It must have been a long time ago when in a fit of wild speculation The Portable Consultant wondered what he would do if he won the lottery.

Now, the first response to the Lottery Question should always be “How much?” …because it makes a difference to one’s daydream whether you’re thinking “enough to get something nice”, “enough to pay off the mortgage”, or “enough to live the life of an independently wealthy person (after setting up the charitable foundation, of course).”

Perhaps I had only recently finished university and was remembering the exhilaration you get from having your brain challenged, because my answer came out something like “If I found myself independently wealthy I would like to travel the world, seeking out the most interesting professors, and taking their courses.” Being independently wealthy would also mean I wouldn’t worry about credits, of course. When not auditing courses I would attend conferences on a wide variety of topics. I suppose that put me pretty high up on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs at that time.

Years later I found myself driving in a rented car to a conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I was far from being independently wealthy. The Internet bubble had burst and I was just starting out as an independent, not wealthy, consultant – which is what you do when your corner of the economy is in depression. In any case, I couldn’t see the point of being unbillable at home when a relatively inexpensive conference on open source content management systems is only a day’s drive away.

That OSCOM conference proved to be a good conversation point for several subsequent interviews. But the greatest benefit was a better understanding of the implications of open source software for enterprise content management. I had managed to merge my lottery daydream with my work to some extent.

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!
Fast forward to the present where for the past year and a half I’ve been a regular listener to the new medium of podcasts. Early on I found the BBC’s In Our Time series and later came across Doug Kaye’s Conversations Network. So, on my GO Train commutes I not only have Adam Curry’s quintessential Daily Source Code and Dave Slusher’s joyful Evil Genius Chronicles to listen to. I also have…

…Melvyn Bragg speaking with John Edwards, Research Fellow in Spanish at the University of Oxford; Alexander Murray, Emeritus Fellow in History at University College, Oxford; and Michael Alpert, Emeritus Professor in Modern and Contemporary History of Spain at the University of Westminster on the subject of The Spanish Inquisition…

[JARRING CHORD… The cardinals burst in… Ximinez: “NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition!”].

Over on The Conversations Network I can listen to an impressive list of podcast interviews and presentations made at a growing number of conference events. Some of my recent favourites have been some Apple nostalgia on Larry Magid’s Larry’s World interview with Lee Felsenstein, who moderated the Homebrew Computer Club where Steve Wozniak unveiled the first Apple, and Dr. Moira Gunn’s Tech Nation interview with Daniel Dennett, who views religion as a natural phenomenon.

…and the Winning Number is 192.168.555.102!
So I now realize that I now have access to the kind of interesting discussions, lectures, and presentations that I had been putting off until I win the lottery. As it turned out, my lucky number is an IP address.

Cheers,
-pmh

ps: yes, that IP address is bogus. Do you know where the ‘555’ comes from? Ok, so you weren’t expecting the Spanish Inquisition. 😉 [Answer]