All Hail the Mighty Moose

Friday is the final deadline for session proposal submissions for the third annual Northern Voice — a conference dedicated to weblogs and social software hosted here at UBC, February 23-24.

Attendee registration is also open, and a mere fifty bucks gets you two days of rich, chocolatey, new webby goodness.

If I wasn’t part of the organising committee, and bound by Canadian modesty to boot, I could unleash an epic rant on the unique value of this event. Instead I’ll merely note that participants cut across disciplines and range from the greenest newbies (beginner workshops have always gotten good turnouts) to the upper reaches of the Technorati Glitterati… everyone hanging out and learning from each other in an energetic yet relaxed environment (and this year, in a spectacular space here on campus).

Previous years have featured outstanding presenters, and attendee registration has been filled well in advance. But frankly, given the growth in social software tools and techniques in education, I’m a little surprised that more educators haven’t turned up in previous years and shown what people in this sector are made of… The quality has been there — I honestly thought the EduBlogger Hootenanny was among the best of last year’s Moose Camp sessions (I’ll dispense with Canuck modesty here, deferring to the eminence of the collaborators), the education panels have been excellent, and I fervently hope my peers will kick out the jams again this year. I know of a couple of sessions friends are cooking up, and there is huge potential.

I was going to wrap this post by saying something like “don’t make me beg”… but what the hell — consider me begging, consider me on my knees, consider me abject… but I beseech you, consider submitting a short proposal on what you’d like to bring to this conference. Keep in mind most presenters end up being grouped by theme into panels, so you may only have to bring the heat for ten to fifteen minutes.

Graphic above courtesy of Darren Barefoot, who worked through a poor self-assessment of his graphic design skills to create a set of badges that you may add to your own site, or to print out as suitable for framing. If you ever wanted to see a Moose wearing an iPod, look no further.