“‘Who wants a drink?’ shouted Calacanis over the hubbub. ‘My round. Paul?’ I ordered a dark rum on the rocks; Savannah the same, but with Coke. ‘Are you sure you don’t want a man’s drink, Paul?’ Oh yes, I thought, rum, the drink of choice for Hunter S. Thompson, Ernest Hemingway, pirates . . . and girls. ‘Double Scaatches for everyone,’ he shouted, to no one in particular. ‘Hey, Paul, you don’t mind getting them in do you?’ He threw his Amex card across the table at me; it landed on my lap.” - Bringing Nothing To The Party (p217)

I find it unfathomable - absolutely unfathomable - that some people will spend hundreds, if not thousands, of pounds to attend a web conference, only to waste the entire time attending talks and panels.

Speaking as someone who occasionally appears on the damn things, I can assure you that nothing of interest is ever said on a panel. Keynotes are even worse, being as they are an (often unpaid) excuse for CEOs to say promote the shit out of their product from behind a wall of fanboy adulation sandbags.

No, the real action, as any fool knows, is to be found at the parties and the fringe events. As you’ll know if you’ve read my Brilliant Bestselling Book, these are where you’ll find the panellists and speakers off-duty (and frequently off their tits on sponsored beer) and able to talk off the record about what’s really going on. It’s the difference between watching the State of the Nation speech on TV at home and pissing on a concrete owl with Dick Cheney at Bohemian Grove.

And so it was that I found myself wandering around Future of Web Apps (FOWA) in Docklands on Wednesday, with Walshy and Tewy, wondering where the fringe fun was. We’d heard tell of a press area - but that would be chock full of press, which is no good at all. There was a dinner later in the evening too, but that wasn’t due to start for ten hours or so.

And then we saw it.

The MySpace bus.

A double-decker bus, parked in one corner of the expo hall, next to a bar, and full of precisely nothing but an expensive set of digital decks, lamely churning out dance muzak for an audience of precisely no one.

An empty bus. With a sound system. Next to a bar. Just take a minute to think about that.

Our first order of business was to sort the music. While Tewy started sifting through the huge cardboard box of CDs he’d found in a cupboard, I located the source of the muzak and disconnected the speaker with a sharp tug. The bus fell silent. But not for long.

Within a few minutes, we’d figured out the combination of switches that needed to be flicked to activate the decks and make things properly loud. As an added bonus, we’d also located a microphone so that Tewy could perform an impromptu beatbox set to really draw in the punters (he used to be a champion, you know - he’s really quite excellent at it).

All we needed now was a drinks sponsor. I’d already bought a starter pack of a dozen Heinekens but it really doesn’t do to pay conference prizes for booze without the use of a company credit card.

Salvation was located in the form of Jake from Tactile CRM who offered us the contents of his mini-fridge in exchange for a simple Twitter plug. More booze soon followed courtesy of Rummble whose purple letter people threatened at one point to turn the bus into a cross between Who Framed Roger Rabbit and the Hillsborough Disaster.

Throughout the course of the afternoon vast numbers of Names and Faces passed through the doors of the bus - cards were swapped, the real business of web 2.0 was talked and I paid a passer-by five pounds for his straw hat. I also fell off a mechanised surfboard and nearly broke my shoulder. Cowabunga.

The rest of the day was something of a blur, so thank God Jason Calacanis, Michael Smith and Andrew Scott were around to take over reporting duties. Speaking of Jason, I even managed to make my peace with him after that Adam Street Amex business - but that’s a fun story for another time.

…

The next day, I arrived late to the venue following a silly disagreement with some security guards over the fact that I didn’t actually have a conference pass. Fortunately I de-escalated the situation and gained entry by explaining that I was “on MySpace” and gesturing at the bus. Not “with MySpace”, you’ll note. Just on it. Fortunately the distinction was lost on them.

I’m not actually on MySpace.

On making it to the bus, I was heartened to find that Walshy and the gang had taken steps to ensure that the party continued. More sponsored beer flowed, more music played and all seemed happy and contented. Satisfied, I pulled up a beanbag and went to sleep.

…

That evening brought the live ‘Digg Nation’ fanboy event. I don’t want to talk about it.

But I shall.

It was horrible. A friend described it, quite perfectly, as being “everything that’s wrong with the tech scene” and “the very definition of crowd behaviour”. Admittedly, though, being the definition of crowd behavior makes it something of a branding win for Digg.

Then there was the afterparty which included an on-stage ‘Digg quiz’ with insider questions like “what version of Linux does Digg run on?” - a level of geekery up with which I will not put.

Between that, the sea of camera phones held in the air like cigarette lighters at a Chris de Burgh concert and the ridiculous fucking whooping that followed every word uttered by the hosts, I decided it was time to go.

And so, despite the fact that Sarah 2.0 (or perhaps Sarahcuda 1.0) had agreed that I could be her official gonzo video correspondent for the party, I went instead for a thoroughly pleasant walk around Docklands and then took a cab back to my hotel.

Early night, FTW!. As the fanboys might say.

Whoop!

…
(Photo credits (apart from the one of me about to fall off a surfboard): Richard Moross)

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