Thursday Meetings at Berkman Blog

Even after some discussion at dinner on Thursday night (June 24) and on the Yahoo! Group list about whether blog group will continue, there still seems to be some confusion.

Blog group will continue.

Because of a conflict with a Berkman Center event on Thursday, July 1, we will not be able to meet in that space. Instead, we are planning a fun, informal cookout at Sandy Beach on Mystic Lake in Winchester. Details will appear on this blog later.

During the weekend of July 3rd and 4th, there will be a blogger-style dim sum outing. There’s a debate over whether to have it on Saturday or Sunday, but it will most likely be, as before, at 11 am at Chau Chow City in Chinatown.

On July 4th, j has invited wayward bloggers to stop by her blanket on the Cambridge-side of the Charles River during the festivities, concert, and fireworks.

On July 8th, we will meet at the Berkman Center as usual. At this meeting, we will focus on plans for the coming year and the future of the group.

I gave two presentations to the staff of Harvard Business School’s Baker Library on Friday, June 25, about blogging. If anyone’s interested in reading the presentation or more about how it went, I posted notes on j’s scratchpad (directly linked above).

I spent some time talking about blogging at Harvard and the resources available to bloggers at Harvard. A few of the audience members might come to future blog group meetings.

Three things happened that I think are worth talking about at a future meeting. Some people didn’t realize there was a blog server at Harvard available to them. Some also thought they couldn’t register for blogging space with their e-mail accounts since Harvard Business School e-mail addresses don’t end with harvard.edu. (Perhaps rewording the text on the Create a new weblog page could end that confusion.) These thoughts indicate to me that we should figure out how to do some marketing around Harvard. Also, there was a discussion about the rules for blogging, whether there are any guidelines for or restrictions on what people blogging on Harvard’s server can and cannot post, and whether the administration censors blogs.

Presentation to Harvard Business School Librarians about Blogging …

Because of an event involving the Berkman Center staff, we cannot meet at the Berkman Center on Thursday, July 1. Instead of a formal meeting, we’re planning a cookout at Sandy Beach on Mystic Lake in Winchester off the Mystic Valley Parkway. The beach is a 20-30 drive from Harvard Square and a 1/2 mile walk from the Wedgemere station on the Lowell Commuter Rail Line. There are a field, a
lovely lake, and a beach for swimming. Since it is a family-friendly environment, please feel free to bring family members, including children, and significant others.

• A rather vague map
• Some vague details about the beach

If you need a ride to the lake, please comment below or contact j.

We ask that people bring some food or beverages to share or contribute some money to help defray the cost of the cookout. No alcohol is permitted at the site.

There are a few picnic tables, but it might be wise for people to bring folding chairs. If anyone can bring another table, it might be useful. It would also be great if we could get one more grill.

a grill One of the people who was bringing a grill canceled. We have one grill still, but if we can get a second, that could make cooking much easier.

Food and Beverages:

• Food to grill
  • mushrooms
• condiments
  • mustard
  • mayonnaise
• lettuce
• pickles
• side dishes
• dessert
  • ice cream
  • marshmallows
• soda
  • Alcoholic beverages are not allowed.
  • Glass bottles are not permitted on the beach, but they seem to be allowed in the cookout area.

Grill stuff:

• lighter fluid
• matches or a lighter
• tables

Here’s what’s already been arranged:

Food:

• veggie burgers
• one package of hot dogs
• kosher hot dogs
• hamburgers
• some buns
• tomatoes
• cheese
• onions
• boiled peanuts
• ice
• vegetarian side dish
• some drinks
• ketchup
• chips
• cookies
• watermelon

Stuff:

• 2 tableclothes
• bug spray
• fire extinguisher
• aluminum foil
• charcoal
• potentially 2 grills
• plates
• napkins
• utensils
• cups
• grilling implements–long tongs and a long spatula
• one picnic blanket
• 3 folding chairs
• a cooler

Feel free to suggest or bring something that isn’t on the list.

The headcount as of 2:52 pm is 10 confirmed and 2 maybes. –>

The weather forecast indicates it’ll be partly cloudy with highs in the mid-80s (checked on 6/30).

Notes: About ten people came to the cookout. It was a good time to just chat without any sort of agenda. We learned about some potential updates to Feedster and Frassle. We talked about life in general. We learned that Shimon is an awesome grillmeister and Scott is great with raw meat. We reinforced that blog group will continue. j reminded everyone of dim sum on Sunday.

If you aren’t on the Yahoo! Group list, Berkman-Thursday, for the Berkman Thursday Meetings, perhaps you can still subscribe to the RSS feed for the group. It gives the first few words of the e-mail and the name of the sender. The group’s archives are public, though, so it is possible to read messages there.

If you blog on Harvard’s server, you should be able to find the feed listed in the subscription list.

RSS Feed for the Berkman-Thursday Yahoo! Group …

Dave decided against doing the barbecue. Instead, he wants to go to the Bombay Club, an Indian restaurant, in Harvard Square, a frequent eating choice for our group. We will meet at the restaurant at 7 pm. If you plan to join the group for dinner, please RSVP via a comment on his blog post.

We will do the barbeque next week (July 1) in lieu of a formal blog meeting. Regular meetings will resume on Thursday, July 8, at 7 pm at the Berkman Center. Details will appear on this blog.

Thursday’s meeting will not be Webcast, nor will there probably be too many of us on IRC and j will not blog live notes.

Notes

Dave Winer’s notes

Photos by Dan Bricklin

Happy Birthday, Jay McCarthy!

RSVP for Thursday Night’s Dinner, Dave Winer’s Last Night with the Blog Group …

Dave decided against doing the barbecue. Instead, he has proposed dinner at a restaurant in Harvard Square. It will probably be at the Bombay Club at 7 pm. I will post something more concrete when I know exactly what the plan is.

The barbeque will happen on Thursday, July 1 instead of a meeting at the Berkman Center at 7 pm.

At last week’s weblog writers’ meeting, Dave Winer
suggested that we come up with something fun to do to
celebrate his last Thursday night at Berkman, which is
this Thursday, June 24th. Shimon proposes a barbeque
at Sandy Beach on Mystic Lake in Winchester off the
Mystic Valley Parkway. The beach is a 20-30 drive from
Harvard Square. It is a 1/2 mile walk from the Wedgemere station on the Lowell Commuter Rail Line. There are grills, a ball field, a
lovely lake, and a beach for swimming.

What do you think? Comment below or blog your thoughts.

Stay tuned: when we figure out what we’re doing, someone will post it here.

The choir New Century Voices, which includes Thursday-nighter Shimon Rura, performs on Wednesday, June 23, at 8 pm at the Church of the Holy Name at 1689 Centre Street in West Roxbury. Admission is free, but there is a $5 suggested donation. More details about the concert, including a map, are on shimonolog.

Addendum 6/23: Shimon sings very well. He had an excellent solo tonight at the very beginning of the program. Y’all should have stopped blogging and gone to hear him. It was worth battling Red Sox traffic.

Shimon Rura Sings on Wednesday (6/23) Night …

Proposed agenda:

• For those who missed dinner at Kaya last week, perhaps Bob will talk about his PC World article on RSS aggregators again. Bob will not be at the meeting. Bob was here; we did not talk about the article.
• Is there anything we want to accomplish with Dave Winer before he leaves shortly?
• Shimon has a concert on Wednesday, June 23 at 8 pm in West Roxbury
• Break on July 1; dinner instead of blog meeting, bug j
• July 4 blogger gathering, bug j
• July 4 dim sum, bug j
• Eat
  

  • Cambridge Common again
  • Seoul Food on 6/3
    

There was no Webcast. j blogged really crappy live notes.

Dave supposedly recorded the meeting to post as an MP3 later.

Here’s a reminder about how to backup a Harvard blog:

• Log in to the blog as a managing editor
• Go to http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/theblog/downloadMySite/MySite.root, but replace theblog with the directory of the blog. You should copy and paste or type the URL into your browser instead of following the link. For example, the URL to backup this blog is http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/thursdaymeetings/downloadMySite/MySite.root. (You’ll get an error message if you click the link for this blog and you aren’t logged in as a managing editor of the site.)
• The server will think for a little while, then you should see a message like:

  “Download My Site

  Your site is ready for download.

  Download the following link to disk:

  http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/blogs/siteDownloads/theblog.root“

  theblog should be the directory of the blog. For this site, it would be http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/blogs/siteDownloads/thursdaymeetings.root.

• Download/save that file.

Instructions are also available on the Weblogs at Harvard Law site.

Since Thursday’s (6/10) blog meeting is cancelled, some of us are going to Kaya, a Japanese and Korean restaurant, in Porter Square, Cambridge, at 7 pm instead. Kaya is located at 1924 Massachusetts Avenue, on the other side of the street from the Porter Square Shopping Center with Shaw’s. It is a short walk from the Porter Square Red Line station. We will meet at Kaya. j made a reservation for 10 people. She would appreciate it greatly if people could RSVP to her so she has an idea of who’s coming and if the reservation needs to be for more people.

Dinner Instead of Blog Meeting, 6/10/2004 …