Praha

Well the Cybercultures 2005 conference is over and, nerves aside, my presentation seems to have gone down quite well. In truth it was a bit of an oddity; only one other presentation (an excellent paper on AI by Ursurla Drees of Berlin Technical University) was speculative and future-oriented. For the most part I felt like a sci-fi author at the Booker Prize. A good bunch of people though; 28 delegates from 14 countries. There's an invite to Melbourne for a Virtual Worlds conference too, which I need to move on as soon as I return. Today though I'm relaxing. After I check email and such on the free wifi here in Cafe-Cafe we're off to do the tourist thing at the Castle, and hopefully a puppet show this evening. Prague itself seems like a virtual world; a strange mix of fairytale and nightmare, all grafitti and golems, beer-for-breakfast cafes and footballers' wives fashion. I'll almost certainly come again (especially if I'm co-opted onto the Cybercultures Steering Group), though I'm not sure I could live here.