IZEA Fest, John Chow and Dinner
// September 19th, 2008 // 1 Comment » // Life, Orlando
When I first moved to Orlando in 1999, it seemed to be a city void of anything remotely considered a tech industry and short on the creative side as well. What was here other than Disney? Fast forward to 2008 and things have really changed, or maybe my eyes are just open. I started really noticing it around 2005 and have seen continued growth and a real technology and creative community really blossom. I admitedly have no immersed myself in the community nearly enough but have had the pleasure of meeting some of Orlando’s finest.
After working on Friday, I thought it would be in my best interest to check out the final day of IZEA Fest on Saturday. Waking up a little late, I made the unbearably long 5 minute treck from my house to the Grand Boehmian hotel in downtown Orlando. I was impressed by the couple of sessions I saw and learned some great new things. I also happened to know John Chow was attending IZEA Fest, so one of my missions was to meet up with him.
John and I go way back to the original dot com boom when we both ran successful tech websites that grew up as members of the Maximum PC Network. My site, AbsolutePC.net fell by the wayside as the college life of studying, girls, and partying claimed AbsolutePC.net as its victim and so did a domainer. John’s site, TheTechZone is still going strong and continues to earn a good income. He may now be best known however for his personal blog, which while focusing on making money online, it is truly his personal blog with cool restaurant reviews and funny stories to go along with his money making tips, and of course his posts about how much money he makes by telling you how much money he makes. So since speaking with him online since 1999, we finally met in person in 2008. After a quick chat during a break, we checked out the last sessions of the day and parted ways. I returned downtown for the IZEA Fest party and had an absolute blast. Open bar is always a good idea… which then turns into a bad idea and a little too much fun. Suffice it to say, Sunday hurt.
Wednesday was John’s last night in Orlando, so I invited John and his wife Sarah out to experience what I consider one of the finer culinary experiences Orlando has to offer, HUE. We had an amazing dinner which you can read all about and take in the pictures on John’s blog. It was great getting to know John and Sarah and I thoroughly enjoyed our dinner and conversation. I learned alot and made 2 great new friends. Thanks John, it was great to finally meet!
