While chatting with Tess O'Connor yesterday via Jabber, we were reminiscing about the old days of the MDOP ("Moderated Discussion of Objectivist Philosophy") mailing list run back in 1993-1994 or so by our friend Jimbo Wales. Ted mentioned how it's cool that people from MDOP have "made good" (Jimbo with Wikipedia, me with Jabber, etc.). So I got to thinking about how fun it would be to hold an IRL conference of what I think of as "practical Objectivist achievers" -- people who have been influenced by Rand but who are decidedly not academic philosophers or graduates students or Objectivist groupies, but instead have achieved some real success in the world. Not only would it be a lot of fun, but it might result in some fascinating cross-pollination between people who are active and successful in a wide variety of careers -- technology, law, business, science, the arts, medicine, etc. I think of it as a "Gathering of Objectivist Achievers" (GOA). And maybe next year would be a good time to start such a tradition, since 2005 will be the Ayn Rand centenary. Perhaps I'll get busy on organizing this in my copious spare time. :-)