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Yesterday, after a hard, hot day tending ducks, trimming palms and skimming algae from the waterway, I came home to find the Baltic "Curating New Media" book in my mailbox. Well, not in the mailbox exactly, but in the shelf under the mailbox where the postperson leaves things that are too big to fit in the mailbox. Being a New Yorker I find it amazing that nobody steals things left out here. Then again, I feel certain I'm the only person within a wide radius who would be interested in a book about curating new media. So last night I read the whole thing and I have to congratulate the editors and participants in the conference for "getting the ball rolling" in printed form. Since I've been involved in a number of projects where we tried to publish something and, outside of Christiane Paul's "Intelligent Agent", nothing ever saw ink hit the page, I know how hard this is to accomplish. And also since I was originally introduced to computer technology through my "day job" in the '80s (which was actually at night) as a typesetter I love the feel of a book in my hands as I nod off to sleep. I haven't seen a theme proposed for May could I suggest this book and some of the issues that were raised in it? I, for one, was glad to see Tamas Banovich have his say but felt that he and Mark Tribe were a bit like aliens dropped into a particularly British party. There's a New York slant to the last ten years they partially represent that needs to be described in greater detail and since Tamas, Mark and I (along with Christian Paul, Wolfgang Staehle, Benjamin Weil and lots of others) were closely aligned through the whole time I'd like to attempt to do from my own POV. Why, for instance, isn't PORT MIT ever mentioned in forums on curating new media? Many of the questions raised in the book we faced in 1997/8 doing that exhibition. We'd planned to publish a catalogue, even had it designed and ready to print, but... Rob offshore|online