Breakfast with Jeff Pulver in Vancouver

When you’re someone who co-hosts a weekly group podcast over the magic of Skype you better show up when a mastermind of VOIP comes to your town for breakfast.

Jeff Pulver currently travels around the world, hosting breakfasts with geeky-fun elements like “Real-Time Social Tagging” to spark networking and conversations. Prior to the breakfast at Subeez this morning I knew of him, I knew of his importance and contributions to the digital realm, but that was about it.

Pulver is the chief writer of what’s referred to as “the Pulver Order”, which was adopted in 2004 by the Federal Communications Commission as the first FCC ruling regarding internet protocol communications. The order ruled that computer-to-computer voice over IP (VOIP) is not a telecommunications service. He coined the term purple minutes to describe value-added IP network traffic. [wiki]

Within about 10 minutes of meeting Jeff, honestly I almost starting welling up because the words he was sharing with me were so inspirational and were also the verbal equivalent of the swift kick in the butt that I so needed to hear (especially given the week I’ve had).

When speaking to Jeff the most resonating word was passion. He clued into what I was passionate about and encouraged me not to ignore it.

You owe it to yourself to take a chance on yourself today and a bigger chance tomorrow. To feel more comfortable with change, try it gradually. Take 5 minutes today for yourself, tomorrow extend it to 10 and in a few days give yourself 15 minutes for yourself. You are the one in charge of your time and what you do with it. Give it a try and capture the feeling of personal liberation. If it worked for you, please encourage a friend to do the same. Do the things for yourself that nobody can do for you and watch to see what happens next. [Pulver Blog]

He even woke up one morning thinking about what Happiness Is, and put the call out on Twitter. He ended up with an amazing poem of sorts created by his social media friends and contacts. He truly is all about giving everyone their voice.

I was also delighted to take in breakfast with some new faces (like Leah and Jess), and some of the usual crowd like Boris (who real-time tagged me with “Surrey”), Colleen (who real-time tagged me as “Fancy”), Monica (who real-time tagged me with “Classic Chic”), Roland, Ian, and notorious gals like Jenn and Nadia (sans cocktail glasses in their hands at this early hour).

Coming off of his Pacific Northwest tour in Seattle and Vancouver, Jeff will be heading back to New York to host breakfast on June 24th. He’ll be back in Vancouver someday and given that this was the poorest turn-out of all his stops so far, I expect Vancouver to do a lot better next time, and you certainly won’t be disappointed.