Unconference

The "unconference" borrows from our "unprogrammed Friends" tradition, just as blogs imitate "journaling" -- engineers have been ripping off Quakers for hundreds of years (a joke, as we've always had many Q-engineers, check novel The Iron Bridge if you don't believe me).

The theory here is geeks are among the most agile at working together you'll ever meet, wired for connectivity from birth, light years ahead of diplomats and even some football players (NFL anyway), so just put us in a room (with wifi), give us donuts and free water (a luxury these days) and we'll hack the hell out of stuff, sprint, develop, dominate the world, and all for just $9.95!

In practice, we're not all "together Friends" and so bumble about a lot, looking for groups to join, tweets to twit about, not always the picture of self-organization.

For my part, I made a bee line to Gabrielle, hanging out with that Amazing Kreskin guy (Joshua Keroes), and informed her I hoped to infiltrate her group with a couple hand-picked elvyn chyx. "Not if they're reporters" she shot back. Me (feeling wounded): "no, of course not, but what if they're like bloggers on the side". She (still suspicious): "That might be OK". Anyway, she had places to go, people to see, so I peeled off at the point, zooming off to the Dragon Boat (more pictures!), thence to within earshot of a Server Sky meetup (hi Keith!).

Notes from the POSSE meeting with Howard:

Note to Portland Mayor Sam Adams re your RFP: we need a new Cubespace, a place where geek user groups are welcome, wifi is free, maybe a food court (indoor carts? dim sum?), definitely beer (nearby if not on the premises). Big free and open, but with secluded meeting areas, as secret sauces mix with open sources (like a cooking school -- have some of those, so lets copy their ideas). In Old Town? Near the Max?

Anyway, costs little to dream, loved Eric Sten's "render farm" idea too, maybe combine them somehow? East side? One idea is to work on civic systems as a group, not just on company stuff e.g. the Oregon Trail chapter of Red Cross is in serious need of a state of the art website. We could take that on maybe? What other NGOs perform vital civic services?

OS Garden is in the cloud but given the death of Jackalope Ubuntu (hardware at fault), I no longer have my local source version in an easily accessible format (SATA HD in carcass). I was consulting with Cronemeyer on how one backs out an image from the cloud, if the local copy goes away, or is that not a valid symmetry to be pursuing?

In any case, the MOTD will revert to "museum exhibit" for the time being, a souvenir. Not complaining. This was a conference worth remembering. I'm noticing this Toshiba doesn't have the right fonts, so my I Ching characters aren't materializing. Note to self: update these fonts.

I should grab some lunch (BV has wifi). Thanks to Dave Fabik for the T-shirt I'm wearing: I'm Blogging This.