He’s been writing for over 20 years on the entire silicon valley, tech, money, and software sectors with insight both spot on and dead wrong but always thought provoking.

He’s taking a break from journalism and his column stops mid-december.

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/

To alleviate my and many other Torontonians’ I,Pulpit-Withdrawal-Symptoms, having Cringely at Mesh in April 2009 would be just the thing.

HiMY SYeD
Torontopedia.ca

One of the big factors that makes mesh such a success is, of course, you blokes – Mathew, Mark, Stuart, Michael and Rob.

It almost goes without saying that this thing wouldn’t be even a fraction as good as it is, year over year, without the passion, energy, and intelligence that the five of you have invested in it.

And yet other than the one Third Tuesday group hug we managed to pull off just before mesh ’07, there really hasn’t been an opportunity to get the five of you up on stage and have you share some of your insights into the state of the Web in Canada (and all things of that ilk).

You’re a group of really smart, experienced, plugged in and genuinely interesting chaps, and I’m telling you this not in any needless attempt to blow smoke up your collective fundaments. I would love to see a big panel session with the five founders and I think it would be a great way to wrap the conference.

This year, as in previous years, the last panel sessions of the second day came to an end in their respective rooms, and people then hung around, not wanting to let go of the buzz, eventually wandering off in groups to the various after parties. It felt like it needed one last group session to bring everyone back together again, in an attempt to summarize or group-grok the overall conference before ringing the closing bell.

I know you probably prefer to act as the foils rather than the frontmen (which is a credit to you all, of course) – but this just seems like an idea that wants to take shape (IMHO, of course), so I had to share it.

Heh – call it the mesh mosh. Throw the five of you up there in front of the assembled hordes and let ‘em fire a bunch of impertinent questions at you.

IMHO too often we as a communications community focus on client work or “sexy” projects where it’s easier to find people/ sponsors, etc. willing to step up to the plate. But one of the benefits of all our new collaborative technology is its ability to affect change vs. just push product. I’d like to hear from people who are passionate about these topics and just went ahead and volunteered their time to get it going, learned as they went, and gave freely back with no expected benefit. And yes, I’d be interested in talking about my experiences with SusCamp if you guys think this is a worthy topic

Cheers,
Tamera

I would be interested in hearing Tara Hunt again, this time on HeroCamp http://herocamp.net/ . Jeremiah Owyang from Forrester talking about white label social networks (he has a Wave report giving an industry overview coming out later this month on the topic). Charlene Li on Groundswell or any other topic she likes.

Thank you!
Connie

Gone are the days where a press release was an effective way of getting buzz. We seem to live in an age where getting the attention of bloggers and ‘casters can drive an organization’s message more efficiently than a story in the Saturday Globe and Mail.