I'm in Pittsburgh, after spending the day with some cyber-forensics folk and seeing first-hand how law enforcement, business and academia are working together and actually sharing real information with each other to fight cyber crime. It's really very cool - A lot like taking community policing to the online world and its players. And best part is, it's a community that works. Lots of creative thinking going on there. Like a candy store for a forensics geek.

It's also similar in ways to the success of business blogging, actually. Why do I mention that? Robert Scoble and Shel Israel are out and about these days promoting the launch of their new book, called Naked Conversations, and I noticed one similarity between community policing and corporate blogging: The desire and success in getting the real faces and personalities of important people who would otherwise be inaccessible out into the community - the movers and shakers of the make-something-happen variety. In a community policing model, we expose individual law enforcement officers, business workers and citizens from the community to each other in a collaborative communication environment, allowing each member to own a part of the problem and solution. The corporate/business blogging model can do effectively the same thing - opening up the hidden world of the big, bad business machine, breaking down the traditional corporate walls, making it individual and human and allowing the customer to take some participative ownership in how things happen.

Anyhow, Robert's in Pittsburgh today, too, and it's his birthday (Happy birthday, dude). He was here to speak at the university and to do some book promotion. We met up for a quick breakfast this morning and I grabbed a copy of his book from the Barnes and Noble store to read on the way home tonight. So far it looks pretty cool, fun to read and it appears to cover the bases quite well. Recommended.

Oh, and since every entry requires a tangent topic: There's free WiFi in the Pittsburgh airport, just like Portland. And Pittsburgh's a cool city - lots of old buildings and bridges. It's been a while since I was here last, I'd forgotten what it was like.