I find meetings with large groups of people fascinating. The interactions between people and among groups have to be one of the most interesting things to observe.

Individual behaviour in a group is also interesting to watch. Some people rise to the occasion (I love watching Ben schmooze a crowd), others freak out. Some thrive with the stress, others complain and whither.

Depending on the circumstances, I can go either way. I'm more to the stress and flee side of the range until I become comfortable with the group. I certainly can't work a room like Ben, nor can I be "on" like Andy (and I wonder if anyone can switch as quickly as he can), but given the right situation, I can hold my own.

For the first night of BarCamp, Messina asked me to greet people as they came in, let them know what was up, and ask them to sign our scroll with their names and hand-drawn pictures of themselves. How could this possibly be a better situation? I do well one-on-one, where large crowds overwhelm me (in as much as I have to fight every fiber of my being desiring to run away, flee, hide out on the sidelines and watch), and I get to meet each and every person one and one as they merge into the crowd.

Perfect.

It was also the perfect opportunity to watch interactions of various people in the crowd.

For the most part, the tech crowd is completely different from the ultimate crowd. Where ultimate is about athletic performance, bonding as a team, throwing discs, running hard, goofing off, revelation of intensely personal details that would embarass me if the revelations weren't to my teammates, and flashing breasts (hmmmmmmm.... should I delete that?), the tech crowd is about talking tech (well, duh!), work, and interesting problems. There's no discussion of breasts (really!), or personal details (work related is okay, family if you know the person, the size of your breasts? no way). There's no physical contact, no hugs, no cheers, no butt slaps, no high-fives, no holding hands, no shoulder-to-shoulder huddle and cheer. Tech is strange, and sometimes terribly lonely.

That's the general idea of the differences between the two groups. The individuals, well, that's a different story.

At a previous job (one of many, many of them), a coworker was this worked up, can never have any fun, uptight (yes, redundant, I know), always busy, life-is-hard, high strung woman. Nothing was ever quite right for her. Life was difficult. Things didn't work out the way she wanted them to. Ever.

Tragically, she was a poor communicator, too. Which made things worse for her boyfriend, another coworker, who became her ex soon after I started working with them. I became closer to him, as she was an emotional vampire, terribly draining and hard to be around.

You see where this is going?

From my perspective as an outsider with respect to all the relationships these people share (the longest I've actually known any of these people is 4 days at this point, with Messina being the slight exception, having met him in passing 2 and a half months ago, and Kaliya about 6 months ago in Berkeley at a talk for Greg), and recognizing said perspective is completely coloured by my experiences and that I really don't know these people at all, one of the people here reminds me of this woman ex-coworker. Everything needs to be perfect, she's not happy if there's something to do, she's completely stressed, and bringing down everyone around her.

Yep. She's high maintenance.

I did my best to help her out. I smiled. When she complained in my presence, I countered with offers of help and suggestions (that were actually reasonable suggestions). When she stressed, I asked if I could help. When she freaked, I stepped aside. Her personality was exactly like that ex-coworker's personality, to the point of near flashbacks for me.

*shudder*

May I never become high maintenance.

Ever.

Or, as Andy says, "Showers are for wimps."

Morning of day two of BarCamp 2005 has begun, after staying up way too late, sleeping on the hard ground (also known as an office floor), greeting daylight way too early, and, well, desperately needing a shower.

Ah, the sponge bath.

After, I think, 4 hours of rough sleep (tap dancing on egg shells here with the disrupted sleep patterns), I joined Andy and Kaliya on journey to Whole Foods, all of 2 blocks away, for Day 2 breakfast. Nothing terribly exciting there, except for Andy's glorious rendition of (I had to ask) Kiss Me Kate's Brush up your Shakespeare.

Few people get that glorious wake up call.

So, at 11:30, the conference is well under way, with Riana leading the session on Industry Darlings.

Geez, let me be able to stay awake until tonight.

I might need to take notes to keep the eyes open.

I really need to move this site to my other server so that I can upgrade the software so that I can start tagging my posts, so that I can go through all my posts and hide the ones that are way too personal, so that I can let the search engines back in.

Until then...

Another successful communal dinner tonight. Instead of our usual 10 people, however, I invited 19 people over for dinner. The usual suspects came: Heather, Vinny, Chris, Kris, Mark, Megan, Chookie, Martha and even Tyler (who showed up on time, whoo)! No Brynne, though. The new folks included Adam, Stephanie, Mike, Kate, Liza and Maeryn (though admittedly those last two didn't actually eat anything), Elizabeth, Heidi, John and cousin Mike P.

Mike P!

Visiting again! The best cousin in all the world. I think he visits Kris more than I visit my mom.

I really need to visit my mom more.

Tonight's dinner was plum stuffed pork with rice and salad. I started really late in cooking it, so Heather helped me out. Heidi helped with the salad. As the recipe was a new one for me, there was the chance (perhaps a small one, but still a chance) it wouldn't be good. Fortunately, it turned out well, and everyone liked it.

Well, those who ate it did.

When serving pork, always prepare for vegetarians and kosher friends.

When people asked what to bring, I said wine or dessert. In the end, we had an extra, oh, four bottles of wine and enough dessert to put on ten pounds.

Per hip.

I love these people.

I talked about both SuperHappyDevHouse (Code Jam, baby!) and BarCamp. I asked around to see if any of my geek friends (pretty much all the men in the room, actually), if they were interested in going, but all declined. "From 7 on Friday until 2 on Sunday? Geez!"

When I asked if I could go, Mark offered, "I would send her to BarCamp with a backpack, and a salami."

And Kris responded, "I think a summer sausage instead."

Whoo! That means, I'm heading to BarCamp!

With a summer sausage! And a backpack!

The great news of the evening, however, we heard at the end of the night, delivered ever so casually by Mark.

"Hey, Megan's pregnant."

*blink*

*blink* *blink*

WHOO HOO!

A baby Smith! A baby Smith! Whoo hoo! The bestest news!

Of course, now that I think about it, this news explains Mark's hesitant answer on the way home from Chico to the question, "So, Mark, when are you and Megan planning on having kids?"

"Well, we're not sure. We're enjoying ourselves too much right now. Some day."

Welcome to Someday. It's a great day!

I finally (finally!) met up with Chris Messina tonight. After, crap, a month or so of trying to match schedules (and that after a month of working up the courage to talk to him in the first place), I gave up and just started cancelling evening plans until we found a day that worked. Entertainingly enough, he thought we were meeting up for lunch (another option), when I thought we were meeting up for dinner. It all worked out okay.

After I told him I didn't mind heading up to the City (he did offer to meet somewhere in the middle), we ended up at the Grove on Fillmore in the City, pretty much near Kris' old haunt. On the way up to the City, I realized I was incredibly nervous about meeting up with Chris Messina.

Chris Messina.

Funny how that's how I think of him. Not "Chris." Maybe "Messina." But not just "Chris." Too many of those.

So, there I was, driving up to the City, definitely arriving ridiculously late (having called to let him know I was arriving late), with a giant macrame for a stomach. WTF? I haven't been nervous meeting someone in a long, long time. It was a strange sensation, not unlike just before the first point of an important ultimate game, when I haven't run off the excess adrenaline so that I can relax and play my game.

I kept thinking to myself, "He's just a person! He puts on his pants the same way every else does! He poops just like everyone else!". These thoughts were immediately followed by a long list of other things he probably does just like everybody else, none of which particularly helped me not to be nervous.

Bah.

So, the Grove is a bar joint "with good oatmeal." It was a little loud when we arrived (within two minutes of each other, so he was just as late as I was, though he later admitted he hates when people arrive late to agreed upon times, which I had sensed when I called around 5:45 to let him know I'd be a bit late).

I need to say now that Chris Messina has the most amazing deep voice I've ever personally heard. It's dramatic over the phone, which will cut off higher frequencies, and damn impressive in person. I think I could sit and listen to that man speak for hours (all of which would be spent with a dumb look on my face, I'm sure).

When we arrived, he pointed out three people in the bar/restaurant whom he knew, then explained that the bar was a pre-Blogger-Business-Conference dinner location for the conference opening tomorrow, and that most of these people, and more to come later, were meeting up tonight.

Oh. Cool.

Two people back in the order line from us, indeed, was one of the people meeting up, though not actually going to the conference. After we ordered and sat down, said person, Scott, came up to talk to Messina. 10 minutes later, my food arrived (Messina opting for only a smoothie), and 10 minutes later, Scott and Messina were still talking.

So much for talking about Drupal.

I ate for a while and met some other people who came through the order line as they arrived (Molly!). Eventually, Scott went to join the rest of the crowd forming, and Messina and I talked a bit about Drupal.

Whoo!

He asked what I was working on, so I explained a couple of the projects Mike and I were thinking of doing. Messina thought about them, and provided feedback that scaled back the project, but make it more feasible.

Eventually, his computer came out (Mac/powerbook, oh the lack of shock on that one is palpable), and he showed me the social browser his company is working on. At first, I figured it was just Mozilla with tags embedded in it. After a few moments, however, Messina showed me some of the other features (integrated blog creation, "breadcrumbs" and a "shelf") and I became much more impressed. I'm looking forward to my download. Especially since it does have tabbed browsing. Whoo!

So, Chris Messina's current project, is BarCamp, happening this weekend, which is an open (in every sense of the word: planning, presentation and followup) answer to the Friends Of O'Reilly camp (FoOCamp), also happening this weekend. Running from Friday to Sunday (as in, pitch a tent, stay the night, geek out, meet the other campers!), the agenda is set the Friday, with full participation from all campers (if you come, expect to present!).

I asked if the talks had to be technical. When he replied, "No," I offered to bring a ton (perhaps a tonne) of ultimate discs to hand out and present the game of ultimate.

I think I'll present the 10 Simple Rules of Ultimate, followed by video of how to play, then teach everyone walking beer ultimate, the so much more party-friendly version of ultimate.

At some point during the Flock demo (did I mention I'm eagerly anticipating being able to use the browser? I hope I don't need a Flickr account, though), I noticed it was really loud in the restaurant, and asked if he'd be up for going someplace else. After chatting with the group of pre-conference goers, we went across the street for gelato (the alternative being heading out to another loud place for a drink, ugh).

While we were sitting outside, with my freezing my ass off in the streets of freaking cold city of San Francisco in August while eating ice cream (my brilliant idea, I'd like to add), Chris Messina received a text message. Two seconds later, a tall, lanky black haired man came tearing out of the Grove and across the street. He flopped his arms around us, camera phone in hand, mouth wide open, and took a picture.

Huh?

I dodged.

He was quite disappointed, and tried again, telling me, yes, I was supposed to open my mouth wide, and no, wasn't supposed to dodge the photo.

Uh huh.

Even Messina dodged.

As the man ran back across the street, Messina commented, "Yeah, that's Andy. My roommate. And, yeah, he's always like that."

Heh.

Half way through the ice cream, I became far too cold to stay outside, so we went back to the Grove, where it was loud, but bearable by the front door. Andy came over and asked a "how" question (crap, I wish I remembered his wording correctly) like "What are you doing with this life?"

I didn't want to answer with what I did. I mean, how boring is that for an answer? So, I said, "I'm doing very well." At which point, Andy pointed out that was a "how much" answer, he wanted a "how", a qualitative not a quantitative answer.

So I replied, "I play a lot of ultimate frisbee."

And much to my surprise, Andy replied, "Oh, I love ultimate frisbee. Except that it's ultimate, because frisbee is a trademarked name."

"Oh! You play!?"

"No. I just know a lot of people who do. I used to play."

"How can you not play in one of the two power meccas of the ultmate world?" Though, now that I think about it, the power has shifted north to Seattle.

Andy was lots of fun. Come to think about it, he might just be the poster child for Munch's Scream. Turns out, he's 21. Just turned. Chris Messina is 24, having graduated from Carnegie Mellon in fall 2003. Good lord, are all the CMU alums I know a {Ch|K}ris?

I missed meeting Chris Messina's girlfriend, and didn't quite catch her name, it was loud. Something like Eres? Eris? Ires? I have no idea, I kept thinking Idris, as in the ultimate player on Jam. She looked a lot like Nathania Vishnevsky from PDI - the two of them could have been sisters, actually.

Eventually, the noise was too bothersome, and it looked like Messina really wanted to hang out with the crowd that had formed, so I let him know I was heading off. On the way back to my car, I admitted I was terribly nervous meeting him, which he, thankfully, chuckled at. I was happy to get that off my chest.

... what you put into it.

I went on a run this evening. It was the first run I've gone on since the begining of July, I think. Usually, I take Annie and we're done with the neighborhood loop in 20 minutes. But I have a lot (as in a lot) of ground to make up, so I dragged Annie around the neighboorhood for a longer run, instead.

I knew the run was going to hurt. I have bad shin splints in my left leg (made worse last week by tripping over a chicken wire fence that keeps the dogs out of one of my gardens). I have steel bands for achilles tendons that all the stretching in the world hasn't seemed to help. And I have a some sort of random pinched nerve in my left glute that's causing bizarre pains and muscle weakness in my left leg.

Can I just get a new left leg, please?

The worst part is that I have no freaking clue where all these injuries came from. It's not like I've been overtraining these last two months. No, that was in January and February.

They have, however, made me more clever in my training. How do you train for a high impact, running and quick turning sport without running?

(Quick answer: you don't.)

So, in an effort to let my achilles tendons warm up, we started out slowly. Think snail's pace. With the twang of the tendons snapping on each step, I managed to run the first half mile as a pace Annie could practically walk.

I managed to finally stretch out into a good run, which Annie kept up.

Until the first cat.

Instead of my dragging Annie, she scented a cat "somewhere up ahead", and sprinted in front of me, dragging me along behind her. We passed the Cat Smell™ and managed a block before the next cat came tearing out in front of us from under a parked car.

Zoom!

Eventually (where that's one pee, four cats, three couples and eleven dogs later), we made it home, with my knees aching only slightly.

Considering I made the run on the snack of champions (9 Pringles), we did okay.