Over a month ago I attended Accelerating Change 2004. I agree with Peter McCluskey’s take: an unexpected but mostly well done and welcome focus on current developments and lots of excitement about virtual worlds, Second Life in particular. Virtual words offer a low cost platform for economic, social and even physical object experimentation, prototyping and more. Virtual worlds are the future! Pity I never was much of an enthusiast for MUDs or video games, so I have a couple decades’ worth of catching up to do.

Had it not been held across the continent (South Carolina) I would’ve preferred to attend the conflicting 3rd Annual Calorie Restriction Society Conference. The first two CR conferences were lots of fun, with a good mix of learning from CRONies (CRON is Calorie Restriction with Optimal Nutrition) far more serious than me and talks by academics studying CR and aging mechanisms.

Dean Pomerleau, whose site is well worth visiting, took notes on approximately every CR 2004 talk: day 1, day 2, and day 3.