Quick Hit: See you at AAM (and my Los Angeles must-do list)

For those folks trekking out to Los Angeles this week for AAM, I hope to run into you at the conference. I will definitely be at the following:

• NAME party at the Velaslavasay Panorama on Sunday night. If the party is half as rocking as the name of the venue, we'll have an amazing time.
• Hosting a session on Monday at 2pm on Design for Participation with participatory design gurus Kathleen McLean and Dan Spock, along with research extraordinaire Kris Morrissey and participatory art rockstar Mark Allen. Mark will be bringing some fun toys to play with and we promise an entertaining, thought-provoking, and participatory 75 minutes.
• Signing books on Monday from 4-5 in the AAM bookstore. If you've been waiting to pick up a copy of The Participatory Museum, here's a good opportunity to go home with a souvenir from the convention floor that's better than a sparkly keychain.
• Hosting a session on Wednesday at 3:45pm on Mission-Driven Technology Development with tech geniuses Bruce Wyman, Shelley Bernstein, and Beck Tench. These people are so brilliant, funny, and passionate it makes me sick. We won't be talking iPhones or 4D theaters: we'll be talking about our different approaches to thinking about and working with technology from a process perspective.

I'm also interested in spending as much time at Wurstkuche, a nearby Belgian beer/frites/sausages place, as possible. If you want to join me for a beer and some fries, give a holler. I'm considering an informal meetup on Monday night if you want to join in.

I grew up in LA, and if you're coming for the first time, I very highly recommend you check out:

• The Museum of Jurassic Technology. The king of idiosyncratic museums. It will blow your mind, frustrate and delight you.
• The Shvitz (official name: City Spa). Do you enjoy being beaten with eucalyptus fronds by old men singing anthems to pre-Soviet countries that no longer exist? Want to hang out in the Bullshit room and smoke cigars? The Shvitz only coed on Mondays and Wednesdays, but this is the ultimate relaxation opportunity.
• Machine Project. Run by one of my co-presenters, Mark Allen, this quirky hybrid space is part gallery, part educational space, part Venus flytrap home. Mark has also been doing work with the Hammer Museum, where you can see some of his institutional interventionist hijinks in action.
• The Time Travel Quickie Mart. This is the LA chapter of the 826 Valencia tutoring enterprise. It's tiny, right around the corner from Machine Project, and full of wonderful products like Robot Emotions (see photo) and apartment vacancies from the future. Plus, all purchases support a truly amazing tutoring program.
• The Brewery Art Colony. Way more funky and interesting than Bergamot Station, and much closer to downtown.
• The Newsroom Cafe. OK, it's in the middle of Beverly Hills. And it's expensive. But I dare you to find a better smoothie/sandwich place in LA. Plus, this is absolutely the place you are most likely to see a celebrity.
• Zankou Chicken or Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles. I don't eat chicken anymore, but I spent a lot of time as a kid at these incredible, tasty, cultural icons of LA.
• Griffith Park Observatory. It's beautiful, and adjacent to the hippest part of LA--enclaves like Echo Park and Los Feliz that will make you think you might actually like to move there. Until you try to drive back over the hill.

See you in LA!