The gig is up… the spaces are set, registration is full, the wi-fi works, the keynote speakers are kicking ass, my t-shirt fits…
I’m not much of a conference blogger. Judging by the amount of keyboard wrestling and digicam snapping that’s going on, I don’t think the event will lack for coverage.
Still in the first session, but a ton of photos already tagged with “northernvoice” in Flickr, some of them quite good:
Earlier today I was asked to appear on tomorrow’s broadcast of CBC Vancouver’s The Early Edition to talk about the Northern Voice weblog conference.
Thankfully, it won’t all be up to me — Darren Barefoot will also be in the studio (this is getting to be old hat for him).
If you happen to be awake between 6:45 and 7:00 AM PST Friday morning (I’m not at all sure I will be), and you wish to hear the carnage this should be the Windows Media Player live feed for the station.
Update: I think the interview went OK, though my attempt to record it didn’t…
Update 2: Thankfully, Darren had his act together. The file:
One of the cooler and more intimidating elements of the upcoming Northern Voice weblog conference is that being slated to moderate a panel on “The Blogger as Citizen Journalist.” It’s a notion that has dominated much of the discourse around weblogs in recent years… and as I’ve been known to complain, the subject generates a considerable amount of webloggaphobic stupidity in the discourse concerning personal publishing.
And while in many respects the mainstream media have begun to learn from and adapt to the rise of weblogs, the relationship is still often antagonistic. As Dan Gillmor recently observed: “This is a time when professionals and citizen journalists should be finding common ground, or at least listening to each other with growing respect. Instead, I fear, the gulf is growing.”
Lots to chew on. Thankfully, we have four amazing panelists to bash the topic around:
* Stowe Boyd, President/COO of Corante (host to an array of essential weblogs), “a well-known media subversive, and an internationally recognized authority on real-time, collaborative and social technologies.” I’ve enjoyed his string of posts on the myth of objectivity and hope he touches on those themes Saturday.
* Sean Holman is the driving force behind Public Eye Online, which is a very lively ongoing skewering of British Columbia’s provincial political scene, covering all sorts of angles I never see anywhere else. He’s indicated that he’ll be focusing on the realities of the actual practice of citizen journalism.
* I remember reading Jeff MacIntyre’s fine profile of Don DeLillo back when it first appeared in Salon. Though his weblog is currently in hibernation, he’s used it effectively to complement his dizzyingly active freelance writing career. I’m especially pleased to have Jeff along because he introduced me to the other organizers of the conference, and also because he has led public discussions on this topic before.
* A late addition (thanks to Seb Paquet) is Hossein “Hoder” Derakhshan, an Iranian now living in Toronto who maintains blogs in both English and Persian. Hoder has justifiably received considerable attention for his efforts in This Magazine and BlogsCanada, and elsewhere…
Given the formidable array of panelists, my style of moderation will definitely tilt toward “shut up and stay out of the way”…
BTW, pre-conference registration for $20 ends today… It is also my understanding that we are near full, so while ‘day-of’ registration should be available at the door ($30), there’s no guarantee spaces will be open.
Those of you who responded to my last not-quite-cryptic references in my last posting were correct… as of last Friday it appears that my family are now home debtors. We move at the end of May. I never knew that a lifetime of financial obligation could feel so liberating.
On Sunday I got some reinforcement on the upside of our decision. Protesting plans for a major expansion of a freeway into East Vancouver, a road hockey game blocking Commercial Drive to automobiles (but not to buses) was staged. “Roads are for hockey” proclaimed one sign, “People 1, Cars 0” another. It struck me as a peculiarly East Van sort of event, and the thought that we had just set down deeper roots in the neighborhood was satisfying. I love this place, don’t want to leave, and now it seems more likely that we won’t have to.
It’s already been blogged by <a title=”‘Arcy Norman Dot Net
Anyone who has had the misfortune of talking music or popular culture with me the past few years has undoubtedly been subjected to my WFMU rant… This legendary freeform radio station, which I remember reading about with yearning growing up in Saskatchewan in my dogeared copy of Radiotext(e), not only streams in multiple formats 24/7, it also archives every show, which means you can summon up the groove of any of their astonishing DJs covering a range of genres and moods in glorious three hour chunks any time you want it… It’s my favorite way to listen to music, and one show or other plays constantly at our place.
So imagine my delight to learn that the station is now maintaining WFMU’s Beware of the Blog, a predictably unpredictable and eclectic collection of postings and sounds. A cursory spin through the first few weeks of activity has already turned up the following nuggets:
* Two dozen John Bonham drum fills, not only a motherlode for the mashup artist, but undoubtedly of tremendous educational value to any aspiring drummer (if only I had tracks like these during the countless hours I spent with headphones duct-taped to my skull trying to play along to “In My Time of Dying”) or bassist. The posting also links to the tremendous Mad Bunny Sad Bunny Led Zep Re-Mix.
* The scariest album cover in DJ Mike Lupica’s collection.
* MP3s of German versions of ‘Pet Clark’s’ Downtown and the Beach Boys’ Ganz Allein (In My Room).
* A link to the awe-inspiring Other Minds Archive.
* A whack of MP3s from 50s/60s singing science records.
On another front, the station — in addition to hosting its monthly collection of sonic stimulants unique to WFMU — has also moved into podcasting in a big way. Though copyright issues prevent them from casting most of their music shows, there’s some tasty stuff being pushed out: Audio Kitchen with the Professor (reality radio, homemade and amateur recordings), The Speakeasy with Dorian (guests from the arts, sciences, the media, and more), Thomas Edison’s Attic (artifacts dating from 1888 through 1929) and Downtown Soulville with Mr. Fine Wine (1 hour; 23 or 24 soul 45’s).
If I harboured doubts about the coolness cache of weblogs and podcasting…
Yesterday I did my near-standard-but-never-smooth weblog and wiki song, dance and fire-eating routine for the BCCampus Online Community.
The event was to be delivered via Breeze Live, a nifty but new technology to me. The prospect of severe meltdown was sufficient for me to take a number of unprecedented precautions, including having my presentation materials completed a full day ahead of the event (you should be amazed). I also set my alarm clock an hour earlier (and hit the snooze bar three times less) than normal so I could log into the system well beforehand and make sure things were running smoothly.
Alas… as I expected, my Mac and the system did not hit it off at all well, so I snagged one of the Office’s PC laptops and gave it a try. Much wrangling with the alien Windows OS later, I encountered similar problems. Undeterred, but with launch time for the event counting down, I grabbed another laptop — same deal. I tried multiple browsers, jumping back and forth between the two borrowed machines with no success, until the allotted hour was upon me.
In desperation, I ran out into the large shared portion of the Office and demanded that someone, anyone, relinquish one of their desktop PCs. I continued to have problems connecting with the presentation space, at which point I threw off my headphones, screamed obscenities at the top of my lungs (hope my microphone connection with BCCampus was off), and did my utmost to channel the energy of a toddler who has skipped naptime and lunch and is now being denied ice cream.
The clock now ten minutes past the announced start time, with operators and a dwindling stock of participants standing by, I connected yet again from the hijacked desktop. This time the connection seemed to stick, and with a quick intro from facilitator Paul Stacey away we went, ready — not.
Due to circumstances that were undoubtedly well within my control, the presentation was a horror show on our end. My co-presenter Michelle Chua and I ended up sharing a microphone and cranking up the speakers so we could both hear what was going on. The result was a lot of fumbling between us when we switched up our bits, and some horrific echo of Paul’s questions and comments. And given my scrambled state of mind, it was definitely not my strongest performance (especially at the beginning).
There is an archived public copy of the debacle, which normally I would bury in a very deep virtual hole. But against the interests of my self-image I pass the mayhem on to you, for three reasons:
* Michelle and Paul were both great, and there were some good questions texted in from the remote participants.
* I think this is a laudable effort to engage the local community from BCCampus, and worth a plug. (I was also grateful for the chance to flog our efforts, and to publicise the Northern Voice weblog conference.)
* The sheer ineptitude of my performance will undoubtedly provide endless schadenfreude to my enemies, who are legion.
If I had it to do over again I would
Consider the day’s events:
The Register posts an interview with a link spammer, regaling us with tales of the big money to be made pushing PPC (pills, porn, casinos), the many technical advantages spammers enjoy, and their near-limitless prospects for continued success. Many illuminating bits of strategy and tough-minded wisdom:
Darwin would understand. Link spamming, with its abuse of common resources, turns out the most efficient, just as cutting down virgin Indonesian and Amazonian rain forest is the most efficient way for loggers there to get wood. If it raises the global temperature of the blogging community, well, that’s life on planet internet, isn’t it?
Why not just buy a Google ad, Sam? “You don’t get anything like the same click-through ratio. Jakob Nielsen’s studies and my own show you get six or seven times more click-throughs from ‘organic’ search results. And pay-per-click on search engines costs money! It can be
Whoa Nellie… I keep saying I’m going to slow things down, that time taken out of the hurly-burly for reflection can only improve my performance… but I seem incapable of extricating myself from the day-to-day.
I had hoped to write blog posts on:
* A couple of inspiring dispatches from Lawrence Lessig (here and here) from the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre.
* Alan’s post about a collaborative aerial map of Vancouver in Flickr.
* The integration of Open Learning Support with Connexions, and other OLS news…
* A couple of wonderful wiki-related bits. Caffeinated and Unstrung is a listing of free wireless cafes in Vancouver (a near-perfect exploitation of the wiki form); and Jon Udell’s groovalicious overview of the evolution of a Wikipedia entry, in this case the notorious Heavy metal umlaut.
* Speaking of which, have you seen Heavy Metal Parking Lot? (You need a strong stomach — there’s a severe content warning on this baby.)
* More cringe-inducing, barely believable video.
I’d also like to share what it’s like to compress two hours of content into five minutes, and to be gonged off the stage while delivering a conference keynote. And I’m still working on the Waterworld of conference weblog postings — a tale of depravity, epiphany, deep fried food and fast online living which in its current draft has everything in it but narrative and a point.
Oh, how I’d like to take a couple hours to explore and deplore all of this… but I am on tap to present a webcast tomorrow which requires me to wedge my materials into (UUGGGHHHH) the dreaded PowerPoint format. The technical status of our weblog hosting environment might charitably be described as a mess, just as requests for new accounts are suddenly going through the roof. Still catching up on the email I neglected last week while traveling, and it just keeps on coming in. And I’ve been pulled into two meetings today for reasons I do not begin to understand, but which I am apparently in no position to refuse.
None of it tragic, much of it most cool. But it does bring to mind Chinese curses about living in interesting times.
And begs the question of why I am typing pointless verbiage into a Movable Type text box…
I’m a lucky, dirty dog.
The fabulous city of New Orleans (think Montreal crossed with Sodom and Gomorrah — but with way better food and music) for this year’s NLII Annual Meeting.
I just gave my presentation — a fairly standard wiki overview, at least intended as one — which was elevated by a tremendous room. A clear majority raised their hands when asked if they had worked with wikis before. I had barely gotten through my introductory spiel when the comments and questions started flying…
Some of the questions were the ones that always get asked. Like, “how can we trust what’s on a wiki?” Which is deceptively tricky — epistemologists were bashing around variations on that one for a long time before wikis happened. One attendee asked if I was concerned about student plagiarism… I replied that I was, which prompted a follow-up observation that I was inconsistent, given my previous assertions on the nature of open space composition. To which I could only shrug, and agree. It was no great rhetorical defeat — I could spend days on end cataloguing things I believe or care about that contradict one another.
Which might be a worthwhile exercise now that I think about it.
Most of the audience input was outstanding… with a particularly great stretch that developed out of the contrast between discussion boards and wikis.
I was lucky enough to have a couple ringers in the crowd — I’d met Steve Greenlaw the night before, and he did a fine job of explaining how his course wiki is supporting a co-constructed seminar research process. And I was able to call on Gardner Campbell to briefly outline his thinking on the implicit philosophical framework of Wikipedia…
So my challenge was less to present than to ride the wave, and give the many people who wanted to speak the space to do so without the whole thing going off the rails. It was a fun problem to have — it reminded me of the days I enjoyed most as a classroom teacher — and the end result was certainly more interesting than it would have been had I talked nonstop through the session.
I’ve seen a couple other good presentations so far — an illuminating student panel, and I’m blogging through this ECAR overview of a study on student attitudes to teaching and technology that will be worth looking at — but as usual the real action happens outside the event itself. So far the most compelling recurring conversational theme seems to have something to do with the power of emotionally connecting with intellectual work — or to put it more honestly having the courage and ability to fall in love with an idea. But I’m still processing that.
And damn, I’m still working on a weblog post about last year’s NLII meeting. Bad, crazy, dirty dog.
Lucky dog.
