Some just held up pens and pencils, which were eventually left in the middle of the gathering, which had been quickly organised earlier in the day on Facebook without any apparent leadership.
The gathering, which had been brokered by James B. Lee Jr., a vice chairman of JPMorgan Chase, was set up for one purpose: Mr. Immelt, who had resisted the urge to sell NBC for years, was finally ready to sell.
These gatherings, which have been held roughly once every two months for the last year, are more in the tradition of the Bohemian salon that Allen Ginsberg presided over at the Six Gallery in San Francisco, where people assembled in a converted auto repair shop for an evening of art-inspired fun.
Three days ago, Pentagon officials said they were ending the $335,000 monthly payments they had been making to support Mr. Chalabi's intelligence-gathering organization, which has been sharply criticized for having grossly exaggerating the threat posed by Mr. Hussein.
The FourSquare conference has become the East Coast incarnation of Allen & Company's annual summer gathering in Sun Valley, Idaho, which has been the hatching place for all kinds of major and minor deals.
Pictures of your family eating these dishes can really add to this book - take a picture, for example, of your family members gathering around the table, which has been laid with all your holiday dishes; or at a back yard gathering where one of the dishes in the book is being served.
This time it was Dave Moorcroft's 3,000 metres best, which has been gathering dust since 1982.
The culture select committee, which has been gathering evidence these past weeks, is a curious beast.
U.K. Independence Party, which has been gathering strength in working-class areas.
But the expansion, which has been gathering steam for six years, is gradually remaking the face of the borough.
