Thank you, Barry! It was great fun and I think a lot of excellent social networking to boot. Chip On Jul 2, 2007, at 2:16 PM, Barry Wellman wrote:
I'm just back from the Communities & Technologies conference (in beautiful East Lansing MI), and I want to congratulate Chip Steinfield and his posse for running what I think is the best Internet-Society conference I've ever attended.
Almost all of the papers were good. Well-prepared, and had systematic evidence, qual, quant, or (even better, often) both.
Mediating on why it was good: 1. Somewhat of a focused theme, altho "community" has at least 57 meanings (and many of them were used). 2. Papers prepared ahead of time. 3. Pretty tight refereeing.
My only complaint: Michigan State Uni's catering couldn't get the concept of providing alternatives to ultra hi carb breakfasts.
And others may rightly point out the inadequacies of American airline service, 24-36 hours after a storm. (The Toronto/London Ont folks drove, and just had a chance to compare/contrast US immigration -- [hyper macho] and Cdn immigration [sweet].
I'm looking forward to the next one, 6/09, in beautiful Penn State Uni
Happy Canada Day! Barry Wellman
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S.D. Clark Professor of Sociology, FRSC NetLab Director Centre for Urban & Community Studies University of Toronto 455 Spadina Avenue Toronto Canada M5S 2G8 fax:+1-416-978-7162 wellman at chass.utoronto.ca http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman For fun -- updating songs, movies and history: http://chass.utoronto.ca/oldnew/cybertimes.php Elvis wouldn't be singing Return to Sender these days
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