Northern Voice 2012

 Conference, Vancouver  No Responses »
Jun 262012
 

This year’s North­ern Voice was held down­town, and was smal­ler than the last couple of years. I like the small con­fer­ence per­son­ally, it’s easi­er to chat with lots of dif­fer­ent people, the lines at regis­tra­tion aren’t as long, and the con­fer­ence as a whole feels more per­son­al. This is the strength of North­ern Voice for me, it’s a pleas­ant con­trast to large con­fer­ences where key­notes are sold to the spon­sors and there are advert­ising ban­ners every­where. Yes, North­ern Voice has spon­sors who show up and have a pres­ence and maybe even a table, but they are all respect­ful of the spir­it of the con­fer­ence. For which I, at least, am grateful.

I spent the first bit of the con­fer­ence help­ing out on the regis­tra­tion table. A cer­tain amount of hec­tic, but not too bad. I then mod­er­ated Martha Rans’ talk on Copy­right for Cana­dians did a good job, I thought, of giv­ing inform­a­tion without over­whelm­ing every­one. The Artists Leg­al Out­reach site has more in-depth inform­a­tion, in what they call toolkits.

Lunch at the W2 cafe was great and the big wooden circles in the middle of the atri­um space were full of people chat­ting while bal­an­cing plates and glasses. After lunch I sat in on Moose­Camp for a while, knit­ting and listen­ing and relax­ing. And singing with Nancy and the ukuleles. I really must get back to singing, it’s been a long time since I sang regularly.

Anoth­er import­ant talk was Daniel Cowen’s talk on pri­vacy. A lot of the sub­ject mat­ter was famil­i­ar to me from my work at Sun, where I was part of a pri­vacy and iden­tity group, but Daniel took it a step fur­ther by see­ing how much someone without spe­cial­ised tools or know­ledge could find out about someone online. In four hours they had a wor­ry­ing amount of inform­a­tion about a woman they code-named “Tara”, enough to run any num­ber of social engin­eer­ing attacks or com­prom­ise any “secret ques­tion” sys­tems. People in the ses­sion were genu­inely shocked at just how much inform­a­tion is avail­able online, and how many details, innoc­u­ous in them­selves, can be added together.

Fri­day ended with the wine tast­ing and party in the atrium.

Sat­urday dawned bright and early with Blaine Cook’s won­der­ful key­note, cel­eb­rat­ing diversity in cul­ture, life, and tech­no­logy plat­forms in the face of glob­al­isa­tion and mar­ket forces. He tied togeth­er archi­tec­ture, rain­forest, and people fight­ing to save their cul­ture with the dom­in­a­tion by large plat­forms such as Face­book and Twit­ter to encour­age diversity and independence. 

Shane Birley’s key­note was of a dif­fer­ent style but had some of the same under­ly­ing themes, cel­eb­rat­ing indi­vidu­al voice, chart­ing his per­son­al jour­ney online, and encour­aging all of us to try out new ways of com­mu­nic­at­ing and shar­ing who we are. All delivered in inim­it­able Shane style, of course!

All in all, it was a lot of work and I was exhausted by the end of the two days, but it was all worth­while. The energy and enthu­si­asm was obvi­ous with all the dis­cus­sions and inter­ac­tions and it’s also been great to see all the tweets and blog posts continue.

#nv11

 Conference  1 Response »
May 182011
 

That was what we put on the front of the t‑shirts this year, . Some bright spark (I for­get who, sorry, the two days blur togeth­er a bit) poin­ted out that the t‑shirts were green with NV, which was an impress­ive pun, or at least bet­ter than any­thing I could come up with on my own.

As always, the days were full, and this year I made it to the party at the Aca­dem­ic as well, which gave me a chance to chat to dif­fer­ent people. I’m still try­ing to fig­ure out wheth­er I liked the Moose cock­tail the Aca­dem­ic designed for us or not. The food was good, and the candy bar went down well with everyone.

I man­aged to miss the morn­ing key­note (the school run took pri­or­ity), so for me the ses­sions part of the con­fer­ence star­ted with the first pan­el I mod­er­ated: Court­ing Con­tro­versy: Dan­cing with the Dev­il. Rebecca Cole­man, Kazia Mul­lin, and Lor­raine Murphy had everything so well organ­ised that I did­n’t need to do any­thing, I just sat there and watched and listened, pre­pared to help if they needed it (which they did­n’t). They have all sum­mar­ised their takes on the pan­el; there are lots of use­ful hints in there as to how to deal with con­tro­versy (and any­one who allows any sorts of com­ments will). I’m glad I got to listen to this one.

I sat in on the Social Media and Online Defam­a­tion: Keep­ing Out of Court pan­el for a bit, some inter­est­ing inform­a­tion there about the upcom­ing Supreme Court decision on wheth­er link­ing to some­thing libel­lous means that you are con­sidered to have libelled someone your­self, which is a fright­en­ing concept and will def­in­itely have a chilling effect on spread­ing news if it goes the wrong way. Rob Cot­ting­ham has a sum­mary in car­toon form. It was inter­est­ing com­par­ing this pan­el with the court­ing con­tro­versy one; “play it safe” vs “be brave”.

I did­n’t make it to any ses­sions after that on the Fri­day, deal­ing with vari­ous issues or chat­ting with people in the atri­um, but I did make it to the Town­ship 7 winetast­ing, albeit at the end. And then, of course, the party.

The party was fol­lowed by the morn­ing after, being in time to wel­come people to the second day and intro­duce Chris Wilson for his key­note From Dial-up Modems to Post-“Social Media”: A Jour­ney. I enjoyed it, espe­cially when he reminded us all just how fast tech­no­logy has changed and how much of what is avail­able today would have seemed unbe­liev­able 10 or 15 years ago. 

After lunch I mod­er­ated Tim’s Sex, Lies, and Wiki­pe­dia talk, which, of course, did­n’t need much mod­er­a­tion. Tim has­n’t writ­ten up his talk, but a search on “Tim Bray wiki­pe­dia ″ will bring up lots of sum­mar­ies writ­ten by others.

Anthony Mar­co’s Pod­cast­ing with Soul: Try A Little Ten­der­ness was a mix of music and advice on pod­cast­ing. He used the music to show how the same basic mes­sage (or melody) can sound very dif­fer­ent, depend­ing on how it’s presen­ted, and talked about how to get that joy and inspir­a­tion into pod­cast­ing. I found it inter­est­ing, even though I don’t listen to pod­casts, with inspir­a­tion for writ­ten blog­ging as well. 

The last pan­el was Altru­ism vs Nar­ciss­ism: what’s in it for the online review­er? with Mon­ica Miller, Kyrsten Jensen, Nicole Christen, and Mar­ina Antunes. I ended up ask­ing quite a few ques­tions of the pan­el to get more details on inter­est­ing items. The advice can be best summed up as: keep your integ­rity. Don’t say you like it if you don’t, but also don’t be too harsh on small inde­pend­ents. In some cases, just don’t post a pub­lic review, but in most cases, say what you really think (while stress­ing it’s your opin­ion and exper­i­ence, not Uni­ver­sal Truth). The ses­sion was lower energy than lots, since it was get­ting a little late in the day, and Kyrsten had almost lost her voice, but I think people found it interesting.

And that was it! North­ern Voice over for anoth­er year. 

Keynotes and Journeys

 Conference  2 Responses »
Apr 182011
 

Every year, when we start organ­ising North­ern Voice, the ques­tion comes up about key­notes. Key­notes set the tone of a con­fer­ence, they indic­ate some­thing of what the organ­ising com­mit­tee is think­ing, or what they think the com­munity that sup­ports the con­fer­ence might want to hear about. This year, I wanted to find someone as a key­note speak­er who could talk to us about the less sunny side of life, and remind us that some of the per­son­al stor­ies people share online aren’t about good things hap­pen­ing, they’re about life hap­pen­ing, and life isn’t always fair, or easy. The rest of the organ­ising com­mit­tee agreed, and we’re glad that April Smith agreed to present. “Storytelling From the Heart of the City” opens North­ern Voice on Fri­day May 13th. 

The Sat­urday key­note is a dif­fer­ent slant on the web, from Chris Wilson, who’s played a key role in build­ing many of the web tech­no­lo­gies we use every day. I’m not actu­ally sure what he’s going to talk about, but I have no doubt it will be an inter­est­ing view of the web world so many of us now inhab­it, sprinkled with inter­est­ing anec­dotes. I’m look­ing for­ward to it!

Two key­notes, two dif­fer­ent slants on what the web enables, two dif­fer­ent jour­neys. I’m not very good at chron­ic­ling my own jour­ney, but I admire those who do, and I hope (and expect) that the North­ern Voice key­notes will give strength and inspir­a­tion to all of us.

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Northern Voice 2009

 Conference, Vancouver  No Responses »
Feb 222009
 

I’m slowly recov­er­ing from the whirl­wind that was North­ern Voice this year (I’m one of the organ­isers). All our hard work paid off, we had the usu­al last-minute glitches but every­one seemed to enjoy them­selves, to make new friends and con­tacts, to learn new things, to dis­cuss issues they care about, and to have fun. 

On Fri­day I spent most of my time on the regis­tra­tion desk, apart from intro­du­cing the con­fer­ence and listen­ing to Stew­art But­ter­field’s key­note. Sat­urday was a little dif­fer­ent; I made it to lots of ses­sions (both key­notes, Aid­rie’s pan­el, my own pan­el, bits and pieces of oth­er talks/panels). What I took away from all was a sense of com­munity, a sense that the people attend­ing are truly inter­ested in shar­ing their know­ledge and exper­i­ences, in being genu­ine. Even though some blog from a purely per­son­al stand­point, and oth­ers from a pro­fes­sion­al, there was dis­cus­sion about how to be genu­ine, how to show who you are with­in whatever lim­its you find reas­on­able (some people blog about their chil­dren, oth­ers don’t, for example). I’m look­ing for­ward to watch­ing the videos of the ses­sions I did­n’t man­age to make it to; we only had three ses­sions con­cur­rently but lots of good top­ics. The energy in the whole space was amazing. 

Sat­urday night after we got home, we found Van­couver was in the top ten for two trend­ing Twit­ter top­ics: North­ern Voice and the Canucks. As someone tweeted (sorry, can­’t find it now), that really shows that Van­couver people under­stand how to use these tools for com­mu­nic­a­tion. I feel proud, as one of the organ­isers of North­ern Voice, to do my little bit to help, by giv­ing people who care about these things an oppor­tun­ity to get togeth­er and dis­cuss them. And it’s fun — at a Ser­i­ous Con­fer­ence we could nev­er get away with put­ting out a bas­ket of yarn and telling people to make their own lan­yards (yes, we had some of those white elast­ic things for those uncom­fort­able with the notion). Lots of people grav­it­ated to the bright fluffy stuff, or used mul­tiple strands, cre­at­ing their own bit of wear­able art. And then there was the Moose col­lec­tion — Rahel Bail­lie donated her col­lec­tion of moose as a fund-raiser for the con­fer­ence, so we had these moose statues and ties and kitsch spread over one corner of the regis­tra­tion desk. Again, not some­thing you can do at a Ser­i­ous Con­fer­ence. Which does­n’t mean to say we did­n’t talk about ser­i­ous top­ics, there were lots of those, and lots of dis­cus­sion about them. 

I’m already look­ing for­ward to next year’s North­ern Voice.

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.

Ebbs and Blogs

 Technology  5 Responses »
Feb 282008
 

One of the inter­est­ing ses­sions I went to at North­ern­Voice was the Blogs are Dead; Long Live the Blog­ger ses­sion facil­it­ated ably by Chris Lott. There’s a write-up on this wiki; as usu­al a lot of thought-pro­vok­ing stuff was said, only some of which I’ve found recor­ded. I’ve noticed changes myself over the last few years of observing part of the blog­ging world (by neces­sity, only a small part). 

I’ve noticed that lots of people aren’t blog­ging as much, or indeed any more, for var­ied reas­ons. Some spend more time on twit­ter, which scratches their com­mu­nic­a­tion itch, and effect­ively let their blog lapse. Some post no longer need to tell friends and fam­ily what they’re up to via a blog. A fair num­ber of crafters are on Ravelry and post their pro­jects there and don’t need a blog any more.

I’ve noticed changes in the blogs, too; maybe because many people whose blogs I read are using twit­ter et al for the more “trivi­al” dis­cus­sions and thoughts, the blog post­ings tend to be about weight­i­er sub­jects, or work-related. In many cases the tone is more form­al and (dare I say it) bor­ing; I’ve giv­en up on quite a few blogs that used to be fun to read, even if the sub­ject mat­ter was incon­sequen­tial, because they now are more weighty and ser­i­ous and not as enter­tain­ing. Or they’ve turned into col­lec­tions of links. The occa­sion­al link posts, with com­ments as to why those links are worth click­ing on, is fine, but I quickly tire of blogs that con­sist solely of links to oth­er blogs and art­icles. I really can­’t be bothered hanging on in the hope that the author will even­tu­ally come up with some­thing original.

One big excep­tion that I’ve noticed is the craft­ing blogs, which (not­with­stand­ing the people who’ve quit now that they’re on Ravelry) have much the same type of con­tent. I star­ted a craft­ing blog after join­ing Ravelry, and I know oth­ers who’ve done the same. Many crafters see their blogs as a refresh­ing change from work, delib­er­ately not talk­ing about top­ics out­side the bound­ar­ies, keep­ing the dis­cus­sion focussed (more or less) on the ser­i­ous craft­ing issues of types of yarn, wheth­er the knit­ted object will fit once it’s fin­ished, and the best way to cre­ate a par­tic­u­lar design or concept. Or just post­ing “I did this this way and this is how it turned out.” 

I don’t think the blog is dead; it’s just chan­ging as the concept dif­fuses out­side the circle of early adop­ters who are busy twit­ter­ing at each other. 

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