Arjun Singh...

Using Flock for the first time...

 

learned about flock's capabilities at Northern Voice.

Blogged with Flock

Tags: nv08

More than just blogging, Northern Voice 2008

My wife told me yesterday I sort of misrepresented the content at Northern Voice to her. I had told her this was a "blogging conference", and in the 3 or so sessions she attended, she heard very little about blogging.

It's true. My 4th Northern Voice was much less about blogging than my 1st.  Unless you take a broader view of blogging - facebooking, twittering, uttering, ustreaming, etc.

I even had a hard time finding a lot of blog posts on this year's Northern Voice. Then, I looked on google blog search, which seemed to me have the most comprehensive listing of 2008 posts.

Wasn't totally happy with my Northern Voice talk, discussion after better.

Started off a little like a deer in the headlights, it felt. I do feel like there was a pretty good group discussion. I guess I personally was more interested in hearing from other folks, and wasn't quite clear what I really could offer.   More on the discussion later...

Matt Mullenweg at Northern Voice 2008

First, Boris Mann tells us that Northern Voice is now a society. I wonder what is planned?

      
Matt Mullenweg thought he was late to blogging. Frustrated with his blogging platform, starting designing wordpress with guy in england, building on b2 open source code, now 7 226 0449  downloads. 5 years old now.

know a bit about what bloggers want: expression (design presentation More than half facebook views are to photo pages), public, interaction, validation,form dictates expression.

Get rid of Friction

We Need Invisible Software

lots more contest posted, because it will be easier. Need to filter, make things
relevant. Achille heel of web2.0 is spam. have to respect people's time: single most valuable principle in a lot of life.

We need to kill the big brands.

problems of scale, need to filter, have to slice and dice the data

open source, 4 freedoms- jkeefer took photo

need how tos on how to 'hack", modify software. Once you have tasted freedom, its hard to go back.

Other posts on Matt's talk: beside me to my left Stewart Mader, to my right
Jeffrey Keefer

Waiting for the opening keynote: Matt Mullenweg

Stewart Mader

Robin Yap, Jeffrey Keefer

Audience Shot

Saturday morning at Northern Voice 2008

One of the great things about coming to a geek conference, a true geek conference, is you swap a lot of information about gadgets. I recently bought a ASUS eee pc,  a tiny linux based laptop. I have now met at least three different people who also have the eee.  Learning about resources, tweaks, different ways of using this tiny thing.

In the past 6 months, I have gone from only using windows on my computer, to not using windows at all. I have an imac on my desk, and a a linux based laptop. I might also put windows on the laptop, but its pretty cool to not be so windows dependent.

Notes from the first day of Northern Voice 2008 - part 1

• dropped out early from the human graph - a bit chaotic for me. Space a  little small for the orderly  formation of lines.
• Blogging 101 - good session, lots of people with lots of questions.
• Marc Lee, well spoken leftie economist, joins other "progressive" bloggers at The Progressive Economics Forum.
• Using the search engine on your own blog.
• can quote up to about 70% of other people's content, without triggering US copyright (?) (don't rely on this)
• People using US services should know a bit about DMCA.
• popularizing ideas through Stumble Upon, Digg and Reddit.
• citizen journalism editor at CBC getting a bit of a rough ride early on in her session.
• now she is getting more credit. Still lot of folks a bit defensive,suspicious?
• good discussion about bloggers and citizen journalists? how about folks who have only a digital camera?
• Power blogging session: flock sounds good as an easier way to blog if you want to blog a lot.  A question about outgrowing typepad and services to go to. Talking about hosted versus self hosted services. Twitter higher ranked on google? Forums- good, bad, quite time consuming.
• Live blogging: man, Jeffrey Keefer is a powerful speaker...why liveblog? - people who aren' t there, not to procastinate, to be accountable, capture the emotion, the initial impression, latest geeky thing to do, boredom. Software programs windows live writer, scribefire, ecto, covering it live. twitter link to facebook. Concerns include not quoting properly, out of context, giving away content for free & who owns content? Confidentiality. Best practices: remembering put things in context, not worrying about being perfect, remembering grammar, internet access and  laptop power, asking people for permission to upload photos.

CBC's Lisa Johnson at Northern Voice 2008

A 21st century silent movie - forgot to unmute the microphone!

Northern Voice 2008 - sarcasm and deep soulfullness at the Waldorf...

What a totally interesting venue - the Tiki Room(s?) at the Waldorf Hotel in East Vancouver. Met up with my good friends Jeffrey Keefer (4th time in a year Jeffrey!) and Robin Yap. Lots of old friends now, and met some new ones as well.  The opening blogger's breaking of the bread at Northern Voice is such a great community event, even if I couldn't bring myself to eat the pig.

The entertainment was more than simply entertaining - it was inspiring, it was wicked funny, it was authentic, it was soulful. People stood up and read posts from their blogs, got up and talked about what Northern Voice meant to them.

An excellent start.

MIT Professor stumped by perpetual motion machine?

Guy in Ottawa doesn't finish college, but may have invented something potentially very huge. MIT Prof currently trying to figure it  out....via boing boing.