This afternoon was one of those days that I wanted to get out of the office, get some lunch, sit in the sun, relax at Peet's while catching up on some reading, and then go to two events I had scheduled. I should have stayed at Peet's. Here's the scoop:

I leave the office about 1:30 famished and head over to The Shops at Bishop Ranch where I grab lunch at Whole Foods and sit out by the fountain in the sun to eat. Ahhhh…

I mosey over to Borders Books to see if there are any new releases I might enjoy - zip. So, I walk over to Peet's for a cup of green tea. I park myself in the corner near an electrical outlet for my laptop and though Peet's isn't smart enough to figure out that having WiFi available at a coffee shop across from the largest business park in the TriValley area is good business, I fire it up to write up a couple of blog posts in Word.

About half an hour into my reading and writing, a gent sits down next to me and says, I'm not interested in real estate but can I ask you a question? (He's respnding to the big sign on the lid of my laptop. You can see it here.) Sure, I say.

William Friend is the CEO of Wait-on-Me a new business venture that sounds pretty interesting. We chat a bit and swap business cards. Bill says he was the fifth employee hired at Oracle, so I figure he's got to have some real estate he needs to sell or buy. He does! In Tahoe. It's already listed with an agent there. Bummer. I can't let the cat our of the bag on Wait-on-Me, but keep checking the Internet, one of these days their website will be live. 

I leave Peet's and head over to the San Ramon Community Center for the Entrepreneurial Expo. I have to shell out $10 to get into this shindig. I should have found a person in need to give that money to. I won't say it was a complete waste of time, but it was a huge disappoint. I don't know who was in charge of promoting the event, but they should consider another line of work.

In my estimation more than 60% of the people there were vendors or others associated with organizing the event. Tom O'Malley was the keynote speaker, introduced by Paul Byer who you see to the right. Tom talked about economic development of the Tri-Valley area and tried to make the point the the spirit of the entrepreneur is alive and well in the Tri-Valley.

But hey, when people are talking high tech, business development and entrpreneurism to me - i expect data more currrent than 2003. So, there I sat underwhelmed by data and trends from 1997 through 2003. I didn't even get excited when they through in a couple of figures from 2004. (If you check the home page on this site, you will find Market Detail Reports that are updated every Monday, local MLS trends that are updated every Friday, and Real Estate Industry news that is updated everytime we come across something we think would be of interest to buyers, sellers and investors of real estate - we follow over 70 blogs and newsfeeds daily to gather this info.)

Two other points on the presentation: 1) Someone needs to teach people how to use a microphone - if you are going to be speaking publicly, make it a point to be heard. 2) Verbally reciting the information on a powerpoint presentation is boring. 

Leaving the Expo shaking my head, I headed over to the San Ramon Marriott, where Dan Gross had informed me earlier in the day that the California Association of Mortgage Brokers was holding  a big shindig from 1 until 7pm. Well, I got there about 5pm. Just in time to see them breaking everything down. I did run into about half a dozen folks I knew that said it was a great event.

So that's my afternoon. A surprise encounter at Peet's followed by disappointment and let down. So, off I went to 24 Hour Fitness to Dance to the Oldies. All of this happened within a radius of about 1/2 a mile. That's the beauty of the Bishop Ranch area.