At least that's what I thought.

During the panel there was a very awkward moment when Bambi revealed that she is not "allowed" to do business dinners with men. Now that's a very simplistic description of the scenario, but the gist is this. She's married and her husband seems to have an issue with her having business dinners with men. Now I can understand if perhaps there's one particular man who seems to always want to meet with her for a dinner meeting, but to put blanket moratorium ... that seems not only extreme but frankly, ridiculous.

In the interest of avoiding more discomfort than was already apparent, we shifted the topic towards business ... but the moment left a strange feeling for me ... and a bit of sadness for Bambi, whose professional acumen is something I quite respect. I hate the thought that her potential is being limited by such a chauvinist mentality.

Here's the video of the session ... the moment I describe is about 1/2 way through.

So having just finished up the first night of CES soirees, which included the Intel CORE Kick-Off shin-dig at which I gave a little greeting to the crowd, I'm now hunkering down in my favorite ballerina PJs and thought I'd show you my favorite feature of the rooms here at the Venetian.

An (Intel) Inside(r) Look: My digs in Vegas from Cathy Brooks on Vimeo.

I, along with Frank Gruber, Brian Solis, Irina Slutsky, Sarah Austin, iJustine and several others began participating in an array of activities with Intel. One of the major events was their taking most of us to Vegas for CES 2009. It was a blast - if not exhausting!

At the end of the first year, Intel evolved the program, some of us staying involved, a few shifting to "alum" status and a few new folks joining the ranks including Daniel Brusilovsky and Corvida Raven.

As the holidays approach we're now looking at preparation for the second journey of Intel Insiders to Vegas for CES. The folks at Intel asked some of us to provide a few thoughts as to why we're looking forward to CES 2010 ... I couldn't resist getting a little cheesy. We are, after all, going to Vegas. :)

The thing that is somewhat unique, I think, about my role with the Insiders is that I'm not a product reviewer. Never have been. My focus leans heavily towards the real world implementation of technologies - less about the bits and bytes and more about what one does with them and how our world changes as a result.

Ironically as an Insider I'm registered as Press for CES 2010, which has meant an almost ridiculous flood of pitches from PR folks. When I say ridiculous I'm not talking about the volume (which is to be expected with a show of this size). I'm talking about the sheer ineptitude of the alleged professionals who are sending these missives. I'll put aside the fact that they're almost all cut and paste mass mails. Knowing from my own experience having done PR for myriad clients at a big conference, sometimes the mass mail is necessary. However, the utter lack of any research on the lists is astounding. Nearly every pitch talks about setting up an appointment to learn about a product - not a single one has a trend story, theme or higher level perspective.

Now having been in their shoes, I tend to err on the side of using these notes as a teaching moment. That means I reply to every one letting them know that I don't do product reviews, I don't do company news, but if they have something relevant for the writing I do - which requires doing some homework - I'd be happy to consider.

Okay, so perhaps my tone gets a bit snarky and I'll admit that part of that may be just feeling insulted that there are people who have such little regard for quality of work that they're so sloppy. Perhaps it's because I've been sloppy myself in the past and feel guilty. Probably a bit of both.

In any case, my efforts largely go towards the old adage - no good deed goes unpunished. You wouldn't believe the responses I got.

Some are downright rude, demanding I meet with them anyway. Others just ignore my note and send another request for a meeting without any clarification. A few try to work around it by sending a pitch that's clearly not thought through.

PR people who are this clueless are a disgrace to their industry. For the record, I realize many of those pitching for something like CES are likely the junior-level account folks with little to no experience. In those cases, I say to the agencies employing them - SHAME ON YOU! To set them out into the wild with no guidance or mentoring is reflection that your agency sucks.

However, several of the pitches came from people with titles like "managing director" "senior account executive" "account supervisor" - all of which should theoretically carry enough experience to know better.

Okay ... rant over.

I'm still excited to be going to CES with the Intel Insiders and for those whose pitches are relevant and thoughtful, I'll look forward to meeting them too.

This week's show has an extra dash of uncertainty because when you're joined by the likes of feisty Ewan Spence - blogger and entrepreneur as well as one of the Traveling Geeks who just returned from Paris; Kevin Marks of BT (with whom there was plenty of frolic in Paris) and Chris Heuer, you never know what will happen.

I do know the topics include: recap of LeWeb (especially BT's ROCKING Internet, the Social Media Club House and Kevin's talk), discussion about Ewan's new toy and holidays.

The Show:
Ah the joys of technology - started out great, then my phone rang, which for some reason killed the Internet connection ... so brave a few minutes of dead air (just a few, really, not nearly as bad as the 10 minutes of dead air thanks to Scoble's kicking the mic cable out last week in Paris!) and enjoy a fun freestyle show!

The Guests:


Ewan Spence is a blogger, author and writer based out of Edinburgh, Scotland. In addition to his own blog, he has contributed and contributes to BBC News, BBC Magazine (online), The Stage (UK Arts and Entertainment Newspaper), Computing (VNU), iProng Magazine, IT Pro, O’Reilly’s Make Magazine, Palmtop Magazine, Podcast User Magazine, UK Tech and UK Mobile Blognation, PDA Essentials, Mobile Messaging 2.0 and All About Symbian. He wrote the book Rapid Mobile Enterprise Development for Symbian OS and has audio program commissions for BBC Radio 5 Live – Through the Night and Pods and Blogs, Computer Outlook Talk Radio Show and Talk 107. He also regularly speaks at and moderates panels at high profile technology conferences around the world.

Kevin Marks works at BT as VP of Web Services. From 2007 to 2009, he worked at Google on OpenSocial. From 2003 to 2007 he was Principal Engineer at Technorati responsible for the spiders that make sense of the web and track millions of blogs daily. He has been inventing and innovating for over 17 years in emerging technologies where people, media and computers meet. Before joining Technorati, Kevin spent 5 years in the Quicktime Engineering team at Apple, building video capture and live streaming into OS X. He was a founder of The Multimedia Corporation in the UK, where he served as Production Manager and Executive Producer, shipping million-selling products and winning International awards. He has a Masters degree in Physics from Cambridge University and is a BBC-qualified Video Engineer.One of the driving forces behind microformats.org he regularly speaks at Conferences and Symposia on emergent net technologies and their cultural impact.

Chris Heuer has over 15 years experience as a digital visionary, creative media technologist and holistic marketing strategist, allowing him to provide an invaluable perspective that frames the modern day challenges of organizations grappling with technology driven change in an approachable way. Over the last 3 years his leadership has built Social Media Club into the world's leading organization for Social Media Professionals. In the process, Chris has become a world-class speaker and facilitator, hosting round tables and speaking to Social Media Professionals around the world. Chris can speak to any issue or challenge related to Social Media, and also is able to speak to a variety of issues concerning social change, modern management, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, organizational transformation, innovation, co-creation, holistic business strategy, web site development, user experience, and the knowledge economy.

The guests joining Cathy on this episode included: PayPal's Osama Bedier, former Googler turned investor Chris Sacca, some of the Club House posse and a few other surprises!

In typical technological gaffe fashion, just after the intro music began for the episode, Robert Scoble kicked out the microphone cable. Thankfully Chris Heuer noticed so we got things, but not until about 10 minutes into the show ... so make your way past the dead air as the rest of the is worth hearing!

In addition to most of my housemates, I'll be joined by several of LeWeb's speakers including: PayPal's Osama Bedier; British Telecom's JP Rangaswami and Gary Shainberg; former Googler turned investor Chris Sacca and possibly some other surprises! (To check out the bios of my guests, you can visit the Social Media Hour blog.)

Join us LIVE for this very special show and NOTE THE SPECIAL BROADCAST TIME of 7:00am Pacific/10:00am Eastern, which is 4:00pm in Paris.

To listen to the show live, just click here. :)

The Show:

Want to know more about the guests ... then read on...

Jennifer Leggio is one of those women in the tech industry for whom I hold such a sentiment, and so when she asked if I would fill her co-host spot one day on the podcast she does with Aaron Strout, I was pleased to say yes.

So that's what I did today from 3pm to 4pm.

They use the same production platform that I use for Social Media Hour, which is BlogTalkRadio. It's not the greatest, but it's just about the only comprehensive and reasonably reliable option I've found for doing a talk show.

We talked a bit about some social applications, we talked with Gradon Tripp and Meg Fowler of Social Media for Social Change, he graciously allowed me do to a shameless plug of my quest to be the Panasonic Living in HD Insider, we talked about the featured Tweeter of the week - Ben Foster of Allstate, we debated advertising on social platforms and then Jennifer Leggio actually called in (turned out the trip on which she was *supposed* to go was canceled so she actually *could* have done the show, but was kind enough to let me sit in anyway), and then we wrapped it up.

Whew. I'm exhausted just reading that. No wonder I was so pooped and my already fading voice got even more Debra Winger-like towards the end.

It was a great time, and I'd gladly go back again; and certainly will be asking both Jennifer and Aaron to join me on Social Media Hour soon!

Take a listen:

Period.

For starters, she's a top notch Journalist with thoughtful and insightful reporting skills and a gift for writing with a graceful command of language. More than that though, I have to say that she is among the most wonderfully supportive and professionally generous people with whom I've had the pleasure of crossing paths.

When I left my job at Seesmic at the end of 2008, Ellen was among the first people to contact me. She was going to be in San Francisco and she wanted to meet to chat. What I thought was going to be a purely social hang out turned out to be Ellen turning her sharp mind's laser focus into a brainstorm on what Cathy 3.0 should, could and would be.

I can say that it is in part due to the great insights and encouragement from Ellen that I figured out my new path and am now well on the way to launching that business (more on that another time).

Several months ago, Ellen told me about a fun new project she was launching for Fast Company. Called "The 30-Second MBA" the idea was to gather an array of industry leaders and provide them with a series of business questions. Their videotaped responses - restricted to :30 sound bites - would be posted to the Fast Company site.

Ellen began naming amazing business leaders that were already in the queue to do this, a list that included: Alan Mulally, CEO of Ford Motor Company; Joe Robles, CEO of USAA; Craig Newmark of CraigsList; Jay Adelson, CEO of Digg; Jeff Swartz, CEO of Timberland.

She wanted to add me to the list.

Far be it for me to say no to such a lovely offer ... and so sitting down in my apartment with my trusty Kodak Zi-6, I hammered out a few 30-second ditties ... and the first two have been posted!

I'm also proud to say that every one of my videos clocked in just below the :30 time limit - not the case for all the faculty :)

Judgement vs. Experience - what's more important?

When does a meeting need to be face to face?

To those who would argue that President Obama has had just a few things on his mind that are a bit more pressing - like several wars, a shattered health care system, and the greatest economic disaster in our nation's history since the depression to name a few - and LGBT equal rights can wait, I say hogwash.

I'm clear that there's a lot on his plate, but stepping up and addressing some of the utterly unconscionable treatment suffered by a decent sized portion of his constituency seems a no brainer.

A week or so after the HRC address that I included below, Obama spoke at an event in San Francisco. I had the privilege of attending that event. (It was not the $30K/couple dinner at the Fairmont. It was the far more reasonably priced event at the Westin - for which I got a discounted ticket through a friend.)

He spoke for about 25 minutes. He spoke about many topics. The LGBT community was not one of them. And he was in San Francisco. Not good.

This speech brought tears to my eyes and warmed my heart, but it also began to ring a bit hollow in my ears.

Talk is cheap, Mr. President. It's time to show us you mean it.

Well, technically I spent my summers in Ventnor, NJ - which is one of three towns along that wedge of land. To be even more specific, I spent my summers in the yellow section of the Monopoly Board - between Ventnor and Atlantic avenues not too far from Marvin Gardens.

Southern Jersey is the usual summertime stomping grounds for folks from Philadelphia and its suburbs (from whence I came), but in my family's case, this place had particularly special meaning.

My father was born and raised there. These days you don't find many folks who fit that category (though I did meet someone at Jeff Pulver's 140 Character Conference in New York last June from there!), but back in those days, it was a lovely community and called by some "the vacation spot of the nation".

My parents met in Atlantic City. The summer after my mother graduated college, she went "down the shore" with her family as they did every summer. Some family friend said to my grandparents, "Have we got a boy for your Doris," and thus the match was made.

Years later my parents bought a beach house - just before I was born - and so every summer of my life we'd pack up from our suburban Philadelphia home and head for the beach. My father would come down on weekends, usually for long weekends, and my mother and I would camp out there until Labor Day.

This idyllic place hit the skids in the late 60s and 70s but even as a child, I recall the magnificent hotels that still stood lining the coast - sentries of a time gone by. Many of the "old time" practices, like post dinner strolls along "the boards", trips to the amusement piers and fishing along the coast - were still in full swing.

Though it's been many years - probably close to two decades - since I even set foot on the glistening white sands of Southern Jersey, but to this day, the scent of sea takes me back.

The other day my mother forwarded this YouTube video ... it made me smile ... and remember.

First off, credit where it's due: I got this recipe from my mother ... who got it from her mother ... who ... (well you get the idea).

Basic ingredients aren't any surprise to any who's made chicken soup at any point. There:
- A whole chicken (cut into pieces - and yes, you use the giblets too)
- A whole lotta carrots (peeled and cut into chunky bits)
- A reasonable amount of celery (washed and cut into chunky bits)
- One whole onion (cut into ... you got it ... chunky bits)
- One parsnip (just toss it in whole

And then there are the two ingredients that take this from just plain old chicken soup to something more akin to sublime.

Oh, in this batch I added a handful of white mushrooms - cut into those chunky bits.

And of course you salt and pepper to taste ...

No, I didn't move, but I did finally return to doing the very thing that has brought me the most joy ... well ... ever in my career.

Radio.

Thanks to the Internet, radio is alive and well and when my friend Chris Heuer mentioned that he wanted to launch a weekly talk radio show that could serve as a platform for himself and some of the creative catalysts he'd collected at Ad Hocnium, I was all ears.

I had to miss the first episode (which turned out to be more of a public conference call) but on week 2 I hopped in, grabbed the reins and it was off to the races! After some discussion, Chris and I agreed that rather than my being a traditional "catalyst" with the Ad Hocnium group I'd focus solely on Executive Producing and Hosting the weekly show.

Over the months the program has evolved quite a bit, and has evolved into my solo program - though Chris pops in whenever he can as do some of the other catalysts. There are plans underway to evolve the program further, which will include a name change and some format evolution, but for now it's called Social Media Hour.

I know. I know. Limited. But it's a start!

A full set of the shows can be found on the show blog, but occasionally I'll be posting episodes directly here.

Starting with today's show.

The guests were:
Writer and columnist, Paul Carr
Architect and author, Eric Corey Freed
Journalist and vlogger, Jolie O'Dell

Our topics: cross-cultural Journalism, evolving architecture and a social media road trip.

The program is broadcast live every Tuesday from 10am to 11am Pacific time at Blog Talk Radio. We take calls and there's a live chat room so you can participate that way too.

I hope you'll come by for a live program some time, but until then, here's a taste from today:

I'll get to that part in a minute but first some business.

Over the last several weeks, maybe even couple of months, I've been growing distressed. Things seemed to be falling apart. As I've written before, the LGBT community likes to beat up on itself. We're very good at ripping each other to pieces. After the devastating loss on Proposition 8 in November 2008, we seemed to finally have a common goal and an ever-so-tenuous detente seemed to form.

In the last month or so I've watched with dismay as it seemingly started to unravel. As everyone began to debate - 2010 or 2012 - with the lines seeming to draw cleanly between "old guard" (EQCA and co.) and "new guard" (the myriad grassroots organizations) the voices began to raise. Every email list I'm on, every conversation I had - the finger pointing was back and the vitriol more potent than ever.

It made me sick.

But I knew there was hope, and it's mostly due to the Courage Campaign. Now let me be clear - I don't work for them, I don't answer to them, and there are definitely things they do with which I have some issue. That said, I have felt that perhaps because they are not primarily an LGBT group, instead being a general progressive political organization, that somehow they have a bit more credence in my book. They don't have the same kind of agenda, perhaps that other groups do.

So when I had the chance to talk with Rick at this event, I asked him what he thought about what was next. He had this to say:

And then there was Cleve.

The day draws to a close, you wash up (making sure to floss, of course) and head for bed. You crawl beneath the blankets, and settle in. For a moment your body resists, and then suddenly it happens. There's that moment when your muscles release and you can almost feel the space between the cells decompressing.

Okay so maybe it's not quite that delicious a feeling but I have to say that in the recent weeks and especially since this past weekend, I find myself breathing again.

For the months since the devastating loss on Proposition 8, the stages of grief have roared, crashing to shore and then sweeping out again. Each time I'd think the community was moving past its anger and shifting into a more productive outlook, I'd have another conversation, hear another new piece of information or see yet another sun-faded No on 8 sign dangling askew in a window. I knew there was a silver lining. I saw the bright glimmer sparkling through in bursts. People were beginning to rise up, but still, the divisiveness remained.

A couple of weeks ago I participated in a Commonwealth Club panel discussion about media coverage of Proposition 8, and what's happened in the months since the election. It was a positive, largely forward looking discussion in which we tackled not only what went wrong in the campaign but how, as media, covering it more effectively would have helped too.

And then this morning I awakened feeling as thought something inside had shifted. Now, granted, I did just spend two days ensconced in an Oakland event space at Camp Courage, so I suppose it's not surprising that I find myself motivated.

But this is different.

We were all in pain. And while I don't discount the fact that some people's bruises haven't yet healed, at long last it feels like the LGBT community may be on its way to go beyond healing and become stronger than ever before. And I think that's because on some level, people finally have answers.

The part of the pain that came from a distinct sense of frustration - unanswered questions, unfulfilled promises - has abated, with answers. Over the last months, a number of the No on 8 Executive Committee members (not all, but some) have spent quite a bit of time doing their best to help the community reach resolution.

There was a list of questions from the Equality Summit that took place at the end of January. Kate Kendell, Geoff Kors and Tawal Panyacosit agreed to sit down with me and spent about 90 minutes addressing as many of the questions as possible. (The two part video of that discussion is below.) But still people wanted more.

Even though more of the questions were addressed at the Town Hall in SF, and then more in Fresno, more in LA, more on blogs and in newsletters, Kate and Geoff had committed to providing a more cohesive set of answers. But time passed, and energy had to be focused on the legal battle at hand.

So when I ran into Kate after the April 13 Town Hall in San Francisco, and she suggested that we tidy up these loose ends, I agreed.

Perched over Cobb salads at an eatery near NCLR's offices, Kate spoke about what might be left to say in a No on 8 post mortem. Here is the raw audio from that discussion.

As Kate mentions in the interview (and as noted above) here is the 90 minute session from February 5, 2009 with Kate, Geoff and Tawal.

Here's part one of the discussion:

Proposition 8: A discussion of what happened - Part 1 from Cathy Brooks on Vimeo.

Here's part two:

Proposition 8: A discussion of what happened - Part 2 from Cathy Brooks on Vimeo.

With that, I'm pledging to look behind no more. Certainly there must be awareness of the past, so as to avoid repeating it. But from here, we must affix our eyes ahead and upward ... we have quite a bit of hill left to climb.