What a blast I had at the first meeting of the New England Artificial Intelligence Meetup! Where else can you sit at a table and talk with

• A man who is investigating "new physics and the mind";
• A man who is starting a company that will apply AI to healthcare;
• A man who applies AI techniques in order to forecast stock prices;
• A man who applies AI to robotics;
• A student who is entering a contest to find the best AI solution to a strategy game;
• A father-son duo whose startup uses AI to predict the outcomes of evolutionary processes;
• And even a fellow guitarist.

I was so enthusiatic about the whole thing that I offered to help organize the next meeting, and now I find myself in the position of Assistant Organizer. (Just as long as I'm not Assistant to the Organizer!)