Her Name is Rio
I've become one of those people who takes pictures with my phone when I travel and posts those pictures to social media sites. This is a problem because now I take photos instead of composing witty blog posts in my head. I fear that I will get out of the habit of writing because I am too busy taking panoramic shots of the Jardim Botânico.
Whenever I despair about my non-reactive pupil, or the weight that I have put on because I was unable to work out for several months, the many months of training I have ahead of me in order to get back to performing on rope or tissu, the vagaries of home ownership, or the myriad frustrations of a remodeling project that has taken six months to even get started, I remember that the Mysterious Workplace sends me to Rio de Janeniro just before Christmas--which is the height of summer in Brazil. One of the Great Corporate Overlords had given money to my Mysterious Workplace to put together a conference on state-sponsored surveillance with activists from all over Latin America and it was decreed that we should meet in Rio. So while it rained ceaselessly in ess eff for weeks, I spent that time in a slightly shabby hotel with an incredible view in Rio's swankiest district, Leblon. I delivered a talk on state-sponsored malware, ran a workshop, and occasionally assisted my poor frazzled co-workers, who were in charge of coordinating this thing.
The utility of these conferences is not entirely clear to me. On one hand, I am relatively new to the world of international Internet activism, and it is good for me to meet the other players in the space in person. People are more likely to send you gossip or collaborate with you on a project if they have seen you speak, or they've gone drinking with you until the sun came up. On the other hand, International Internet Activist Land has a culture of professional conference-going--people whose lives seem to consist of nothing but travel from one junket to the next. Those people seem to be under tremendous pressure to produce something concrete at these conferences--documents, announcements, petitions, open letters--in order to justify their bloated travel expenses. The work that comes out of these conferences is not always the best use of our time. I have not quite learned how to maximize useful connection-making time while minimizing the time I spend bogged down in the redline edits of some collective statement I am uncertain we should be making in the first place. More research is needed. I will consult with my boss, who appears to have mastered this skill with aplomb.
In the meantime, Rio has miles and miles of pristine white beaches, and people who will bring you coconuts and caprainas while you are lounging on them. Rio has all-night samba clubs and favelas sprawled across hillsides next to mansions, vying for the view. It has mountains shrouded in mist and tucans and orchids in the trees and people trying endlessly to get me to eat steak. If I must negotiate the Byzantine interpersonal politics of international Internet activism, I am glad that I can do so in Brazil. It is a fine place to be Carmen San Diego.
Whenever I despair about my non-reactive pupil, or the weight that I have put on because I was unable to work out for several months, the many months of training I have ahead of me in order to get back to performing on rope or tissu, the vagaries of home ownership, or the myriad frustrations of a remodeling project that has taken six months to even get started, I remember that the Mysterious Workplace sends me to Rio de Janeniro just before Christmas--which is the height of summer in Brazil. One of the Great Corporate Overlords had given money to my Mysterious Workplace to put together a conference on state-sponsored surveillance with activists from all over Latin America and it was decreed that we should meet in Rio. So while it rained ceaselessly in ess eff for weeks, I spent that time in a slightly shabby hotel with an incredible view in Rio's swankiest district, Leblon. I delivered a talk on state-sponsored malware, ran a workshop, and occasionally assisted my poor frazzled co-workers, who were in charge of coordinating this thing.
The utility of these conferences is not entirely clear to me. On one hand, I am relatively new to the world of international Internet activism, and it is good for me to meet the other players in the space in person. People are more likely to send you gossip or collaborate with you on a project if they have seen you speak, or they've gone drinking with you until the sun came up. On the other hand, International Internet Activist Land has a culture of professional conference-going--people whose lives seem to consist of nothing but travel from one junket to the next. Those people seem to be under tremendous pressure to produce something concrete at these conferences--documents, announcements, petitions, open letters--in order to justify their bloated travel expenses. The work that comes out of these conferences is not always the best use of our time. I have not quite learned how to maximize useful connection-making time while minimizing the time I spend bogged down in the redline edits of some collective statement I am uncertain we should be making in the first place. More research is needed. I will consult with my boss, who appears to have mastered this skill with aplomb.
In the meantime, Rio has miles and miles of pristine white beaches, and people who will bring you coconuts and caprainas while you are lounging on them. Rio has all-night samba clubs and favelas sprawled across hillsides next to mansions, vying for the view. It has mountains shrouded in mist and tucans and orchids in the trees and people trying endlessly to get me to eat steak. If I must negotiate the Byzantine interpersonal politics of international Internet activism, I am glad that I can do so in Brazil. It is a fine place to be Carmen San Diego.