Brains working towards machine consciousness

First up, can I thank everyone involved in ThoughtFest09.  It was an incredibly stimulating, enjoyable two days providing much food for thought.

Especial thanks, of course, to Steve Warburton, Graham Attwell, Helen Keegan, Jen Hughes and Linda Castañeda for testing the latest This Is Me activity - based on 'Attention Economy:  The Game' by Ulises Mejias.  Details of this will be posted later (i.e. tomorrow, 2009-03-07) over at the This Is Me site.  I was very pleased that everyone had a good time playing it, and that the twist at the end provided for an added learning opportunity (and bit of fun!)

Also, many thanks to all those who had the chance to come and chat about future plans for MeAggregatorTM - it was great that the responses were all so positive, and when we get the last couple of major wrinkles ironed out I will be sharing that elusive URL with you so you can come and poke and prod it for us.  I think there are a couple of potential collaborations on extending the MeAg further into the social and collaborative sphere - we will have to work together on some bids.

I have to say a HUGE thank you to Jen Hughes for her workshop on cartoons, and the introduction to Comic Life.  Nice bit of software, and I think it is fair to say that in conjunction with Toondoo it may well provide me with hours of productive fun doing documentation (and it isn't often a computer scientist can use the words fun and documentation in the same sentence!)

One of the (many!) highlights for me was the ARGOSI project's game session.  Obviously, winning made it all the better (and I was astounded at how much I had learned about Manchester city centre just by walking through it twice - I seem to have retained far too much information about a town I have seldom visited before!).  Coupled with a 'natural' Google-it instinct, and some brilliant team work (and poor Sam having to keep his mouth zipped when we were struggling on occasions) it was great fun to explore the story line, the landmarks, and the whole concept.  I feel we need to work on some other learning games with you guys.

I am also fantastically enthusiastic about the possibility of collaborating with Pontydysgu on the suggested secret Project X.  Wonderful concept, and it will be a real pleasure making your future freams for it come true... we will have to find someone to fund it now!

I am really looking forward to playing with Mark van Harmelen's integrated PLE (which shares some nice commonality with MeAggregatorTM ) - I think this looks highly suitable as a foundation for further work in various pieces of collaborative software.  I am also really keen to have a copy of FreeFolio an ePortfolio system developed as a plugin to WordPressMU.  Both great pieces of software, thanks for the demos guys!

I almost feel guilty for not singling out every other session I was in for a specific "thank you" too - everything was thought provoking, and provided a wonderfully rounded couple of days.  But I want to save the last thank yous for the great conversations 'in the gaps'.  So especial thanks to Paul Bailey, Graham Attwell, Sam Rhodes, Dave White, Jen Hughes, Cris Costa, Frances Bell, Mark van Harmalan and the others whose names I have foolishly forgotten (I am generally really poor with names, so it is a miracle I have remembered all these ones!).  Sadly there were also those I didn't get to talk to as much as I would have liked (Josie and Steve spring to mind). 

The final, and possibly most important thank you, though, goes to Helen Keegan, along with a deep feeling of regret for not having answered an email a few months ago.  I have missed out on the opportunity for deep and wonderful dialogue there, and it is all my fault.  With topics ranging from needing new words to describe some social behaviours, through fascinating discussions about Digital Identity and marvellous suggestions of future collaboration, I have to say I have not had a better dinner time conversation for a long time - apart from with my Godson, of course, but his vocabulary is a little limited only being 18 months old, and he hasn't trained me well enough to understand all his sign language and gestures yet, so I often eat the food he offers me when I suspect I am really only meant to be admiring it or blowing on it to cool it down... evil Uncle Pat ;-) !. 

Those who know me (or can be bothered to look at my digital footprint) will know I am not generally given to exuberant rounds of thanks-giving.  These two days in the company of such stimulating and wonderful people left me having to express my gratitude.  Thank you.