Last night I went to boca for my first ever Dorkbot, aka San Francisco's monthly cute nerd convention. I only had time to stay for Eric Paulos, so I missed Oron Catts from the Tissue Culture & Art Project and Joel Slayton and any random dorkings. Paulos's talk was amazing though, all about the work he's been doing at Intel dealing with how city-dwellers interact with their surroundings and each other. He brought in Jane Jacobs's idea about the vitality of chance encounters on city sidewalks, and talked about designing technology and devices that celebrate that sense of wonderment, including an interactive trash can and a program to track your familiar strangers. In another project he distributed matchbooks throughout Portland bars that encouraged those who found them to text their loves and hates about their city to a central database, so I am now in proud possession of a matchbook that says "I Love Portland" on one side and "I Hate Portland" on the other. Which is pretty much how I feel about Portland right now, as it is about to steal one of my best friends away from me. Anyway, as a bona fide city girl myself, I loved hearing about these brilliant conflagrations of art and science, and I walked out of there totally invigorated. Of course I was probably the only person there who left to go watch the next episode of Project Runway.
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