Brian Hsi

I met Mayor Rice at a City Club event not too long ago. Apparently he is now a professor at the Evans School at the University of Washington. Seems like a rather nice guy with a whole lot of history and knowledge of civic engagement locally, though he admits he is not as up to speed with regards to new forms of engagement that are facilitated by the internet and mobile phones. Would love to discuss all that further with him.

I enjoy talking with Josh about various things like politics, transit, how we want to live in this city and region. He’s passionate, knowledgeable, and is cool to hang out with even if we don’t agree 100% on everything.

Brian likes a good debate. And he’s a nice guy. So even though we don’t agree on how to fix Seattle’s transportation problems, I still enjoy discussing it with him, online and offline.

The Robots threw Carrick a party (who wouoldn’t want to throw this guy a party?) and we all convened to celebrate Carrick.

I gotta say, my suspicions were correct. He’s a great guy—nice, well spoken, interesting…you know, good stuff. I look forward to getting to know him more—even if he’s a suburban commuter ;-)

I’ve heard a lot about him from Lee and read some of his thoughts on 43things. Seems like a sharp guy. To top that, he went to school in my old stomping grounds (Poughkeepsie, NY) and now lives in Seattle. Small world, I tell ya.

Nancy’s great. I love how she applies lessons from the online community space in places you might not always think to implement them. Take for example her work with Project Harmony or all of the Katrina related posts she’s made lately. Both examples show how best practices in the online community space can be applied on a very local level. I’m glad that there are people like Nancy thinking deeply about community and applying that on a local level for the overall public benefit.

Since I met Brian, we’ve been meeting over beer and dinner every couple of months and the more I’m with him, the more I like him. We are on the same page about online communities and lots of other things, which certainly helps.

More than that, Brian is smart and really stands up for what he believes in. He’s a volunteer in local organizations and has inspired me to get involved, though I haven’t followed through.

Brian is good people.

I met Lee completely randomly when he wrote about my old company on his blog. Having my interests piqued, I realized that in addition to doing similar work, we lived in the same city. Not being able to pass up the opportunity to meet others doing community/social design, I dropped him a line and we’ve kept in touch ever since.

I met Daniel at the Elysian through Lee LeFever, and learned that in addition to working on some really innovative stuff here, he’s also in the band Maktub (thought he looked vaguely familiar).

...maktub aside
Years ago, when I first moved to Seattle, a bunch of us went out to see Maktub play at the EMP. After the concert, on that warm September evening, I got engaged. In a round about way, I guess you could say Daniel helped me get married.
...end maktub aside

Anyway, it was a great meeting where we talked about tech, passion, civics, team formation and the like. Great conversation, great guy!