Cannon Beach impressions (1)

[koos de heer]

Hi All,

Thought I'd let you know how we are doing here at
Cannon Beach. Just my impressions of course...

Before driving down to Cannon Beach on Monday, I
had lunch with Rhodes Hileman and Karen du Four
des Champs in Seattle as a result of the RFI that
I posted on the 22nd. It was too short but I
enjoyed meeting two of the real people behind
this list server.  Here at OT17, there are many
more of course, lurkers as wel as regular posters
like Birgitt, Jeff, Harrison and Michelle. Great
to meet those folks.

On Tuesday evening, we had an informal gathering
to see who was there and get to know each other
a little bit. When I got there (just across the
street from my hotel) I found a room without
any furniture and some 60 people sitting on the
floor along the walls, chatting lively. At the
doorstep I found Harrison, who invited me to
come in, go up to somebody I did not know and
start talking to them.  Now that was not too
difficult since I did not know anybody there,
but I did feel a bit awkward just walking up
to someone. Probably my Dutch nature, having
been born in Friesland, in the somewhat
stubborn northern part of the country. After
a second encouragement from Harrison to plunge
in I did so anyway and found that I had landed
among a very friendly and easy-going crowd.
The meeting was over too soon - all of a sudden
people started to leave and it was over.

The next day at 9:00 was the real opening of
the space by Harrison and then the marketplace
started. There was a lot of enthusiasm and a
great variety of subjects was posted. I decided
to post one myself on "melting the technician".
In my work with computer companies I often find
it hard to convince the technical people that
there is more to work than just the half-brain
mathematical side of things.

I had a hard time choosing which sessions to attend.
I picked one on the dillemma between "whatever
happens is the only thing..." versus "creating
opportunities"  and one on Sexuality, Spirit and
Transformation.  These two and my own session were
all three very worthwile, though very different.

The discussions in the other groups were very
lively, it seems most people were having a good
time. One group had to move to another location
because the group at the other end of the deck
made so much noise...

After the evening news, in which a german woman
gave a beautiful drumming concert on an equally
beautiful drum, I had a beer at a nearby bar with
a group of around 10 people and later on had
dinner at the house of one of the participants
with another group. Both groups consisted mainly
of women - I wondered where the men were hanging
out...

Today (it is 8:50 AM on Thursday now) I have only
signed up for one session. The weather is not as
nice as I had hoped, so I can't to to the beach
or go inline skating. So I might be bumblebeeing
today. I'll let you know.

To be continued...
------------
koos de heer
auryn management advies
utrecht, netherlands
mailto:koosdhr at auryn.nl
http://www.auryn.nl/