abject learning

… with a little Dadblogging. I was just about to head out the door this morning when my four year old popped out of his bedroom. I told him I was leaving, he nodded. I demanded a hug, and he indulged me. “Have fun today,” he said as I was walking away.

“Ah thanks Harry, I’ll try to…”

“No Dad, I meant I’m going to have fun today. You have to work.”

Erik Duval is asking for non-conventional nominations for a conference keynote speaker. Though it’s near-impossible to top his own suggestion (Laurie Anderson), it brings to mind my own long-time “if I could pick anybody” choice for a keynote speaker — Ken Freedman, station manager for freeform radio station WFMU.

Anyone who knows me or reads this blog is probably rolling their eyes at yet another WFMU plug, and justifiably so. But my rationale extends beyond mere fandom. For one, I know from regular listening to his show that Freedman would make a compelling and very amusing speaker. And a freeform radio station is at least somewhat analogous to an institution of learning. Both have their roots in media that predates digital technology, even as they are challenged on every front by what new media means. Both have their passionate adherents and practitioners who generally have wildly divergent visions of what the practice should be. Both are chronically underfunded, and need to find inventive ways to get things done.

One thing I find compelling about WFMU is how they reinvented themselves, moving from their 1960’s campus radio roots to something that embraces online culture in a way that does not diminish their core values. The station does so many things right with technology: its archives, its array of awesome search tools, its podcasts, and of course its fantastic weblog (check out that Technorati ranking). Here are a few excerpts from an interview with Freedman:

Blogs and podcasting are both fads in their present incarnations, but they both represent real trends that are NOT going away. Podcasting as it presently exists may go away, but the idea of on-demand audio being automatically deliverable is not going away. And blogs are just the latest incarnation of what the web has long made possible – the amateurization of publishing, journalism, broadcasting, filmmaking, etc, which is a great thing. We no longer have to rely on fake experts for any of this stuff. Every radio station has to do what’s right for it – I can’t speak for other stations. But our blog has been enormously successful. The jury is still out on podcasting – we’re severely limited in what we can do on that front by copyright laws, and that situation is not going to change. I’m hoping to develop a podcasting license of our own so we can freely podcast a lot more musical material.

… we have seen an increase in our listenership, but that’s only because we’ve heartily embraced all this new technology. There’s no question that iPods, the Internet, satellite radio is whittling away the audience for AM and FM radio, we’ve seen it ourselves. Fewer people listen to FMU over the air, but the number of new online listeners has more than compensated. The old model of broadcast radio is disappearing, but I’m thrilled about that. Most people in the industry – commercial AND non-commercial – aren’t quite as happy about all this as I am.

… I’m honestly not sure what the future holds for the old model of community and alternative radio. I don’t think it’s very bright actually, because most stations have been too slow to embrace new technologies.

WFMU is 100% listener supported — no corporate sponsorship, no foundation money, no campus affiliation. Its main fundraising is via its two week marathon, on now. (I wrote about the marathon last year.) Given how much money the station saves me by serving as my primary music source, I feel obliged to pony up some dough. This year, I got more than just swag for my pledge, I also got naming rights to an item at WFMU headquarters — somehow I snagged the Studio B microphone (pictured above)! I am assured a marathon DJ is using it right now. I should have come up with a more inventive name for the equipment, but I was frozen at the sheer glory of it all, this is way cooler than having a sports stadium name.

UPDATE: I have audio proof that my naming rights are legit. My dream keynote speaker himself Station Manager Ken utters it (short MP3) at the onset of his annual State of the the Station address (streaming RealAudio).

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A mess …, originally uploaded by asmundur.

So yesterday was UBC’s e-Learning Open House, which is a notable event for a few reasons, not the least of which is the chance to drink frosty pints while presenting. Most of the presenters share work they’ve done that they think is especially noteworthy, and it is often most impressive indeed. My officemate Novak Rogic and I took a slightly different tack, figuring we would once again take the opportunity to evangelize a bit about what we called distributed content networks.

Nothing too wild. We divided the poster into three sections: 1) the sources (essentially stuff available by RSS feeds, with an emphasis on academic materials); 2) the mixers (aggRSSive, Pipes, tools like Google Co-Op and my new fave Grazr); and 3) where the output can be presented (anywhere, naturally, including an LMS). About half an hour before the event, Novak came up with the “digital chef” metaphor to connect the process with cooking (ingredients, etc…), and I hope we use that conceit again, it’s got potential.

Nowhere on the poster did we mention RSS. We just had lists of sources, tools and outputs. The reaction from attendees was striking. One of the special challenges of presenting in a poster-session environment is spinning a compelling narrative to a constantly changing group of listeners. Most of them entered our space just looking blankly at our materials, and when I asked them if they had any idea what they were looking at, most just laughed and said no. They typically had no knowledge of what RSS or data mashups were… in many cases I found myself circling back to explaining what a weblog was.

We had many eager listeners, a lot of them said they would follow up with me later. So I guess our presentation could be called a success. It certainly was fun. I am struck by how many people who would be interested enough in technology to attend an “e-Learning open house” would still be unaware of the basic components of social software — all those Time magazine cover stories have evidently had little effect. For all the growth, and all the advances, when I talk with the public I am still trying to explain the same things that I was five years ago. I keep expecting that one day when I walk into a room and ask who is basically familiar with what a weblog is, a bunch of hands will go up… but outside of specialized groups, it never happens.

Before I start to sound more obnoxious than normal, I should stress that I don’t think this is some defect with the people. In today’s world, there are so many things that cry out for our attention. Most of us don’t know a thing about the food we eat. We don’t know where our clothing comes from, and who is making money from it. We don’t understand how our way of life changes the planet. We have only the dimmest and conflicted sense of how power is constructed and exercised. Many of us cannot explain our own behavior much of the time. We are groping to understand the fundamentals of how we learn. In a sense, technology is just one more thing most of us don’t get. It’s easy to get caught up in the hype, or to think as I often do that fluency with social software is an emerging form of essential literacy. But events like yesterday illustrate how even with an intelligent, conscientious and curious bunch of educators that some sort of essential transformation is not something that’s just going to happen around us…

On the other end of the scale, the Moose Camp session on mash-ups for non-programmers (audio here) was also a sobering experience. Certainly, the fact we could even conceive such a session seems to show just how far things have come. A tool like Yahoo Pipes promises that an ordinary person might assemble and reorder data much as we use a word processor to edit a document, an example of that emerging literacy I was talking about.

But thorny experience doesn’t play by the script. Even with these new tools and some very sharp collaborators helping me I still can’t make a modest goal (simple and coherent republication of student courseblogs) happen the way it needs to. Things break down on obscure technical levels (like how different systems output RSS — turns out the syndication standards geeks might have had a point with all that infighting I didn’t understand), and on fundamental levels as well (such as Pipes, OpenKapow and Dapper each going AWOL during one short Moose Camp session). We had no choice but to conclude that as of now, the dream of mash-ups for the masses is tantalizingly just beyond the grasp of the non-programmer. But just you wait!

It seems like a painfully familiar dynamic, expecting that just ahead things will fall into place and something utterly revolutionary will be upon us. But can we assume that things will come together the way we envision? Perhaps our fate is eternally mucking through a messy and promising set of possibilities, with enough useful bits spinning out of the maw to keep us from giving up altogether. Small victories providing a few passionate educators with the means to make big things happen inside a few people’s heads.

So one afternoon long ago I quickly tossed a few tracks together and burned them to CD, thinking they would be fun to listen to in the car. How could I have known the eject mechanism would go haywire, and we would not be able to remove the collection for weeks? And that due to other car stereo defects we would not even be able to skip tracks! I threw this playlist together casually, even disdainfully, how could I have known it would become the soundtrack of my life? My only other option is sports talk radio, and let’s just say I know enough about the Sedin twins to get me through most days.

Without prejudice:
* 1) The Guess Who, “Running Back to Saskatoon” – Even with the incessant repetition, my four year old son and I still love this song, we both sing along with every word every time we hear it. This is one of a trilogy of classic songs written with Saskatoon in the title, along with Johnny Cash’s “Girl from Saskatoon” and Sonny James’s transcendent “South of Saskatoon”… and really this is the only song actually about the place. I grew up thinking the Guess Who were goofy, because they were, but now that I’m old myself I also think they were the most talented rock musicians the Canadian prairies ever produced. I’d love to claim Neil Young, but he did his best work after leaving. This is a very rocking song about a city where “nothing much ever happens”, but there’s a lot you can learn in Saskatoon if you hang around the right places. You should download, or better yet find a $1 vinyl copy of the Guess Who’s Greatest Hits, Vol II.

* 2) The Beastie Boys, “One Song a Night” – Didn’t know that the Beastie Boys did a country album? Well, only Mike D. is confirmed on this vinyl-only fan club release that is some very fun trashy listening. This isn’t my favorite song on the album (I prefer “Sloppy Drunks” and “We Can Do This if We Try”) but my son really likes it, which is probably why I put it on the CD.

* 3) The Whigs, “Technology” – Solid rocker, sounds OK, I tired of it quickly, no offense.

* 4) Terry Manning, “I Guess Things Happen that Way” – He’s more famous for his work producing and engineering others, but I love the sound on his solo record. His killer version of “Savoy Truffle” would have been my first choice for a track, but it’s ten minutes long. This song is fun, but in retrospect I should have sucked it up and went for the truffle.

* 5) Richard and Linda Thompson, “I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight” (live) – this is an OK live version of one of my absolute favorite songs ever. This is a near-flawless album, if you like folk-rock and don’t have this record you must rectify your error.

* 6) Johnny Paycheck, “Hang On Sally” – This is from his George Jones-ish early period, long before “Take this Job and Shove It.” He was a solid second-rate roadhouse country talent, with some great tunes, and his singing carries a certain real psychotic resonance. He already sounds like a guy who would someday have a big hit, go into a coke-fueled depressive spiral, and eventually kill someone and do some serious time.

* 7) Matthew Sweet, “Sick of Myself” – Still not close to being sick of this track, even after countless repetitive plays. A brilliant distortion-saturated love song that manages to be an over-the-top rocker and a sweet ballad all at once. This dude was a serious hook-master, he got sound in a very deep way, and it’s a crime he never had a huge hit or two. I loved this song in 1995 and I love it now.

* 8) Journey, “Any Way You Want It” – It seemed like a good idea at the time. I dug the pained reactions when this came on, with me on air guitar. But the joke was on me.

* 9) Hot Butter, “Popcorn” – This early electronica pop hit (and for Canadians, one-time theme of ParticipACTION TV ads) is included only because I am try to conquer my early childhood fear of it. I have yet to overcome. And nobody else seems to like this song.

* 10) Eric Burdon & War, “Spill the Wine” – Another song immune to overplay. What a sweet groove.

* 11) They Shoot Horses, “Hiccup” – great track by a fine Vancouver band.

* 12) The Rockets, “Hole in My Pocket” – The Rockets were the band eventually discovered by Neil Young and renamed Crazy Horse. Though Crazy Horse are rightfully perennial frontrunners in the “luckiest bastards in rock” sweepstakes, this album shows they brought at least as much of their sound to Neil as vice versa.

* 13) The Who, “Much Too Much” – middling early Who track, hardly their best work, but sounds great.

* 14) Robert Wyatt, “Song For Che” – magnificent, soaring, anthemic. I have very strong positive associations with this song.

* 15) Tom Scharpling, “The Sleaziest Rocker of All Time” – clip from Scharpling’s WFMU radio show. 10) El Duce; 9) Marilyn Manson; 8) Tommy Lee; 7) Nico; 6) Sid Vicious; 5) Iggy Pop; 4) Gene Simmons; 3) Chuck Berry; 2) G.G. Allin; (Jerry Lee Lewis was supposed to be in there somewhere)… and the sleaziest rocker of all time is… [RealAudio Link – Scan 42 minutes in]

Not the best playlist of all time, but it may well be my last.

So first, what this post isn’t. It isn’t a recap. It isn’t composed in a haze of post-event relief and it isn’t composed in the throes of Moose Fever (finally shaken the symptoms, though my strength is still returning). It isn’t an attempt to adequately thank the many people who made this year’s conference so rich and enjoyable. It isn’t going to try and link to all the people who deserve it or describe any of the sessions. But lucky for you, it isn’t going to try to convey the emotional tenor of this year’s event either — I think I’ve offered up enough goop to people via comments and email. If you were waiting for your goop and feel cheated, do let me know and we’ll see if we can set up a private goop session.

Having said all that, I do feel obliged to offer up a few observations and shout-outs, whatever the limitations I place on myself so I can begin to get my head round the thing. Those of you who are quite reasonably tired of hearing about this event are advised to move on.

I previously wrote that this was the best NV yet, and after more than a week to think it over I stand by that assessment. Why the best? Well, for one the quality of the sessions was stronger from top to bottom. And it turns out Moose Camp didn’t need the radical surgery that I thought it did, some minor tweaks (like vetting vending a wee bit more aggressively) did the trick. But it was the inspiring energy that everyone brought out to the UBC Forestry Sciences Centre that made things fly. The vibe was tremendous, I was buzzing on it afterward for days. At times, it felt like the realization of an idealized vision of learning that sometimes seems like an impossible dream. And as many other attendees have written, the cumulative effect really opened people up to some powerful stuff. Chris Lott wrote that the intense social dynamic could not really be described as networking, it was more like connecting… and that simple phrase has stuck with me since then.

I’ll leave it at that, though I’m tempted to say more. If you experienced what I’m getting at, you already know what I’m talking about. And if you didn’t, you won’t believe me anyway.

I have to give my props to the conference organizers. Once again it was an honour to work with you. And heaps of learning. And huge fun. I enjoyed every planning meeting, and it was a blast to watch everything come together so smoothly. I really hope we do this again.

To the people who stayed at our house, or joined us for a meal/party — thanks for providing some of the most memorable moments. And I wish we had the space to invite more people. I do regret my distracted and cranky demeanor at the largest gathering, I was awash in logistics, very anxious about how the next day would go, and due to various quirks barely ate all day… I was so wired I barely touched the ceviche. But it was fun nonetheless, especially once the cooking and cleaning bits were squared away.

And a very special debt of gratitude to Keira, who worked nearly non-stop for five days in the run-up to the event. Northern Voice followed two major permaculture happenings in February (and another on the way), so it was some kind of intense month.

I’ll leave it at that, but I intend to return to the specific sessions over the coming weeks piece by piece. There’s no way I can do the participants justice if I try to do anything more comprehensive now. The sessions were all recorded, thank goodness. And it will be nice to get a bit of the sensation back now and then…

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Gopher #2, originally uploaded by Keira.

Yes, my home province, having already launched the first avowedly socialist government in North America, the first publicly-funded universal health care, flat land of the co-op, is taking the next natural step in its collective(ist) history.

Residents and visitors to the downtown business districts and post-secondary institutions of Saskatchewan’s four largest centres will soon be able to access the country’s largest wireless Internet network, free-of-charge. Premier Lorne Calvert and Minister responsible for Information Technology Andrew Thomson made the announcement today in Saskatoon.

Linktribution to Alec Couros.

And go Roughriders!

Update: leave it to a displaced but ancestral nonetheless flatland blogger to make an obvious comparison with the decidedly paranoid reaction from groovy Van Rock City’s finest.

And it wasn’t until I read it on Darren’s blog that my brain processed the name of this initiative as something other than an HTML glitch — remember people, when we hail this worthy effort, let’s not fail to loudly articulate the boldly-placed internal emphasis in the “Saskatchewan! Connect” project. A quick perusal of the government website reveals not only the ultra-cool appropriation of the Roughriders insignia as a URL field favicon, but that the homeland braintrust have embraced aggressive and unorthodox use of the exclamation mark as the core strategy of its marketing blitz. I’m optimistic. I think this is going to work. I really believe they will stem the population drain with their relentless use of dissonant punctuation.

Hell, I’m ready to move back (for the summers, anyway) just so I can literally pronounce the name of every one of these new Saskatchewan! Initiatives every chance I get. This is Freaking! Awesome

…soon. Like many of the attendees, I found Northern Voice to be something of an overwhelming experience. And like many, I and Keira both seem to have snagged the post-NV plague.

I will say that I concur with the many posts describing this year’s iteration as the best yet. I suspect I will be returning to a lot of the themes a great deal in the coming weeks and months. I do feel obliged to give a shout-out laden post thanking the many people who provoked, informed and amused me this past week… but I think the effort will sap what energy reserves I have left. So for now, a huge, Hee-Haw style SA-LUTE! to everyone involved.

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The Moosecamp Mashup Poster, originally uploaded by MrGluSniffer.

Jason did that nifty poster up for our session. We just blasted through it to a surprisingly packed room… hope it went well.

Nancy White and Lee LeFever are kicking it hard leading a discussion on communities right now, so time to close up my machine and listen for a while.

Tags: northernvoice, nv07

A critical correction to some wrong information in the earlier post on transit options to UBC for Northern Voice.

Thanks to Kathryn for this vital news – “The 44 does not run on weekends!”

To get to UBC on Saturday, your best bet is the 99 along Broadway. If you’re coming from downtown, you can catch the 98 south to Broadway and Granville and get the 99 west from from there. Go to www.translink.bc.ca to check out the route maps.

Again: Don’t plan on the 44 on Saturday!

Apologies to all. I am ritualistically flogging myself as soon as I finish this post.