Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    <scribbled by brian Wed 20 Mar 13 18:18>
  

    
It sounds like an opportunity for someone willing to experiment with
using machine learning to extract events from arbitrary text.
  

    <scribbled by brian Wed 20 Mar 13 18:18>
  

    
It seems like this is a situation that will change in part when tools 
change, and even more, when people demand it. So long as we couple the web 
posting about an event and the place it was originally posted, and expect 
word to diffuse only by posting in several locations, nothing changes.

I am reminded, though, of a situation back in the early '70s when I would 
skip high school to work on the local underground weekly. One job was 
clipping events out of the Sunday paper's regular calendar for inclusion 
on our calendar. The Dallas Public Library was shocked to discover that 
events that once attracted two or three people suddenly drew in dozens of 
shaggy hippy types who had read about the event in our paper.

So, it would seem that some sort of push-pull could work here, as well. It 
might involve microformats. It might involve screenscraping (or better) 
obvious places like Google and Yahoo calendars, Facebook, and MySpace, 
then providing the iPhone apps or Facebook widgets to make it easy for 
people to get a feed back filtered for things they are interested in.

Having said that, you spoke a bit earlier about Eventful Demand--a service 
that gathers people's requests for an event in a particular venue (We 
insist that Lady Gaga tour here!?). Sounds like an intriguing cross 
between Meetup and petition drives. What are some of the interesting 
things that come out of that?
  

    <scribbled by brian Wed 20 Mar 13 18:18>
  

    <scribbled by brian Wed 20 Mar 13 18:18>
  

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    <scribbled by brian Wed 20 Mar 13 18:18>
  

    
Did you ever try putting the money thing back in?
  

    <scribbled by brian Wed 20 Mar 13 18:18>
  

    <scribbled by brian Wed 20 Mar 13 18:18>
  

    
Finally, we are saved from corruption and government tyranny!

So let's see, Glenn Beck is Father Coughlin... who do we get to play
FDR.  Clearly not Obama, since he's already cast in the role of
Hoover...
  

    
That brings up the question -- who uses Eventful?  Is there a certain
demographic/psychographic group such as right wing rockers? (I joke. I
think!) Are there instead a lot of clearly delineated subgroups?  Do
people expand their social circles on the site?
  

    <scribbled by brian Wed 20 Mar 13 18:18>
  

    
Brian, I think we are getting close to the end of our discussion. Before 
we go, I want to ask a couple of wrap-up questions.

First, closing our most recent digression, I have a note that there were 
some interesting methods used to raise money for Eventful. Do tell?

Second, to pull some of the discussion from the past two weeks together, 
can you recap what about PLATO still matters today--what do you hope that 
people take away from this discussion (or from the book-to-come)?

Finally, talk about events coming up to celebrate the 40th 
anniversary--when, where, or how to find them on Eventful?
  

    <scribbled by brian Wed 20 Mar 13 18:18>
  

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    <scribbled by brian Wed 20 Mar 13 18:18>
  

    
Are things still cooking for the conference in June?  I ran across
the web site today.
  

    <scribbled by brian Wed 20 Mar 13 18:18>
  

    
Nice!