day 8 of notes on my new job at annarbor.com
Almost every week for the last 4 years I've been organizing a Thursday lunch. It started with 4 people, and the mailing list now has almost 400; our record attendance at lunch was 41 but the typical table size is much like today, with 22 people sitting around a long table plus one person who came late sitting by themselves. As with any mostly-open lunch series, you get to know people bit by bit over time, and some people take a few weeks to gain the confidence to describe who they are to a group of strangers. Repetition makes it a bit easier.
Most weeks I try, or at least intend to try, to put together some notes about lunch. Now that I'm no longer just an experienced blogger but also a fledgling analog journalist, I took some notes; these are incomplete, but they are more complete than I normally do. I'm hoping to get better at note-taking as time goes on.
People go around the table and introduce themselves; I asked people to say a few words about what's going on for them. This list below links in most cases to people's or organizations Arborwiki pages, since that lets me edit and fill in some of the blanks later or to have some of the blanks already filled in.
In order of how I wrote them down, with a simple question: what did you notice this week? Apologies if I got anything wrong or incomplete, and I know there are incomplete bits here.
Patricia Anderson - U of Michigan emerging technologies librarian - talked about some meetings she was at with folks at the U looking at getting UM communications people engaged in social media; the good story was about introducing people for the first time to SlideShare.
Linda Diane Feldt - holistic health practitioner - spoke about foraging, and teaching people about where to find black raspberries and wondering why more people weren't out picking them.
David C. Bloom - Chelsea resident, coach, connector - noted the new Chelsea library director, Bill Harmer, and his profile on Concentrate.
Susan Hunsberger - professional organizer - remarked that her summertime student neighbors were quite loud, and wondered how best to manage that.
Susan Harris - writer - observed excitement in town before the Art Fair.
Carol Kamm - I Sold It On Ebay - mentioned the Townie Street Party coming up before Art Fair.
John Hritz - embedded systems engineer and Wayne State grad student - liked Gever Tulley's talk on TED on tinkering.
Karen Epstein was walking around town in the evening and noticed that things felt different, but couldn't pin words on it that I was able to repeat.
Kathy Griswold has been noticing and paying attention to vegetation on sidewalks and at street corners that get in the way of clear visibility for kids on skateboards and going to school.
John Lukacs likes the Farmington Farmers Market, open til 2pm on Saturdays.
Valerio Della Porta has some faded Kodachrome slides that he was able to scan in and restore with software (sorry, missed the name of the software) so that he can again appreciate the nice bright colors.
Lance Carlson - ruby programmer for a California company - enjoyed the Rothbury Festival and notes that Bob Dylan's voice has declined further.
Dennis Tokarski - embedded systems engineer - recommends the Heavens-Above web site to find observation times for the International Space Station.
Tom Meloche - working on HomeSchoolAdvantage - has been noticing vegetative reproduction.
Kyle Mulka - twitter developer - muses on the phenomenon of canceling your Twitter account and starting over when your life changes.
Steven Fox of Secure Lexicon notes the reporting on the recent cyberattacks and is looking for folks to interview.
Chris X was in Chicago, and spent some time in a neighborhood that was much obviously more prosperous than the ones he sees here.
Jen Fox notes that her vegetable plants are actually producing things that look like vegetables, not just greenery.
Patrick Haggood notes an awesome treehouse in Dolph Park.
Roger Rayle is looking forward to a week of making sand sculptures.
Mary Morgan, a GM engineer, is newly able to park at the Whole Foods on Washtenaw; usually the problem is that store's lot is full.
Martin Newland remarks that vinyl records, of all recorded media, are on the upswing.
Thanks everyone for coming; please fill in the blanks!
