Northern Voice 2006 - Initial After Thought...

It is always incredible to be among people with such great drive and passion. The ideas were aswirling today at the Northern Voice 2006 blogging conference. I spent a lot of time exploring new web sites suggested by the presenters and participants. I am not sure what it is - maybe many of us were not popular in high school - but I felt  sensitivity in the rooms today. People liked being part of the cool crowd, and if some were not part of it, they seemed a little on the periphery. This is not a reflection of the excellent work of the organizers of the conference. I think this is probably something that happens at a lot of tech and/or blogging conferences.

I did not focus on the learning today, although I am pretty sure there are ideas that got into my head that I will be thinking about for a while. I focused, instead, on talking to people, actually interviewing many with my voice recorder / wireless mic set up. It worked well.

As I am writing this, I realize that one web site I did learn about - yesterday at the conference - is going to be causing those creaky wheels in my brain to start to turn. Blufton Today, presented by Ken Rickards, is stuck in my head as a great model of a real community web site. When I used the word 'community', in this context it actually means a real town or village or neighborhood. I would like YourKamloops to turn into this. We need to rediscover community in the western world - and that starts with knowing your neighbors and feeling truly invested in whats going on in your neighborhood.