Tuesday at the conference

As I said, I'm catching up on the conference information as best I can.

Tuesday morning, I went to a packed session featuring Molly Ivins. It was entertaining, but I couldn't stick around for the questions because I had a session coming up but I wasn't prepared for. The title of the session was "Thrills, Chills, and Spills: America's need for adventure". Somehow or other, I had to work my martial arts expertise into the session because that was my major knowledge of thrills and chills and spills. For an intro I was able to proudly say I was going on a six-day rafting trip down the green in Colorado rivers the summer. With me on the panel were Yoshi Funaki, Jurek Martin, and former Sports Illustrated writer Bill Nack, who told a great story about an informal ride on a racehorse.

One of the things I've discovered about myself from the sessions is that I'm a pretty good extemporaneous speaker. We're all supposed to present 10 minutes worth of opening remarks, and for almost half of the sessions, I found myself preparing my remarks less than 10 minutes before the session was to begin. Nonetheless, they seem to have all worked out okay; I guess I work fairly well under pressure.

In the afternoon, I was on the panel cold "Technology Meltdown - Lost Without My Instant Access". With me on the panel were Andy and Will Arntz, former physicist, software entrepreneur, and producer of the new film "What the bleep do we know?". I used my SPOT watch as an example of the current Dick Tracy level of instant access, while Andy trotted out his variety of personal gadgets to do the same. The general consensus is that I would do just fine without technology for a little while - I plan to bring almost nothing along with me on the rafting trip beyond a sports watch, which I'll keep in the bag - while Andy would shrivel up and blow away. I thought it was an interesting session, though we had relatively few attendees. The technology track is new for this conference so I think it will take a few years to build up an audience for it; I think most technorati look right by it right now.

Dinner was in the new club level at Folsom Stadium. This was a large, very nicely appointed room with floor to ceiling windows looking out over the stadium and the Flatiron beyond. I understand it was very controversial when it was being planned and constructed; from my point of view, all I know is that it was a nice place. Both the Kassoys and Paula were able to attend the dinner with me.

Right after dinner, we all trooped across campus to Mackey Auditorium for the annual CWA All Stars jazz concert. This year’s musicians were organized by Nelson Rangell (saxes, flute, piccolo…and whistling), Brad Goode (trumpet), Bijoux Barbosa (bass), Mike Shapiro (drums), Kevyn Lettau (vocals), Dave Grusin (piano), Mike Flowers (Hammond B3 and synthesizers), and Chuck Loeb (guitar). Special guests were Rony and Elie Barak from Lebanon. Rony is apparently a regular participant, but I think it was Elie’s first time.

It was a great concert. It was an outstanding concert if you take into account that most had never met one another and they’d had exactly one rehearsal. They were tight and communicated well; it was interesting to observe because they really had to watch and signal to each other, so we got to see the inner workings of a jazz ensemble a little more. All of them were superb individual soloists, and played a complicated bop tune as though they’d been playing for years.

After the concert, the band and CWA folks who were up for it went over to a bar called Redfish to listen to a jam session at till 2 AM. The three-piece playing there was very good, but it was exciting to watch the interaction as one by one the different All Stars began sitting in until the whole band was back in place in a much smaller venue. One vignette I remember was Rony Barak soloing with the three-piece on his darbouka, the Middle Eastern equivalent of the Indian tabla hand drum. He was so virtuosic the pianist, who didn’t know him, exclaimed, “Oh my god!” in the middle of his solo. The jam was so good it was energizing; I walked out more awake at 2 AM than when I’d gone in at 11.

And when I got back to my room at almost 3, I realized I had a 9 AM session...