I arrived to the US last Monday and I am leaving again for London this afternoon, from Newark Airport. It’s been a good trip. I’ve visited DC, seen some friends, went to a conference (that was unfortunately suspended in the middle due to snow weather), enjoyed a private tour of the Metropolitan Museum and had fantastic food. Now, it is time for the second stage of my 4-week 4-country travelling period: Brussels. I’ll be there on March 3rd.
I’ve spent my day in a snowed NYC. Well, not really. I’ve spent my day in an auditorium in a university in NYC, while it was snowing quite heavily outside. I am attending the New School conference on Limiting Knowledge in a Democracy.
After spending a couple of days in DC, the Amtrak train brought to Penn Station on Wednesday afternoon to attend this conference. Today, the panels were particularly good. Tomorrow, it promises to be as good or even better.
On Saturday, I am attending another conference in Columbia University about policy-making in the digital era. In both conferences, Jonathan Zittrain speaks. It seems that there are only a couple of people that talk about these things in a country of 300 million people. Funny.
This morning I met Jon Worth for an always-inspiring conversation. We exchanged some ideas and tips. I told him about some projects I am working on in Barcelona and the more ambitious League of Informed Citizens, and he shared with me his immediate and long-term life projects. Very interesting.
Later, I went to the Regent Street Apple Store to return the 15 inch Macbook Pro I bought after my 2006 Macbook’s logic board melted, which I replaced with less difficulty and cheaper than I thought. Then, I went to John Lewis to buy two new beds for the London flat – I should have them next week, my back is looking forward to it.
Now, I am @ The Hub in King’s Cross. The video on c’llr 10 for TweetyHall is finished, and a bit later I am having a conversation about a tech & democracy in Catalunya with some people in Barcelona. It looks promising.
So much to do in London, so little time…
It is some time since last I went jogging. I need to find again my past routine when I went 4 times a week. When I run, I feel healthier and I want to keep that disposition when eating and doing other things. Action begets change. By doing something, our mind gets into a different context and changes the content of thoughts and wishes. When I run regularly, my mind feels healthier and wants to keep that going by eating light food.
I believe it happens in all what we do. For example, if we drive our cars to work, we’ll be different persons than if go walking or taking public transportation. We might become more environmentalists in other activities. Action begets change.
If I use open source software, I will think differently about my work, about what I am doing with it, but also about how I should treat information. My perspective will be more open towards liberating information and data, increasing the effect of my first belief that brought me to use open source software in the first place. Action begets change.
Just saw ‘A serious man‘, the last movie of the Coen brothers, and I loved it. They are back to Barton Fink, though even better. There is something of it that reminds me of Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm. It is this existentialist jewishness that we can also find in Franz Kafka, where the individual keeps banging his head against social norms and a system that doesn’t understand him, and he doesn’t understand, either. While he tries to adapt once and again. Genius.
It was a quiet but fruitful Saturday today. At 11h I was at Goodenough College in London to attend the 3rd Crisis Camp London. What is it? It says it clearly, on its newly launched website (crisiscampldn.wordpress.com, soon on a proper domain):
Crisis Camp London is a BarCamp style event focussed on the role of technology in humanitarian assistance and disaster relief. Projects at CrisisCamp Haiti include open mapping, developing applications to aggregate local resource information for relief workers, and developing low-bandwidth applications for use by the relief effort.
It is a part of the Crisis Commons movement. It is taking place in several locations around the world including London.
I’ve been actually working on the website from nearly the scratch. Someone before had put together a Wordpress.com blog and I designed and configured it to look more like a proper site. Other people then checked and wrote the main content of the pages, and help design its information structure (where each page should go). I think it looks quite neat, despite the limitations of Wordpress.com. So now, we need to organize properly the information flow and share responsibilities for its maintenance. Also, I would like to have a proper install of Wordpress on a shared hosting server, so I can use in its full potential. I hope soon.
At 5 pm we finished the crisiscamp (it happens every Saturday from 10-5, normally in the London Knowledge Laboratory, but today it was exceptionally located in Goodenough college). We went for a quick beer. Afterwards, I went home, had dinner and watch one of the best episodes of Curb your enthusiasm (s07E03) (in season 7 they are making a Seinfeld reunion, it looks promising!).
Now, it is 11.55 pm, just finished my 20 mins meditation, and getting ready for bed. My booking is waiting for me on my night table…
Just bought flight to NYC to attend the New School’s Limiting Knowledge in a Democracy conference! It features keynote by Seymour M. Hersh and talks by many other good people, including my ex College tutor at Oxford Jonathan Zittrain. Very much looking forward! 
I haven’t really ever found a place that I call home
I never stick around quite long enough to make it
But if my life is for rent and I don’t lean to buy
Well I deserve nothing more than I get
Cos nothing I have is truly mine
I’ve always thought
that I would love to live by the sea
To travel the world alone
and live my life more simply
I have no idea what’s happened to that dream
Cos there’s really nothing left here to stop me
(Life for Rent, Dido)
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