nicest things today, june 30

here's some things I'm happy for today.

My weekend looks like it will be full of seeing people - Deb has arranged a couple of things, and I was invited to Barbara and Gavin's 4th of July party.  That should be all very nice.  I'm grateful for the opportunity not to have to plan very much and for things still to happen.

Jon Udell and Lou Rosenfeld had a great conversation podcast:

Lou Rosenfeld is my guest for this week's podcast. Fellow superpatron Edward Vielmetti put me in touch with Lou, with whom I share an affection not only for Ann Arbor, Michigan, but also for a cluster of topics including information architecture, search analytics, print and online publishing, designing for usability, tagging, and microformats. We had a great conversation!

Well worth a listen.

Alan Gutierrez in New Orleans (via Ann Arbor) has connected up with the folks at Xavier University there to teach web publishing courses.  Alan's Think New Orleans wiki was a rally point during the evacuation of Xavier during Katrina; it's good to see that go full circle.  I'm grateful to Alan for his tireless efforts in getting into the streets and neighborhoods of New Orleans and giving people there their own voice on the net.

I'm happy that I got some time to be offline today and to write things that are longer than three paragraphs and unlikely to see the light of day for weeks or months.  It expands my thinking to not always be reacting to the latest message but instead to wander through my own words first.

thanks