I love Lunch 2.0. It’s ironic that something that started as a prank on Web 2.0 could become representative of the very thing it teases: free and open communication and “the lunch as a conversation.”

Even though I missed Lunch 2.0 at Oodle, you have to love this mobile post via Utterz by Chris Heuer catching the first words of this utter by Randy Corke of Utterz, talking at Lunch 2.0 to Devon Holmes about social media.

Now that’s so meta. 🙂

I wish I could have jumped in on the social media circle jerk. Of course, I’m not as hip as them so I went “old skool” and twittered it. You see these sort of random circular connections in my blog posts, so I obviously love it.

Lunch 2.0. It’s been a great year.

OMG we made the frontpage!
North Beach, San Francisco, California

Nikon D200, Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G VR, SB-800, Gitzo G1228LVL, RRS BH-55 ballhead
1/100 sec @ f/16, iso 100, 26mm (39mm)

Lunch 2.0 makes the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle. Believe it or not, this is how we got a Facebook Lunch 2.0.

I thought I’d finish with how this last Silicon Lunch 2.0 of 2007 incident is a great way to close out the year, which began with the linked blog post above about how we created Lunch 2.0.

[Epicycles and thanks after the jump]

And just to add another epicycle to this blog post: that article was about first Lunch 2.0 of this year at Yahoo! to contrast it with having to sneak into that same place the year previous. I stayed up all night writing it because I heard a rumor that someone from the Chronicle was thinking of writing a story about Lunch 2.0. The wonderful Jessica Guynn eventually wrote that article—the article I’m holding in the picture above. Luckily, I got my “lies consistent” in time for that. 😉

Beginnings, endings, and thanks

When we started it, Mark’s first e-mail said:

“The idea is that we’ll announce where we’re hitting up for lunch and invite people to come along. Then afterwards we’ll post pictures, etc. It’ll be great.”

It has been great!

And what we observed then, holds true today: we never expected it to be this big or have this much fun. Wherever Lunch 2.0 has gone is because of you: those who have hosted us, who have dined with us, who have promoted us to their friends or in their writings, who have taken our idea and ran with it, across the country and around world—epicycles, serendipitous connections, free food and jokes. I can only hope there will be more in the future.

I loved eating your lunch!

Thank you so much.

And, as for the “lunch as a conversation”? They say that “many words won’t fill a bushel” but your conversations have filled my soul, as assuredly as the free food has filled my stomach.

Thank you so much.