Author Archives: Michael Froomkin

In “The Strategy of Conflict” ur-game theorist Thomas Schelling discusses a special type of coordination, which he illustrates [I’m working from memory here, so forgive me if I slur details] with the following example:

Suppose you find yourself in New York city, and you have to meet a stranger. You have no way of communicating with them, but you know that they too want to meet you. Where and when do you go?

Apparently, someone did a study and found that a substantial majority of New Yorkers (in the 1950s) answered, ‘under the clock in Grand Central Station at noon’ — this being the stereotypical meeting place and time for Manhattanites. And, being the most common answer, it was therefore also the right one.

For a while there, it looked as if Meetup was going to be the Grand Central Station clock of the Internet — the default place to look for like-minded strangers. Then economics reared its head: Meetup, which was free and no doubt burning funds at a prodigious rate, decided to start charging for Meetups.

Naturally, meetings are fleeing to the free services. For example, the other day I saw this announcement via The Blogging of the President from the Dean for America campaign:

DFA-Link: DFA is finally moving away from using Meetup.com and has created DFA-Link, its own online organizing tools for local meetings, etc. Please sign up at DFA Link. After August 31, DFA will no longer be using Meetup.com for events or communicating with members.

That same day I got an email promoting a free version called Gatheroo, and promising that it “will not charge”:

Information technologies have been blamed for (among many things) increasing alienation (e.g., game potatoes). The Meetup phenomena moved in the opposite direction – using technologies to bring folks together and thus reversing if not a trend, a perception. … we feel technologies like ours are a response. I have expanded on this in our blog

As I’ve written previously (see Building the Bottom Up from the Top Down), I agree that meetup-style services are of great potential value and importance. The problem is that while there was one, famous, meetup.com, there are at present many free alternatives, with no one service seeming likely to achieve dominance. But this game is non-constant-sum: unless some player can evolve a dominant strategy — or someone can design a crawler/aggregator that combines them all into one feed — we are poorer for it.

Lots of people offer free congealed work product online, be it articles or software. But how many people offer free personalized classes? The Phantom Professor is thinking of doing it:

Here's the offer: The Phantom Professor's Online Writing Workshop. Open admission. Free tuition.

Using all the exercises, reading lists, quizzes and other tricks I have developed during 15 years of teaching, I will offer you, the blogistas, the benefit of my experience and expertise. I will also incorporate new things I learned at the University of Iowa Summer Writing Workshop, the most creative and inspiring haven for writers in America. You can find most of what we'll read on the Internet or in a library, so you don't even have to buy books. (Though some of them you will want to own.)

If you need help getting that novel or screenplay started, this four-month workshop will kickstart you into a creative mode that will get that sucker under way. If you're interested in journalism, here's where you can start. If you have just never felt confident putting words on paper, step right up. You don't have to be college age. My techniques work whether you're 12 or 92.

I will post short exercises to help you improve grammar, punctuation, spelling and style. You will do them at your own pace and grade them yourself.

Every couple of weeks, you'll have a short assignment (no more than 300 to 500 words) due. You can email them to me or post them in the comments section for everyone to read. We can “workshop” your output together. With positive but honest critiques to work from, you will rewrite these assignments until they are polished. You can even drop in and out as your schedule permits or your interest waxes and wanes.

Why am I doing this? Why not? As I watched my professor friends head back to classes, I just thought, “Why waste all the good stuff I've accumulated? Why not make it available for anyone who wants to do it?”

Even my agent likes the idea. Even though I'm doing it gratis.

So let me know what you think. Would you join this “class”? If enough of you do, we'll start a week from today. I always did like the Tuesday-Thursday schedule best.

I imagine there will be a stampede.