That's right folks, tomorrow is the next Wiki Wednesday, and it's happening in Montreal, too!
Socialtext provided the ice cream last time, but doing
that again here in January is rubbing salt on the wound, really, so we have
a beer budget this time around.
Already a few people got wind of the event and signed up on the wiki page.
Given a bit of last-minute marketing on my part I wager we can get a
nice bunch together. Each time I've coordinated a gathering, some new andinterestingpeople showed
up, so don't imagine this is some kind of old-boys club reunion and do
feel especially welcome if you don't know anyone just yet!
Montreal Web-heads don't get together very often, and the opportunity
to bounce your ideas off others' heads can be very valuable. I'd love
it if we could get people to spend some time describing projects of
theirs or issues they've been thinking about. If you'd welcome an
opportunity to spout out ideas for 10-20 minutes about something you're
passionate about, please indicate it next to your name on the wiki page, or send me an email. Special nudge to Wikitravel founders Evan and Maj, who we really don't see as often as we'd like to!
Timeframe is 5PM-8PM (just before the YulBlog meetup). We haven't picked a place yet. Laika ("resto-bar pour micro-société branchée") has sometimes served as the default spot, but I think we can find better-suited places. We're looking at Prato, I just need to make sure there's room. Suggestions and offers are welcome.
Ok, so by now surely you thought this blog (or I) had died a quiet
death... as it turns out, neither of us is ready for that just yet.
Lots
is new. I've switched jobs and cities. New house, new neighborhood,
nice people. The kids spending more of their time outside home, making
new friends. My daughter has entered school (and is mostly liking it
thus far, much to my relief, though she wishes she had more free
activity time) and my son found a kindergarten where he feels well
after trying out a place where things just weren't right. Trust me,
leaving a child somewhere they hate feels miserable.
New job, too. The last post I wrote brought a number of interesting opportunities to my attention. I opted to join Socialtext.
Socialtext makes wikis work for people working in all kinds of
organizations, from small businesses to big enterprises. Most of these
wikis are private and thus not visible on the Web. However, Socialtext
often provides wikis for events (branded as "Eventspaces") making it
possible for attendees to network and communicate with one another.
You've probably run into a public Socialtext wiki if you've attended an
event relating to Web/internet tech recently, such as the Collaborative Technologies Conference.
Key
to my decision to join Socialtext was the fact that I wished to work
with good people, and I already knew several of the good people who
work there, from their blogging (find a list of Socialtext bloggers in the right margin here) and from face-to-face encounters from my travels.
One
thing about good people is that they tend to hire more good people, and
so the staff members I didn't know, it turns out, are pretty awesome
too. One of the people I work most closely with at Socialtext is a
gentleman named Matthew Mahoney,
who works out of New York and is, from what I've seen so far,
thoughtful, driven, considerate, tactful, unflinching and an amazing
coworker whom I've never seen complain. Really, when I grow up, I
hope to become that good a coworker. :)
If you asked me for a
single word to describe my first impression of Socialtext, I think I'd
pick "busy". I guess that's what happens when you get attention,
prospects, customers, and new employees all at the same time (I think six people have joined since I came on board!). The
company is very distributed, with people in about a dozen cities. It
operates in a fiercely collaborative manner, too. Our virtual office
is a private IRC channel which I like to call "the hive" and which is
where people ping one
another throughout the day to swarm around different projects and
issues. Never seeing your coworkers can be difficult, so I'm grateful
that the company gets together face-to-face from time to time. Someplace warm, to boot.
I gradually stepped up to full-time work over the fall season and I am
still figuring the ins and outs of this shop and what I'm doing in it.
I will hopefully have more to say about work in future posts. (Yes,
there will be future posts!) Blogging about work can be tricky, though,
and balancing interestingness with the requirement to not talk about things
you musn't talk about does make the blogging process more involved, so I don't know
how much of it I'll be able to do. We'll see.
