it was a beautiful day

If you learn something new every day I’m way over my limit today.

• Steve Jones has played pinball with the Ramones.
• Las FARC generates revenue on the internet by selling t-shirts.
• The (rebuilt) Library at Alexandria, now called the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, is a cultural center of the city (concerts, lectures, etc.)

That’s a pretty good day for a variety of facts learned from people, but there were also lots of very interesting ideas and people as well.

Today was the first day of an intensive seminar class I’m taking this week about new technologies and business which is being co-taught by a prof in my department and one from the business school. It happens to be at the same time as the First Monday conference up stairs in the same building, so we’re coordinating and also going to some of the presentations there.

Today we saw Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia via videoconference. The interesting thing about that is that it actually worked well. I’ve never seen that happen quite right before - even the Q and A went off without a hitch. I couldn’t help thinking that this 2.0 feeling is not about new ideas, but about old ideas actually working.

I think I’ll be totally exhausted if every day this week is as intense (in a good way) as today was. Well, better get on those readings for tomorrow. It’s more pressure when the authors of whatever you’re reading for that day are going to show up to discuss it with your class of like 6 students. It’s great to be taking classes!