A few of us have been noticing that there hasn’t been as much chatter on the internet about Northern Voice during or immediately following the event. As well, the page views on Flickr seemed to be a lot lower than last year. Personally, I think it’s just that everyone hasn’t fully had a chance for it all to sink in yet. As I’m finding by new followers on Twitter, new contacts on Flickr and a bunch of new feeds I’ve been reading, it’s slowly gaining some momentum after the fact.
Let’s face it, a weekend of conferencing takes it’s toll on people and especially since most of the attendees have normal day jobs that they returned to almost immediately. It takes awhile to get your head around what you participated in and find a way to record or publish those thoughts. Not to mention taking care of all the things you didn’t tend to during the conference.
So in that vein, I thought I’d followup my somewhat brief recap with a few more cool things I’ve found since the weekend:
- my pal, Duane Storey, pulled some awesome out of his hat with his amazing photo mosaic of all the tagged photos in Flickr he could hoover down. He called it 1600 reasons to love Northern Voice and I’m sure he’ll have to rename it as that photo number keeps growing as attendees get out their card readers and upload more shots to the Flickr stream. As Gene said in his post, if you can’t find yourself in those photos, you weren’t there.
- I twittered about it a bit and mentioned it in my first recap but I keep coming across blog posts and photos of people that I wish I had a chance to either spend more time talking to or even just meeting at the conference. I guess one of the cons of going to a conference in your own town, with a lot of friends in attendance, is that you don’t get outside your circle as much as you would if you were somewhere you didn’t know many people. That and there is never enough time.
- I wish I had an opportunity to chat with Stewart Mader whose presentation about Wiki’s I really enjoyed at last years NV and missed his this year. He’s been rounding up some great links and comments from other people as well as doing a great job liveblogging a lot of sessions
- Another missed meet/chat was with Alan Levine who gave a great presentation on “50 Web 2.0 Ways to Tell a Story” in which he outlines some of the amazing web tools out there you can use to tell a story. Something he did with all 50 tools and the same story. Alan also managed to capture one of my favorite open mic sessions at the Opening Night party by Scott Leslie called Trackback Love.
- Bobby Dassler took an awesome set of polaroids that turned out really cool…and I’m even in there
- DaveO’s amazing “F*ck Stats, Make Art” session is now available via Audio (MP3) thanks to Cosmo and Matt’s keynote audio is here although he says that it may not be a great experience without the slides. Stewart has a transcript as well.
There is a ton more stuff that I missed that I hope makes its way online eventually. Needless to say, I’m looking forward to next year already.
Check out the Northern Voice wiki for other things you (or I) may have missed.
Update: Looks like videos of Miranda’s natural light talk and Reilly’s modified light talk have been posted. Both are great parts of PhotoCamp. Great video capture job too!
During the Northern Voice Opening Party, Chris Heur asked if he could do a quick interview with me. Chris was doing this to capture the event by talking to as many people as possible and asking them a couple of questions. He simply used his cellphone and a service called Utterz to record the interview and it automagically posted it to his blog, twitter and to his Utterz page (and possibly other places). He also managed to take a decent photo of me which is pretty much a miracle.
Hopefully I sound as cool as everyone else he interviewed during his trip to Vancouver. Thanks Chris…it was a fun thing to participate in and a cool way to capture the people attending the conference.
Just like last year, I had a great time at Northern Voice. Like many (good) conferences, there is always too many people you want to talk to or meet and simply not enough time. Maybe next year there should be a scheduled block of ‘hanging in main hall’ just so you have a little more quality time between sessions to chat.
This year I convinced a few friends that might not ordinarily go to a conference like this to come out and I think they had a great time like I did. My favorite session easily was Kris Krug’s PhotoCamp and still think (like I did during BarCamp) that it could be it’s own stand alone conference. Dave Olson also had an outstanding session about making art instead of worrying about “fucking stats”. Looking forward to hanging more with these guys in Austin real soon.
I enjoyed all the sessions I attended (check out Rebecca’s always awesome liveblog posts of many sessions) but if there was one negative about the conference (which happens to all of them) is that there were a couple of sessions happening concurrently I would have liked to attend but had to make a choice. Judging from the results, Rachael Ashe’s session on light painting looked fantastic and I really should have went to it. I really like the mix of art that has worked its way into some of these tech(ish) events and it’s inspiring to see people doing really cool stuff right in front of you.
Using a cool trick Derek Miller shared at PhotoCamp, here is my Northern Voice wrap up in pictures:
I’ll try to tag as many of the photos as I can but feel free to tag yourself if I didn’t.
Special shout out to Jennie (who flew in from Pittsburgh!) and Dan (from Toronto) for coming out west for a few days. I wish we had more time to spend together.
I completely forgot to pick up a “Bloggable” T-shirt during the conference….maybe Boris can help me buy one. Maybe next year Basco5 can do some t-shirts too.
I’m at UBC this weekend attending the Northern Voice conference. Last night was the opening party/dinner at the Waldorf Hotel:
I’ll be taking photos all weekend and I’ll be posting intermittently. As usual, Rebecca’s got the live blog going on.
You can watch my flickr stream or all the photos tagged by the other attendees.
![Matt [cropped]](http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2061/2253247306_8eee7c50ee_m.jpg)
Tickets are almost sold out to this year’s Northern Voice conference. It was just announced that Matt Mullenweg, creator of the Wordpress system that I use to power this site, will be giving the keynote at the conference…although there hasn’t been a post about Matt on the conference site, he blogged about it on his so it must be true.
I’ve had the chance to see Matt speak twice now: at SXSW last year and at WordCamp last summer. Like Larry Lessig, he knows how to give a great presentation. He also happens to have one of the coolest personal domain names : http://ma.tt although it sounds like it was a bit of an ordeal to acquire. Someone beat me to the one I should have gotten.
This year’s conference is shaping up to be a great one! See you at the Waldorf for the opening party!
There is a lot going on over the next little while around town and elsewhere. Here’s just a few of the events you should check out.
Tonight (Sunday, January 20th for you slow feed readers)
Watch Rebecca (aka Miss604) on CBC’s Test the Nation where she (and a few other locals) ‘represents’ on the Blogger’s team. I think I can actually get away with saying “You go girl” and not look like a tard in this case. I’m sure she’ll find a way to live blog via her iPhone. My TiVo is set to record so expect some video highlights of Becky beating some flight attendants with her brain.
Creative Thinking Hacks - Tuesday, January 22nd
I’m really going to try to attend this talk at VFS by Scott Berkun put on as part of the VanUE group.
Launch Party Vancouver 3 - Friday, January 25th
I missed the first two parties and won’t be missing this one…hosted by Strutta.com, I keep hearing about how much fun they are and a lot of my friends will be there RSVP on the Facebook group or their site if you’re interested in meeting up with a lot of the local tech community.
Third Tuesday - January 29th
The monthly event just keeps getting better and better (thanks to Tod and Tanya) and this month is no exception with Brian Oberkirch’s talk on Social Media and Brands.
Vancouver Blogger’s Meetup - January 30th
Another monthly meetup that I’ve missed the last couple but will be attending this one….if you blog, or want to blog, you should come out too. Lots of great people to talk with.
Privacy & Security Conference - Feb 6-8th (Victoria)
Due to some projects I’m involved in lately, I’ll be attending this conference in Victoria for the first time. The agenda looks very interesting and the speakers are very impressive.
Northern Voice - February 22-23 (UBC)
Great little local conference I finally discovered last year (this is the 4th year) for people interested in blogging….it’s also not just for geeks. I met a lot of great people last year and look forward to seeing many of them again and meeting new friends this time around. Tickets are very affordable but that is also why they always sell out so get yours as soon as possible.
South by Southwest Interactive - March 6-11 (Austin, Texas)
Easily my favorite tech conference held each year in Austin, Texas. This will be my third trip to the Lone Star state and look forward to meeting up with friends again as well as taking in all it has to offer. It’s also one of the least expensive tech conferences and there is arguably no better place to meet and interact with the brightest people in the tech world. If you haven’t already booked a hotel expect a long commute as all the good ones were booked months ago…I had the foresight to book mine last September. It’s worth the trip for the BBQ beef brisket alone and the Raincity Studios folks put on the best party during the event.
These are just a few of the things on my plate for the next little while…hope to see you at one (or more) of them.
Since everyone is doing it, I thought I should do the same although I have a hard time putting them in some kind of order…so they aren’t!
Here is my list of the random things from last year that stood out to me in no particular order:
- my iPhone - in case you haven’t noticed, I kinda dig this phone. Sure it’s not perfect but overall, it’s hands down the best cellphone I’ve ever owned (and I’ve owned a lot). It’s also the first phone that has made me stop looking for a better one. It’s been a lot of fun this past year sharing it with friends and helping others with theirs. You’ll notice it’s the only tech item on this list (shocking!) but it’s been hard for it to not be a focal point on this site and with many friends. This is a geek blog afterall so if I had to pick one tech item from last year, this is it.
- Falling in love with photography again - I fully blame/credit kk+ for this. As I’ve said before, after attending Kris’ Photography session at Northern Voice something struck a chord that made me want to pick up a camera again for more than just snapshots. Kris’ passion for taking photos really had an impact. That lead to picking up my first DSLR (after years of point and shoot and film cameras) and reconnecting with a fantastic creative outlet that I had been into before I became a (computer) geek. Thanks Kris!
- Friends - I don’t talk about too many ‘personal’ things on this blog but this past year has been an immensely rewarding year for meeting new people and forging new friendships on and offline (real life FTW!). Social media/networking/whatever has really changed how people communicate, meet, collaborate and generally be human. I’m still surprised how many friends from my past I’ve reconnected with on Facebook as well as how many real life friends these tools has helped stay in contact with in ways that I never expected. Everything including SXSW, Northern Voice, photowalks, tech events, Camps (how come I never see tents?) and meetups has put me in contact with some truly amazing people (way too many to list). I look forward to building on those friendships and making more new ones this year and beyond.
- Buying our first home - my wife and I made probably the biggest financial move of our lives this past summer and it has been an amazing experience. Even when we were stressed out and woefully unprepared for our big move, our friends came through and helped in ways that I can’t ever repay. It has been a fanatastic experience being a ‘homeowner’ - like a really good rollercoaster that can make you sick and giggle like a schoolgirl at the same time. The commute isn’t that bad and has been totally worth it!
I know that’s only 4…I can’t think of anything else from last year that’s had as much impact as these 4 things have had on me at a high level at least.
So 2007 in summary: I’ll call you with my iPhone to invite you over to my house and take your picture.
Robert Scoble has posted his video of the Digital Photography session Kris Krug put on at Northern Voice that I attended last February.
This is the session that helped reignite my interest in photography after being away from it for awhile. Since that time I’ve posted over 2200 photos to my Flickr account. I can’t believe it’s been that many..although many are older photos, it helped remind me why I like taking pictures in the first place.
It’s also made me begin to lust after a Digital SLR camera.
I’m impressed with the quality of the video Robert got considering he was just sitting in the front row and would just swing his camera around on his monopod to catch the audience comments and questions.
I saw a twitter from Laughing Squid that he was talking with Justin.tv and grabbed a screencap and posted it on Flickr. So it’s kinda (not really) like I took Scott’s picture:
I made a point of saying hi to Scott and his wife at Northern Voice as I’ve been admiring his photos for awhile now. Check out his Flickr stream or his photo gallery on LaughingSquid.com if you like great photography.
After attending Kris Krug’s Digital Photography session yesterday at Northern Voice 2007, I’ve been re-inspired to take/post more photos.
Since moving to the new server, I’ve setup Coppermine to host my pix here and after Northern Voice, I’ve also decided to post more pix on Flickr.
I’m planning on taking a ton of photos when I head to Austin, Texas in just over a week for South by Southwest.
Should be a great time and opportunity to take more photos.
