Bringing the Typosphere Together, Nine Years On

I was delighted to be invited by Portland, Oregon, blogger Bill Guthrie (The Typewritemosphere) to take part in a series of Question and Answer interviews he has been conducting. My responses to Bill's 12 questions are here.  Also taking part in Bill's series, "A Typer's Dozen", have been Richard Polt and Joe Van Cleeve, and I believe we may soon hear from the irresistible Ted Munk. Between Bill's work on this series, Jonathan Posey's insightful podcasts and David Brechbiel's wonderful work on the Virtual Herman's Zoom presentations, the pandemic seems to have somehow joined forces with our typewriter passion to bring the worldwide Typosphere even closer together. The efforts of Jonathan, David and now Bill have made it an astonishing few months for me, all the more so because of the periods of isolation we have all had to endure.

It seems light years now since Richard Polt, in Cincinnati, Ohio, hosted a then "breakthrough" event in which Adwoa Bagalini (above) in Geneva, Switzerland, Peter Baker in Tacoma, Washington, and myself in Canberra, Australia, took part. It was a 40-minute “Hang Out Type-In” on Google+ to mark International Typewriter Appreciation Month, and actually it will be nine years ago this coming February 24. Richard described as a “virtual type-in”, a multi-party video conference that was “a strange and enjoyable sort of event”, and added at the time that we may well look back on it and laugh about how primitive it was. Indeed, we can do that, now that Zoom meetings and Podcasts are the thing. But it was an historic occasion. Little did any of us realise back then just how enormous the Typosphere would become. 

Thank you Jonathan, David and Bill. You have brought fresh warmth and conviviality into international typewriter-loving community.