[Air-l] The OII Symposium

Denise N. Rall denrall at yahoo.com
Fri Sep 19 02:01:44 PDT 2003


Dear AIR'ers -

I wish I had time to write a proper 'postcard' but the
OII iCS Symposium is going brilliantly! Last night we
had our informal dinner in the Balliol Junior Commons
Room which is a proper Harry Potter kind of chamber. 

Especially after our alloted two glasses of red (or
white), we agreed on one thing: We all felt much
smarter.  Quite brilliant international reputations
were on show with extremely erudite commentary
provided on the significant topics of the day (even
without drool) and later at the Pub the conversation
continued as you might expect, at the highest level of
committed and insightful academic debate.

I proved to have quite a packet of opions about
classical taxomic systems during a session, and in an
ill-advised attempt to control me, Prof. Barry Wellman
stole my passport and is broadcasting my DOB to the
list which should be patently ignored as a misinformed
interpretation of details. Leslie Shade, Leigh Keeble,
Denise Carter, Chris May, Joanna Robson (goddess of
e-shopping) and people that I am not even smart enough
to mention in the same breath with the rest of 'us'
pub-crawlers were all in evidence at one point or
another of the evening.  

I close with that I have never felt closer to my
academic colleagues when, (at the point of the
e-knife) we were all good citizens and participated
heartily in the meaningful discussion of e-democracy
under the most capable hand of Prof. Stephen Colemen
before they allowed us into the undergraduate bar at
Balliol to take off our thinking caps before dinner.

I for one am most happy that this was a IRL not a
virtual event. Kudos to Prof's William Dutton and
Steve Woolgar, and not to mention the brilliant OII
staff that have faciliated in this exercise of
sulliement of a great Oxford college and fine Internet
institution.  This is the highest accolade the Academy
can offer to each other (ie. we're having a blast over
here.)

Via cyber cafe, see ya in Toronto! Denise





=====
"The distance between here and there is growing; and getting even larger as we speak" (S. S. Hall)
Denise N. Rall, PhD student, School of EnvironSciMgmt, Southern Cross Uni,  Lismore, NSW, 2480 Australia Phone +61-2-6624-8627 Fax +61-2-6624-8637 Office (Tuesdays) (02) 6620 3577 Mob 0438 233 344
http://www.scu.edu.au/schools/rsm/staff/pages/drall/index.html

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