Yesterday evening I had a meeting with John of Argos Bookstore, in which we discussed the whats and whys and wherefores of creating an Argos Bookstore website. This is something we have been talking about, off and on, for most of the summer so far. Now it looks like it will be moving forward.
The meeting was my first experience using free wireless internet access in a cafe. I haven’t yet made up my mind about the whole thing. On the one hand, very convenient. On the other, Kava House had (at that time) bandwidth and connectivity issues, and I had a serious bout of the jitters with visions of spilling my iced mocha into the keyboard of a very expensive laptop computer.
John and I talked for almost two hours, and came up with some exciting ideas about what would go into the site, and how we could present it as a small community, specifically focused portal and repository of certain aspects of Grand Rapids history. In the process of this meeting I also discovered that John is yet another member of the over-educated, under-employed segment of Grand Rapids, from which I seem to draw so many of my friends.
Discussing the fee for building the site was a little awkward. I said “I’ll do it for free!” He said “We gotta pay you!” In the end we worked out some of the details for a trade-type arrangement.
Once the work begins I will throw regular updates up here. I hope things begin soon, as the school year begins at the end of this month and from that point on, until the end of April, my time will once again belong to everyone except me.