Cyber Salon, The Reality

Have you ever imagined something and known the reality would probably not quite ever live up to your idea. Last spring/summer I dreamed up this idea of having Cyber Salons, like the intellectual Salons of the 18th and 19th centuries. Heck…even the Paris Salons with America ex-pat writers. Part of what I imagined was the combination of laptops and live talking and back channeling, and beer of course! A group of us starting meeting this past fall and have been meeting monthly ever since. Although we are still struggling to find …

...Continued | March 09 2008 | Comments
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Friday Night CyberSalon

Im guessing we should have done CyberSalon on a Friday night before. Obviously we are really geeks if we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and spent a chunk of time at a bar, with all of our laptops and very giant beers. This picture became our new CyberSalon Google Groups image. Thanks CogDog! Some of the discussions that stood out to me were BeFitt and I agreeing we would Tumble instead of Twitter (although Im sure …

...Continued | February 09 2008 | Comments
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Cyber Salon at Dave & Buster’s

Cyber Salon for 2008 kicked off to a great start by having the one, the only, CogDog in attendance. I got there early to make sure I would find a place with an outlet, only to find that there was no wireless. What? I called last week to verify. Oh, well…we’re geeks; but, we’re also blabbermouth geeks. I knew we would do ok without computers. The evening (or late afternoon) started out with Alan, Biray and I (actually Tom was there too). We talked about how Biray is going …

...Continued | January 17 2008 | Comments
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Geeking Out Over New Tools

The Cyber Salon met this past Monday, October 8, at the Village Idiot Tavern again. I felt bad that I did not find something further west, at least in west Tempe, so that Dr. Coop would not have to travel so far. I promise...I’ll find something before the next time. (FYI...we’ll be meeting one week earlier, the first Monday, in November.) What did we do? Alisa and I gabbed about finding Stixy. We really liked the idea that online …

...Continued | October 10 2007 | Comments
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Cyber Salon: Technology and Politics

Last night, the Cyber Salon met at Brunellos, which is now becoming the Village Idiot. Descent food, wine, and beer; good wireless connection, and 20% discount! Veronica and I spent most of the evening talking about things happening in the district. I thought we had some good chats about open source (can we do it at a CC w/o cheap computer science grad student labor?), podcasting (I claimed that I don’t think most of our colleague’s “get” the syndicated element of it...they just equate podcasting with audio files), …

...Continued | September 11 2007 | Comments
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First Cyber Salon

Well, it happened. Six of us met this last Monday to geek out and drink some beer. Of course, as those us who teach with technology know, the technology failed. The wireless connection at Fibbers was extremely week (sorry Laura & Susan). However, those of us who were there had some great discussions about the “net generation” of college students and the reality of our students at the community college. We talked about using wikis and podcasting in the classroom (thanks for great ideas Alisa). Matt shared Plazes …

...Continued | August 15 2007 | Comments
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First Meeting

It looks like second Mondays is what is going to work best with this group. I admit, I’ll be off to a conference during November gathering; hopefully, by then we’ll be off to a good start and just keep rolling. What: First Cyber Salon meeting When: Monday, August 13, 4:30ish --> Where: Fibber MaGees Pub Homework: 1. be prepared to chat for a few minutes about one or two current techy/geeky projects 2. email me with any other food, alcohol, wireless, and outlets places where we might …

...Continued | July 26 2007 | Comments
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Introducing the Cyber Salon

I’ve been bouncing around this idea for a while of emulating the salons of the enlightenment and the expat-writers in Paris.  The idea started to grow on me this past January when two colleagues and I hung out in a computer lab together for about an hour. We hadn’t seen one another for quite a while. We sat their talking, catching up and bouncing ideas, while we “worked” on computers. Once we knew what one another was doing for projects or wanted to share something we had just mentioned we would …

...Continued | June 28 2007 | Comments
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