Boston notes

Great day in Boston. A blur of caffeine and syllables.

David Weinberger introduced me to Zaftigs. I’ve wanted to chew the fat (or as things turned out, an egg sandwich) with David since meeting him briefly in Vienna at Blogtalk. His Small Pieces Loosely Joined expresses the genius of the Internet’s imperfection and he’s an author of the Cluetrain Manifesto, one of the sparks that lit my first blog post. David showed me the Palm pilot he’d just run over.

Next I had coffee with Biz Stone in Wellesley, where he’s designing and sneaking blogs into that Ivory tower. Damn, Biz is a genius and his name is Biz. Turns out the only thing not to be taken seriously about Biz is his blog’s photo.

Next I dropped by the office of a Pressflex investor who shall remain surnameless. (Welcome to blogs, Glover. Here’s the Gelernter post I mentioned.)

Finally, I hung out with Hylton Jolliffe, the micropublishing impressario of Corante. We compared notes at the Miracle of Science Bar and Grill near MIT between runs to stuff coins into parking meters. We brainstormed about how blogs might leverage tactics from newsletters and conferences.

As I mentioned at the outset of this post, the day was a blur. My lasting memory: bloggers are, as a group, smarter, wittier, humbler, more social, more articulate and more ambitious than the average Joe. Bloggers together make a formidible army.