V. Alex Brennen's
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I'm one of those people who seems to know just about everybody (in the technology world that is) and many people know me, or at least recognize my name. It's a bit odd since I'm not super social and try to keep a pretty low profile for myself and my involvement in different projects and organizations, especially in my personal life. But, none the less I seem to be one of those people.

I'm also a person who has a great ambition for shaping the world. I can't stand to sit still. I feel like I have a responsibility to contribute, to improve the world. I'm always trying to find ways, to think of things, that would allow me to do that. I love technological advancement, and greatly enjoy being a catalyst for it whether that's by introducing ideas to people, or people to people.

I was fortunate enough to get to live in Dublin, Ireland for a while many years ago. While I was there I got into some interesting discussions with a friend of mine on a hobbyist cryptography project. We spent a lot of time talking about it when ever we hung out together.

The project had the potential to have a pretty significant impact, I thought.While it started as more of an intellectual curiosity - a fun puzzle to play with, we both saw the benefits to developing it.

One day I sent my friend an e-mail and cc'd some other people I thought might help develop the project and suggested we get together at the local to make some plans, discuss some designs, and get to the point we could start writing code. The email had the subject "In for a pint, then?", the Irish equivalent of "Wanna go grab some beer?"

I sent a few similar emails at other times during my time there and eventually emails with that subject came to have a reputation for being very interesting among my social circle. Getting other people to read your email is never easy. So, I took advantage of the subject line's notoriety and it eventually became customary for me to title any emails I sent to people that contained one of my interesting ideas, one of my grand schemes. I even started using it when it wasn't possible to meet up at a pub.

So, that's the story of the "In for a pint, then?" emails. If you ever get one of those mails from me, hopefully you'll read it. I'd like to think it contains something that would be rather interesting.

If you already did, well, now I can send you a URL to this document when you ask me about the title.