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Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]

Reminders

The latest wave of communicational cleverness has made face-to-face meetings to spread good ideas both easier to organise, and more necessary to organise. Easier, obviously. More necessary because it now takes much clever thinking and cooperative enterprise to get good ideas heard and acted upon in this new media hubbub, just as it used to when the media were dominated by a few megaliths.

There was, I now realise, a joyous interlude when good ideas had the run of the blogosphere and those who might have been using the blogosphere to spread bad ideas instead mostly just waited for the good ideas to go away. But now the bad ideas are back with a vengeance, never having gone away – just having been temporarily heckled a bit, and now different skills and energies are needed to get the good stuff said and done, and in much the same considerable quantities as two decades ago.

There are now so many meetings, just in London, of the kind I am inclined to be attending, that I myself have taken to sending out reminders when my own last-Friday-of-the-month meetings are imminent, and I greatly appreciate it when others do the same. Nobody has yet complained to me about my reminders. Several have said thanks. (My speaker this month, by the way, will be Samizdata’s own Rob Fisher, who will talk about the impact that open source software is having on the world.)

So it was that I was very glad to receive this, this morning:

Liberty League Freedom Forum 2013 is this weekend!

The conference is just a day away, and we have well over 200 people signed up. LLFF will be the largest gathering of classical liberal and libertarian students and young people in the UK, and the second largest this side of the Atlantic!

If you haven’t seen it already, make sure to check out the Full Conference Pack, with timetable, maps, session descriptions, travel directions and more, here.

More here, and what I earlier said about this event here: here.

Another meeting I will soon be attending is this evening, organised by Libertarian Home at the Rose and Crown in Southwark, and addressed by our own Adriana Lukas. Details here. Get there at between 7pm and 8pm (which is when the talk starts).

Reminding people about your meeting involves the same kind of humility that is involved in repeating good ideas. People don’t necessarily hear things the first time you say them, and if they do they often forget them, especially when they now have so many other things to be attending to. And even when they have told you that they will definitely be attending your meeting, your meeting is not likely to be the biggest thing in their lives, and they are entirely liable to forget all about it until several days later. Unless they get a reminder.

2 comments to Reminders

  • Thank you Brian, for having the humility to remind me, as your posting did by way of repetition, about your advice about reminders. Tonight is going to be a busy one, see you there.