- Steve B. and I drove into Detroit City late Thursday afternoon. We arrived at the registration table at about 4:50. Some person there said “Sorry, we close registration at 5.” Um, okay….
- Went to the St. Martin’s sponsored reception at the Detroit Beer Co., which was a nice way to kick stuff off. Good beer, good company. Showed Bob Whipple a bit about Comic Life, chatted with all kinds of folks.
- Steve B. and I were going to go out for Greek food, but pooped out and ended up at an Ypsilanti institution and EMU hang-out, the Sidetrack. Ah, the pleasures of the familiar.
- Friday AM, I moseyed in around 10:30 or so. Met up with a former MA student of ours who is now at the PhD program at BGSU. She interviewed me about blogging for a project she’s working on, which sounds pretty interesting.
- Went to the lunch event, ate with my colleague Nancy Allen (who has been on sabbatical this year, so it was good to catch up a bit) and managed to be close enough to the front to actually hear it. No microphone. But some interesting talks from Metroblogging Detroit, dETROITfUNK, and DetroitYES, bloggers from three very different area blogs/communities. I talked with them a bit afterwards about contacting them later as case study sources, and they all seemed pretty okay with that.
- Went to an excellent panel, Blogologies with Collin Brooke, Krista Kennedy, Derek Mueller, Donna Strickland, and Jeff Ward. Review forthcoming, but some useful stuff for this quasi-hypothetical book project. Oh, and there I was, right there, when Derek quoted from my “When Blogging Goes Bad” article. That’s the first time I was quoted right in front of me, which was kinda cool.
- Talked a bit with Collin and contemplated buying a Wayne State cap. I went into the store and didn’t like the selection, though I did like the sweatshirts they had indicated the major of “Undeclared.”
- The damn Starbucks was closed so no decent afternoon coffee.
- For reason too convoluted to go into here, I ended up missing Geoffrey Sirc’s speech because I was eating a lovely ruben and drinking fine beer in a place called Saloon Circa 1890. About 10 minutes after Sirc’s presentation was over, the place was full of C&W folks. At least one photo forthcoming. Talked with many other folks like Nick Carbone and previously mentioned folks, and heard tales from Mike Palmquist of his elaborate motorcycle travel from Colorado State U to here.
- Drove home without incident (which, knock on wood, has been the case so far in my travels into Detroit) and hung out with the wife and child. All in all, a good day indeed.