I arrived today at the Santa Clara Hilton to get situated for the NetSquared Conference happening tomorrow and Wednesday at Cisco Systems headquarters only a few minutes away. Seems like a nice bunch of non-profits and tech industry folks coming for this, from the looks of the Meet-and-Greet this evening.
A bunch of us from the Second Life Non-profit Commons crew ended up heading out to a local vegetarian place, including Glitteractica Cookie, In Kenzo, Beth Kanter, Creech, Jani Myriam, Ozma, Penguin Kuhn, Johnny Austin, Coughran Mayo and a few others. The restaurant was actually run by a somewhat odd Buddhist sect that follows the "Supreme Master Ching Hai," a Vietnamese former Buddhist monk. Don’t know if I want to join their sect, but they do make a fine veggie curry.
The process of ordering the food was a NPC classic moment. Glitteractica took charge and had people shout out the dishes that they wanted, then she put in a huge order for the lot of us, which we ate communally. And of course Glitteractica ended up footing a large proportion of the bill, despite our protestations.
After dinner, we wound up hanging out at the hotel bar, telling jokes that only other Second Life people would find amusing. We started talking about whether our virtual world lives effected our real world activities. Jani, who is transgendered, had the comment of the evening when she said, "I started hanging out with all of these girls in Second Life, and now I’ve become one!"
Looking forward to tomorrow!
It was a pleasure putting faces to names and avatars. I’m looking forward to the next day and half.
Nice to share a meal with all the npsl crowd!