That Was Fun
20 January 2008One of my favorite days of the year comes when I drive north to Bellingham, to talk about the year ahead to members of the Washington Software Alliance. They tell me that the numbers attending have doubled each year, and this year we outgrew the usual spot and ended up in a beautiful glass and wood structure on the water.
Everyone grabbed a quick buffet lunch, this new room filled up to capacity, and we got started. I laid out a few landscapes in technology, economics and politics for 2008, and then got down to predictions for the year. In at least one case, the price of oil, the prediction had already transpired. In mid-December, when I introduced this list, oil was at around 80 and heading south, so a call for $100 oil seemed bold. Now, of course, it has already come true.
Here is a good description of the event, from the Bellingham Herald:
http://www.bellinghamherald.com/496/story/296597.html
2 Responses to “That Was Fun”
January 21st, 2008 at 2:17 pm
Mark,
Enjoying the more frequent blog updates these days. Got to take issue with the prescience of your $100 oil call and subsequent self-congratulations though. Pretty much a shoe-in, would only have been news if someone had tried to suggest that oil would not reach $100 in the year.
January 21st, 2008 at 2:57 pm
Thank you, Andrew, for posting on the site.
You may be right about the oil bit, in general, but I’ll tell you, no one in the press was calling for $100 oil when I made the first call. By the end of last year, many had joined in. Keep in mind, though, that when I made last year’s call in mid Dec, oil had dropped precipitously, down into the $70-80 range, and was headed south at the time.