Englishman in New York

I always swore never to blog while drunk. But I have a very busy day ahead tomorrow. And if not now, when?

Tonight, thanks to my friend Jen, I attended the farewell party for the New York Times building at 229 West 43rd Street. The Times has occupied the building for almost 100 years. And it was a delight to watch the staff partying among the desks in the now vacant newsroom.

it was a little sad too. I only got to visit the building a few times since I arrived in New York. But the rooms definitely had a certain aura about them. The place just oozed news. In a hundred years will the new building feel the same? Probably.

It was also great to see my friend Nick (left) who splits his time between the Times’ research and development department and the news department. I knew Nick growing up in Leeds. But we hadn’t seen each other for about 15 years until we met up the other week via Facebook. Nick and his colleague Michael (pictured with Michael’s wife Kim) flew to England last week where they competed in Hack Day London.

Nick and Michael took on hundreds of developers from companies such as IBM and Google to design a new web mashup in just a couple of days. Apparently they were up until four in the morning putting the finishing touches to their application called Shifd, which syncs a computer and a cell phone. Not only is Shifd a brilliant idea. It also won first place.

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