John Reinan phoned me a couple of weeks ago, looking for an excuse to visit Northfield, the hometown of his alma mater, St. Olaf. Actually, he did have a grander purpose: picking my brain a bit about tech developments that I was involved with in my business and with Northfield.org as part of his new beat covering the internet for the StarTribune newpaper. He'll be writing pieces for the print edition and last week he launched a weblog called Digital Drifter with a nice tip of the hat blog entry, including three alums from gofast.net: Mike O'Connor, Ralph Jenson, and yours truly.
Some other coincidences: John's college roommate was Kai Hagen, now running for commissioner in Frederick County Maryland. I got to know Kai when I ran Cafe Utne back in the 90s. He was one of the many online moderators and eventually became manager of Cafe Utne, taking over after I left in 1998. And last week I heard Kai's name mentioned by one of his former professors, Bruce Roberts, who's scheming to start a Northfield area conversation salon. He and his wife Jan just became neighbors, having moved into Village on the Cannon… which is owned by Collegeville Communities (AKA Collegeville Development Group), a client of mine whose president, Colleen Hollinger Petters (seen in this photo with her husband, Jon Petters), is collaborating with Bruce on getting the Northfield salon going and who wants to collaborate with our as yet non-existent salon initiative at Northfield.org. Got all that?
