Before leaving for Tokyo, I mentioned how I was looking forward to getting back to Montreal for the summer. More specifically, what I told a few people in person was I was particularly looking forward to watching, and perhaps being a part of, the blooming of a rather good bacterial culture starting to take hold at my favorite hang out of late, Laïka.
Laïka is essentially a neat little café/bistro/bar in my neighborhood, known to be a hang out for many of Montreal's digital culture makers. Until Ile Sans Fil set up the free WiFi hotspot there, that group comprised mostly of francophone electronic musicians and video artists (not exclusively, but mostly), as well as scenesters, students and various young artists who could afford the $2.50 coffee.
The Wifi brought the web-geeks. Amen.
Over the last 6 months, many many ad-hoc conversations have sparked up and some really great people started showing up, talking and doing cool stuff. Community! Yay!
Michael Lenczner with Ile Sans Fil, WifiDog and all his great ideas.
Hugh McGuire with LibriVox and... something else. ;)
Julien Smith, podcasting hip-hop, but thinking about it all quite a bit.
Brett Gaylor, videoblogger, film-maker, also thinking and talking about it all.
and a few others I have yet to meet or fully contextualize for myself.
Steven Mansour seems to lurk about on occasion and that I am very happy about too.
(Notice that the local "usual-suspects" and "movers and shakers" are absent... too busy at their jobs. ;)
Anyways, it seems I missed a monumental caffee-clatch which spawned a multi modal discussion online after the fact.
The overall theme is "open information" and "what the heck are we doing with all this web stuff?!", and was no doubt sparked by Michael's enthusiasm for what he is calling "open access to civic data." Way. To. Go.
So that was the set up, here's the conversation:
Hugh's write up of the Laika talk, and comment thread.
Robin Millett's blog entry.
Bretts videoblog summary and reply.
Hugh's vlog reply and continuation.
Mike said a few words on his blog too. ;)
I KNEW this was gonna get good-er. All the more for me to look forward to.
(Apologies to any egos that got bruised in my rough and certainly incomplete round of references... There's only so much I can "see" from this side of the Pacific at 2am.)
