Time to start getting involved. I guess.

Things are happening around me that are quite exciting. The area seems charged like it was back in the late nineties. Cool things are being developed, people are excited about the new opportunities, toys are around everywhere. Just a general feeling in the area that I can't say I've felt for a long time. Not quite heady/giddy days of the last bubble, but definitely one of promise and hope.

And in that vein, while recognizing that networking is crucial for new ideas as well as contacts for help, I've decided to come back out of my work shell and look around, start meeting up with these people that are moving and shaking things up around me.

In other words, I'm in the Bay Area, I might as well milk it for what it's worth.

I'll be attending the Carson Workshop on "How we built Flickr" next Monday. I was looking forward to meeting Matthew Mullenweg of WordPress fame (and who seduced Jonas away from Drupal), but he's heading to New York this weekend, so that one's nixed.

I have a bet with Mike, who is also going to the workshop, that the men to women ratio will be like 17 to 3. Though, from the pictures on the Carson site, I'm thinking it might be 19 to 1 (me).

Bah.

I'm also heading up to the city for the Tag Tuesday to meet up with a couple tag developers, see what they have to say. Since I'm finishing up with a tagging project for a client, other reference points would be nice.

And since tagging now works on my other site it'll be good to compare notes on implementations.

And then there's the Blogher conference in late July. It's a mostly "women in blogging" sort of thing, though men aren't exactly excluded. To be honest, I'm going for two reasons: to get information on what bloggers want in order to develop drupal modules for them, and to meet Heather B. Armstrong.

I have no shame.

All in all, a good start to this groundhog's shadow check.