Doc Searls comes to Accordion City

Doc Searls — writer, consultant, A-list blogger, senior editor at Linux Journal, one of the writers of The Cluetrain Manifesto (on the Cluetrain, Doc runs the bar car) and all-round Internet Big Idea Guy — was up in Toronto to meet with the people at Tucows. He managed to carve out some time last night to do for a little blogflocking with me and some other Accordion City folk at The Academy of Spherical Arts. Present were:

• Brent Ashley, who used to work at the late great Arkon Electronics on Queen Street West, where I used to hang out in the early 80’s. Arkon’s probably to blame for all the solder I inhaled as a teenager.
• Tara Cleveland, with whom I talked about boys, girls, computing and why you can’t pay me enough to live in the Valley.
• Michael O’Connor Clarke, who’s added his own two cents to World of Ends (which Doc co-wrote): the World of Ands.
• Tim Aiello
• Ross Rader

We talked about the future of blogging tools, reminisced about the Rockwell AIM-65 and the RCA 1802 processor (well, Brent and I did, anyway), relations between the sexes in computer science and engineering, handheld computing, travelling and headaches in customs, Atkins, the prevalence of beards at the table, “Does everyone know Cory Doctorow?!” and why Doc’s TiBook crashes whenever he puts it on its side. He theorizes that it’s the bits leaking out, and only the “1” bits since the “0” bits aren’t skinny enough to fall out the ventilation holes.

At the end of the evening, I gave them a quiet (there was a film shoot upstairs) accordion rendition of one of my signature pieces, AC/DC’s You Shook Me All Night Long. I’ll never tire of the song, since I’ve lived the lyrics. I also got a picture of Doc wearing my flaming cowboy hat and accordion, but I’ll have to post it later as my camera card reader is currently kaput.

Thanks to Brent for organizing the “blogflocking”, Doc for taking the time to hang out and to everyone else for making such great conversation!