Berkman conference

I'm at the Berman Center's Internet & Society 2004 conference, Votes, Bits & Bytes.  The first morning session was a little slow, but things sped up with Tod Cohen's business panel (particularly with the very human Craig Newmark).

Now Scott Heiferman of meetup.com is up, talking about meetup issues.  Robert Putnam, who wrote “Bowling Alone,” will respond to his remarks. I have a feeling that Putnam will say meetup is no substitute for full human contact.

But the IRC channel that Joi Ito set up is buzzing along.  I'm asking what happens to meetup 10 years from now, and someone mentions upcoming.org as a place to look.  I guess the idea is that calendaring functions will integrate meetup kinds of events — it'll be built into the infrastructure.  Hmm.  I'd rather have lots of wildly non-infrastructure meetings going on. With pugs and ukelele guys.

December 10, 2004 | Filed Under main page 

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