Northern Voice 2006 - Initial After Thought...
February 11, 2006
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.