Good morning, it is April the seventh; the seventeenth day of April, is what that means. It's the sixteen day of me vlogging everyday in April and I can't believe I haven't missed a day, since that first one.

So as soon as vlogging everyday is over, on May 1st, I have a thing that I'm doing. It's a thing in Missoula, it's called the Missoula Bar Camp and it's a bunch of people in Missoula who get together and we talk about Missoula and technology and, uh, stuff like that. And it's nice, because I, you know, I live in a place where there's not a ton of people who are deep into information technology and new media in the way that I am.

So the idea is that we all get together and talk about how new media and IT and open source software, all of these buzz-topics, for, you know, the the information revolution. We get together and we talk about that stuff. They've asked to give a very short, five minute talk to sort of start it out along with a few other people. Including, I think the mayor of Missoula and the owner of one of the really big businesses in town.

So the idea being I get to spark some kind of ideas in the heads for, for discussion later on. And I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to talk about. Because this is a hard thing. Being interesting is always a hard thing. It's easier on the video camera because I can try seven times.

So like if I had to burp during an actual speech I would have had to hold it in the whole time and because I was doing it on a video I could burp and then I can cut it out. I didn't cut it out just as an illustration though. For illustrative purposes.

So I'm a little bit nervous. And I want to think about the kind of stuff that I want to talk about. And there are a few things. One is the idea that those of us on the cutting edge of this stuff have the responsibility if we care about the places where we live, to try to bring people to those places. To try and make those places active in, in those ways. And trying to bring jobs to the area and trying to create jobs in the area.

And trying, and when you're doing things, have it be focused on the local community and not just on the internet. Because those of us who work on the internet have a tendency to kind of ignore where we live as an important thing. I certainly have that problem and it's something I feel a little bit guilty about.

The things that I do employ several people. None of those people are in Missoula, except maybe if you count Katherine because she does a lot of work for EcoGeek. That's an interesting topic. I don't know that it's gonna be as interesting, or interesting enough for this particular crowd, but it's something that I'm very curious about personally. Like, I love online communities, obviously, like, that is unarguable.            

But what happens when your sense of place transfers into the virtual space and you don't have a sense of place in the real world, and you don't have roots that go any deeper than surface level in your real world environment, and you can just pick up and go wherever you want, whenever you want. Because a lot, or maybe even most of the business relationships that some- that people like me have are on the internet and many of the personal relationships that I have are on the internet.

That raises interesting questions for what community is going to mean in the future. It also raises interesting questions about how to raise money for community based non-profit organizations and it raises questions about what being a good citizen is.

Is it only about being a good nerdfighter? Which, I'm all for. Or is it also about being a good Missoulian. And a good Montanan. And a good inter-mountain westerner. That is an interesting topic but I don't think it's going to be an interesting topic for that crowd and they probably don't have that particular crisis of identity that I have.

Nonetheless I think that it's curious, and I'm curious to see what y'all think about that particular issue. So please, if you have thoughts on the conflict of identity between the virtual community and the actual community and what that means for being a good citizen of those different communities, I'm looking forward to having that discussion in the comments below. I'll see you all tomorrow.