Personal NV Musings

 Conference, Vancouver  No Responses »
Mar 132008
 

I just got back from the North­ern­Voice organ­iz­ing com­mit­tee’s post-con­fer­ence lunch. The con­fer­ence motto is per­son­al blog­ging and social media but lots of people who attend or speak are inter­ested in the pro­fes­sion­al or cor­por­ate aspect as well. As a res­ult, one of the per­en­ni­al top­ics we talk about is who the con­fer­ence is for, and what do par­ti­cipants want to listen to. I touched on some of this in my Ebbs and Blogs post­ing. Per­son­ally I’m more inter­ested in the per­son­al blog­ging aspects than the com­pany PR aspects (YMMV, of course).

Which raises some inter­est­ing ques­tions — why would per­son­al blog­gers come to a con­fer­ence? I can think of a few reasons:

  • to learn more about tech­niques, e.g., how to pod­cast, or how to embed video
  • to get ideas for content
  • to learn how to write bet­ter, to express ideas better
  • to meet up with people with some related interests

I guess there are a lot of people who blog who would nev­er come to a blog­ging con­fer­ence because what and how they blog is enough for them and they don’t see any need to change any­thing. But there are also people who don’t do well in crowds, so one issue I see is how to encour­age people who are less com­fort­able at con­fer­ences (even small ones), how to make them more com­fort­able. I don’t know what the answer is; I’m an intro­vert but it sel­dom stops me going places, so although I sym­path­ize with those for whom it’s a prob­lem, I’m not sure of what to do to help. If, indeed, any­thing can be done at the con­fer­ence organ­iz­ing level to help.

Bravery

 Conference  2 Responses »
Feb 252008
 

You can see bravery in places you don’t expect it to be needed. In the safe con­fines of a blog­ging con­fer­ence, for example. Read Meg’s post­ing, and Nancy’s response.

I was in that ses­sion, and where Meg was brave enough to tape her pic­ture on the wall, I was not. I threw it in the bin on the way out, cast down by my own inad­equa­cies. Strange how a ses­sion that seems easy and fun on the sur­face can trig­ger so much intens­ity inside.

MooseCamp 2008

 Conference, Vancouver  1 Response »
Feb 242008
 

Anoth­er nice Fri­day in Feb­ru­ary for Moose­Camp; some­how the Moose­Camp day man­aged to score nice weath­er two years in a row. This year’s Moose­Camp was big­ger than pre­vi­ous years, and I think we’re get­ting to the lim­it of how many people we can take without los­ing some­thing. We also seem to be get­ting a lot more people who are inter­ested more in com­mer­cial aspects of blog­ging and social media than the per­son­al side, so I’m not sure how that’s going to play out in the future either.

I spent much of the morn­ing on the t‑shirt and regis­tra­tion desk until things settled down, then went to the mul­ti­lin­gual ses­sion, mostly since I occa­sion­ally won­der wheth­er (I should try blog­ging in Ger­man as well as Eng­lish. There were quite a few people in the room, but it turned out that only two of us were inter­ested in the sub­ject for a per­son­al blog; every­one else was inter­ested in the sub­ject for a cli­ent, or for their com­pany. Which isn’t bad, and I’m sure the oth­er people in the room were glad to know that sev­er­al oth­ers were inter­ested in the cor­por­ate aspects of the sub­ject, it was just of less interest to me personally. 

Pho­tocamp took the first part of the after­noon; inter­est­ing as always and some decent tips on light­ing, even for the few of us who use little pock­et cam­er­as (there were some ser­i­ously big cam­er­as on show).

I spoke in the last part of the inter­net boot­camp. The talk I’d pre­pared was meant, in good uncon­fer­ence fash­ion, to be reas­on­ably inter­act­ive. James agreed to help out, since he also found the top­ic inter­est­ing: What Next? The idea was to talk to people who’d been blog­ging for a little while and wanted to take their blog to the next level; I was primed with top­ics such as broad­en­ing the focus versus nar­row­ing it, how the tone and style of blogs tend to devel­op, what effect incor­por­at­ing work top­ics often has, mul­tiple blogs versus one blog on mul­tiple top­ics. A few minutes in it became really obvi­ous that people wer­en’t inter­ested in the sub­ject, and when I asked why they were there, almost all were inter­ested in fig­ur­ing out how their com­pany should start blog­ging, or make their com­pany blogs more effect­ive. So in even bet­ter uncon­fer­ence style, I changed the sub­ject and star­ted talk­ing about how Sun had imple­men­ted blog­ging. Most people seemed much hap­pi­er with that sub­ject, and we dis­cussed a lot of related issues. For­tu­nately it was the last ses­sion of the day so the fact we then went over time did­n’t seem to upset too many people. 

Energy Deprivation and NorthernVoice

 Conference, Vancouver  No Responses »
Feb 112008
 

There’s some­thing about these grey gloomy days that saps my energy. I’m still here, just not blog­ging much. I do post occa­sion­ally to my craft­ing blog, that seems easi­er some­how than this “main” blog. I’ll have to think about what that says about my blog­ging right now. I’m hop­ing that going to the North­ern Voice con­fer­ence at the end of next week brings back some of my blog­ging energy.

Oh, if you were think­ing about attend­ing that con­fer­ence, and haven’t yet registered, you’re too late. We have a couple of spots left for Moose­Camp on Fri­day Feb­ru­ary 22nd (which is when I’m speak­ing, in the Inter­net Boot­camp), but the Sat­urday con­fer­ence is full. The sched­ule is look­ing great, we don’t have to trek across cam­pus in the rain for lunch like last year, since lunch is provided, and I got my flu shot already in case the dreaded lurgy strikes again. So I’m all pre­pared. Except, of course, for my talk, but I’ve got over a week to get ready for that.

Yearly Rethink

 Conference, Vancouver  No Responses »
Dec 062007
 

One of the reas­ons I like going to North­ern Voice is that it always gives me lots to think about, in terms of what to write about on my blog, what tech­nic­al tricks to try out, and how to write bet­ter. Oth­er people choose their blo­giversary, or maybe New Year’s Day, but I find North­ern Voice to be bet­ter. One reas­on of course is the num­ber of enthu­si­ast­ic people there talk­ing about blog­ging and social media and how they use them.

All of which is a long way of say­ing that this year I’ll be look­ing for more of that spark, that enthu­si­asm in the speak­er sub­mis­sions. What talks will make me happy to be blog­ging, will give me incent­ive to make my blog bet­ter, will tell me of inter­est­ing things to try? What talks would make me want to start blog­ging, if I wer­en’t already? The dead­line is Monday, Decem­ber 10th, so you don’t have long to pol­ish those ideas (and we can­’t take late sub­mis­sions as we’re select­ing talks that same week and we do need to read them first). For oth­er views on what we’re look­ing for, check out Dar­ren’s post­ing, or Bri­an’s. Bri­an also has some pho­tos of the party spot for the Thursday even­ing as an added incent­ive to go there and read what he has to say. Once you’re ready, sub­mit your idea while it’s fresh and before you forget.

Balisage

 Conference  1 Response »
Nov 132007
 

I used to, some­times, go to a con­fer­ence in Montreal in August called Extreme Markup Lan­guages. Some­times a bit over-the-top geeky for me, but mostly a good exper­i­ence. There’s now a new con­fer­ence in Montreal in August, run by some of the same people and chaired by Tom­mie Usdin from Mul­berry Tech­no­lo­gies, called Bal­is­age (the reas­on for the name is on that web site). It prom­ises to have much the same sort of XML-related geekiness.

The con­fer­ence com­mit­tee invited me to be on the Advis­ory Board, and I’ve signed up as a peer review­er. Montreal in August, per­haps even with the fam­ily in tow, with some fun top­ics to geek out over, sounds appealing.

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