I was in Napa. In a wine cellar, actually.
That was the latest location update in a thread that had already followed me through San Francisco and into the mountains.
A friend had introduced me to a company called Boundary. They were building a tool for watching network traffic in real time. This was directly in my area at Shutterstock, so I agreed to look at a demo.
Then travel got in the way.
I missed the first call because the week had gone sideways. I missed the next one because I thought I would have cell service and did not. When I finally resurfaced, the company offered to stop by the New York office or set up another WebEx.
Thursday looked good.
The whole exchange was normal for the period. Infrastructure software was changing quickly. New monitoring companies kept appearing with cleaner interfaces and faster ways to understand systems. I wanted to see anything that might make our work at Shutterstock better.
I also traveled with the job in my pocket.
The laptop made a demo possible from almost anywhere. The phone made it possible to reschedule from everywhere. Neither one made the schedule less messy.
There was no grand conclusion to the thread. I did not buy the company or announce a partnership. I tried to get the people and the calendar into the same place long enough to see the product.
Sometimes that place was an office.
Sometimes it was a hotel.
This time I had no cell service in the mountains and a wine cellar in Napa.
Thursday would have to do.