July 14, 2005
Toronto
I just got back from 4 days spent in Toronto at the 15th Annual World Conference on Disaster Management or WCDM for short. Yeah, I know. It was a little weird, but that's part of my business now. I spent the last few days talking to people about how to plan for pandemic threats and checking out blast-proof furniture. It was all a little surreal.
The best part of the trip though (aside from checking out Toronto with my new pal Doulgas) was going to a bookstore. As it turns out, Cory Doctorow (one of our new favorite authors and a Toronto native) was going to be signing copies of his new book! I headed over to Bakka Phoenix books in downtown Toronto to check it out.
When I got there, there were only four people in the back of the store including Cory, and they were busy trading stories about data packets, distributed computing, war driving and geeky t-shirts. While I couldn't keep up with all of the conversation, I felt like I was home with family. After a bit Cory looked up and said "Hi, I'm Cory!"
It was a little weird, but at the same time it seemed right. From all that I have read about the guy and seen from his posts peppered here and there on the "internets", he is a really nice person who loves to connect with others. I introduced myself and he said that it was nice to meet me. After getting a signed copy of his new book "Someone comes to town, someone leaves town", he asked me to stay for a while because he was thinking of reading a new story he had been working on. Shea, of course I would!
In a few moments the room was packed with about 30 people and he settled into the chair. It seemed like he was a little nervous, but had no trouble kidding with the room full of like-minded, tech-saavy, t-shirt laden folks. He took some time and first talked to us about his feelings on the bombings in the UK (he lives in London right now) and then read to us from his new story "When sysadmins ruled the world" for about 15 minutes.
All in all, it was a great time and I am glad that Tara tipped me off that he was in town. Cory is a real gentleman and not a half bad writer either.
"There are only two stories"