Blogger Lunch with Sebastien Paquet and Company

Sebastien “Seb’s Open Research” Paquet, one of Canada’s bright lights on the social software and blogging front, made his first visit to Accordion City (he even called it “Accordion City” in his email!) on Sunday, and invited a few local bloggers to come out for lunch on Monday. The attendees were:

• Sebastien (of course)
• Hossein “Hoder” Derakhshan, whose blog, Editor: Myself appears in both English and Persian flavours
• Michael “Puzzlepieces / Fagan Finder” Fagan, the go-to guy for all things search engine-y
• Kaveh “Not Exactly” Khodjasteh, who can blog about theoretical physics and Jim Jarmusch films with ease
• Melanie “Chandrasutra” McBride, who’s done a quite a bit in the short span of time she’s been blogging
• …and yours truly.

We met for lunch at Cafe Diplomatico, in the heart of the Little Italy that occupies College Street West (we have a couple of Little Italies). Discussed in addition to blogging (which was to be expected) were the supposed rigor of academics, the upcoming election, censorship, Iran, search engines, the University of Waterloo and the glassy-eyed expressions of most of the other folks in the restaurant as they watched Italy playing the World Cup.

It was also the first time I’d met this group of bloggers, and I had great fun. Thanks for organizing this get-togerher, Seb! As for you locals — Hoder, Michael, Kaveh, Melanie — I’ll be sure to let you guys know about any upcoming GTABlogger gatherings.