InBerkeley

Last week when I was in NYC, I did a meetup for a new technology I’m working on called rssCloud. To get the meeting space, I did what I always do — telegraphed the need on my blog and waited for someone to volunteer. It worked. I got a beautiful conference room on the 38th floor of an office building in mid-town on the east side, with a fantastic view of the Chrysler Building. The volunteer was an investment banking firm, Ritchie Capital. I assume they offered the space because they like the idea of having leading-edge geeks be aware of who they are and have a good feeling about them. I think it’s great marketing. We need more of that kind of thinking imho.

So now I want to do a similar event on the West Coast, where I reside. So I did the same thing, asked on Twitter if anyone knows of a space I can use, and while I don’t have the space yet (pretty sure I’ll get it) — I did get an interesting response from James Munn, who I didn’t follow before, but do follow now.

He pointed to a fantastic piece he wrote about the possibility of creating a space in Berkeley for just such events. He writes: “With all the empty store fronts in Berkeley, its abundance of students, self-employed geeks, and new-thinkers, I think there is a great opportunity to design a space similar to a coworking office that is intended to support the kinds of activities that the connected cafe goers of today really want to partake in.”

I so totally agree.

And while I can’t start this business myself, I ache for it to exist.

In fact, it’s an impetus behind this site — to gather a community of Berkeley netizens and see what they want to do. I imagine that a certain subset would want to participate in the development of a loosely-coupled 140-character message network. One that would allow anyone to play the role of the company headquartered on the other side of the Bay.

After all we are the B in BSD.

So this thread picks up with a need for a small place for 35 geeks to meet. Should be close to BART. Good eating places nearby. That pretty much narrows it down to Shattuck, probably betw Hearst and Cedar. We don’t have money for the meetup, so it has to be free. We can of course, pass the hat around, in true Berkeley fashion.

Interested to see where this leads.

And of course, we can do it in San Francisco just as easily. But the name of this site is InBerkeley.

General

This post is a bit off the beaten-path for InBerkeley, but it’s necessary…

A couple of weeks ago, one of the authors of our site posted two pieces that quoted far too heavily from articles from the San Francisco Chronicle. Shortly after, we received an email from the Chronicle, asking us to remove the pieces and to acknowledge receipt of the email. We did both things. But that was not enough, imho.

As one of the founders of InBerkeley.com, on behalf of the publication, we apologize to the Chronicle, and go on the record saying it is against editorial policy of this site to extensively quote other sites’ stories.

I totally understand the concern of the Chronicle. The practice of reposting massive portions of articles started a few years ago, and I’ve been burned by it, repeatedly, with content originating on Scripting News. I find the practice appalling. I don’t do anything to stop people from using my material this way, but I don’t like it when they do.

I feel what’s permissible is a one or two sentence quote, and citations must include a link and possibly an original sentence or two explaining to the reader why you felt the article is relevant. The author and publisher of the original story is entitled to the flow. Anything less is unethical.

I think the ultimate test of any editorial practice is The Golden Rule. In this case there’s no gray area, no controversy. The wholesale copying of content is just plain wrong, and we don’t do it here.

Finally thanks to the Chronicle for being so understanding.

General