The whole group [Vincent B.]
We toured Microsoft’s headquarters. We put on a live show at KUOW. We marvelled at the new library. So who would have guessed that coffee and beer with 15 near strangers would be the highlight of our Seattle trip?
The pictures you see here are courtesy of Vincent and Bill, two OS listeners who brought cell phones with miniature cameras to our Seattle meetup on Friday evening, thus saving Chris and me the wrath of the rest of our crew back in Boston. What does Nikos look like? they had asked us. Who shows up at an Open Source meetup? Without documentary evidence we were going to be in trouble.
But of course the documentary evidence doesn’t really do justice. Who were they? They were black and white, men and women (though disproporionately men, for some reason), younger and gray-haired: a dream-like demographic cross-section. More exciting than the superficial markers of diversity was a real diversity of opinion and experience — and this among a group with an undeniable, instant, genial cohesion. We had a social services worker, a college administrator with a background in multicultural education, a “culture-jamming” filmmaker, a tech guy who makes large-format metal sculptures, someone who does billing for the UW dentistry offices (who told us about the Dental Fears Research Clinic), and others whose daytime jobs got lost in the jangly mix of espresso and hefeweizen.
Nikos, in the middle, is much higher resolution in person. [Vincent B.]
They said they podcast every show because 9pm doesn’t work for them. And they said they never podcast; radio shows work just fine on the radio, after all. They said they were only there because of the blog and the sense of community it has created. And they said that they were only there because they’d heard a brief plug for the meetup the night before and, hey, why not?
However they listened, and for whatever reason, they told us that they were listening closely… scarily closely. Kim listened to the Hip Hop show — the full hour — seven or eight times. She wanted to make sure she got everything out of it, she told us. (They’re also listening discriminatingly: Kathleen gamely noted that three minutes of Hip Hop was all she needed to achieve the same result. Then she switched to the classical station.) Vincent burned the Economic Hit Men show on CDs this week and distributed them to his friends.
Chris and company [Bill T.]
They said more race and class. They said more discussions about how technology is changing our lives. They said take the show on the road again — to Seattle for another go, now that we’ve cleared our throats here and are eager to delve deeper, or to New Dehli. They said add nesting to the comments on the blog. We said yes to all of it — and to New Dehli with the most gusto.
They were thoughful and engaged, fan-like but not fawning. They were clued-in and considerate (one guy apologized profusely for being late), and we even got a ride — along with Jake Shapiro of the revolutionary Public Radio Exchange — back downtown. It was a ride that gave us my favorite quote of the trip: “Last night I was listening to the radio alone in my house. Tonight I have three men in my car!”
We felt the same way. The night before, even in front of a live studio audience, we were, in some ways, making radio alone. At the meetup we had found our family. It’s corny, perhaps, but true: an hour of made connections in a missed connections world.
I cannot begin to express how pleased I am that my face is distorted in the photo. If you doubt my sincerity (since I’m admittedly something of a smart-aleck) I offer this with the most profoundly heartfelt honesty:
Please do not unblur it. I’m much happier in obscura. (Literally!)
It was fun though, wasn’t it?
It was indeed nice to ‘meet the family’.
And was CheeseChowMain there?
I wanted to meet you, pal, but my ferry didn’t deliver me until after the get together and the introductions had begun… and then, like any good time in a beery venue, it was last call before I knew it. And time to run for the return-trip ferry.
Oh well.
Next time!
Maybe we should have a ROS-blogger get-together in Port Townsend, which seems to be universally loved by Puget Sounders…(and o-so close to my home)…
Later, all.
I hope you all had a good visit to Seattle.
It’s actually a pretty interesting city with lots of interesting people.
Be sure to stop in Denver when Opensource goes on the road…
Don’t forget SLC either…
Nikos, I’m sorry to report I could not make it. I couldn’t make the timing work which is most unfortunate; though this is probably a big gain for the folks at the meetup. My social graces amount to something akin to Dilbert Management and Clueless Geek; my ties match my toothpaste type of thing. Your picture gives you an omnipotence for us great unwashed out here in the web hinterlands!
Things I would have tried to relay to the ROS folks:
Thank you ROS for all the effort and doing so many things well. The stuff you folks do well are like oxygen, it’s hard to notice and therefore, often overlooked. I would have said so in person with uncomfortable gushes. My nits are web related, and in three’s (all things come in three’s…inside work joke):
(*) Better thread management and navigation tools would be helpful. As the threads begin to grow, it becomes pretty daunting. This is a serious nit and it’s understandble for a variety of reasons why it may have been deferred or not considered a high priority.
(*) This is a minor nit. I’ve not found the search engine to be very effective in terms of perusing show suggestions. For example, before suggesting John Perkins I did a search and it came up with zero hits. It turns out Nikos had made this suggestion a while back. If the result set allowed you to see any results from show suggestions, perhaps last in the result set, this would be helpful. There is good information that people provide in the show suggestions that become avenues of research. This is a minor nit.
(*) Another minor nit. Show catagories. It would be nice to see how shows are related to each other. I enjoy crawling through archives and don’t mind the brute force exhaustive search method. I used to go to a used book store in Berkeley that had no organization at all. Books everywhere without any human intervention beyond a toss. The searches were fantastical and it amazed me how many interesting things I’d find by simple random search. So, perhaps keeping it loose is best. Again, a very minor nit and you folks may have this configured this way by intention.
The thread management is becoming a difficult problem and is the one of highest priority in regards to my suggestions. Thanks again ROS for the excellent work, it’s appreciated even if all the good stuff cannot be readily articulated. You’ve got an excellent community of folks posting here and it seems to be growing.
I forgot to add something about the search issue. You may want to tie in comments from the comment thread into the result set as well. Again, there is excellent information in the comments. You may want to allow people to turn these results on/off and order where they appear in a search result set (e.g. Shows treatments first, comment threads second, show suggestions third, etc). From the ROS point-of-view, I’d be very careful about this and consider whether these features will be useful. I’m just one person squawking. Weigh careful your feature creep. Things can definitely become unwielding and costly on the slippery slope of feature-itis. I can be told “no” about feature suggestions and still be very happy.
CCM: no need to apologize. And as far as the ‘personal presentation’ thing goes, I’m one of those ‘Wardrobe by Good Will’ types. Except for shoes and boots, that is. Can’t have enough rock solid hiking boots and trail-running shoes, and money is no object when the objects enclose my feets. (I ought have taken the ROS handle: ‘Imelda Nikos’. Just ask my sister.)
One last caveat: the original Perkins suggestor was the MIA ALYB, not me. In fact, I echoed your suggestion by about 86 seconds after hearing Perkins on KUOW’s Weekday. Credit where credit is due…
See ya.
And oh, I’m reasonably serious about a Puget Sound ROS blogger meet-and-greet, if anyone’s interested. It could be a summertime blast.
Yes Nikos! After I walked off to get more espresso, I realized that it was ALYB who had recommended John Perkins as a ROS guest. See, we really do need that search engine feature for fact checking! I can find the espresso, but can’t find my car keys. Memory is a cruel mistress/master.
Hi guys,
That was mucho fun. I love that we’re all such a bunch a geeks.
Nick – my job takes me over to your neck of the woods all the time. My e-mail is jadams519@hotmail.com
Drop me a line and let’s catch a cup of coffee(or a beer) sometime soon.