h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I've three Big Projects on at the moment.

With work it's a case of if this is Thursday it must be Zurich. I've had to pack for a trip involving five countries, three time zones and temperatures ranging from -15 to +30ish. Perverse mare that I am , I prefer the cold to the heat, but I shouldn't be ungrateful. It's fun to be on the road again and it's no harm that they work us hard. No surprise in that: it's expensive to move us around like this so they want value for their money.

Then I am studying - I'm starting a dissertation on corporate governance and whether it's ethical for companies to act ethically. It's actually fascinating, in a rather cereberal kind of way, but I'll assume you'd rather I didn't expound on it here.

And then we've the hootoostooshie.

Do you know something? I am really very excited about the hootooshooshie.

We've FINALLY got the chance to reshape h2g2 into what it could and should be. There's energy being relesead that's been pent up for 10 years: some of the plans have been a decade in forming, so they are well thought out, coherent, full of force and very very workable. And this vision-thing is heady stuff.

Then there's the skills we have, both in the Consortium and in the Commuity as a whole. It's been a revelation to discover what abilities and sheer bloody professionalims we turn out to have in the day-jobs lurk behind our ridiculous user-names. I'm humbled by who we are and, as I said in a previous post, not only do we understand the Guide but we know each other. We've been interacting online for 12 years, some of us.

And then there's the fact it's not 2001 any more. People all over the world know how to run websites and make money from them and from apps on hand-held devices. The model can work. Servers and bandwith are cheap. We don't need to invent every single wheel like how to get money from ads, how to set up subscriptions, how to moderate posts. No-one knew any of those things in 20001. But we can put all that in place for tuppence and get on with creating and publishing great content in a format that covers the bills.

So I'm vibrantly thrilled with what I think can happen with h2g2.

And knackered. Because of the bloody flying. And working. And studying.

Give me Red Bull. Give me s.

Ben

Would help, too?

With rather impolite interference by all sorts of RL these times, my support for the committee remains rather moral. Rest assured there's lots of it though!

BTW, loved the subject line - Classic Ben if I may say so.

Which -15 place?

Because it sounds like my neck of the woods...

And I thought my life was hard, with work and moving house and h2g2! At least I don't have to travel thousands of miles and be seperated from my beloved. I hope you enjoy yourself.

Zurich, I believe..

Hmmm... we are planning to go to Zürich tomorrow or Saturday. Not sure sunny still wants to go if it's *that* cold.

Or it might have been Warsaw. I loose track

I was in Warsaw. It's +4 or so in Zurich and I'm there now and all weekend.

Ottox - email me at agirlcalledben at gmail dot com. Z - can you send Ottox my phone number and / or send me Ottox's email to my work email account?

Can we have an h2g2c3 mini-meet at some time on Saturday? It would be very good to see you and compare notes.

In haste - I'm not ignoring everyone else.

B

Ben, did you get my mail?

We're leaving for Zürich in a moment. If you're still interested in meeting - and have time - there was a phone number in the mail. And some of the time between two and four we'll be here: http://www.zb.unizh.ch/ausstellungen/ausstellung/005731/index.html

If either Ottox or Ben log into Facebook, I've introduced you, so you can hook up via Facebook, it's more private than giving out personal details in this thread...

with your mini-meet, and if it happens I want to see photos on Facebook,

Just to have something to show GB, I took a picture of the only Ben I saw in Zürich today: http://ottox.ch/images/zhben.jpg

I hope Ben had a good time in Lucerne which is a much nicer town anyway.