I have a small circle of people to thank today for being part of ‘N’ Internet: NEXT, which took place on consecutive days this past weekend and which opened my eyes and mind quite expansively in ways I haven’t experienced since… hm. Maybe that time I was at a blogger’s conference, Gnomedex, in 2005, with my reporter’s notebook and a pen taking notes while the people around me were in fifteen backchannel conversations reporting to each other what was going on.

I was at that time newspaper reporter, like for, you know, a print daily. How things were changing in front of me, and how the reality of how people were going to be getting their news was obvious in that moment, hit me like a juggernaut and I literally skip-ran back the short hop from that conference hall to my office building, on the same street, as I recall, in downtown Seattle, bursting in with excitement and saying, ‘We gotta have a blog!’. They said no. And that very year, I started this one.

Being open to the possibility of being changed by what you hear. Is. The very definition of listening.

And thanks to those whose paths I’ve crossed all these many journeys in work, life, real world walkabouts, and showing up at things because while it’s hard to do because you don’t know what you don’t know, it’s what I do because I don’t have virtual tethers of smartphones and their various apps that pull me back from being there and asking someone I don’t know a question that they may or may not have the answer to and it may or may not be correct. The point for me was always that breaking of a barrier, of going out, further out, but up until now it has always been geophysically.

What I learned from N Internet NEXT, so far, is that you can also do it… with your consciousness. With your mind. Being aware of more than what you already know, or feel. Being willing to suspend your beliefs: that’s, for me, what’s next.

To be continued!*

Dipika

*HT EM

PS Who wants to come ‘next time’? Next time is scheduled for later on, and soon. It’s by donation now in lieu of tickets like before, when 16N looked like this. But yeah. Get a ticket at our crowdfunding page. Here’s a link.

chuffed.org/project/spacethezine.

Thanksss