Flying again tomorrow – this time to Portugal, to speak at SHiFT conference (on Blogging on the edge: between personal passions, work practices and business risks).

Looking forward to meet old friends and other interesting people, get some fresh ideas and find a bit of time for Portuguese sweets (that even Indian sweets can’t beat as No.1 :)

And, since I couldn’t manage to do both – no BlogTalk for me this time :(

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2006/09/26.html#a1835; comments are here.

• In the train…
• Studying weblogs at Microsoft
• I’d love to do a workshop in this house…

Last year in Seattle, when Lee and Sachi were planning their trip around the globe I said I wanted to show them Moscow. The chances to meet there were slim – they didn’t have any definite plans and I’m in Moscow just a few weeks in a year…

I don’t know how, but it actually worked – I was there when they arrived as part of their transsiberian journey, we could find each other and spent a nice day together. For me it’s always very special to show foreigners around my own city, but this time was even more special.

I have been reading TWINF for months – it’s started from checking how Lee and Sachi were doing once in a while, but slowly grew into some kind of light addiction, waiting to see the next story from their journey. It felt like some kind of reality show that I was following, but the one where the people were not completely strangers… Now it took another turn – we met and my position changed from an observer to a participant – I made part of their story… The most funny and strange thing is that what I know as the events of the day we spent together is not the story itself. I guess it will take a few more days till their impressions of Moscow get online and I have no idea what story they will tell. It’s a very strange and special anticipation…

[and, in case you are wondering, I'm back to NL]

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2006/09/23.html#a1833; comments are here.

• Brain vacation
• Travel plans
• Travel plans: Moscow 14-26 May

I’m flying to Moscow tomorrow and will stay there till 23 September, mainly busy with some work. Not likely to blog, but will be online via usual means in case you need something :)

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2006/09/12.html#a1832; comments are here.

• In Russia 23 Nov – 8 Dec
• In the train…
• Disconnected or How to contact me over coming month?

Recovering from the heat and intensive human contact of Cambridge and London. Next to the time with friends and a tiny bit of sightseeing we went to Microsoft Research Socio-Digital Systems group, e-mint event on communities and blogs with Nancy White and Headshift.

Some things to remember:

• how people get into blogging <- don’t skip legitimate peripheral participation
• archiving as identity construction in To have and to hold: exploring the personal archive
• Nancy’s three types of blog communities: person-centric, topic-centric/distributed, “walled” (see also more detailed notes by David Wilcox )
• see what comes out of interviews by Robin Hamman
• all kinds of things on peripheral awareness, its effects and their intentional enrichment, connecting ambient knowledge thinking and bunnies of guys at Headshift, peripheral ink display and other cool tools of Socio-Digital Systems and my own thinking on unexpected knowledge sharing
• what if you job is about connecting the dots?

Hmm, this post seems to escape categorisation…

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2006/07/20.html#a1802; comments are here.

• I’d love to do a workshop in this house…
• Perseus weblog study
• Blogging about disabilities

If nothing (visa paperwork) goes wrong we are planning to be in UK mid-July (around the weekend of 15-16), visiting friends in Cambridge. I’m thinking of adding a few days to it to meet people – at least for sharing conversations and food, but we can add some work to the mix as well.

Any suggestions? Let me know.

Pinging Matt, Rick, Headshift guys, Piers, Kat, Steven and others around…

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2006/06/14.html#a1776; comments are here.

• Observed, lived and written: random thoughts on meeting Lee and Sachi in Moscow
• Travel plans: Moscow 14-26 May
• Take-aways from UK trip

By coincidence I found out that Nancy is coming to Europe in a near future. Wonder, why it always have to be like that?

We have many location-aware tools, but those I know are pretty much about now and past: showing where people are or where they’ve been. I want to see the future.

I’m ready to share my travel calendar with my friends. I guess many of them would do the same. I’d love to have some tool that would allow me to:

• share selected events from my Outlook calendar with my online friends (ideally using my friend lists in whatever tools with friends I specify instead of making another one)
• have a notification tool saying something like “Nancy is coming to Europe – may be you should check if you can be around” or “do you know that X are coming to the same conference as you do” or “three of your contacts are going to be within 20 km range from that meeting in Germany next week”

It shouldn’t be that difficult. And we need something like that. In the world where far-away-very-close-friends make us looking at any chance for a meeting it doesn’t make sense to leave it to coincidences…

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2006/06/12.html#a1772; comments are here.

• Weblogs as mushrooms
• Online communication tools: designed for a group, experienced by an individual
• Trust in weblog conversations

So, we take off for a long weekend away. It’s 4 hours drive and then we see the house. I fall in love immediately. It’s huge. It’s beautiful. It’s old and modern at the same time. It’s open – spaces connect and flow into each other, big windows connect inside and outside…

And, as we walk around to choose a room to stay, we discover that it’s also designed as a workspace (wifi and beamer anyone?). And my inside screams immediately – I’d love to do a workshop here. 25-30 people, a few days, mix of creative conversations, nerding, hiking, cooking, sitting by the fire…

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2006/04/14.html#a1765; comments are here.

• Travel plans
• Taking a week off
• Observed, lived and written: random thoughts on meeting Lee and Sachi in Moscow

What could be better when you get off the train from Moscow in the morning? 10 min walk, fresh orange juice, free wifi, pancakes and all the time you want…

Unfortunately couldn’t find any website or info in English. The address is Zhukovskogo, 28; phone +7 (812) 272-35-12. You can check plazes or maps:

• in English – crossing of ul.Zhukovskogo and ul.Vosstaniya in the lower right corner
• in Russian, but with location marked (should be easy to find given that red line metro station is the one at Moscow railway station :)

Opens at 9 in the morning, so don’t take the train that arrives at 7 :)

And while I was googling – some other nice cafes in St.Petersburg.

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2005/11/25.html#a1709; comments are here.

• Travel plans: US in April-May?
• Facilitation lessons learnt
• Note to myself: think in terms of innovation acceptance stages for every new project

I’m hardly blogging anyway, but just in case: I’m travelling to Russia 23 Nov – 8 Dec. In Moscow most of the time, in St. Peterburg on 25 Nov, in Ekaterinburg on 4-6 Dec.

If you are there and want to meet – let me know.

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2005/11/23.html#a1708; comments are here.

• Location-aware future
• Travel plans: UK, mid-July
• Brain vacation

12/34. 12 hours by train in 34 hours – some sleep, first gluntwine this year and lots of talking in between :)

Somewhere between Frankfurt am Main and Köln I detach myself from the book I’m reading and look around. Upper shelves are packed with black cabin-size suitcases; seats under then are packed with dark suited businessman. They look strange – not reading, not sleeping, not clicking around through emails – just sitting and staring into nowhere. I wonder if they are jetlagged or just spend the day negotiating big deals…

I go back to my book. It’s a collection of interviews with travel writers, A sense of place, by Michael Chapiro. I picked it up in January, when we traded beaches of Waikiki for coolness and coffee of Barnes&Noble. It was patiently waiting for me – till last week. Since then I was steeling a bit of time here and there to dive into it. Fortunately this trip is long enough to let me do all of that – watching people, reviewing reports, sending kusjes and being able to savour the book slowly as food in a good restaurant.

I enjoy this book – the themes – home and being far away, crossing borders and cultures, writing, being insider and outsider, facts and fiction. And the style – close and somewhat intimate conversations, asking very knowing questions coming from reading travel narratives that may be reveal more about their authors than about destinations.

As usual I start seeing parallels with my own work. Thinking of absorbing details of others’ lives from their weblogs, sense of connectedness and somewhat intimate knowledge about them – and interviews that could touch themes and go to the depths not possible otherwise.

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2005/11/17.html#a1707; comments are here.

• Outliner use patterns
• New Bloglines
• Weblogs from a philosophical perspective