Tonight I attended the ***Berkman Thursday Meeting|http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/thursdays*** at Harvard Law School’s ***Berkman Center|http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/home/***. I had heard about the meeting a while ago through the ***Boston Blogger Meetup|http://blog.meetup.com/3/*** group, and had wanted to attend… and tonight I finally got around to it. I invited ***Kellan|http://laughingmeme.org/*** to come, thus killing two birds with one stone – attending a Berkman meeting, and meeting Kellan (which I’d been hoping to do since he mentioned he was going to be in Boston).
Meeting Kellan was cool. I always enjoy meeting someone who I’ve known of in one narrow context online… in Kellan’s case, it’s because I use his ***MagpieRSS|http://magpierss.sourceforge.net/*** software. Eventually I figured out that he was in Boston from time to time, and so I pestered him about meeting up some time. 🙂 Eventually it worked out that we were both able to attend the meeting tonight, so there you have it! Kellan is an excellent example of a friendly, well-adjusted, talkative techie type… up for discussion on any topic that arises, well-versed in many disciplines, and not obsessed with some narrow topic to the exclusion of any interest in anything else. Also, I finally got the story straight as to just why he lives the nomadic life, and why the heck he’s in Boston anyway. 🙂
The meeting itself was very interesting… a good portion of the meeting was spent discussing policies for accepting members to the Yahoo! Group that the attendees use as a mailing list. Recently some spammers have gotten through to the list, so everyone wanted to make sure there was an acceptable policy for keeping out the undesirables, while letting as many legitimate users in as possible. There was also some discussion of weblog comment and trackback spamming, which turned into a discussion of identity and authenticity in blogging, blogging for hire, commercial blogging, etc. All very interesting topics… not to say that I had anything to contribute, or that I had an opinion on them, but I do like hearing other folks debate and discuss these issues.
After the meeting, we all walked down to Harvard Square for dinner at Smile Thai. The food was pretty decent, but I actually think I prefer our own Siam Delight here in Beverly… their ingredients seem fresher. But still, it was good. The company was good too – like other meetups of this type, I usually end up sitting at one end of the table, and I end up having rotating discussions with the small group around me. In this instance, it was Kellan and me, and three or four other charming people whose names I simply can’t remember (even after looking at the ***meeting notes|http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/thursdaymeetings/stories/storyReader$282***) – so to those very cool people, I apologize… and if you’re reading this, please leave your names and website addresses in the comments!
All in all, it was a great time. I really enjoy these sort of meetups, getting the chance to meet totally new people who have similar interests, and to talk over dinner. I don’t know if I can keep up with attending the Berkman group on a weekly basis, but I certainly wouldn’t hesitate to come again when I’m able!
As an aside, there’s a monthly ***Boston Weblogger Meetup|http://blog.meetup.com/3/events/4246334/*** coming up soon, which I do hope to attend… will be good to see those folks again. I’ve noticed in the past that there is some overlap between the groups, but tonight I only saw two people (***Josh|http://frassle.net/josh*** and ***Shimon|http://frassle.net/shimon***) who I recognized from the Weblogger Meetups I’ve attended… then again, not everybody can come to a weekly meeting, so I suppose I would be less likely to see the montly folks.
It’s been a long night… and one more day of work tomorrow! Time for bed.