Now, I know East Campus (my dorm) is not the center of the universe, neither is MIT for that matter...however you probably have been living in a hole if haven’t heard about this yet...
This Saturday there was a Time Traveler’s Convention at my dorm here at MIT. It sarted out as a them for one of our many, many parties here:
This is the original link to the web page...it has now been updated, but the original stuff is still there.
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Good idea, or infinite chaos?
Either way, it will be a profound event!
http://web.mit.edu/adorai/timetraveler/
"Technically, you would only need one..."
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The conversation went on from there...it’s the EC think to do to discuss interesting (or sill) things...the pros, the cons, also advertising a Senior House (neighboring dorm) party last weekend, you get the pocture.
Then we were Slash-Dot-ed:
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/01/2247248&tid=133
Within an hour of this discovery...Amal Dorai (the originator of the idea) sent this e-mail out
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Friends,
The first thing is that since a lot of non-MIT people will be there, we should be careful about strangers in the dorm. Removing taped doors and being vigilant in general would probably be advisable.
One cool thing would be to get a bunch of people dressed up as people from either the future or the past, and be that character for the evening. If you're interested in doing this, please email me. Also Dugan will be playing, his music sounds pretty futuristic.
Other things:
[a list of 6 or 7 other ideas that he had]
Thanks,
Amal
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From there we went to All Things Considered on NPR…and someone even recorded the segment if you would like to listen:
After that it was a see of e-mails discussing the organization of this event, now that we were ‘forced’ to hold it. Until something happened that no one was ready for…ok, maybe some people were, but not us…front page of THE NEW YORK TIMES!
{one of the responses to the NYT article: http://www.gawker.com/news/media/new-york-times/index.php#we-assume-theyll-do-the-time-warp-again-102476}
The people of Second West (the hall that helped Amal put on the convention, and Amal also ended up on The Today Show… http://web.mit.edu/ting2/Public/ttc.mpg
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There were some guest list issues when the day of the Time Travelers Convention actually came. The people of East Campus were not on it, no one told us that we would need to RSVP. If everything had gone as planed, it wouldn’t have been an issue because there would be no way to keep us out of our own court yard…however, because of MIT’s refusal to use the weather machine for us, it rained and we had to come up with a rain location. This location turned out to be Walker Memorial (a building right next door), where there is a maximum occupancy of 465 (and the guest list was cut off that Wednesday when it reached 345). Needless to say, a lot of ECers were rather miffed! At any rate, it all worked out for the best…the guest list was let in first, then East Campus people, they any one else that just showed up. As it turned out the lines were so long at the start that by the time the room was full there weren’t many people to turn away. But we did have people from all over the country show up, it was rather entertaining to see all the people…
There was even a guy who AudioBloged the event:
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/eon/TheMoment.mp3
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Apparently it was such a big deal that the story hit the international press. There was an article in the London Telegraph about it. After hitting the AP news ticker, the story has appeared in:
The Mail and Guardian in
http://www.mg.co.za/articlepage.aspx?area=/breaking_news/other_news/&articleid=237395
The Hindu in
http://www.hindu.com/2005/05/06/stories/2005050600472000.htm
The International Herald Tribune in
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/05/06/business/ptend07.php
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It was also mentioned on Saturday Night Live by Tina Fey on Weekend Update:
"A student at MIT is organizing a time travel party this weekend hoping that people from the future will show up. Unfortunately, people from the future already know that the party sucked."
Dear Tony,
The deal is that the convention was last night. So you must mean that once you've translated to
Thanks for your interest,
Amal
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