Review of Crystal City - lacks any building made solely of glass which
is disappointing.

After the somewhat Odysseian journey to the building (walked past it
three times - appears to be an assumption on my part Lockheed Martin
would have it's name on it's building) I found the venue, and snuck
in. Sadly my sneaking in skills did not work.

The initial session was more of a getting to know the learning
registry and for the people at the event to introduce themselves. The
mix of people if about 50/50 industry to education (with ISKME and SRI
sitting outside either, or happily between). The Universidad de
Cataluyna is here as well, and is the only other European Organisation
here (which I think reflects OER's success in Spain).

Important detail number 1 - Catering was awesome. There is a magic
table that when I remove coke from it, within minutes the coke is
replaced. Yes. No sleep for me, I wonder if this hardware is available
to buy?

The morning session was spent working primarily on getting my dev
environment set up properly (dislike Macs) and thinking of a few ideas
with which it proceed. I'm loosely tied to the Open Michigan team,
which roughly means they've almost got something working so if I sit
near them people might think I helped. Hopefully tomorrow the stuff I
have been doing today with searching / checking LR for data will
become part of the Drupal plugin.

I'm conscious trying to explain what the LR is and does it hard
without showing people a demonstrable service that uses it, so I've
been focussing most of my code on "low hanging fruit" until i realised
strawberries don't even hang and are therefore much lower. So
hopefully relatively soon I'll have some strawberries coded up that
can demonstrate what the LR does, and can do for your learning
content.

At present, I would consider it to be akin to the "dumb repository"
idea that popped up a few months back (hat tip to Medev) but also like
the original internet in that it remains an infastructure to build on
(plumbing is used regularly as a word), rather than a "site".

I'll update more as and when I get code working / demonstrable.

Two of the main drivers of the LR are both US Government departments,
but I would say the desire is to hold all content - the system will
not decide on which material it thinks you should learn from.

The above fact came as a response to a question I asked about scoping.
The answer came from a gentleman from the Department of the Defense
who referenced the enlightenment in his answer. He'd also flown f-15s
in an earlier career.

So to conclude, imagine Top Gun with references to the Enlightenment.
Perhaps replace Goose with John Locke?

Maverick : I've got charlies on my six
John Locke : no, I think you'll find they are innate

*smirks*

Questions / thoughts / bookings for Bar Mitsvahs can be sent off list,
or added to the google doc.