« Guardians of markets past | Main | Quants and schmoozers »

May 12, 2005

Cory in Oslo

I had great fun arranging Cory Doctorow's visit to Oslo together with Eirik Newth. Aside from an excellent talk and a lively discussion (about 100 people came to the meeting), I got to have dinner with Cory before his talk and lunch the day after - with a number of Norwegian digerati (Jon Bing, Gisle Hannemyr, Håkon Wium Lie, Jon Lech Johansen, Eirik Chambe-Eng, Jorunn Danielsen Newth and Thomas Gramstad) in addition to the board of the Norwegian Polytechnic Society's IT Group. (Incidentally, PF is 150 years old and the world's oldest society of its kind, dedicated to non-partisan debate around matters technological and societal.)

Others have blogged about the talk and their impressions:

My impressions were more personal: I was impressed with Jon Lech Johansen not being a quiet and difficult geek as portrayed by the newspapers, he is fluent and articulate in several languages and has broad interests (I wonder what the Norwegian police were thinking when they brought the case against him.) I thought Petter Merok of Microsoft Norway quite the hero for standing up for his company with articulated and knowledgeable arguments - which took some doing in that crowd. I thought Jon Bing was rather tough for showing up when he had been wilified for arguing for the new copyright law in a report his law company did for the Norwegian Record Industry Association - but he enjoyed himself and participated in the lively debate.

I found Cory himself incredibly easy to host as a speaker and as a visitor - all he wanted was a fast Internet connection at his hotel room and some time to do email and BoingBoing a bit. Moreover, he managed to suss out Oslo's best bookstore within two hours of arrival, and showed a keen interest in Norwegian governance, history, geography and culture that had me doubling as a not very professional guide around town. He is welcome back anytime he wants to.

And what a blast it was to participate in a long and lively dinner where the arguments were flying thick and fast about technology, the Internet, literature - and theory about all three - with nobody bothering with or needing to explain the acronyms and references....

Posted by Espen at May 12, 2005 3:29 PM

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.espen.com/cgi-local/mt/mt-tb.cgi/347

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Cory in Oslo:

» Cory Doctorow speaks in Oslo from brilliantdays.com
Cory Doctorow visited Oslo today to talk at the Norwegian Polytechnic Society. About 100 (?) people attended the speech, including Jon Lech Johansen, often called "DVD-Jon". Here are some of my "impressions", the things that I found interesting and tho... [Read More]

Tracked on May 12, 2005 11:32 PM

Comments

Post a comment




Remember Me?