I am at a big web conference and a colleague mentions that at an upcoming conference in San Francisco the dinner will be held in the San Francisco Armory, which is now famous as a porn movie studio. The entertainment will be provided by the Regimental Pipe Band of the Black Watch.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Armory

Porn and Bagpipes – what a great night out.

I have developed an intense dislike for email. It clogs up the day, kills creativity, breeds discourtesy and cowardice. You will have to take my word for this as I cannot be bothered to explain.

One manifestation of the evil of email is the modern conference. People fly in from all over the world at great expense go to the sessions, open their laptops and do mail. At this event Tim Berners Lee spoke, everyone did mail. Neelie Kroes spoke, everyone did email.

You doing mail?

I just have to finish this mail.

This morning Bernard Stiegler, French philosopher who was banged up for armed robbery, spoke, everyone did email. In this last case even the session Chair who was up on stage was doing mail.

I have an alibi

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Stiegler

The front row of the conference. "It's so much better doing mail here than in my office."

I have just left a committee meeting at which we heard presentations from candidate cities for the 2015 conference. 80% of the committee members had their  laptops open and were doing mail throughout, only meters away from the presenters.

I find this discourteous. “Manners maketh man,” my Father would say as he took another pull on the bottle.