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Calling all library conference organizers! Please look at this website: http://thatcamp.org/
This is one of the friendliest conference websites I’ve seen in a long, long time. Why?
The When, What, and Who are neatly laid out in the top navigation bar (as “Schedule” “Blog” and “Campers” respectively).
The conference’s name could not be clearer – front and center on the main page with the acronym spelled out and a very brief description underneath. Wonderful!
The home page is simple: navbar, info, blog and twitter. That’s it. The other pages are also neat and clean, with the schedule laid out in a simple table and the Campers all presented with little icons for eye-candy and plenty of white-space to make for easy skimming.
The only things I would do differently:
Put the Campers in some sort of order (!) … are they in any order? I know the alphabet is arbitrary but it’s better than nothing.
Create a “Trends” tab that gives some auto-generated visuals of the current hot topics — such as a tag cloud from the blog or a Wordle cloud from the tweets. Some sort of topic browsing somewhere would be nice as a way to filter the information from those lucky, enthusiastic campers. 
I must say the website alone makes me a little jealous, but the content coming out of THATCamp *really* makes me wish I was there. All sorts of fascinating questions coming up! I only wish I had time to follow it all. Keep up the great talks, THATCampers.
from Milan Kundera’s, The Joke,
Czech: 1967 / English: 1992, Harper Perennial
p. 164
“… I only asked with a calm (and well-rested) heart: why did I meet her? what did the encounter mean and what was it trying to tell me?
Do stories, apart from happening, being, have something to say? For all my skepticism, some trace of irrational superstition did survive in me, the strange conviction, for example, that everything in life that happens to me also has a sense, that it means something, that life speaks to us about itself through its story, that it gradually reveals a secret, that it takes the form of a rebus whose message must be deciphered, that the stories we live comprise the mythology of our lives and in that mythology lies the key to truth and mystery. Is it an illusion? Possibly, even probably, but I can’t rid myself of the need continually to decipher my own life.”
Me: But more specifically, I want to decipher the now of my life as it is happening. Some things I have deciphered – long after the thing passed and was just ready to be forgotten completely. But that doesn’t satisfy. I want the sense of right now, the meaning of right here.
The good:
…this quote from a news story I read this morning:
“The rarest of all commodities in this world is love. It is that thing that we all yearn for at some level — to be simply loved unconditionally for nothing more than who we are — not what we can get, give or become.”
The bad:
It’s from the S.C. governor who admitted to having an affair with an Argentinian woman.
The ugly:
Their emails to each other have been made into a news story ( http://www.thestate.com/sanford/story/839350.html ) and what sounded like a very beautiful relationship has come to an end because of politics. I actually feel very bad for the man. He certainly made a lot of bad decisions but I think the worst one was choosing to go back to the career and give up the love. When he says he spent a week crying in Argentina… I kinda believe him.
