Categories: It Happened to Me

Last Night’s OPML Meeting

Last night’s OPML Meeting, in almost an outline format

Downstairs boardroom at Tucows HQ, located in lovely Liberty Village, Accordion City.
Attendance:

Well attended — about 20 people showed up. Not bad for such short notice! My thanks to all of you for coming over!
Put together by Ray “iPodderX” Slakinski and Ross “Boss Ross” Rader, with some logistical details handled by Yours Truly.
This was presenter Dave Winer’s first visit to Accordion City. Hope you enjoyed your visit, Dave!
Randy Charles Morin managed to make it, despite having to navigate around the traffic snarl resulting from last night’s Air France crash.
Amber MacArthur (from Call For Help and command-N), came with a video camera and camera operator, who videoed most of the proceedings.
Tom from CIBC wins the Scoble Award for bringing in and taking notes with a tablet PC. At dinner, he shed the light on Interac Online, which essentially lets you use your debit card over the ‘Net. (I bought my new Powerbook from my coworker James “Master of His Domains” Woods this way — rather than give him a cheque, I gave him the money via Interac Online.)
Calvin, who has the coolest non-intentionally assigned licence plate that Ross and I have ever seen.
Albert Lai was also there. I know him from my days at
Mackerel Interactive Multimedia and from that crazy time when we both

lived in San Francisco riding the P2P wave and surfing that bubble. You

may remember him from the deal in which three guys under 20 sold a network of computer-oriented web sites to Internet.com.
Tara Hunt, a friend whom I know from non-tech circles, showed up. I met her through Kickass Karaoke and the Naked News launch party back in February 2003. In addition to being one of the savviest online marketing gurus I know, she also organized Accordion City’s best disco parties!
I know I’m missing some people — send me your names (and links to your sites) and I’ll add them to this list!

Discussed

The Air France crash
OPML (Outline Processor Markup Language)
Dave’s OPML editor
Blogging using the OPML editor
Creating an outline using the provinces of Canada (including Florida as a province)
Collaborative outling (a.k.a. intsant outlining)
I recorded most of the meetup — I’ll post it once I’ve had a chance to convert it into MP3.

Post-Meeting

Closing song on accordion: Britney Spears’ Baby One More Time.
(Those of you who know me well will probably say “What, again?”. I’m

working on expanding the repertoire, folks.) This was a mostly new

audience, so they haven’t heard me do it a million jillion times yet.
Post-gathering dinner

At the Liberty Street Cafe.
My thanks to them — the kitchen typically closes at 9:15
on Tuesday, but I phoned ahead and explained; they kept the kitchen

open later just for us. Kudos!
Appetizers: warm brie-and-raspberries platter and fried
calamari with a nice spicy sauce. My dinner: the salmon with lobster

mashed potatoes. Tasty stuff!
Another accordion-powered incident: the waitress,
Genevieve, is trying to start a cabaret and is looking high and low for

an accordionist (“Are you a professional accordionist?” she asked, to

which I replied, “No, I’m an amateur.) I’ll audition anyway.

Joey deVilla

Next Paging Michael O'Connor Clarke! »

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View Comments

Anonymous says:

August 3, 2005 at 8:23 am

And I had a divine time, Joey! Thanks so much!

You forgot to mention that you came up with the uber brilliant idea of cross referencing Google Maps with Sausage Party...fantastic!

The two fine gentleman from Toulouse, France were sitting on my end of the table. They were Harvey (pronounced 'Arvay') and Matthew (pronounced 'Matieux'). They were lovely.

I look forward to more meetups and I really look forward to meeting Michael O'Connor Clarke! There will be a Cookout in Accordion City!
Anonymous says:

August 3, 2005 at 8:27 am

Awesome night Joey. Thanks to everybody at Tucows.

-Randy Charles Morin
Anonymous says:

August 3, 2005 at 12:02 pm

Uh oh....

Someone over at the Hugh Wiki is trying to grapple with OPML...anyone from last night want to give it a whirl?

http://www.thehughpage.com/Got_a_question%3F_Post_it_here.
Anonymous says:

October 14, 2005 at 7:36 pm

Okay, I realize this post is a couple of months old, but... it's still germane to leave comment here. Considering that (a) I'm one of the top users of BlogWare, and (b) have just released a service that outputs OPML... what's the deal with only offering users the ability to (easily) tag to Technorati?

http://mitch.lockergnome.net/blog/_archives/2005/10/14/1300591.html