2004-02-07»
we're at the San Diego l0ft»
It's a great place, and our dachb0den hosts are being
fantastic. I just ate the best steak I've had in years fresh off their
barbeque, and I'm leaching off one of the faster connection. It's also about 4
minutes walk from the Emerging Tech hotel in a straight line West down E Ave.
Looking after the now toddling Ada in a paradise of switches, hubs and MP3s is
taking ... some improvisational skills, but it should be okay.
Ye Olde Traditional Emerging Man Party is set for Wednesday, which should
be after most of the talkers have given their talks, but before we all begin
to fade.
2004-02-01»
em3rg1ng l0ft»
We all really enjoyed Emerging Man last year. It was a makeshift
campsite in our back garden that we used to house some of the geeks
who were having trouble finding affordable accomodation for Emerging Tech
in
Silicon Valley. This year, the cost of finding a hotel room in San Diego looks
to be even worse. Even worse to that "even worse" I don't live in San Diego.
Damn me!
This wasn't a problem of pure altruism. I'm speaking this year, so I don't
have to pay for a ticket, but even so we were having real problems working out
how to afford the trip.
I think we've pulled something together. Dachb0den run a hacker l0ft near where the conference is
being held, and they've really kindly let me and whatever squatters I
could assemble sleep on their floor.
When this was tentative, I put out feelers with UK people to see if anyone
needed a bed, and the spaces filled up before I really had a chance to make it
public. There may be more room as time goes on though (people came and went at
Emerging Man, and you know, there'll probably be some in-conference bartering
of nice accommodation for Orkut testimonials or something).
And, anyway, we'll have a party on ... Wednesday? To which you are invited,
of course. And, just to play to all the stereotypes a little bit more, here's
the Em3rg1ng L0ft
W1k1.
The other idea I was hatching but never really got together there was to
have an Emerging Tech/CodeCon crossover session in San Francisco. There's a lot
of people who traditionally go to both conferences, but haven't been able to
afford to go to both this year. Also, as ever, a bunch of people applied with
really good papers to either one and didn't get accepted.
It occurred to me and a few others that would could hire somewhere in SF
during the intervening week, and manage both a decompression from ETech and
ramp people up for CodeCon. And you could easily fill a schedule with people
who didn't fit at either. I'd love people who managed to make it to ETech to
recount the good bits in lightning talks to people who didn't, and you could
use the same format to plug interesting upcoming ideas for Codecon, or stuff
that got missed by both. It'd make for a fun evening. Well, I think it
would.
Doing this rather fell off my radar, but there's still time. If anyone
knows anywhere has Secret Knowledge (Moonbase University? Dorkbot SF?) on hosting such a
ConCon in SF during the intervening week (February 14th-20th), go for it. I'm
going to be monster busy when I get back from Etech but I hereby foolishly
volunteer to do an impressionistic rendition of my Etech talk and anyone elses
I see. If you're on for the hassle, mail
me, and I'll put you all in touch
with each other, and then I shall stand well back and try and publicise it in
San Diego and elsewhere.
