A random assortment of experiences at day one of this year’s reboot conference:

• Through Morgan, met the team from Novalis, that, among other things, make a Rails application that helps measure community happiness. Exchanged business cards with hopes that their work might somehow benefit QoIL.
• Had an good conversation with Luisa and Catherine and Jonas and Yann about community building, neighbourhoods and digital-physical crossovers like this.
• Got together with an interesting group of people to build a prototype of a solar bread oven using cardboard, aluminum foil, plastic and glue. We call it a “prototype” because it never got about 36 degrees C inside. But we’re going back at it today.
• Took the Flickr Bike, helpfully lent by Mark, to the shop around the corner to buy an oven thermometer. Of course the bike took pictures of the journey.
• Injured my leg getting on the Flickr Bike: forgot there was a sharp solar panel on the back and put a minor gash into my femur. I will survive.
• Did more session-surfing than session-immersion. Lost heart mid-afternoon — likely a combination of solar bread oven fatigue and dehydration — but regained my moxie around supper time.
• Made a tiny contribution to Ton’s Open Government Data by talking about the ClosedCorporations.org project.
• Met David Sjunnesson and decided to attend today’s Full Body Arduino workshop.
• Sat across from Dave Weinberger at supper, wherein he (very pleasantly, and with much skill) tried to drive a wedge between Catherine on the “net culture vs. wool culture” issue. Followed by an informative conversation about the Google Book Search Settlement.
• Lamented the absence of a vegetarian option at supper: the food was local, well-prepared (over roaring fires outside on the patio), but very sheep-based.
• Put forward the Royalty Oaks Project for the Reboot Prize.
• Left early, by reboot terms, catching the 23h00 train to Malmö with the Malmövians; exhausted and somewhat mind-boggled, but otherwise happy.

Today, day two.