Erik Emery Hanberg

I was very happy with last night's R-71 debate. We had a good discussion and good attendance (I think we had maybe 70 in the room, ranging from a state senator to a whole flock of college students).

City Club has long hosted candidate forums and issue debates. But this was one different for a couple reasons: it was scheduled outside our regular programming and it was free.

We had two presenters: Laurie Jenkins, a co-chair of the Approve 71 campaign, and Joseph Backholm, Executive Director of the Family Policy Institute of Washington.

I asked five or six questions to them, which took the first 35 minutes or so, and then the audience had a chance to ask questions. We got through about five or six of those as well.

I am happy to report that while contentious and at times quite lively, it was a good model of civic participation and discussion.

Mary was armed with the Flip camera. I haven't reviewed the footage to see how it turned out, but if it's got good audio I'll find a way to post it online.

Thanks to all who came!

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The Coen Brothers "A Serious Man" was some great filmmaking, though not up to their No Country For Old Men. It was funny and rather painful, but that has something to do with it being loosely based on the Book of Job.

It's an odd movie, to be sure, made more so by an entirely Yiddish opening and a very abrupt ending (that I did not see coming). But like any Coen Brothers movie, it's perfectly cast; that and the filmmaking are really wonderful.

It opened at the Grand yesterday. Here's the preview. It pretty wells illustrates the oddity and the fun of the movie.

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5 local techies showed off their "work that wasn't for work" last night at SiteCrafting. I felt like it was a good round-up of interesting projects--from Twitter apps to algorithms used for mapping DNA to URL shorteners, there was a lot of everything.

Represented were several SiteCrafting people--SiteCrafting was also a wonderful host for the event!--plus a couple from Topia, the two most recognizable tech companies in Tacoma at this point. Also some entrepreneurs, techies and communications folks from some big employers in town, and even someone from Tacoma Economic Development who dropped by to see what kinds of things people were up to.

I didn't present--my side project idea is still just a draft business plan and not much more--but it was inspirational to see what was going on in Tacoma. For a couple of the presentations I caught only about half the acronyms used, but still--pretty cool.

Thanks to the presenters and glad to see so many people attend!

Next tech event: South Sound Technology Conference on November 20. Hope you can make it!

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via Idolator via Frinklin.

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Six to eight local techies will present on their side projects--"work that isn't work" at SiteCrafting.

We'll have some pizza and such (hopefully you can chip in a couple bucks if you come!) and interesting presentations about Twitter apps, URL shorteners, and crowd-sourcing sites.

If those things interest you, this is the event for you!

Here's the details on FeedTacoma's Events Calendar.

We'll start gathering at 5:30, with demos starting at 6.

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