A very brief piece with some initial thoughts. 

I wanted to live in NY because I always wanted to live here. This is where I grew up, where my roots are, where I fit in. I've already made friends with the owner of a local hardware store and coffee shop. Their ethnicities are different, but fundamentally they share the same approach to life -- that of a New Yorker.  

If you came from Chicago, that's where you'd fit in, probably. Same with any other place, Florida, Paris, Costa Rica, Buenos Aires, Shanghai, Sydney, Mumbai, Egypt or Israel. 

But that's not all. 

All my career there's been a tension between technology and media. Very early in my career I saw they'd meet, and I made a good choice to put myself firmly in the technology world, because that's where the growth was. I don't think that's where it is anymore. 

I also don't think the growth is in media, believe it or not. I don't think the big organizations are going to turn the corner. I think they're finally coming around to that belief too.  

But if it isn't tech and it isn't media, what is it? Ahhh. 

We don't have a name for it yet. I call what I do "media hacking" and like the new Japanese doctor on Lost, I am using a phrase that only approximates what's going on. 

Here's what's going to happen, imho. 

There are a bunch of smart, mostly young, people who work either in tech startups or inside big publishing companies who will, in a few years, form the companies that are hybrids of technology and publishing that will lead us into the future. They won't be like Google, Facebook, Twitter or Apple. And they won't be the NY Times, Time-Warner or even the Huffington Post or Gawker. But they will learn from all of them.  

Intuitively, I feel NY is where this is going to happen.  

I also think a university will play a role, like Stanford and Cal did in the various tech booms, in bringing people together. That's where I belong right now, and that's why that's where I am. 

Vague? Yes. But it's a Ouija board. Lots of people get to shape the future, and only ideas that work will be part of that future. The way to get there is to try lots of things out. 

As I used to say in the early days of the Web boom: Zoooooooooooooom! 

And Coooooooooooooool. ">