Jeff Klein at The New York Times Soccer Blog has gathered a wonderful
video collection of 17
celebrations around the country (many of them here in California).
Most of them are either after Landon Donovan’s stoppage time goal or
post-match, but this one from San Diego actually starts a few seconds
before the goal so it captures the false start after Dempsey’s kick into
the goalkeeper, an intake of breath, then the explosion. It’s just what
it felt like at Nickies in the Lower Haight and one imagines all over
the country.

This intense interest in the World Cup is more about national pride
than a new-found love of soccer. Hopefully interest in the game will
continue to grow for kids and their parents, because of all the team
sports it’s the one that will produce the highest degree of physical
fitness, which according to statistics we desperately need to provide
for our young.

It’s even easy to imagine highly competitive high school soccer in
more parts of the country but the economics and the low scoring will
prevent the game from catching on at the professional spectator level.
However, the United States international team could continue to improve
dramatically as more and more kids go to play in the European leagues
after they leave school.

Whatever
happens later, for now it sure is great to get up at 5:30 in the
morning and to go find a pub to share this team with others. It’s also
fantastic to play well in the world’s game. Take a look at the bottom of
the NYT blog’s game play-by-play.
It was a joy to read all the well-wishing comments from around the
world.

It feels, too, that this team which plays a foreign game has an
iconic American hero. Donovan is slight, without much swagger to him. He
spends most of his time running, and his rush up the field on the
winning goal was breathtaking. But he is most compelling when he stands
still.

When Donovan is poised before the ball at a corner kick or a free
kick he has an air of quiet certainty, alertness and complete
self-possession. His confidence and attention radiate to his teammates
and to all of us.

There’s a little Tom Hanks in these photos, but when he is surveying
the pitch before kicking the ball into play it is more like Gregory
Peck, as if Atticus Finch were a coach whose job is to integrate a high
school team in the 1960s American South.

He tells us with his eyes
that he’s going to get it done. A hero makes people say “That’s what I
want to be like.” Donovan inspires that.

A reasonably thorough inspection of soccer pubs and restaurants in San Francisco and Berkeley over the past ten days reveals that while there may be more people supporting the English and Mexican soccer teams in the Bay Area there is nobody having as much fun as the Brazilians.

On Sunday the Brazilian World Cup team once again gave its fans a reason to dance (as if they need an excuse) with a 3-1 trouncing of Cote d’Ivoire. Of the several places in the Bay Area which are hosts for Brazilian fans this time we chose Martin Macks on Haight St. in San Francisco. You might ask yourself how an Irish pub has become a place to samba….

So we have Thierry Henry and FIFA to thank. What a way to convert the Irish mourning and outrage at being cheated out of the World Cup into something positive that we all get to share. In addition, the pub burned down less than two years ago so we’re lucky it’s here at all. This is a review shortly after it re-opened.

On this perfect San Francisco Sunday the seats were gone 30 minutes before the match and most of the standing room taken by the national anthem, as you can see.

The kitchen and floor staff did an excellent job of getting food and drink to the mob, no easy task. There were plenty of TV screens, flags everywhere, and even a samba band at halftime and after the match. There is nothing like a room full of happy people doing the samba to make you want to move and to remind you to make sure that at least part of life be a party.

Brazil’s next match is Friday against Portugal, the match soccer fans have been waiting for since the first round groupings were announced. Brazil is ranked first in the world and Portugal is third – it’s unusual for two highly-ranked teams to be in the same group so expect a great match. Play hooky.

The top shelf of the bar at El Farolito Soccer Club is lined with trophies won by the team over the past 20 years or so. They must be nailed to the wood because that’s they only way they didn’t come crashing to the ground during Mexico’s dominating 2-0 victory over France Thursday in both countries’ second World Cup match.

There were whistles and horns and flags and songs and a couple of television crews. It was so loud
you couldn’t even hear the vuvuzelas.

To our left was an 86-year-old Nicaraugan with a firm handshake and a bottomless glass of vodka.  He was looking for bets at the bar and was probably the only person rooting for France. I asked him why and he said that he’d lived in the U.S. since 1945, raised a family here. The United States is his team and that if everyone wants to support Mexico they should go back home. He also said that he’d been paying his bar tabs for 30 years by betting against Mexico. But he didn’t collect today.

To our right was an elegant 50-ish Guatemalan who looked like she was playing hooky from her job at the school library. In fact, everyone was playing hooky (or out of work) which added to the fun.

The announcers in Spanish also contributed to the atmosphere. ESPN made a great choice by using English announcers rather than Americans for their broadcasts but they are usually somewhat subdued. This guy, on the other hand, went 45 minutes without punctuation, sounding like a cross between an auction and a horse race.

With the taqueria shuttling burritos from next door it was a perfect day, the most fun of the tournament so far. 

Capturing goals in real-time at a bar is next to impossible, unless it’s a penalty kick. Here is the goal that gave Mexico an insurmountable 2-0 lead. 

Matt Marshall addresses 200 people who show up for a DEMO meet-up at Sunnyvale’s Plug & Play Center in Silicon Valley. He encourages entrepreneurs, engineers, product visionaries and investors to network, brainstorm and help each other out so we can make great things happen together.

He also talks about DEMO’s move to Silicon Valley, the first time in the history of DEMO they will host an event locally rather than a resort, which has been typical of the style of their events for the past 19 years. More details on products, people and announcements as we get closer to the event.

The Willow Garage team programmed one of their PR2 robots to play pool and PR2 not only has a blast doing so, but its accuracy seems to be remarkably better than the Willow Garage’s engineering team. Go PR2! Go ROS! (an open-source system for robots)

It was 34 years ago today that black students protested the apartheid policy of teaching classes in the Afrikaans language. The riots that day marked the beginning of the Soweto uprising, which in addition to drawing the attention of the world helped put the African National Congress (party of both Nelson Mandela and the current president, Jacob Zuma) in a leadership role in the struggle against apartheid, ending white rule within a generation.

The boy being carried in the photo to the left was killed by a police bullet that day. The Hector Pieterson Museum, which commemorates him and the struggle, is a moving and essential visit if you are in Johannesburg.

So it was appropriate that among other events to mark the day the South African soccer team played their second World Cup match this evening.  Here is a video with Graeme Addison, a South African journalist who was at the scene on June 16, 1976.

Horatius, in San Francisco’s Potrero Hill, is an art gallery, bistro, event space, wine bar and culinary specialty shop. It is also one of the few places in San Francisco open for the 4:30 a.m. matches from South Africa, and offers the biggest screen in the city on which to watch them.

Horacio Gomes, founder and CEO, has like others given us a gift by
sharing his passion for soccer, especially the Portugese variety. This
morning Portugal played its first match of the 2010 World Cup, against
the Ivory Coast. The match started at 7 am but by halftime most of the
seats were taken by a crowd that included at least a few fans of Cote
d’Ivoire’s Elephants.

The space is more like a gallery than a bar or cafe, lit by candles on either side of the large screen. Folding chairs take up most of the floor and there are couches along the sides if you get there early enough. Farther back are tables where you can set up a laptop and  eat breakfast.

Though the match was scoreless it was entertaining, with much artistry, and the crowd appreciated the drama and flow. Here is a short tour of the space, followed by an interview with Horacio (his last name is pronounced GOMSH, not Gomez, as it was mangled in the video). He’ll be here every day, for every match. Come share a few.

Fotobabble Teams up with iVillage on the “iVillage I love my…” Contest, which encourages
women to share their beauty & style secrets.

In this campaign, talking photos serve as an innovative social media tool to drive user engagement, brand awareness and traffic. The contest, which is currently underway and will run through midnight of June 30, 2010, encourages users to create Fotobabble-powered Talking Photos to start a community dialogue around the products and clothing they love, and express their personal style.

To participate, users simply sign up (takes a few seconds), upload a photo and then click a button to record their own voice and share their secrets for style and confidence. Participants can then share their Talking Photos (or Fotobabbles), with friends and family through email, Facebook or Twitter. Fotobabbles with the top views are eligible to win a $500 gift card from Sephora.

The Fotobabble Platform can provide deeper brand exposure and increase traffic to a site. Easier and faster than video, more engaging and dynamic than photos and easy to embed anywhere on the web, Fotobabble provides companies and individuals a powerful and engaging way to connect with their customers and further extend their reach into popular social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter.

Click play below to learn more about the contest and see a fabulous example of how established brands are using unique social media platforms, such as Fotobabble, to increase fan and customer awareness and engagement.

Linchpins Everywhere, Linchpins Everywhere — dive for cover!! Seth Godin’s latest book: Linchpin which I am 75% the way through, is one of his best. It is written in Seth’s usual free flowing style with conviction and passion throughout but manages to call you to action on every page. I plan to post a book review once I turn the very last page.

As always, he’s straight forward. There are chapter subheads like: Where do you hide your brilliance? When did the resistance take over your life? Where do you put the fear? And, who are you trying to please?

He’s also funny: Would Shakespeare blog? From Superhero to Mediocreman (and Back Again), The Problem with Bowling, Throwing Yourself Under the Bus, and Why the Lizard Brain Wants You to be Stuck?

Tony Robbins uses a figure eight metaphor to refer to our “stuck-ness”. There we are climbing the ladder towards brilliance, creativity and joy and just before we get there, we sabotage yourself because emotionally, it is as much as your ‘lizard brain’ can handle). In order to feel safe, sabotage sets in and down you go back to the bottom of that figure 8 circle until you’re so bored, frustrated, sad and pissed off that you fight your way back up again until lizard brain takes over and the cycle repeats itself.

This week, I decided to go to an unofficial Linchpin meet-up because frankly I love Godin’s work, his writing, his thinking and this damn book. It turns out and little did I know, that 819 of these events are scheduled across the world and many have already happened.

Below is a video I shot at the end, where individuals came to the front of San Francisco’s Georges’ bar and pitched their “linchpin” project in 60 seconds to attendees. By “linchpin” project, I am referring to their passion, the thing that brings out their talent and brilliance, the thing that calls their authentic voice, and the thing that makes their hearts sing. The group was a combination of entrepreneurs, bloggers and non-profit evangelists. Have a listen:

Argentina won its first 2010 World Cup match on Saturday, beating
Nigeria 1-0 on a goal in the first several minutes.  Lionel Messi spent
the rest of the match showing us why he is the best player in the world
but Nigerian goaltender Vincent Enyeama had the answer every time,
including a couple of truly spectacular reach saves.

But never mind that. What really matters is that there is a place in
SOMA where soccer fans of any country can come and watch matches in a
setting that was built for the World Cup from the heart.  Check this out.

Urns of water and coffee, a free beer for anyone dedicated enough to
arrive before the 7 a.m. start. A yummy “chicken or egg” breakfast
wrap.  Lots of  TV screens. Here’s an interview with Andrew (left) and
Aaron (right).

They’re open for the 7:00 games every day and expect to open for the
4:30 Argentina game next week.  Come share the lunacy and love.