Mathemagenic

As the title says - I'm going to cross Atlantic and be in US in January (fingers crossed: still have to get a visa).

The first part of the travel plan is more or less clear:

• 3-6 January - Big Island, Hawaii - HICSS-2005 - presenting paper on weblog conversations at persistent conversations track
• for next 7-10 days - offline time for vulcanos and diving (mentally preparing for a hole in my budget, but this is something I can't miss :)

The second part is quite open. I'd like to stop over at 1-2 places in US mainland on my way back home to meet interesting people. I have no particular preferences for places, but some ideas for what I'd like to do there:

• Meet bloggers. Those that I know online and those that I don't know. Actually, being a blogger is not a requirement :)
• Meet researchers doing interesting things, especially around: social software, weblog research, corporate blogging, personal knowledge management, lurking in communities, emergent metadata/ontologies...
• I'd be happy to present my work, do some interactive teaching/brainstorming, establish a common ground for collaboration opportunities and do other work-related things. It also may be a good idea to organise US edition of BlogWalk...
• Have fun.

So, any options/suggestions/invitations are welcome... I'd prefer to go somewhere where I can do interesting things with interesting people. Also it shouldn't ruin my budget, so I'd prefer somewhere relatively easy to get and relatively cheap to stay (or with local hosts who like strangers around :)

This post also appears on channel BlogWalk