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After much hemming and hawing about plane and hotel arrangements, the final
confirmation from some conference organizers arrived this past Monday morning.
And, yesterday, the State Department promised me a passport on my doorstep
this coming Tuesday. So, it now looks like I'm going to London on next
Saturday's redeye to speak at the Internet Trading for Global Securities
Markets conference, Tuesday and Wednesday, November 24th and 25th at the
Hilton Olympia.
Because of some interesting economics of cheap hotel room-nights and dear
airfare, I'll be staying at the Hilton Olympia itself, on Kensington High
Street in London, from the morning of Sunday the 22nd to the morning of
Thursday the 26th.
This conference has been in the works for months, but we weren't really sure
everything was going to happen until, as usual, the last possible minute. I
bet a whole bunch of people registered right on the deadline, or something,
and they decided they had enough interest to pull the trigger. Oh, well, after
dodging those kinds of bullets myself getting the FC conferences and this
summer's Philodox Symposium off the ground, I should have expected it from
someone else in the same shoes.
We all have Duncan Goldie-Scott to thank for this trip, of course. For the
past few months, I've been writing a series of articles on digital bearer
transaction settlement for the Financial Times Virtual Finance Report, which
Duncan edits. I started with cash, and then bonds, and then equity. This month
I did derivatives. I've got three more left to do, I figure; one on
micromoney, the other two on the possible macro-, and micro-, economic
inplications of digital bearer settlement, and maybe one more, on possible
deployment strategy, if we get that far.
Since I started these articles, I have gotten quite a few pieces of fan mail
from Duncan's subscribers, and it has been quite fun. It also seems that some
of those folks are going to be at this conference. In addition, after all the
dust settled, Duncan himself was made chairman of the conference, so I expect
he's going to have his hands full when I get there.
As if that wasn't enough, Duncan has also arranged for me to talk privately to
some traders he knows at an investment/merchant bank whose name you would
recognize, and that should be quite interesting. Duncan says that they've
been reading my articles, and they've got lots of questions to ask.
So, Duncan, thanks so much for all your good efforts evangelizing digital
bearer transaction settlement to your friends in the City. I'm positively
psyched to unleash the word hoarde in the Old World, fire up the patented
Hettinga rant machine on that side of the pond, and all that.
God help you all. :-).
So, if anybody wants to get ahold of me in London for a beer and a schmooze
while I'm there, (especially if you know someone crazy enough to pay my
extortionate personal appearance fee for some of my scarce free time ;-)), the
Hilton Olympia's address is 380 Kensington High Street, London W14 8NL, and
phone number's 0171 603 3333.
You can, of course, email me as well, but, since this is my first trip to
Europe, I expect that internet connections, power, etc., for my trusty
PowerBook 540c will be interesting, if not, um, creative. So, it might be a
good idea to contact Duncan