The Tale of Three Conferences - Part 1

It was a whirlwind time from Wednesday, April 23 through Sunday, May 4. Planes, trains, cab, and my own two legs took me to New York City for the Good Experience Live and PodCampNYC conferences and then to Chicago for SOBCon08, the Business School for Bloggers. A series of travel adventures wrapped around some nuggets of good experiences and good conversations, meeting old friends and making new friends, with plenty of stories accumulated to replay beginning here. Travel I drove from Franklin down to Providence, RI to pick up the Amtrak Northeast Regional train down to New York’s Penn Station. It was easier to drive there, parking at the Providence Place Mall next to the train station than to go into Boston via car or train. This shortened the trip by at least an hour on each leg out and back. The Providence Place Mall provides covered parking with security and a location that works. The walk is a short one to the train station. I picked up my boarding pass from the automated teller and participated in a couple of conference calls while waiting for the train. I could have timed the drive differently. This way helped me balance work and travel. The train was a few minutes late out of Boston but generally ran on time from Providence until just outside of NYC where we got held up due to construction which limited the trains to a single track. Once by the construction, Penn Station was only a few minutes away. The return trip on Saturday was a slightly different story. While Amtrak boarded us on time, a series of announcements kept changing the story on departure time. We were going to be the “Last train to Boston” that night. The train that was supposed to take us had broken down earlier on the run up to NY. Amtrak had sent an Acela train to transfer the passengers from the broken unit to bring them to Penn Station. We needed to wait until they arrived before leaving. Fortunately, while we were already on a train, we wouldn’t have to leave. The Acela we found out can only stop at stations with high platforms; it doesn’t have the stairwell to reach ground level platforms. So we could sit, in relative comfort and wait. The announcements kept changing on how long we were going to be delayed. Initially it was one and a half hours, it shortened to 15-20 minutes and then lengthened back to one hour and three-quarters. We actually left two and a half hours after we were scheduled to. Watching the Amtrak folks, security patrols, etc. provided some entertainment during the wait. As a study in contrasts, Southwest could provide a few lessons to Amtrak. The flight to Chicago was delayed at Providence due to a nasty set of storms rolling through the Midwest. At one point both airports (O’Hare and Midway) were closed. As the storms cleared and travel resumed, the Air Traffic Control centers in NY and Cincinnati clogged up delaying us further. Through all this, Southwest was marvelous. We had boarded and taxied out. They brought us back to the gate and allowed us to deplane. They kept us informed with updates every 20-30 minutes or when ever there was a significant development. Once airborne, the pilots really worked to keep us on an even flight path. It was one of the bumpier flights I have experienced. When we did touch down successfully, the passengers broke out into applause. The return trip via Southwest was uneventful. We left on time and returned early in much better weather. What can one can about the New York City subway? It works. It is not glamorous. The architecture is interesting. The diversity of people are well worth watching. I used the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) for the first time. The Orange Line runs from Midway Airport into downtown Chicago with multiple stops and connections along the way. It is reasonably priced at $1.75 per person one way. It is odd though that the fare card machine does not provide change for two one dollar bills. Keep that in mind for future travel to have some quarters handy. The CTA was clean, more presentable than NY, and operated effectively. The CTA personnel in the stations were quickly to help the obvious traveler in need. The Orange Line was completely above ground, indeed “elevated” in the famous Loop area, and as I was traveling in daylight, I was able to take a good bunch of photos. to be continued...

MS Word to Web Help

Via Thane writing at Technology on a Shoestring, I hear about a couple of good ways to work with a Word document and convert it to a relatively clean HTML file for posting to the web. I have found some Word files to be more problems than others. Cut/paste into a text editor will strip away all the HTML but sometimes that is too much. Read more here and then click through to see the article on the Wired "How to Wiki" I just did a quick test with Textism and liked the results. This service is free for files less than 20KB. What have you done to strip Word of all its non-essential code?

Franklin: register to vote by May 21st

If you are of age, please register to vote. Visit the Town Clerks office at the Municipal Building. You would need to register to vote by May 21st. If you are going to be out of town on June 10th, you can pick up an absentee ballot at the Town Clerks office. If you can't visit the Town Clerks office in person, you will need to write a letter explaining why you are out of town on the 10th (attending school, traveling on business, etc.). An email is not sufficient, they need your signature for the records so an "old fashioned" either hand written or typed note will do the trick. Spread the word to register to vote. Franklin Schools need the money from this override. If you need details on the Town Budget or School budget, visit the Town web site The School Committee blog Or Franklin Matters

Franklin Wednesday Night - Recreational Run

RUNNING 6 p.m. Dean College, Franklin. Meet at rear parking lot for weekly Wednesday night recreational runs. Generally a five-mile route. Contact Moe, 508-222-8898. Found this on the Milford Daily News calendar.

"There is more than one way to do things"

Sabine also says: "I have learned to work with what I have." Never let it be said that you can not do something! If you think you can, you can! Thanks to Cathy B for the pointer!

Obama answers BlogHer questions

When Lisa Stone spoke at the Berkman Center in March, she mentioned the difficulty that the BlogHer group had been having getting the candidates to address a set of questions that the BlogHer community had come up with. Now that the candidate pool has been winnowed down, Barack Obama has sat down with BlogHer to answer their questions. You can view this exclusive interview here: Thank you Barack for answering these questions! Thanks to Steve Garfield for the tip to this via Twitter!

Dodge Poetry Festival - tickets available

The listing of poets has been updated and tickets are now ready for purchase for the Geraldine R Dodge Poetry Festival to be held on September 25-28, 2008. The line up currently looks like this: Chris Abani Forrest Gander Linda Pastan Simon Armitage Aracelis Girmay Patrick Phillips Coleman Barks Joy Harjo Robin Robertson Taha Muhammad Ali Robert Hass Roger Sedarat Coral Bracho Brenda Hillman Brenda Shaughnessy Peter Cole Edward Hirsch Patricia Smith Billy Collins Jane Hirshfield Tracy K. Smith Lucille Clifton Ted Kooser Charles Simic Mark Doty Maxine Kumin Luke Warmwater Thomas Sayer Ellis Joseph O. Legaspi C.D. Wright Beth Ann Fennelly Naomi Shihab Nye Franz Wright Martin Espada Sharon Olds Kevin Young Sarah Gambito The Festival will be held on the grounds of Waterloo Village in Stanhope, NJ. For additional info and to join the Festival mailing list, visit their website. If you do have a chance to go and have questions about the Festival, let me know. This will be my 4th.

Commencement Address - R Nicholas Burns

from the Assumption College, Class of 2008 Commencement on May 17, 2008, the keynote address by R Nicholas Burns former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. Time: 20 minutes, 47 seconds MP3 File

Valdictorian Address

From the Assumption College Class of 2008 Commencement, the Valdictorian Address by Jeff M Roy. Time: 13 minutes, 42 seconds MP3 File

Degrees Conferred - May 17, 2008

From the Assumption College Commencement, the key part of the ceremony where the act of conferring the Bachelor of Arts degrees took place. From the long listing of over 700 graduates, I selected two key names, Allie's and Brad's. Time: 1 minute, 10 seconds MP3 File

Assumption College Graduation 5/17/08

Assumption College Graduation 5/17/08, originally uploaded by shersteve. degree conferred, with all the rights and privileges thereunto appertaining - wonderful sense of pomp and circumstance

5 for Friday

In a quick review to help catching up on some items, I have five for Friday. 1 - Did you see that Zoho has allowed access to those with Google accounts? This is a good move. read more about it here. Have you tried Zoho? It is a competitor to Google docs and a worthy one at that. 2 - In case you missed it elsewhere, Google Street View has implemented a new feature to muddle the faces of people in the crowds to avoid privacy issues. Pretty slick. I hope it is automated. Would be a good algorithm to market for a price. Check out the posting on the Google blog here. 3 - Oh, Arlen Specter has your integrity never been questioned? Are you really not pandering to the Eagles or to Comcast? 4 - Did you hear the story about the girl who had her MAC stolen and using the "Back to MyMAC" feature took a picture of the thief using it, one of her friends was able to identify the thief so it was an easy pick up by the police? Nothing like a little technology to help. On the other hand this may also go down as one of those "stupid thief" moves! read the story here. 5 - Hey, if they can send a scent (yes, you read the properly) over to your cell phone, it won't be too much longer before "Beam me up Scotty!" can really happen. Read the short story here. This was the week that was. Enjoy! What did you find interesting this week?

Vote June 10, 2008

Only one question on this ballot: Question #1: Shall the Town of Franklin be allowed to assess an additional $2,800,000.00 in real estate and personal property taxes for the purpose of the operating budget for which monies from this assessment will be used for the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2008? Yes or No Visit Franklin Matters for all the details to cast an informed vote

What were you doing a year ago? or two?

A year ago, I visited Dolores' kindergarten classroom for their annual show. You can see the pictures and read the recap here. Two years ago, May 14th was Mother's Day. Three years ago, I posted my recap of Jimmy Wales presentation at GEL 2005. This year, I went deep into the archives because a good deal of my time is being spent recording and posting the local Town Council, School Committee, and Finance Committee meetings as Franklin prepares for an override vote on June 10th. You can keep up with this activity at Franklin Matters. What were you doing last year?

Happy Mother's Day - Dolores!

I think this has been posted before but I think it is worthy of a repeat showing. I think it speaks highly for the mother of my daughter's to see how much and how well they have grown up. Thank you Dolores!

What do you see?

What do you see?, originally uploaded by shersteve. When you look at this photo of some open farmland, what do you see? Good fertile ground? Room for development? Room for sports fields? Room to fly a kite? A place to sit in the shade and enjoy the sounds of nature? No matter what you see, think about what it says about you and your needs. How much does your view color the world? How does your filter color your world?

"Franklin voters will be able to start trusting again"

Yes, I did say that. During the Town Council meeting 5/7/08 when Chairman Chris Feeley proposed a committee to prepare a long range projection for Town finances. I'll have the complete audio file up some time this week. In the mean time, you can read the full article in the Milford Daily News here My "live blogging" recap of the meeting can be found here.