Amy Jo Kim (who is much more in touch with movers and shakers than I seem to be, and who is guest blogging at Many2Many) let me know that Linda Stone (quoted yesterday in Continuous Partial Attention) is no longer at Microsoft. The article I quoted was a year or so old, but the meme of CPA seems to be hot again, perhaps ignited by Joi Ito's rapping about it.

Looks like she is doing other great things:

[from Wired (November 2003)]

Linda Stone: Former Microsoft ambassador; currently advises the power elite and consults for Segway's Dean Kamen.

Node Cred: Old-school network. Stone, 48, directed strategic initiatives at Apple and Microsoft through the late '80s and '90s; her reputation for having the ear of people like Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and ex-Apple CEO John Sculley prompted Steve Ballmer to enlist her to soften Redmond's image.

Know your enemy: Stone brought the barbarians through the gate and straight to the podium, starting a Microsoft speaker series that featured open source maven Eric Raymond and copyleft theorist (and Wired columnist) Lawrence Lessig.

Secret Weapon: The dinner party. "I've developed a seating algorithm. I don't think of who will sit next to whom, but who sits diagonally. I make sure people with high energy are thoughtfully distributed. I scatter them, so one corner of the table is always lighting up."

Speed Dial: General Wesley Clark and Danny Hillis.

Node wisdom: Stone coined the phrase "continuous partial attention," popularized several years later at the 2001 World Economic Forum. CPA describes a key characteristic of the node life. "With CPA, we focus on the topic at hand but are constantly scanning the periphery for new input and adjusting our attention accordingly. It's different than multitasking. It's knowing when to hit call-waiting and when to ignore it.

If anyone out there is in touch with Linda, could you point her to me or vice versa. I would like to see where she stands on CPA these days. Could be a fun interview.