Ashley and I hit New York, 2 days until launch
My (long suffering) partner and I arrived in New York last night for a series of interviews prior to the launch of WorldTV on Wednesday. Hooragh!
Since my blog posts have been a little thin on the ground lately I figured I'd make up for it with some coverage of our 'big US trip'. It certainly got off to an interesting start...
Liz Hurley and Hugh Grant were both on our flight to New York and we were curiously thrown together with them on 3 separate occasions during the 'get to the plane' process. The next day I'm reading about their journey in the newspaper. I'm convinced Liz Hurley smiled at me on the gangway but Ashley says it was in my dreams. He's probably right. I think he's just jealous because the only person smiling at him was... Preston from Big Brother!
Today we had an interview at Reuters which was pretty cool, and some filming to do for a promo video we're making. The video will be shown at NewTeeVee live on Wednesday and may be used for other bits and pieces. It was all put together in 'no time at all' after the folks at GigaOM suggested the idea a week ago. The video is pretty raw but kind of fun - we got to smash up an old TV and I smuggled a camera into Wimbledon (although unfortunately that didn't make it into the final cut). As I speak, Steve, our fearless (and exhausted) editor is uploading the final version onto our FTP site, complete with the latest footage we shot just hours earlier in Times Square, which we DSL'd back to London.
The rest of the day has been rather forgettable, if only for all the things that have been going pear-shaped. Two of our main servers both died today, including our development server and a production server. The reason for the SNAFU isn't clear, which is always a worry, although everything is back up and running again. We also had a major issue with one of our source sites changing their server configuration, leading to a complete rebuild of how we gather thumbnail images from that site. Our developers had a really tough time of it today.
We've got an early start tomorrow with various interviews in and around Manhattan. A massive tip to anyone with a startup.... spend the $$$ on a great PR firm - it's the best money you'll ever spend - seriously. Our PR firm, MPRM, are outstanding, and have done a phenomenal job getting us in front of the right people. Word.
That's it for now... I should really go test a few things before hitting the sack.
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