A week or so ago I had a great chat with Jason Becker of GabCast, a small technology firm up in Calgary specializing in Asterisk customization and other cool voice applications (GabCast is a service that enables you to call a PSTN number or SIP address and phone in your podcast -- and yes, hopefully Jingle support is on the way, via Asterisk or otherwise). That got me to thinking about encouraging more communication and coordination among technologists throughout the Mountain time zone. Emulating the title of Cory Doctorow's book Eastern Standard Tribe, we could start up an initiative to do that and call it Mountain Standard Tribe (MST). MST wouldn't engage in the kind of double-dealing conspiracies that Doctorow's tribes do. Instead, it would work to strengthen the network of companies and individuals who are building advanced technologies in the Mountain West. That would probably include folks working on information technology, energy research, genetics, robotics, nanotech, and the like. MST network nodes might be strongest in Los Alamos, Denver, Boulder, Boise, Provo, Calgary, and Edmonton, with smaller nodes in some of the university towns (Laramie, Missoula, Bozeman, Fort Collins, etc.) and at specialized locations such as the Santa Fe Institute and Aspen Institute. I may start working on a longer prospectus for such a group before long -- if I can find the time.