I leave for JFK to get on a flight to Austin, Texas. No thanks to Continental Airlines, I will have a three hour layover in Houston.

Sigh.

I will check in once I get there. I will also post more about the panel and what we would like to accomplish with the launch of The Digital Ethnorati project.

For the feminists out there, pay attention. This is basically what I have been trying to do with y'all.

Stay tuned.

One more before I leave for Puerto Rico:

Hugh forrest from South by Southwest has decided to go all wisdom of crowds on us and has put up the panels for next year's SXSW Interactive for voting

From his email :

I wanted to alert you that the online interface for panel proposals for the 2007 SXSW Interactive Festival is now live. This page allows users to give us their feedback on which of the many outstanding panel proposals they feel are most appropriate for next year's event. The panel idea and description that you sent me earlier this summer is listed on this page.

See http://2007.sxsw.com/interactive/panel_picker/

Complete directions for the voting process are listed on the site. I definitely encourage you to vote for the idea(s) that you submitted. As well, I encourage you to send this link to friends and associates to encourage them to vote for your idea. As noted on the site, please remember that votes submitted by past speakers and past attendees will be given slightly more weight than the votes of users who have not yet attended SXSW Interactive.

Deadline for voting is September 8.

My request is for you to not only to vote for the panels I have proposed but, if possible, to please forward this information to any past SXSW participants you may know. Posting on your blogs will be most appreciated for faster diffusion.

My proposed panels are :
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Image via The People's Yes

One of the interesting people I did not get to meet at SXSW was Sean Coon of Connecting The Dots. Tag-daddy Thomas Vander Wal told him to ping me about his new project, The People's Eyes :

[via thepeopleyes / Introduction]:

We're creating a platform to enable people who are interested in sharing their personal experiences and POV's with the world via a collaborative blog. As participation grows, and the blog gains a greater footprint in the conscious of the web, we plan on devising a CPM advertising model to provide a return to each individual participant.

100% of the revenue will go directly into the hands of the individual contributers.

I think this is a real interesting project that deserves more attention. Sean is looking for help with incorporating as a non-profit organization and that's why he needs all the pro-bono help he can get.

Here's the deal though : I have had more than one blogger asking me for legal referrals. I am going to ping Jeralyn Merrit with this one, but seriously, for up-and-coming lawyers, there is a market there for per-diem work with bloggers of all kinds, especially with issues of incorporation, trademark and contract negotiation.
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Whenever I travel I almost always end up in deep political conversations with people who identify themselves as conservatives and republicans. I guess people feel like they can open up with me. I did at one point want to be a nun and I guess people get that I am not only willing to listen but I take the conversation seriously to the point of it being sacred. To me communication is communion and those 10, 15, 20 minutes to me are sincerely precious.

This is the second time I have been given permission to write about these conversations with pseudonymous attribution. The first conversation I published was the one I had with “The Guy”. I met The Guy during a return trip from Washington DC. I really want to re-publish what he had to say because, honestly, it cannot be repeated enough :

"Michael Moore is right";, he said. I asked him about the coming fight over Roberts and the likes of people like Dobson : "You don't understand, they don't care. These people don't care. This is just entertainment to them. A way to keep the masses fighting with each other. They are out to make billions and billions of dollars, amass incredible wealth and power while we're here, the have-nots of all sorts of incomes, down here duking it out. They don't care about Roberts or homosexuals or dead babies. They only care about power. And that power is money and oil." I sat there quietly, with my eyes wide open. The Guy had told me earlier that he worked in satellite broadcasting media. That means his contracts are in the tens of millions. And this guy looked at Bush as the enemy.

Now it's Mr. D's turn.

I met Mr. D on the way over to the airport. Mr. D works in finance and was taking a plane to Las Vegas to take the qualifying exam for their fire department. To my beanie-wearing readers, Mr. D looked like he could be the love child of Clay Shirky and Cam Barrett. Young, white, affluent. Not your typical red stater but certainly of the kind that matters to the GOP (and unfortunately to any political party) : he's a guy with money to spare in the form of campaign contributions.

Why was Mr. D. leaving an extremely well paid job with gobs of economic perks for a chance to work as a firefighter? Two words : September 11.
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