Just a quick note to let you know that BarCamp is officially underway. The backchannel on IRC is moving pretty swiftly if you want to join in, should be fun and informative. Also, the gang just have let go of a limited release of the Flock Browser. Am just about to fire it up… will let you know more later after tooling around with it for a day or so. Joins us on IRC at irc.freenode.net and join channel #barcamp

Was looking at the calendar and realized that we needed to get on with the planning for the next local Bay Area BrainJam. Based on discussions we had last week, I would like to propose that we hold the event on Saturday November 5, 2005. This should give us plenty of time to get things organized and make the second one even better than the first. Anyone have any thoughts? Any spaces available?

After the BrainJam on Saturday, we will definitely be hosting a BrainOff event, and then I am planning on heading off to the next installment of SuperHappyDevHouse Unfortunately, the rest of November is already booked for me, so it does not present much opportunity – if necessary, we can always push it back to early December, but I think the holiday season should be a time off for everyone.

This past Saturday, the San Francisco arts community threw a party, and practically everyone came. I am speaking about the DeYoung Museum opening day, which went from noon on Saturday through 6PM on Sunday. 30 Hours of artsy madness that seems to have brought the whole city out. Many of the photos you will see on Flickr now are of the opening night/day’s festivities. Quite a few people also wrote about the event, but I think I had a somewhat unique experience…

For starters, I almost forgot about it, but at around 930pm on Saturday night, with Kristie out of town and nothing to do, I ran across the event on Upcoming and decided to go for it. I knew of some other people who were going from looking around the web and figured I would try to reach them once I got there, or just run into them. A little while after 11pm I arrived, thinking how cool it would be to hang out in the museum and listen to DJ Cheb I Sabbah who happens to be one of my favorite world music based DJ’s – and one I have never seen spin live.

As I got closer and closer to the doors, I realized there might be quite a wait to get in. I almost bagged it, but decided to go to the end of the line and see how long it might be. After walking literally 3 blocks away and not seeing the end of the line, I took a few photos with my Treo and started to head back, disappointed to say the least. I saw some people by a different entrance, but soon realized it was an exit and no one else was being let in (it seems it was a VIP entrance earlier in the evening). Some people said they were being lead to the main gate to be let back in with their green wristbands, so I followed hoping to sneak in with them – didnt work. So then I went over to the window over looking the part of the gallery where DJ Cheb Sabbah was playing, and saw all of those people down there dancing and having fun. I felt like the little kid on the other side of the fence again, but quickly moved past that feeling, realizing there was little I could do.

As I started leaving, I went past some ‘temporary art’ that was being created and then for shits and giggles decided to hang out by the exit to see if maybe I could see someone I knew or perhaps ‘borrow’ a green wristband from someone who was leaving. Then I noticed that the security guy was kinda sorta letting people in who were members. Given that I had every intention of filling out the membership and paying the $70 membership so Kristie and I could go to the museum and Golden Gate Park on weekends, I told him I was going to join right there tonight and he let me in. (turned out I could not do it that night)

Wow, the agony and disappointment turned into joy so quickly. I felt like a kid being unleashed in a candy store. Once inside, I realized everyone was here. The philanthropists, the suits, the artists, the nomads with backpacks bigger then they were, the club kids, the college students, the underground and just about every other cross section of society you can imagine. It was truly wonderful and I have never felt so much a part of San Francisco as I did while walking through those halls on Saturday night.

So I was taking photos with my Treo 650 when all of a sudden, it crashed, going into an endless reset loop. I tried to do a soft reset, but it didn’t work. If I did a hard reset, I would lose all my data and perhaps not even be able to use the phone. Here I am in the middle of the night, with no phone to contact the other people I was hoping to meet at the museum. This made me think more of what happens when the tools we rely on simply fail. Here I am screwed, because my Treo has this problem with the code used to manage the non-volatile flash memory – which was supposed to be the biggest improvement in the 650 from the 600. Turns out they issued an update to the system this past summer, but no one from Cingular let us know about it, no one from Palm let us know about it. But each of them had my contact information, knew I had this crappy phone with a serious flaw in it (I have done a lot of research on this and it would seem this is an often cited problem) and no one bothered to tell me I needed to do this update. They sure did not miss the chance to try to sell me more stuff via email though. Anyways, I digress, so lets ignore the part of my night that went terribly wrong due to my reliance on a product I previously respected (am now looking for a new phone to replace the Treo 650).

So I managed to catch Dj Cheb Sabbah’s last 2 songs and later saw some great reggae, just dancing with myself and the other 100+ people up near the speakers. In between sets I went for a walk through some of the galleries, when I noticed a distinctive San Francisco/Amsterdam sort of aroma wafting through the hall. How cool – only in San Francisco would you run into something like this. This happened several times throughout the night actually, in different crowded galleries and near the stage area. Later on, I actually saw a couple sneaking out of a somewhat hidden door, with that ‘just fucked look’ on their faces – people sneaking off to do the nasty during a public museum opening in the middle of the night!

Eventually, I saw the entire museum, which had some really great art in it, but in the end, the people and the experience is what really made it for me – uniquely San Francisco. What a great place to be, and what a great city to call home.

My PC hard drive failed a couple weeks ago, some boot error with a bad sector. Since I work on my Mac most of the time, it was not much of an inconvenience, until I realized I needed to create an invoice for some of the work we did recently. So today I turned to Craigslist after checking with some friends for a reccomendation and coming up with nothing because almost everyone cool I trust uses a Mac. (kind of like that issue that came up with “24” I suppose)

The first guy I spoke with sounded sketchy, so I called the next one. He seemed knowledgeable enough, so I called his references who both said they have used him for a year or more. Turns out he had time this afternoon, so he came over to do the work after quoting me a flat rate of $75 (why he doesnt have an hourly I dont know). While more than I expected since it just needed a boot disk (I dont have one, my bad I know) to scan and repair the system, I agreed because I just want it over with.

So he comes in with his own mini-desktop and starts hooking it up to the hard drive directly. He never tried to boot the machine to see what the error really said, but I figure he has some utility on his system that would do it quicker then just hitting it with a boot disk. After about 20+ minutes of fussing around he informs me he can not even get it to show up properly (just attached a USB jumper to the SCSI on the back of the physical drive) which meant it was bad – he kept trying to point out the ‘red light’ on the jumper which meant this was not good at all. So now he wants to do a little backup on the data before trying to repair the drive. We try to figure out where to put the data, since it was less than a gig of data at the most since my last backup, I figure we will jsut use the 2nd drive. So he gets it all set up, wires everywhere, ready to scan the drive and he says he is going to go out for a while and take care of another client while this runs against the 60GB drive. OK, I say, I will be here.

Then he says (45 minutes after he arrives and 20+ minutes after establishing the plan of action) that it is going to be at least $150 now because this is data recovery project. What? You have not even tried to look at the drive through the system itself, not even performed a surface scan to see if it might be fixed easily. So I told him no, I wont pay that, you should have told me that before you started all this stuff – it felt like a mechanic taking your engine out and then telling you you need a new engine. He kept telling me how expensive data recovery was and how reasonable this rate was (which is actually true, but this was not a data recovery problem yet, it was a bad boot sector as far as I can tell). Had he actually told me this beforehand, we could have taken a different approach, but as it was I felt he was trying to pull one on me by upselling me and preying on fear of lost data.

Thing is, he seemed like a nice enough guy, not too personable, but definitely did not seem like a shark who would try to pull something like this. It may have just been bad communications skills and a lack of service oriented business accumen, but whatever the real deal, he started to disconnect everything and I waited patiently. When everything was disconnected, he said, well I guess I can just move the data over here for the original $75 he quoted. I thought for a few seconds and quickly realized he was not the right person for the job and after a few minutes more of packing his stuff, he left here with an hour less of his time and no money for the trouble.

And I am still sitting here without my PC, without the ability to create an invoice and mad as hell that I did not get the right person to do the job. Anyone else know of someone reliable who can solve simple hard drive related boot problems for a reasonable fee?

In reading through the tomes I posted over the weekend, I noticed a key element – in fact THE key element behind what I think BrainJamming should be:

To facilitate ad-hoc collaboartion and interpersonal connections across traditional social, political, technical, economic and organizational boundaries.

One of the first issues we will address is the facilitation of BrainJamming between open source developers and those people/organizations who can most benefit from their knowledge, skills and experience. Ultimately, this should result in the creation of solutions for some of our most difficult socio-economic problems This will also help to fix existing systems that are not operating as they should be, such as disaster relief and recovery efforts.

Additionally, we hope to establish BrainJams as a community of practice for people who are organizing other forms of open source inspired, ad-hoc collaboration within their local Commons. To this end, we will work with other leaders of similarly inspired events to organize their experiences, ideas, Insytes and even their events if they need a place to organize their own events

That feels like better language, more along the lines of what I am hoping for, but still in need of being rewritten end simplified. Tell me what you think, I have posted this and a group editable version over on the BrainJams Wiki

First, thanks to everyone who came over to discuss what this idea really is and for the planning of the next one in the Bay Area. I will be adding the notes to the BrainJams Web site along with everyone’s names to get some more input from a broader audience. We would really like to get more involvement from the WebZine2005 organizers as well as BarCamp Counselors, so please reach out to us if we have not yet reached out to you.

The simple mission statement we kind of agreed upon is:

“To make emerging social software/media technologies more accessible to the people and organizations who could most benefit from them, connecting the creators of the technology more closely with the people who use the tools. This will create stronger awareness of the situations in which the tools are used and what else might be needed to make it simpler and even more valuable.”

So that is the start that I promised Chris Messina the other day. Now the ball is in the court of conversation. We hope to get some more really good feedback from everyone on the Wiki and hope that this idea might come up as part of the discussion at BarCamp Amsterdam and also hope the people at TechCamp in Ireland might throw a few ideas our way too… Which starts in about an hour or so BTW

First, I am just so unbelievably happy that this era of the Knowledge Economy is upon us; you might even call me giddy. The manner in which the concept of Knowledge Networking is spreading so quickly around the globe is almost unfathomable. While it certainly is not anything I invented, it is something to which I am proud to contribute and would like to help organize with other people smarter than myself.

As you may have noted on the BrainJams site – it says

“BrainJams is not an event company or a an organi[z]er of events. BrainJams is intended to be a resource for people who want to share best practices in knowledge networking”

(sorry about the typo, no one pointed that out to me and I just missed it in the rush.

Oops – we may kind a sorta be an events sorta thingy-ma-jobby. We are getting together tonight to discuss the idea, as well as when to do the next Bay Area BrainJam.

Essentially we realized that the idea of a Web 2.0/2.1/37.0 (whatever) was not being received by average people. Not to argue about the natural evolution of innovation, the propagation of memes and the simplifying of technology over time to reach the other side of the chasm, because I believe in that. Rather that people coming together across organizational and disciplinary boundaries to discuss current uses of technology as it might be applied to their problems is pretty cool and useful. The premise of a little structure, a little focus and ad-hoc collaboration through conversation really truly works. When focused on issues like Recovery 2, BrainJams can be really powerful tools in connecting the dots and fixing systems to make them work the way we need them to.

We are planning on staying true to our original promise of building an open community of people like you and me to share best practices about knowledge networking, or as we like to call them, BrainJams. Everything from templates, to resources, to technology, to people, to places to hold the events and more – everything you need to know to get the most from doing your own local BrainJams. There are no intentions to collect fees around this, it is just the right thing to do and I think it is important to do and it should be fun.

We are also planning on tackling a big juicy idea to really support the ideals of BrainJams in the best manner we think possible. We want to meet people from all around the country, learn together with them how to do this thing right. Share our experiences and contribute to one another’s passions. Every aspect that is core to our ideals is served this way. So we are beginning to plan for a BrainJams Roadtrip up, down and all across the USA. We want to be a big part of the solution and help facilitate the right connections within the system – and golly gee this sounds like a neat-o thing to do.

Details are fuzzy at best, but we are talking to the folks at BarCamp to see if we can team up, perhaps leading with a BrainJam that involves people from all four tribes, focused on encouraging participation through the best uses of technology and/or whatever issue is most important to that community. Hopefully they may also involve some of the themes of Recovery 2, or The Noble Pursuit with a genuine intention of creating inter-personal connections between people beyond boundaries – most specifically between developers in the open source community and the people with needs and ideas – with the purpose of actually making them happen.

We are also talking about teaching more people how to use the tools of ‘social media’ to be heard – connecting them with the tools via their own language, rather than the geek speak we so often use. Talking about reputation instead of identity, subscriptions instead of RSS and organizing knowledge instead of social bookmarking. Spreading the message of open source values to other aspects of society. Share, be a part of a community and contribute your experience and expertise. Watch as things start to get better. Review what worked, share those Insytes and repeat.

But who knows, this could all change 33 minutes from now when people start to arrive. Which is a good place for me to break and help Kristie get the house ready, which she has been scrambling to do for the past hour+ as I sat here and wrote away….

(BTW – per Jeff Jarvis’ description , the four tribes are Technology, Business, Non-profit and Government)

ON A PERSONAL NOTE

It is my hope that the real lesson learned from what we did with last week’s Web 2.1 BrainJam, is that anyone can do it.

Believe in yourself and give it a try. My hairstylist today reminded me of another important point – how deep some of our fears go back to our childhood. He related to me a story from when he was a new kid at school at age 6, he threw his birthday party and no one came. All of the new friendships, and for whatever reason they each had, they had let him down. He has not thrown another birthday party since -though we will be changing that this year. For me, it was when I was about 5. Ringling Brothers was coming to town and I came down with the chickenpox. I remember it as if it were yesterday – I was ‘locked’ in the backyard behind the driveway fence when 2 of the neighborhood kids came up and started teasing me about not being able to go. I have always been afraid to miss out on something, often thinking about that other thing I could have been doing. Sometimes I was not even aware of the moment I was living or those around me. So I have learned (am learning more accurately) how to be here now, to not doubt myself and to not give in to a silly little fear that something might not happen as we hoped it would.

A lot of people I know and many more I don’t have given in to these thoughts. They have never tried to do that “big thing” or to pursue that big idea. I just want to remind people to stop, breathe and reconsider. No more why – its time for why not? You can do anything you want to do – make a difference. Start something, join something, and take action today. Right now. Check out VolunteerWatch for some ideas. Reach out in your neighborhood – find something you really care about and contribute.

Nike’s message speaks equally well to business people, artists, non-profits, government employees and developers as it does to athletes – “Just Do It”

With so many companies emerging that have the same focus as I had intended to do with Insytes, I thought it might be a good time to start sharing my vision of what the opportunity is and how I see things evolving. Especially since I keep telling my friends that it is a bigger economic disruption than the introduction of the personal computer. In terms of its social impact, it is even bigger. These thoughts are not the complete picture (that is going to take a book). Rather it is a first attempt to share some of my personal Insytes on a vision for the future and what we need to do to get there. This is a further extension of the essay I wrote in 2002 called The Noble Pursuit and is cross posted there.

Finally, if I have not disclaimed this enough, it it is only a draft – a starting point for discussion. This piece is being shared as is, incomplete and unedited, with the express intention of requiring further editing and research. It was written in the course of 3 hours of stream of consciousness typing. Your criticism, advice, suggestions and contributions are certainly encouraged. Perhaps this can even go into a Wiki so that it can be edited by everyone and made the better for it.

—-

The Knowledge Economy will be powered by a global, interconnected computer system that provides structure to the information, with contextual connections made by human input. The best functions of the computer are in processing linear connections between bits of data while the human brain excels at recognizing contextual patterns. By merging the best aspects of both the human mind and the CPU, we can achieve the most comprehensive contextual knowledge engine possible. No, we are not talking Cyborgs here – we are looking at a need for all humanity to gather knowledge and information in the pursuit of truth with the goal of establishing trust between all peoples of the planet. This is just one aspect of what is needed to bring about a lasting peace that will lead to shared prosperity for a broader swath of the global population.

We face so many problems today and the limitations of traditional broadcast media have prevented the majority of the population from ascertaining truth. But the nature of the Internet provides us with the mechanisms and means to correct this problem. As more and more people participate in the conversations that interest them and on which they have experience, the closer we will be to the solutions. Personally, I believe that the knowledge exists out there somewhere to solve most of the problems we as a society face. They may be in someone’s basement, in the drawer of a consultant, in someone’s mind, or just waiting for someone to discover it within the culmination of a life’s work. But they surely exist.

Unfortunately, for one reason or another, many of the solutions never saw the light of day, many others were struck down by politics (business and governmental) and many others were attempted but failed due to an untold number of reasons. As Tony Robbins is fond of saying, “Past failures are not indicative of future results.” Another primary reason for prior failures is that the pieces were not connected properly for the particular situation they were trying to address. Perhaps a key element of knowledge, fact, or insight was missing. An equally large piece of the puzzle is in regards to how we as humans treat other humans from within the traditional command and control power structures. Good people have been beat down, taking their brilliant ideas with them. Because most people were never taught how to argue for or against an idea, they instead choose to demean the messenger. This has lasting effects that are often reinforced to the point of instilling a sense of helplessness, such that people simply have given up on being able to make a difference.

Therefore the first step in making the world whole and fixing our problems is to deepen the sense of possibilities, to instill the power of belief in self and to help people connect with their higher purpose. With “mother earth’ conceivably trying to shake us off the planet as a dog might try to get rid of fleas, and the unsustainable power structures failing from cronyism, incestuousness and deceit, I can only hope that now is the time that the silent majority stands up to let their voices be heard. That people around the world begin to get inspired to connect with their passion and find their true calling to give the world the unique gift that lies within each of them. We have suffered through the pains of leaders we can not trust, media conglomerates that color the news rather than report it and with too many of those in control rewriting history to suit their own needs, much as King James did when it was his turn to rewrite the Bible.

I’m mad as hell and I am not going to take it any more.

Repeat after me –

I’m mad as hell and I am not going to take it any more.

It is time for the people of the world to rise up together and be heard. But we are not talking about revolution, at least not here in the US and other democratic systems of government. The revolution we need can totally come from within the system itself as it was designed, if we simply PARTICPATE. By freeing ourselves from the shackles of our own pre-conceived notions of what is and what is not possible, the world can truly be whatever we want it to be. We each play a very important role that is unique to each individual with a few base requirements – share what you know, provide insights from your experiences and contribute in whatever way you can. We can do anything we set our mind’s to, so why not focus on something big and wonderful.

Despite the consultants who often tell you to spend time outside of it, THERE IS NO BOX! The world around you can be whatever you want it to be. You need not be ruled by fear of failure, for as many famous people have said – “Within the realm of our failures lies the seeds to our success.” As Edison did with the 10,000 filaments he tried for his light bulb, each one that did not work did not represent failure, but rather one step closer to finding the right one, and his ultimate success. We need to adopt this thinking on a broader scale in order to sustain our society, lest the fringes get more and more frayed and the very fabric that holds it together eventually becomes unraveled.

I believe we have reached a point where we are truly ready for The Noble Pursuit to become a core principle of our ideals. I don’t have all the answers, and I certainly can not make all the arguments eloquently, but I do know that this just feels right. Being inclusive, having compassion for others, being pragmatic, eliminating fear, flattening the control centric hierarchies and embracing each other because of our differences rather that pushing one another away because of them. We need more tolerance and less anger. We also need to understand the way systems work in our world and how to leverage them to our advantage.

The knowledge we need to solve most of the world’s problems exists out there today. Scientists have gathered information on things that are unfathomable to me, and perhaps 90+% of the population. Journalists, and now Bloggers, are gathering and discussing current events. They are writing the history books of the future right before our eyes – a direct accessible archive of all human knowledge and experience. People from all corners of the world are creating the ultimate, fully authoritative encyclopedia and dictionary, expanding it each day as our knowledge grows. New Media organizations are emerging everyday for every conceivable interest someone may have, and we have only begun to scratch the surface.

All of these things bode well for the future of our society, but these efforts still lack an organizing principle – a purpose for other valuable members of society to both contribute and benefit from our advancements. People still cannot trust closed organizations. Having been lied to so often by those they once trusted, many are rightfully jaded – even to the point of not being involved with the ‘system’. The way to make change is by understanding the systems that were put in place. In the case of the US specifically, to understand why our country’s forefathers designed the system that way. The intentions were pure, despite what many men of power have done to those ideals since. It need not be that way any more and it starts with taking action. Believe you can make a difference and you will. It may not be in exactly the same way you intended, but it will at least give you knowledge of what to do differently next time.

My strength has always been in pattern recognition and crashing disparate ideas together to create innovation. In many ways, my life has been one long BrainJam, talking with people and connecting the dots, sharing what I have learned and offering my Insytes to help people succeed. What I have learned about knowledge is that reading and talking are great, but there is no substitute for an experience – from many researchers, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that the strongest method of learning comes from failure. Again, I paraphrase Tony Robbins here “people tend to celebrate their successes, but ponder their failures.”

So what is my Noble Pursuit? While still partially unclear, it feels like it should be to help create the systems necessary for its success and initiate efforts to organize the collective wisdom through driving further participation from across the spectrum of humanity. (lofty stuff, but when there is no perceivable barriers to success other than the mental constraints of others, why not?)

The system itself I had originally envisioned through my first work around The Noble Pursuit back in early 2002, which was more recently manifested through my attempts to turn these ideals into a company called Insytes. As one great leader said to me, you need not own it for it to work for you in the way that suits the world best. To this end, I am risking myself and my reputation by putting these thoughts out here into the commons, with the hope that the people who are putting out similar systems today will truly ‘get it’ beyond the need for making next quarter’s numbers.

In a system such as the one I imagine will power The Noble Pursuit and serve as a foundational element of The Knowledge Economy, the greater the inputs, the greater the relevancy and value. The greater the value, the greater the user base. A virtuous cycle with value being placed into the system and removed from the system – a perpetual motion machine of constant and never ending innovation and enlightenment.

In order for such a system’s success to be both broad and deep, the system must be open to all to take their personas, their stored artifacts, their reputation and their attention stream with them. To change services more easily than one can switch their mobile phone provider. If the system’s premise is based on the collaborative efforts of the collective wisdom, then surely the economic systems it applies to its operations must also operate under these principles. It is the fundamental basis of open source – and it works.

This is not the end of the story, it is only the beginning. I know not where it ends, or what my real role will be in it. What I do know is that everyone will play a part, that everyone can make a difference and that people need to stand up and be heard rather than remaining sidelined by the 10% of extremists in our society who currently dominate the national and global discussions on such matters. This is the true power being offered by the emerging technologies being referred to as Web 2.0. It my hope that we are able to dispel the fears many people hold towards technology and that one day soon, they will look at a computer and realize it is only a tool, much like a pencil and paper – but oh what a tool it can be if everyone is empowered to use it and participate in the conversations that matter most to them.

We can make a difference, each and everyone of us. Together we can fix the problems of our world as we band together, each of engaged in The Noble Pursuit.

Was deep in thought earlier while getting a haircut, perhaps my first moment to take a breath really since the events of last week. I generally do a bit more refelction but the ideas are coming so fast now, and the conversation has become so engaging that I sometimes even forget to eat (last time it was like that was 1995 for me and my waistline proves it).

So what comes next for me is going to be a big change, no mattter which opportunity (or opportunities) I pursue. Funny thing is, I am not worrying about it. I am not even worrying about whether BrainJams is going to be something, or if other people think the idea behind Web 2.1 is ephenneral. I am finally getting to just be me. Sure there are other aspects of me that are not on public display at every moment, but generally speaking I am, as Rachel Murray mentioned the other day, a WYSIWYG sort of guy. While that frankness has occasionally gotten me in trouble, occasionally made me misunderstood and occasionally been harmful to myself financially, I can not imagine being any other way.

So as I sit here today, uncertain of what the future may bring, uncertain of which path I will choose over the coming weeks (though one I have already begun to walk – more on that later today) – I know that massive change lies before me and I welcome it with open arms. Change happens every day and we simply adapt – humans are perhaps one of the most (if not the most) adaptive species on the planet. It can feel unsettling of course, and it often affects many areas of your life simultaneously, but the sense of ‘change’ that is often troubling to people is mostly within our heads. For that reason, it can be something that prevents you from taking action, something that drives you to take action, or as I prefer, something I deal with as each moment comes and goes – attempting to be present in those moments rather than worrying about what may or may not happen.

During the early Internet years, my signature said it all:

Look forward to dream,
Look back to learn,
Look at today and be.

Simple eh? Sometimes you just gotta believe and let go – the unvierse takes care of the rest.

It took a couple of extra days to put this together because of a few returns we made and a few things we had to mail out, but you can download the final accounting Excel Spreadsheet to see for yourself where it all went, or just read the summary below.

We took in a total of $2,593.86, spent $1,191.33, returned $171.63 worth of goods and paid $60.25 in PayPal fees.

This means we are able to donate $1,384.81 to the Internet Archive!

53 people paid for registrations via PayPal for a total of $129.10 which will be donated to the Creative Commons Fundraising Drive. This popped up on my radar after we had committed to make the primary donation to the Internet Archive. Since we really did not know if people were actually going to pay to register, and it was not required, we felt this was a good way to contribute to another good cause and still remain true to our promise.

At the moment we are awaiting a $500 check from KRON-4 due to problems I had with my QuickBooks in generating an invoice. We are also waiting for the funds to be transferred from PayPal into my bank account. Once these items are cleared up we will be writing both checks. Probably within a week or two at most.

A huge shout out to our patrons who made this all possible. My deepest gratitude to my logistics queen Kristie who put together the spreadsheet and left me with the simplest of tasks, telling everyone about it. Many thanks also to all the people who volunteered and those who are helping to organize the next one here in the Bay Area.

BrainJams web2.0 web2.1 web2.1brainjam knowledge+networking brainjamming