Tuesday Open Mike 1: initial announcement

Starting this Tuesday (today), we are starting "Open Mike" sessions. The idea behind this is to have dedicated time to discuss what folks think are important issues that need discussion to further understanding. There is no compulsion on the discussions at these sessions to have any practical outcomes in the immediate or any future, although it would nice if it did. The primary motivation is purely selfish, its to further one's personal understanding on different issues. We had started some such thing in Austin, and its been going on really well for the past 6 months now. There is also a yahoogroup discussion list for the same and a blog which chronicles all links on each topic (http://thursdayopenmike.blogspot.com). Take a look at the blog to get an idea.

I was thinking we can meet at 7pm and discuss for say 90min on Tuesday evenings. This week, the plan is to go with:

Red Rock Cafe
Castro Street, Mountain View

Tuesday Aug 5th, 7PM to 8:30PM

But depending on who turns up, we can find a more convenient location as times goes on.

A note on topics:
There is no restriction on the topic, except that it needs to be something that folks can think about and formulate their own thoughts about it. For example, we could learn the history of nation boundaries, starting from a society where tribes demarcated their territories from neighboring tribes to the current day nation states and discuss what use nation boundaries really are. Another example could be how would you organize the Indian govt. political system for maximum democratic participation. These are just examples. Please send me an email about what you would like to discuss.

I am hoping this will be well attended. The more folks we have, the more inputs and varied viewpoints we will be able to gather. Please come, and please bring forward what you would like to discuss.