Just getting settled at the eState Symposium. Not sure what to call it. The name is kinda long "Building Community in a 'Connected Age'" doesn't quite roll off the tongue. BCiaCA? BuCCA? I think I'll go with eState Symposium.

I'm sitting at a table, waiting for the sessions to begin. Who's here? I've already met an interesting cross-section of attendees.

Wesley, a student at Champlain, studying "art and animation." He's in the video game program, but didn't describe himself that way so he'd seem less nerdy. Didn't seem nerdy at all, actually.

Mary Catherine Jones, who works with the Children's Literacy Foundation. CLiF donates new books to libraries, schools and battered womens' shelters. We talked about how our forebearers didn't have bookgrowing up. And that morphed into,"Can you imagine, someday we'll be talking about how ourforebearers talked on phones that were connected to the wall." Ha ha.

David Punia, from the Vermont Assisstive Technology Program. He's working on a tablet PC with a bumper sticker on the back: "Your attitude just might be my biggest barrier."

"Technology is increasingly the way that manypeople with disabilities can access community electronically," he tells me. "For many people, it's just opening so many doors."

The room is filling up with people, and I feel anti-social for working on my computer.