Musings on law, tech, chess & other topics by a geek

All local legal bloggers are invited to a meetup at Avvo’s offices. Please RSVP if you are able to make it.  I can’t make it as I am still in San Francisco at Creative Commons, but it looks like a great event.

Where: Avvo’s offices on the 3rd Floor at 217 Pine Street (between 2nd & 3rd Avenue) in Downtown Seattle

When: Thursday, June 26 from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.

What: Legal Blogger Meetup – proposed agenda to include

• What have you done to attract more readers?
• What widgets or other features have made your blog more functional?
• What resources do you consult when trying to improve your blog?
• What are your strategies in developing new content?
• What is your favorite blog (ok, other than your own), and why?

Will there be treats?

• Why, yes – beer, wine & sushi maki!

The opening to the conference was Om Shanti a piece by Janice Giteck who played Keyboard. She was accompanied by Thomasa Eckert Saprano, Sid Law Tenor, Laura Deluca on Clarinet, Holly Michelle Eckert on Violin, and Richard Eckert on Cello.

Central to the theme of NTTT is the contemplative aspects of the body and the mind. Over the course of this conference we will engage in a conversation focusing on how to establish a better balance in these over busy times.

The opening panel Moderated by Geoffrey Bowker (Santa Clara University), participant were;

Janice Giteck (Cornish College of the Arts): Tech heads v. traditional song writing musicians. The clash of ideas

Don Horowitz (Former Superior Court Judge): Making decisions immersed in music or the shower, caves of contemplation and the need to listen to others.

Eric Nalder (Seattle Post-Intelligencer) : Meditation and interrogation… Take a moment of silence before action

J. Lee Nelson (Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center): We keep losing space to think.

Stephen Sundborg, S.J. (Seattle Univeristy) : I think through writing. The yearly 8 days of jesuit silence also focus me on contemplation. Green lake is like taking your mind for a walk

Vinton Cerf: opening clips: I do not feel responsible for where the internet has gone since inception, we were wise to not over regulate the net, the internet makes it possible to postpone action till the last minute, the acceleration of life limits our contemplativeness, stratagems are need to focus on what is important instead of waiting for the next email or the onslaught of information.

The opening session was videotaped I will see where it is posted.

Quote of the panel “I mean really listening not just waiting of your turn to speak”

PS is it wrong to blog a conference called No Time to Think… ?

The first week of the internships has been a bit of a rollercoaster. I arrived in San Francisco Sunday the 8^th, 14 hours before my fist day of work. I had just attended the Washington State Bar Access to Justice Conference in Vancouver Washington, a great experience in itself. When I got to San Francisco I met up with Tim Hwang, of ROFLCON, another intern at CC and a recent graduate of Harvard. Tim and I are splitting a 3br in the middle of SF with two of his former classmates. Moving in went well. We have a hefty flight of stairs to the house, but the view makes up for it.

My first day at CC I was able to start directly on legal projects, my supervisor Diane Peters, the General Council, had sent me a few project to start on the week before. The first research project I started on was “Can I license different versions of a work under different licenses?  For example low resolution images under CC-BY and High Resolution version under CC- BY-NC  or 128k version of a song under CC-BY-NC and a Free Lossless Audio Codec under All Right Reserved?” The answers will be published in an FAQ and other educational material to help people navigate their options with copyright licenses; it will be published in the next week or so. It feels great to do research and see it impact a community of authors through free practical recommendations right away. Technology and copyright are strange bed fellows. Copyright applies to new technology or the works created with them but not in a coherent way. The law is crafted to deal with today, and as new developments arise in tech we get the opportunity to explore uncharted realms, this is what makes digital copyright such a challenge and a love for me.

San Francisco has been a great place to start the summer; both the technology and nonprofit communities are very strong here. I look forward to getting out in the community more as the weeks pass. I am back in Seattle currently for a 4 day visit. I spent the weekend with my partner and daughter; it is great to see them, and then Monday and Tuesday at the No Time to Think Conference at University of Washington’s Ischool and Law School. Wednesday I am headed back to San Francisco for a Copyright 2.0 Technology Summit at Google and a CC reception at Stanford Law. Exciting week to come!