Back from workshop at MIT and I am unpacking bags and notes, not concepts

So I was in the company of sociologists this past week on Thursday. I heard them use the term "unpacking" meaning to take apart and analyse a term or concept. I am in fact, unpacking my bags and not really concepts because I am not really a sociologist. These people know me by email and now by my presentation. It went well and I was not trashed like some bad school boy. In fact, I am now looking to take up a more serious study of knowledge management and search out the author Cousins.

I will be following up on things I learned from all the other speakers and in the future applying all this learning. Each one was interesting and presented concepts I can learn more about. First I will visit the web sites presented by the Keynote speaker at the centre of e-social science in the UK. I may even study over there for a few days. Her centre also is involved with myexperiment.org which I joined a few days ago but have not fully explored or added much content yet. Another featured speaker has developed an open source plug in for Microsoft Excel 2007. I do not have access to Excel 2007. This plug in draws network graphs and diagrams much like seventies' string art as the speaker put it. He is the only sociologist employed by Microsoft apparently. This whole event was sponsored by Port 25 the Microsoft open source lab. Their site can be found here http://port25.technet.com/.

Our conference packages included name tags with USB keys with the CITASA name and logo printed on them. I have not even opened this USB key up yet to examine the files. I should join this group with real membership fees but I still owe this years fees for the Canadian Mathematics Society student membership I hold. The full program is here at http://www.citasa.org/files/PreConference%202008%20Program.pdf.