Before I start in let me point to Seamus Heaney’s wonderful appreciation of Czeslaw Milosz in the Guardian, called “In Gratitude for All the Gifts”

Next, Yes I can stay awake for 24 hours straight. I did it. not meaning too. but nonetheless. FOO Camp is full of folks to talk with including several from across the years.

Dale Dougherty who I met as the Web was beginning when he was starting GNN for O’Reilly and who is now starting a mook/bagazine (not my terms) called Make, a kind of how-to do things techie rag. Basically a high quality quarterly paperback to be sold as book as the old American Heritage series or more locally to NC as the Red Clay Readers.

Dan Woods who I knew at Nando.net and who is now an O’Reilly author.

Wendy Seltzer who is an EFF lawyer (an seems too ambigious a word for Wendy).

Kathy Sierra
and her husband Bert Bates who I met on my first trip (I think) to Boulder’s Conference on World Affairs and who are now doing the HeadFirst series of books for O’Reilly.

Danyel Fisher who works with Marc Smith on Social Software and the like at Microsoft Development.

Chris DiBona once of VA now of Google.

Sam Ruby of IBM Emerging Technologies who lives right in Raleigh and who I met earlier this week at Doc’s talk.

Paula Le Dieu of BBC New Media who is looking at ways to make all of the BBC archives available on the net.

Brad Templeton who founded Clarinet and who is now with EFF. Ten years about almost to this day, I had a long email dispute wth Brad about how to do radio on the net — specifically WXYC which became the first 7/25 simulcast station (despite Brad’s misplaced fears). Brad remembers that he was right at the time considering the state of the Net. He wasn’t.

A good talk/session on Gmail led by Chris Uhlik (with help from Chris DiBona) started last night at 11 PDT and was interesting enough to keep me up much too late in the EDT sense. What would you like Gmail to be? What API should be provided?

During this talk a person (whom shall remain nameless and whose employer shall also remain nameless) was posting a critique (internal or external?). I didn’t mean to peek but I from what I saw it was a bit unfair. Like a Demo blogging the Repubs or the reverse. Offhand remarks seemed to be taken as ways to show how unsmart the Goolists are. Or maybe to reenforce the smartness of those who are less open. Any how the “not everyone is a programmer so why consider APIs a solution?” at the center of the critique. I’m of the “APIs are better than what was get from some companies” school.