change for Publishers conference. I'd rabidly followed the news bits from the first installation of this conference in 2007. Now, amazingly enough, I was going to be able to attend the second one!

My flight left on Sunday. I was seated next to one of the VP's, PN. He had brought a stack of Publishers Weekly, and I had my iPod. For awhile, we didn't say much, but then we hit it off and I'm afraid I filled his ears for the last half hour with some of the training preparation the Editors Guild has been doing. When we got to LaGuardia, I sort of followed PN. I felt like a child, there was so much noise and people were everywhere. We ducked through hallways and passed through doors. Everything seemed stuck together, as if we were in the innards of a giant robot. Finally we popped out into the dark to wait in line in the cold for a taxi.

We stayed at the Marriot Marquee in the center of Times Square. The taxi seemed to come up to the hotel from nowhere, and an army of african-american men in thick coats ushered us like spanish bulls to the eighth floor where I nice young indian man gave me a room on the fortieth floor looking right down into the Square itself. Standing at the window looking down, I thought of all the people that I wish could be there with me to enjoy the moment. And then I thought of how ugly New York is when you take your eyes off the neon. (Strange isn't it that human beings should make things more artificial the closer they live to each other. Strange that we should make things out of such inhumane materials: things that bleach and fade, crack and peel, without mercy. But maybe there is something human in that.)

The TOC conference is not cheap; I was committed to squeezing every bit of value out of it, both for my own sake and as an expression of value to my company. Remember, everyone else that was slated to go either was directly IT related or had "VP" on their business card (or above). One thing I wanted to do was videoblog the conference. I had brought my webcam for exactly that purpose. I set it up the laptop and unpacked.

Now, business requires a sense of nerdiness these days. The kind of thing that would have landed you straight in the chess club (ahem, SWR) is now expected. Admittedly, there is a fine line, but computer saavy is usually a plus no matter what department you hail from. Emboldened by this, I took the time the previous week to make a Google map of the few blocks surrounding the hotel and to mark recommended restaurants and points of interest. I was determined to make the most of the experience, both the conference and the city, and the conference wasn't until the next day. That meant dinner out. First stop: Carmine's on 44th for Italian.

Now the map says that Carmine's is only a block south, which is true. The problem is that the elevators on the ground floor of the Mariotte are arranged in a circle, which means that the people coming out of them could shoot out from anywhere like ping pong balls from the top of one of those chance contests at fairs. Mine came out pointing north, though I thought it was south. The wind was icy cold, and people were wrapped to their ears in coats and scarves. I had on a windbreaker and, for awhile anyway in the face of that icy blast, my face. Seeing the stack of jumbotron TVs, I assumed I was heading correctly, not realizing that the Square is bordered on both ends by those gaudy advertisements. Can you imagine what Edison would think if he could see those! I went past 47th and, realizing my error, turned West at 49th.

By the time I had oriented myself and turned around (walking south along 8th Ave), L. called to see how things were going. Actually, I was glad she did, not only to hear her voice (but who can hear anything with the speakers in the RAZR phones?), but also because yacking on your phone is a fantastic way to blend in and look like all the other freezing New Yorkers. "You're outside? You're walking outside? You're on the street? You're lost? And where are you going?" She was a little nervous, but I was pretty high with just being there. I stopped and asked a cop for directions--that freaked L out a little bit. But she felt better, and so did I, when I finally found what I was looking for.

Carmine's looks like a speakeasy. You can paint all the people in twenties-era clothing, give it all a faded yellow color, and it looks like any other big city crime photo on PBS. This means, of course, that it has atmosphere to burn. The portions are so large that the waiter steered me to the bar for a sandwich. I felt a little foolish at first, but a cappuccino took care of that. And, hey, turns out I was sitting not three stools away from Sarah Jessica Parker, who was absorbed in conversation with a girlfriend. Hmmm...celebrity sighting: check!

It was nearly midnight by the time I made it back to the hotel. By now I had my bearings and knew how the street numbers ran in this part of town. I knew now that I was in the theatre district (giant ads celebrated HairSpray, Spamalot, the Little Mermaid, and Phantom) and that it is sometimes called the Middle West side. I knew that Times Square is flanked by those giant glowing CRTs. And I knew I still had work to do.

Back in my room, I turned on the webcam, adjusted the lighting a bit, and started talking. It took about an hour to get enough usable footage, what between me blinking, licking my lips (it was dry in there), wiping my nose, yawning, or simply forgetting what I was saying and rambling on about "digital" and "future" and "business models." I fell into bed at two o'clock, so happy to be where I was that it didn't even matter that wake up was in four-and-a-half hours. It was hard even then to convince myself that a few hours of sleep mattered more than exploring this giant new continent called Manhattan.