It’s been less than a week since I left Los Angeles and much less than a week since I got to Vienna but it seems like muck longer than that on both counts. Man, people sure have a bad impressions of LA here, when people ask me where I’m from and I say LA it’s been pretty amazing how many people have negative reactions, almost all of which have never been there but instead have “heard all about it.” Yeah, and I’m sure that is all accurate too. Sorry I haven’t been posting here so much but if you’ve been following me on Twitter or Flickr you know I’ve been keeping those pretty up to date. I’m trying to be a bit more organized with the photos I’m taking so if you want to see photos of things around Vienna check out this set, and if you want Roboxotica photos specifically check out this set.
I was also a guest on monochrom’s Taugshow on Friday night and photos from that are here. I talked about blogs and metroblogging, and how it’s changing the world. When that goes online I’ll link to it for sure. Saturday I gave the opening talk at the English portion of the Roboexotica symposium about this years theme “Ghost in the Machine.” I drew the conclusion that similar to the concept of Koestler’s theory about how primitive man’s mind still lingers within our own modern and evolved minds and drives many of our actions, that online communities were the “ghosts” actually driving the decisions and actions of more modern and evolved websites, sometimes to the benefit of the companies behind them if they are smart enough to know that they aren’t that smart. The overall point I was making was that the companies that think they are smarter than their users are the ones that fail, the ones that accept the fact that their users are smarter than they are early on, and trust them to help lead the way, can only benefit from that insight. That said, many much smarter and more interesting people filled out the talks for the rest of the day.
So far Vienna has been very fun, hectic as hell, but I’ve been enjoying it. I’m looking forward to things calming down a little more so I can explore the city and see what it has to offer. I’ve met a handful of new friends already and I’m excited to hang out with them when we’re not rushing to meet some deadline or to make some event on time. I’m sure I’ll have more stories soon, better ones than this anyway.
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