(Offline Tales - a new (ir)regular Friday column.)

Wednesday I was in North Beach heading for the Bubble Lounge and Media Bistro sponsored by the Horn Group.

It was great to catch up briefly with Sabrina Horn, founder of the Horn Group, who tells me that business is booming and the firm is engaged in a broad range of digital communications services and applications.

I had an interesting chat with Tim O'Keeffe, (below) who heads Horn Group's San Francisco operations.

And it was great to see Smita Topolski, who joined Horn Group as Vice President in December 2011.

Then off to find a cab ... heading to the Mission.

I ran into a fast moving Brian Zisk in the Mission. Brian's excellent "Future of Money" conference is this Monday. It's well worth attending.

Scott Beale, founder of culture and events blog Laughing Squid was in town from New York. Scott used to live in San Francisco but moved to New York a couple of years ago, "for a change." I know lots of people who have done the same, a trend that seems to have accelerated lately.

There were lots of media at Scott's drinks thing, and it was great to be able to relax and chat without it being a "media event" with PR and tech companies about.

I congratulated Eric Eldon, the new Techcrunch editor. He's putting together a great team, here he is with a recent addition: Frederic Lardinois.

It's always a treat to see Violet Blue, my colleague from ZDNet.

Also good to see Gabe Rivera, founder of Techmeme, Alexia Tsotsis, Eddie Codel, Kevin Mathieu, and assorted starters...

(BTW, I'm testing out the term "starters" to describe people in startups... more on this in a separate post.)