It turned out that embedding a call for documentation writers in between screeds about the election turned out to be wildly effective (even though I do not speak for My Place Of Work, blah blah blah — something they did NOT ask me to say, in case you’re wondering).

I wish I could get Margaret and Helen to post this, but FRL will have to do: My Place Of Work even has a little more documentation work left — and not only that, MPOW has two openings (two!) for “self-motivated, enthusiastic software developers … with at least 2 years of systems (non-web) development experience.”

Access was Fabu!

I finally made it to Access, and this conference was amazing (except that Amy Buckland and I never got to meet — boohoo!). The favorite modifier was “Evergreen,” as in Evergreen-LibX, Evergreen-Vufind, Evergreen-SOPAC, Evergreen-Zotero, Evergreen-Google-Book-Search… whew!

The list of people I finally got to meet face-to-face — and it’s a long list! — included Andrew Nagy (I’ve seen him from afar), Annette Bailey, Godmar Back, David Fiander, and Dan Scott. I also had reunions with many, many folks. Conferences are about learning, but a lot of that learning happens informally… there’s something so companionable about sitting at a table with people I like while we listen to a speaker and tap away at our laptops.

Tweeting the Debate!

During the debates I’ve been wildly tweeting — and now I learn I can even embed my tweets in this coverage! Twitter, despite some bumpy scalability issues earlier this year, has really embraced its zeitgeist with a Twitter site specific to politics (post there, and your tweet also shows up in your timeline). The debate may push me over the 5,000-tweet mark!

My writing

Someone wrote me yesterday to mention I hadn’t written much about my writing. Lately I have had time for two writing activities: aggressively revising older essays (and sending them out), and staying on top of the monthly writing workshop I manage.

The workshop is good because when I’m not writing, I should be thinking about how to write, and every month I need to look very closely at several manuscripts. I do have a whole “how to run a writing workshop” post in my head, but my failure to write about writing may be more of a sign that when I have a little time, I’m actually writing.

How to “win” against open source

This article, co-authored by Harvard and Stanford business wonks, made my skin crawl. I’ve wanted to respond to it in length, but in some ways I’m simply dumbfounded. You should read the full article to really catch the strange alien vibe of economists talking about how to use the “network effect” (which they do not fully understand to begin with) and other strategies to undermine open source. Even Gartner, the ultimate business-analysis squares, has cautiously tipped its hat to open source (in a kludgey, uncle-with-obvious-dentures-and-green-plaid-jacket sort of way). Boo Harvard and boo Stanford.

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But before I forget, on Saturday, August 9 from 1-4 p.m. I’m leading a creative nonfiction workshop at Leon County Public Library, through the aegis of the Tallahassee Writers Association. Three hours is actually a fun length for a local “taste of CNF” workshop. I can read a little from my own work and the work of others, we can do a couple of fun exercises… we’ll have a good ol’ time.

I am going to brag more loudly next week, but The Best Creative Nonfiction Vol. 2 (Lee Gutkind, ed.) is due out July 28, and my essay, “Range of Desire,” is in it.

What really humbles me is the list of authors in this volume. They’re like, you know, real authors. I can’t wait to read their essays.

By the way, I don’t know if I’ve ever said this, but Michael, the editor at Nerve who worked on “Range of Desire,” was the perfect balance of good judgment and restraint. If I did say it, I’m saying it again. I like editors.

No, I haven’t bought a car. I have been Away. Carmax’s suggestions have not been right, and the local Honda guy has so far been mum. Still waiting for the gummint to issue me a car.

Now that I’m car-shopping I’m noticing that maybe it’s not such a terrible predicament to be in… my car leaks inside when it rains, it looks worn-out, and it is mildewy. I love my old Honda, but perhaps it is not so bad to be downgrading it to the Family Beater. A hard acknowledgment, like realizing a pet is getting old. (Or that we are getting old.)

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I have another take on this, bolstered by Joe Nocera’s article in the New York Times about Google’s deteriorating daycare options. Google has proven itself to be just another aging company where common sense and sincere dedication to human need have yielded to impatience with employees who want, of all things, day care for their children, a need the company has likened to free M&Ms.

Obviously, one point is that the United States still doesn’t have its act together about daycare. Not long ago I worked with a smart, dedicated woman who had grown up and been educated in China, and she observed that our large state university completely fell down on childcare options. In China, her kids would have had childcare. Period. Here, childcare was dangled as an option, but her kids would have been in middle school by the time they moved off the waiting list.

But I’d like to repeat a point I keep making while big universities fall over themselves to participate in Google’s digitization projects. Google is a relatively young company (though aging rapidly, if Nocero’s story has credence). Everyone assumes Google will rule the world forever. But we have thought that about a lot of companies.

In the end, if we really care about our software and our data and our materials, we have to fight to keep them open, to keep them available for use, and to preserve them — on our own, not through the secret back-door doings of a company too young to drive.  We keep re-learning this lesson. We learned it when we privatized library software, and we learned it when we privatized library data, and sooner than later, we’ll learn it with Google.

And yes, I’m holding off on comparing Google to a library software company recently in the news for its draconian personnel policies — because others wrote that story for me. (It’s funny how LJ’s correction only dug the hole deeper: “Oh, only TWO years! I feel SO much better!”)

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