I’m in San Diego until Monday evening to attend the O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference. Monday’s sessions will all be a Digital Democracy Teach-In and Joe Trippi (late of the Dean Campaign) will be among the speakers.
My main purpose in attending this event is to get to know some of the people who are speaking and attending. Tonight I’m supposed to hook up with Michael Pusateri who is speaking on Disney’s use of RSS. I met Michael last year at SXSW in a very serendipitous way. We were sitting down in a hallway restoring battery power to our Wi-Fi enabled laptops, ignoring each other as we furiously answered E-mail and so forth. Whereupon one of the building’s Union electricians told us that we could not use the power without paying for it.
After we dutifully unplugged our pirate laptops we started talking. One thing led to another and we sort of got to be friends. After the conference we kept up with each other, almost exclusively via our respective weblogs. I know important stuff about him from his weblog; like, for instance, I know that his daughter Zoe’s recent science project studied the important–but heretofore not scientifically studied–question of whether ‘bubble gum loses its flavor on the bed post overnight.’ I assume he’ll have the results of that study handy.
I’m hoping to meet some more nice people like Michael while I’m here. Actually, I alread have. Last night I went to a music club called Croce’s, which is owned by the widow of famous singer-songwriter Jim Croce. The jazz band was excellent and the place was packed with locals. I met a few of them, and at one point wound up talking to two guys (whose names I forget). One of them was an avid jazz afficianado (and a pretty good magician) and he told me that I must listen to the music of a jazz singer named Eva Cassidy.
And so I shall.
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