Mathemagenic

I couldn't leave it unnoticed: Martin Dugage, you can't participate in life via conference call.

This is an ad (original), but the image is very powerful. Thinking of f2f time, conference backchannelling, sightseeing, dialogue in slow motion...

I guess it's not about tools we use, it's about pace: you can't connect with others at sixty-five miles an hour. You can't learn about a city jumping here and there in a packadged tour, you can't became friends in half an hour... Weblogs may mediate presence, but connecting with others still takes time as pregnancy takes nine month...

My three weeks of travel are over. I'm back home, unpacking, tuning into regular rhythms and trying to connect bits and pieces into a whole...

Themes to think about:

• Networking: from awareness to action, dynamics, scaling
• Interplays: tools and practices, users and developers
• Reflective practices
• (PhD) research methodology: design research, multiple perspectives, Niels Bohr, (in)visibility as a lack of dimensions
• Conversations: multiple media

Lessons learnt and other unrelated notes in no particular order:

• never ever think of finishing a paper while travelling to conferences - spoils all the fun of sightseeing and f2f time
• how comes that I was meeting "hypertext guys" at all places I went?
• survival Italian: spremuta di arancia
• when you decide to have a "laptop-free" day you need it most (or: one step closer on investing into something light and small)
• where to eat in Milan (or: poetry and food) - find link!
• lunch at a conference venue is not necessary the fastest one: sometimes it makes sense to walk more
• before blogging a conference check if there are collaborative notes 
• for a real-life metaphor of being lost on the Net, get into the net labyrinth at  Mur insel in Graz (and while you are in Graz, remember that the best time to walk to Schlossberg is 2 at night :)
• walking in Lugano be prepared for salsa dancing
• when you start believing that there is no one to talk about weblogs, you find a great company to do so
• it's easy to start falling in love with everything Italian
• three weeks with a small suitcase is not that impossible
• it's not about getting to the colourful house, it's about conversations with people on the way there
• it's a pleasure to see Earth from above again and again: each time there is a discovery
• in spite of another round of Radio problems, I'm not going to change the tool (at least until liveTopics functionality gets into k-collector ;)
• and, of course, all interesting personal KM discussions happen when I travel...

I'll be editing old posts during coming week, don't be surprised...

Something else: my weblog turned two years the day before I started travelling and I forgot to post about it. I guess blogging is getting so much interwoven into my way of doing things that anniversaries do not matter anymore :)