Do you remember Apple’s early Macintosh ad tagline? It was: Macintosh. The Computer for the Rest of Us. That resonated with me at a time when personal computers were in their infancy and were ruled by the left brain among us (you know…those people that actually loved MS-DOS?). The right brain connected to the left brain of the Mac sucked me in and good user interfaces have never let me go.

I wanted then to live in Silicon Valley. Life (and love) kept me in Minnesota for a time before moving to Chicago and then moving back some years later. You know what? I’d like to be in the Valley now (except for the buying-the-house part of the adventure).

So it bugs me to know there are a whole bunch of people that can get in their cars and drive over to the SD Forum Search SIG meeting tonight. The panel on “The Search for Attention” features:

• Gabe Rivera, Memeorandum
• David Sifry, Technorati
• Seth Goldstein, Root Markets
• Mike Arrington, TechCrunch

I’d like to hear these four guys in person. Hmmm….let’s see. There are many of us out here in flyover country that are working real hard to stay abreast of developments in search and the attention economy. Also, there is a plethora of social sites, collaborative offerings, and ‘net technologies that could be leveraged to cast the net of inclusiveness a bit wider.

Am I expecting too much? Wouldn’t it be a good thing to include smart people that could, say, leverage all those API’s being delivered by these guys and others. The only way Web 2.0/NextGen Internet/<Your Name For It Here> is going to work is if concepts and development paradigms are embraced and extended all over the Web. Perhaps it’s time for a new kind of developer and business leader evangelism.