Meeting Ben and Mena
Comments: 4
What a pleasure it was to meet Ben and Mena Trott last night, to shake their hands and thank them in person for Movable Type, such a wonderful piece of software. They seem even more charming in real life than they do on their sites. For people who are moving the world a millimetre or two (about the most anyone can reasonably hope for) they are very demure – in the now-obsolete late Middle English sense of being calm, settled, and modest (remember modesty? It’s seriously out of fashion now). They smiled bravely all night through the onset of what was obviously a crushing jet-lag, and had a sort of shy bewilderment at finding themselves the centre of attention. I told them that they should probably get used to this.
Every now and then an application comes along that receives a disproportionate amount of attention, deservedly so, and MT is one of those apps (like NetNewsWire or Safari, perhaps). Ben and Mena ought to be extremely proud of themselves.
The evening basically involved standing around a cavernous hall, full of food if not quite of drink, in the basement of the building where Neoteny is located and – what’s the word? – hobnobbing. I finally met Joichi Ito and also some people who I’ve only corresponded with before. There ought to be a word for that moment of mildly dislocating surprise when you finally get to put a face to a personality you feel you’ve come to know in some way.
Some people I was hoping to meet unfortunately couldn’t attend but there will be other opportunities.
After the gathering I had a drink in a bar across the street with Mike, Nadine, Mie and Cameo. Mike and Nadine mentioned trying to get Tokyo bloggers together on a more regular basis, which would be a good idea.
Apart from the irresistable chance to meet Ben and Mena, I originally had vague reservations that getting Movable Type users together is a bit like getting the armies of the world together because they all use tanks, say, but of course I needn’t have worried and was probably only in search of a smart-arsed simile with which to amuse myself.
Have a great time in town, Trotts. Try not to spend too much money in Akihabara!
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Posted to MetaStuff • 2003.01.18 (Sat) • 13:51
Comments
Posted by Ian 2003.01.18, 14:13
Glad it went over well and everyone had a good time.
RE Tokyo bloggers getting together more often, Stuart Woodward recently setup the Japan Bloggers Yahoo Group in the hopes of getting a meeting together. I would encourage you to join! Some bloggers in Tokyo have metup all ready through Meetup.com, but meetup.com has it’s own set of problems.
Posted by Adriaan 2003.01.18, 19:01
Ah, yeah, I would have loved to be there. I tried to set up a meeting this weekend with the Trotts, but Joi Ito has compeletely stuffed their schedule, or so did his secretary inform me. Maybe some next time we all meet. I’ll be in Tokyo for the Sonic Youth concert, so if you dig them, perhaps we’ll meet then.
Posted by Jeff 2003.01.18, 22:12
There ought to be a word for that moment of mildly dislocating surprise when you finally get to put a face to a personality you feel you feel you’ve come to know in some way.
Jeremy, I encountered the same feeling last year when I attended the SXSW conference in Austin. It’s a little disconcerting, isn’t it. Afterwards, I tried to write about first f2f meetings.
Posted by Joi Ito 2003.01.18, 22:31
Adriaan… Sorry you couldn’t make it and sorry the scheduling didn’t work out. I’m sure they’ll be back. Thanks to everyone who came last night. I keep not being in town on the Wed of the meetup’s. Am looking forward to finally meeting everyone. I also had jet lag last night. I had just returned the night before from Hawaii, had a few hours sleep and had been up since 2am. Would like to meet everyone when more of my brain is around…
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