ResQgeek

Saturday was the 12th anniversary of the day I joined BookCrossing.com.  Twelve years ago, I was curious about this site that provided me with an venue for labeling and tracking my books.  I had been a member of wheresgeorge.com for a while, and had discovered BookCrossing through a link on the WheresGeorge page.  As I joined the site, I had little expectation that it would come to fill such a large part of my life, introducing me to new friends from around the world, and broadening my reading horizons substantially.

As luck would have it, Saturday was also this year's Gaithersburg Book Festival in Maryland.  As usual, the local DC area BookCrossers had a booth beside the event sponsors, to give away books (registered on BookCrossing, naturally) and generally promote BookCrossing.  It was the perfect way to celebrate my 12th anniversary on the site.  Together, we brought about 2,100 books to the event, and by the end of the afternoon, we had a mere handful left.  I got to catch up with my local BookCrossing friends and talk to strangers about books and BookCrossing.  Even the severe thunderstorm that tried to drown us as we headed to dinner couldn't dampen my spirits after the success of the day.

It is hard to articulate all of the reasons I continue to find participating in BookCrossing so rewarding.  A lot of it has to do with the people I've gotten to know through the website.  But I still get a thrill when I randomly leave a book somewhere for a stranger to find.  My hope is that finding the book will motivate them to read more, or to read something different.  And when I get an e-mail telling me that a journal entry has been entered for one of my books, it is like a little miracle that can brighten my entire day.

So, after twelve years of BookCrossing, I have no intentions of quitting, or even slowing down.  How many more books can I share in the next twelve years?

Over the last few weeks, I've found myself worrying about some of my local BookCrossing friends.  The annual anniversary BookCrossing convention is being held here in the DC area next month, and my friends on the planning committee have spend a lot of time over the last couple of years organizing the event.  Last year's convention, held in Amsterdam, had over 200 people registered (the actual attendance was lower, because of the travel issues caused by the volcano in Iceland).  The last of these conventions held in the US was in 2007 in Charleston, so the planners expected that there would be a great deal of interest from the US BookCrossers who might not have been able to travel overseas for the three conventions since then.  So when they budgeted for 200 people, it seemed reasonable.

Unfortunately, we currently only have 88 people registered for the convention, with only two weeks left before they have to close registrations.  As a result, the convention is in serious debt (currently, they have collected less than 45% of the funds they need to break even).  The planning committee has tried to increase registrations by offering options to sign up for single days and are even volunteering to have their hair dyed a variety of colors if people donate enough money.  So far, these efforts have not had a very big impact.  I've been trying to promote the convention and the various fundraising efforts on Facebook, but it doesn't seem like my efforts are making any difference.  It has been frustrating, and I'm worried that my friends are going to be left owing a significant amount of money that they are going to need to pay out of their own pockets.

With the convention only 35 days away, the organizers have been working to make sure that the planned activities will run as smoothly as possible.  A couple of weeks ago, a number of the local BookCrossers (myself included) met in DC to do a trial run of the Literary Museum Hopper event.  It was fun and seemed to work pretty well, though we did make some suggestions that will hopefully make it even better for the convention.  I volunteered to lead a walking tour of Old Town Alexandria for the convention, and we have a trial run of that tour scheduled for Sunday.  I've done my research, compiled a list of sights to include and planned a route.  My notes are all typed, and I've printed maps for the participants, so I think I'm ready to go.  I really have no way to judge how long my tour will take.  I hope it isn't either too long or too short.  I also hope I have enough information to keep it interesting (and I would be really pleased if I have at least something that the locals on the trial run didn't already know).  We'll see how it goes...I'm hoping that I won't need to make any major changes.

I'm going to end with a shameless plug:  Please check out the information about the convention, and if it looks like something you might enjoy, PLEASE register and join us.  You do not need to be a member of BookCrossing, and while the BookCrossers in attendance will be doing their BookCrossing thing, leaving books for others to find, many of the activities available should be of general interest and fun for anyone.  If you have any questions, you can post it in the comments and I'll try to get an answer for you.

Talk about BookCrossing overload! I've now attended three different BookCrossing meetings, in as many different cities, in the last five days!

The first, of course, was my hometown BC in DC group, which met at my house on Saturday afternoon for several hours of lively discussion and laughter. We managed to attract a couple of our lurkers to the get together, so there were new faces and new stories, which added to the day. I had tentatively scheduled the event to be from 1pm-3pm, but it was almost 7pm before everybody decided it was time to call it an afternoon! I suspect more invitations for BC in DC to come to chez ResQgeek may be forthcoming...

Monday was spent traveling across the country to the golden hills of the San Francisco area. After returning to our hotel from our official business on Tuesday afternoon, I changed clothes, loaded our Meetup Bookbox into the car, and headed east across San Francisco bay to the suburbs for dinner with the Tri-Valley bookcrossers. There were 11 of us in all, seated around a long table in an Afghan restaurant in a strip mall in Dublin, California. The food was superb and the company delightful and the evening ended far too soon for my tastes.

And finally, last night, after a reminder of how uncomfortable I am driving inside the center of big cities, I managed to find a safe parking place and met with the BookCrossers from San Francisco itself, in the bar at the Hotel Rex. In addition to the lovely Suetu, there were three other established members of their group (sadly, I didn't manage to remember their screen names), and one new recruit who gamely joined our often animated discussion of the best books we've read recently. It was another fine evening out, but again time conspired to make it far to short.

It has been interesting to meet with such diverse groups in such a short period of time. While we all share BookCrossing in common, each of these groups has a distinct personality and charm, and part of the fun is learning about these differences. This was so much fun, in fact, that I'm already looking forward to future meetings with local BookCrossers in other places during future (as yet unplanned) travels.

After a long afternoon of promoting books at the Kensington Day of the Book Festival and a relaxing evening meal at Panera Bread, it was time for everyone to go their separate ways. I had to honor of hosting teotakuu for the night, and so after making sure all her luggage was successfully transfered to my van, we set of for what would be her fifth different state for the day. We crossed the Potomac River into Virginia and drove down the George Washington Parkway towards the heart of the nation's capital. We crossed the river again at the Memorial Bridge, admiring the views of the Kennedy Center, the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument as we drove. I found a parking space on Constitution Avenue, right next to the Vietnam War Memorial, and we got out for a stroll.

The night was damp and chilly, with a bit of wind, but even so, there were still a number of tour groups moving among the monuments as we payed our respects to those who served in Vietnam and in Korea. As we walked, we talked at length about these conflicts, and the histories of our countries, and it was clear that she found these monuments quite moving. We also walked up to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, but the climb was simply too daunting after such a long day, so we decided to take a pass on a closer look at old Abe. We did pause and admire the view down the National Mall at the Washington Monument and the Capitol dome, though, before heading back to the van.

The rest of the tour was conducted from the vehicle, as I drove past the White House and the Jefferson Memorial, before returning to the Virginia side of the river. We drove within an easy stone's throw of the Pentagon before heading down into Old Town Alexandria, where I think teotakuu was a bit surprised to find street names, such as King, Duke, and Royal, that are clear holdovers from our colonial days. Finally, we arrived at my house, where my wife was waiting up for us to return. We sat and talked for a spell, but eventually we all needed to get some sleep.

Monday morning started with the usual bustle of getting the girls up and ready for school. I don't know if teotakuu managed to sleep through all the ruckus, but she (perhaps wisely) stayed out of the way until the girls were on their way. She had some tea and toast and checked her e-mail and such, while we waited for crrcookie and her son to join us from Maryland for the trip to Manassas to meet buffra and futurecatnz. The steady, soaking rain made any detailed sightseeing at the battlefield an unpleasant prospect, so we limited ourselves to the views from the visitor's center and a quick glance through the small museum.

We then headed for lunch, after which we said our good-byes. It was lovely to meet both travelers from New Zealand, even if it was only for such a brief period. I hope they enjoyed their brief time here, and I look forward to reading about the remainder of their travels in the coming days.

[cross posted in bcxchange]

After the wonderful fun I had at the BookCrossing Convention last year in Charleston, I came home with a desire to re-energize the local BookCrossing scene. There used to be a number of local groups that met regularly, but most had stopped meeting, and none had ever truly encompassed the entire Washington DC area. So when I started seeing members in this area starting to post threads about getting together, I jumped right in. Since last summer, a core group of local BookCrossers has developed, and we are now meeting more-or-less monthly. But we're not just getting together to talk and have a coffee. We are actively looking for fun ways, as a group, to promote BookCrossing around the area. Some of us traveled north to Carroll County, MD in November to help MaryZee promote BookCrossing at the Book Fair at the Carroll County Community College. A number of our members met at the National Book Festival on the National Mall in September to release books. Later this month, we will have a booth at the Kensington, MD, Day of the Book street festival, where we will be giving away books and promoting BookCrossing. Its been a lot of fun to get together with these other BookCrossers, and I look forward to each event.

However, I now think that we, as a group, may have collectively taken leave of all our good sense. We just completed and submitted a proposal to this year's convention in London, suggesting Washington, DC, as a possible venue for the 2010 Convention. I remember well the stress that I observed the organizers in Charleston deal with, and I fully appreciate how much time and effort it is going to take to organize a convention. I for one don't think I'm going to be able to devote nearly enough time to the effort, and I can only hope that my fellow BookCrossers here will step up to the plate should we be chosen as the host. From what I hear, the competition includes a couple of other cities that would make equally excellent venues, so any way the voting goes, the 2010 Convention is already looking like another terrific event in the works.

My wife and I scored some more free books on Friday. The local Boys & Girls Club was getting new books to stock their shelves and was giving away all their old books. Someone posted about it on the Alexandria Freecycle mailing list, so my wife and I decided to see what we could get. We showed up at noon, which is when we were told they would open the doors. There were a dozen or so people sifting through the boxes of books, filling bags or boxes to take home. We weren't quite so picky and just piled books into boxes by the handful. Eleven minutes after we arrived, the books were gone, and we had five boxes of books in the van. We later counted about 250 books, mostly children's, with a lot of duplicates mixed in, which is a good thing. We'll keep most of the kid's books for the girls to read, but I can BookCross the adult books and the duplicate children's books.

This weekend was the first weekend of the fall soccer season, and Saturday the girls' teams played back-to-back games. Luckily, both games were at the same venue, so the logistics of attending both games were simple. The older daughter is now one of the few older girls on her team, and the lack of experience showed on Saturday. My daughter and I talked about her role on the team, and I pointed out how she could use her experience to be a team leader, to help her team mates learn. She had a second game on Sunday, and I could see her starting to assume some of that leadership role on the field, helping to direct the other players during the game. The team played much better and even managed a 1-0 win.

Its going to be a busy fall season. In addition to soccer, my younger daughter is taking a dance class and is in Brownies. My older daughter also has Girl Scouts and her piano lessons, and also wants to join chorus at school, as well as learn the violin! Not sure when she's going to have time for homework or sleep, but we'll see how things go. If it becomes too much for her, we'll just have to scale her back a bit.

I've been trying to release at least four books each weekday this summer, though when it is raining (or it seems likely), I pass, since I like to release my books outside. For the first part of the summer, I was getting very few catches, considering the number of books I was releasing, but in the last week I've been on a role. I have had at least one book caught (out of four released) on each of the previous six weekdays, stretching back to last Monday! Two of those catches were by the same new BookCrossing member, who, it turns out, joined after catching a book released by another member who joined after catching one of my releases earlier this summer! Hopefully, this means all my releasing is starting to build up a group of active BookCrossers in the area.

I'm also looking forward to our BookCrossing meeting at a local Panera Bread this coming Saturday. Its been a long time since we had a get together in Alexandria, and I've gotten RSVPs from a number of members that I've never met before, so I'm really looking forward to meeting some new friends. I'm also thinking about seeing if there would be interest in getting together to do a mass book release event in Old Town. I think it would be fun to get a group together to release a load of books around the city, but it might be better to wait until next summer, as the tourist season will be winding down soon, and I doubt we could organize something while the tourists are still here in large numbers.

In any event, I've been having loads of fun with BookCrossing since the Convention back in April. Getting together with all those other BookCrossers seems to have re-ignited my passion for BookCrossing!

Last night I received an e-mail from an author who had read some of my book reviews on Amazon. She wanted to know if I'd be interested in reading and reviewing her book. Of course, I rarely turn down a free book, but it occurred to me that this was an opportunity to promote BookCrossing. I suggested that she join BookCrossing and register the book before sending to me. After I read and review the book, I'll be passing it on to others, and this way she would be able to find out what all the book's readers thought of it. Apparently, she found this idea appealing, because she joined! Unfortunately, I didn't get credit for her joining for BookCrossing's current "Tell-a-friend" program, but it was cool that she joined!

Upon arrival in Charleston, we immediately proceeded to broadcast studios for The Bridge (105.5 FM), where bookczuk had arranged for an on air interview to promote the BookCrossing convention. We were running a bit late, but our host patiently waited for our arrival, and when we found the place, we were promptly directed upstairs to the broadcast booth.

There were six BookCrossers present: bookczuk, antof9, skyring, molyneux66, Netstation and myself. The studio was a bit snug with all of us in there, and with only two extra microphones, we had to play a bit of musical chairs to get on the air. I was still suffering from a nagging cough, so I chose to avoid the microphone so as to not cough in Charleston's collective ears.

As we entered the studio, Netstation did a double take, staring at our host. It turns out that this guy looks amazingly like Jim Hawkins (aka JimOnTheRadio) from BBC Radio Shropshire. Our Jim Hawkins look-alike seemed quite interested in the convention, and we found ourselves in his studio for a full hour, chatting both on and off the air. I think we did a good job promoting BookCrossing in general and the convention in particular, and hopefully it helped encourage the people of Charleston to pick up and journal some of the books we were to scatter around the city.

On the way out of the station, I left a book in the station's reception area. I'm not sure how I came to be the only one in that group of BookCrossers to leave a book behind, but I'm glad I did. Later that evening, when I went to make the release notes for the day, I discovered that the book had been journaled by our on-air host, who had also joined BookCrossing under the screenname rockdoc98. Not bad for an afternoon's work, I'd say.