Made it out West mostly intact, except for the keep-it-closed latch on my laptop, which broke a couple hours ago. I’ll have to see if I can take it by an Apple store tomorrow. But right now, I’m sitting in sunny Berkeley, enjoying a mild and breezy 68 degrees. Dinner with my mom’s sister tonight, then into the city tomorrow to check into the hotel. And it was around 30 when I left the house this morning. I could get used to this CCCC-in-warm-locations thing — but next year it’s Chicago. Enjoy it while you can, I suppose.
California
Glad to hear that you’ve landed safely. Hope you have a good time and enjoy some decent weather!
Mike: Best on the panel. Wish I could be there.
Chicago–again?! Wasn’t Cs just there 3 years ago?
Thanks for the best wishes, y’all, and your presence will definitely be missed, Chris — after all, you’re the one who really got me thinking seriously about this stuff. As it stands, my presentation has four major pieces: first, writing as process or activity versus writing as scarce and solely owned product; second, Neoclassical and Marxian economic perspectives on knowledge work (including writing); third, the market transaction and the gift transaction; fourth, the use value and the exchange value of student writing. All filtered through Lessig & through Yochai Benkler. The thing I’m struggling with is that since I’m doing it as a talk rather than reading a paper, it has a much more paratactic and inductive feel to it, rather than the hypotactic “if A, B, and C, then D” leading-toward-a-single-unified-conclusion stuff I’m more used to doing. So I’m hoping it won’t suck.
Oh I am jealous. I lived out in Pacifica for awhile, paying $700/mo for an outhouse in someone’s basement (but I could see the ocean from the kitchen window–the only window). I can’t wait to hear everyone’s report on how the conference went (I’m first year, so I missed the call this time).
Well, you know the deadline for 2006 is fast approaching — if you’re thinking about maybe doing a presentation with weblogs, folks are likely going to be tossing ideas around for panel presentations on the kairosnews blogging listserv.