Stealthily Yours

At BloggerCon, you might have noticed I was there WITHOUT my laptop. Shocking, eh? I really thought long and hard about it. I wanted to spend as much time listening and not be distracted by IM, IRC and blogging -- all of which I have done and can do at conferences -- but this one was different. I knew I would not be able to really listen and have a machine in front of me. It's just too distracting for me. And I don't make judgements about others who were very wired and running every variety of community app while listening to the speakers. If it works for them, that's great. It's just too much for me most of the time.

Despite my best efforts, in Joi Ito's excellent presentation, half my favorite IRC channel people were wonderfully IN the room and the other half online which was projected on the screen behind Joi -- so you could say I was on IRC in there and you'd be right. No computer in front of me, but I was definately horsing around on the channel. I wanted to explain that I meant no disrespect to Joi -- actually to the contrary, I showed him the highest respect in a certain crazy way. Since he's been writing about it on his blog for weeks -- at a minimum it said, "Hey, love your blog!"

AKMA was seated behind me, typing stuff on IRC that appeared up on the screen in the front of the room. He was daring me to go up and stealth disco Joi and his words were being projected in front of me and behind Joi, if you can imagine the weird logistics. Also funny and wonderful was actually trying to figure out who from our IRC channel was actually not only online, but in the actual room there at Harvard, but since I hadn't been introduced to everyone and they didn't have name tags visible, I didn't even realize they were there. Boris was one of these folks for instance and then I asked AKMA to point him out in the room. Accordian guy was NOT one of these guys since he had an accordian on the floor next to him, anyone could have picked him out, but I also saw him at the party the night before, so I knew who he was. Same with Ryan who I met in my first morning session.

Since Lovely Liz Lane Lawley was on the IRC channel up on the screen, I felt like she was in the room too. When Bob Frankston entered the back of the room, I asked AKMA to tell him welcome ... which he typed into IRC and it went up on the screen. I guess I was riding IRC sidesaddle so to speak.

Joi handled all the levels of engagement and distraction in such an amazing way, I finally had to give in to AKMA's rather unpriestly goading, along with Britt's bubbly encouragement -- and attempt to slip behind Joi, just out of his line of sight and try to stealth disco him in complete surprise mode. It was a surprise. He and I had been talking about trying to disco Dave but the opportunity never presented itself. I know Joi didn't expect me to disco him. We never did get around to discoing the statue of John Harvard in Harvard Yard, maybe next year.