It has been a crazy week and a half. Starting with FOWA, Jon Hinson (code monkey and co-founder of TeacherHubs, sole-developer of Get a Roomy) and I had a great time listening to all of the speakers. We were able to meet Kevin Rose of Digg and Gary Vaynerchuk of WineLibrary TV. The networking opportunities were great. At the FOWA after party, we were able to meet the creator of CakePHP, Blaine Cook the developer of Twitter, one of the Ustream guys and many others.
Being in Miami was a first for me. Missing my flight from Miami to DFW was also a first for me. How in the world do you miss a flight? Well, after a really late night with the Villij and Socialthing! guys. We had to be at Miami International Airport at 4:30am to catch our insanely early flight. Jon and I got back to the hotel around 3am, and somehow I thought I would be a good idea to sleep for an hour. One hour turned into four hours, and it was quickly 7am. So, we hurried to the airport, waited in a few lines, explained our situation, and we were on our way in no time. I have to say, I have been impressed with American Airlines this past week.
Once I got back to Abilene Saturday night, I was able to hang out with Carla for a little while. I can’t wait to take her with me on these trips! Sunday morning, the rest of the TeacherHubs team and I got up and started our journey to Boulder, CO. Arron of villij was a huge help by giving us a few rides and letting us stay at his place for the week. During our stay in Boulder, not only did we crank out a lot of code and get several things lined up for TeacherHubs, we attended Boulder Open Coffee, Boulder New Tech Meetup and most importantly TechStars for a day. I was able to meet so many people. The community in Boulder is quite incredible. It is definitely a future Silicon Valley. I talked to more entrepreneurs and investors during those three days than I have my entire life. Unfortunately, Thursday morning finally came, and I had to head back to the reality of all the school and work I had missed, but hey, I got to see Carla again
For a few more firsts, Jon, Jordan and I left Boulder by bus at 10:30am. Once we arrived at Denver International, we learned that all flights in and out of DFW had been canceled for the rest of the day. Who would have thought a huge snow storm would have rolled through Texas in March?! This was the first time a flight of mine was canceled. So after a couple of hours of being in and out of phone calls with American Airlines, we had all nailed down new flight arrangements. Another first, I would be spending the night in an airport. As the night progressed, Jon left on a lucky route from Denver to Houston to Abilene, and Jordan and I actually found a United Airlines flight from Denver to Dallas at 8:30pm. So we took it. After riding the sky tram at DFW a couple of times and checking out the international hub (which is extremely nice and looks like a mall) of DFW, we headed back to our gate, found a few airport supplied cots, and slept.
The next morning, Jordan flew off to Shreveport where his parents would pick him up, and I had a flight to Abilene at 9:30am. Due to all of the planes needing de-icing and other delays throughout the states, my plan didn’t pull out of DFW until 2:00pm. I finally arrived in Abilene and was picked up by Carla at 3:30pm on Friday.
During all the time at the airport, I did manage to get some work done. I created a simple twitter mashup for a very active web-savvy teacher, who goes by coolcatteacher. She had found Pulse of Open Source one day and thought it would be cool if there was a Pulse of Education. Having stumbled upon her comment, I thought it would be simple enough. So I bought the name and made it happen. Check it out: Pulse of Education.
All of that was a ton a fun, but as I said earlier, I did miss over a week of school and work. It is going to be crazy for the next week.

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