The true opportunity for contacts is everyday life; parties, work, anywhere. When I meet new people I like to see how long can I get them to talk about themselves before they ask about me. I’m genuinely interested. Not looking for support for my current thing, but to find out who they really are. It’s fun, and interesting. Most people have done some very wild stuff at some point, or have been in close proximity to it. At the very least you’ll get some stories. Getting better at this but I’ll never be as good as my wife; one of her super-powers if finding common ground with strangers.

Meeting neighbors is a rich source of contacts for all manner of stuff. Also allows bridging of the mundane to the career-useful. Super important, politically connected guy down the street still needs someone to take care of his cat when he’s away. And it’s great to knock on the door of a neighbors you know when you need a cup of sugar or someone to take your kids for a few hours while you go to the hospital.

Too lazy to look for it right now, but there is a paper somewhere talking about the more effective people in corporations being those who *do* the most favors. Want a network that can help you? Try to help others first and one will magically appear.

I met Stuart Kauffman at a Systems Biology conference a few years ago; dude is brilliant. The whole boolean networks thing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boolean_network) was startlingly prescient work, deriving general properties of gene networks from a gedanken experiment, *decades* before they were directly verifiable. Also a great speaker. Following a few uninspired PowerPoint presentations he wandered up to the podium and freestyled a one hour talk based solely on some notes written on a napkin; totally crushed it, had us on the edge of our seats.

Brings up deeper questions, do we want Apple to protect us from developers, complete with the overstepping that will come with it, or do we want developers to have common sense/souls?