Final Thoughts on Northern Voice

So, I've looked at my notes and collected my thoughts from Northern Voice. And pretty much this is just a literal collection of the notes that I took (well, the interesting parts anyway), unprocessed*. Sort of a glimpse into the mind of Bethy at a blogging conference - I'm sort of using my blog as a "brain dump" (and a record of my notes should I want to go back and re-visit them) so feel free to skip this post if you find it less than interesting....

Day 1 was "Moosecamp" - the unconference.

At the end of the session called "Mashups for Nonprogrammers," I made myself the following note:

Wow, this session is going way fast - lots of info in a short amount of time. I'll have to check out these sites** to see what they actually do, because I can't really follow at this rapid speed.

That was my first indication at the conference that I'm a veritable neophyte in the ways of computers.

At "Photocamp" and "Videocamp" I just made a bunch of notes of technical stuff that the pros were suggesting for taking better pics/videos for the web. Nothing really interesting enough to blog about***, but definitely useful stuff for me to use. Highlights included the fact that someone had a waterproof digital camera and someone else had a shiny red camera that takes 8 photos at the same time. Also, the idea of having a pocket camera that you always have with you was stressed... if you don't have the camera, you don't get the shot.****

The "Vancouver Transit Camp" session was quite interesting - the presenters talked about a barcamp event held in Toronto where the community of transit users came together to collaborate on ideas for a new website****. The idea was to start discussing the idea of having a "Vancouver Transit Camp," or, as someone pointed out, a "Greater Vancouver Transit Camp," as, unlike in T.O., Translink is responsible for transit in the GVRD, not just Vancouver proper. It seemed to me that a key point that seemed to come out of the session was that Vancouver is not Toronto, so a transit camp here would probably evolve into quite a different event than Toronto Transit Camp.

"Stats: The Forbidden Love", IMHO, should win the "best title of any session I attended at Moosecamp" prize, if there were such a prize. Which there was not. But I digress. This session was a discussion on how we don't need to be ashamed of our obsession with how many people are reading are blog, and when, and from where, and how they found us, and... well, you get the point. The group was a lively bunch and I got a learned about a whole bunch of different stat counters I can try out.

"Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for Blogs" provided me with some tips for, not surprisingly, optimizing my blog for search engines. As well, I learned that Google used the concept from academics where how many times you are cited by other authors determines your reputation (i.e., searches are based on who is linking to whom and how often).

Other random thoughts from Day 1 that I felt it necessary to record in my notes:

everyone here seems to be using a mac. either that or writing in a notebook.. like with a pen. on paper.

also, there are a lot of people here using a lot of words (or more often, acronyms) that i totally don't know. i feel like the least techy person here.

Onto Day 2... the more formal conferency day. First up was an interesting keynote talk from Anil Dash, whose job title of Chief Evangelist at six apart tends to be problematic at Customs.

Then I went to "Blogging 101," where I could actually keep up with what was being talked about, what with being a techy neophyte and all.

"How to be a Citizen Journalist" was a cool session on what journalism is and what makes something "news." I learned that "reporting" requires you to (1) gather information, (2) filter it, and (3) distribute/publish. Missing any of these keys steps = you are not a reporter (you are either a plagiarist (or writing opinion pieces) (missing #1), a transcriber (missing #2) or a snoop (missing #3). Also cool: with the "Access to Information Act" - Canadian citizens/permanent resident has the right to information for any record under the control of the federal government (and there are provincial equivalents of this act). It only costs you a stamp (and maybe a photocopy fee). And they have to tell you. And they have to do it within a certain time period. Cool. Also cool to know: you can buy a microphone that plugs into your iPod and use it as a recording device, should you ever need to. Also discussed, and echoing what was discussed at a previous session: there are 2 rules of photography - (1) have your camera, and (2) take the picture *****. As well, if anyone is interested in Canadian law as it pertains to photography (like, hmmm... I wonder if I can legally post that pic I snapped of that random at the conference/party/protest/change room the other night), check out ambientlight.ca/laws.shtml. Apparently it has a lot to do with whether you can have a "reasonable right of expectation of privacy"... for example, if you are at blogging conference, it's pretty fair to say you do not have a "reasonable right of expectation of privacy" and so someone can take your picture and post it... if you are in the change room at the gym, however, most reasonable people would expect some privacy.

The "Legal Rights & Liabilities of Bloggers" session taught us all about such fun stuff as defamation, copyright infringement and the like. Good times.

I found the "Why Do We Blog" session to be particularly interesting... there was a presentation by Alex Waterhouse-Hayward on why he blogs and then Darren Barefoot showed the results on the survey he conducted that I told y'all about a while back. And I have to include this photo montage thingy of his presentation, taken by leftantler and posted on Flickr, 'cuz it's just too cool for words.



And the last session of the day was a lively panel discussion about "Online Dating," which drew a big crowd and generated lots of Q&A. And the woman who recruited me to her Ph.D. research study was able to recruit more subjects at this talk, so that was cool.

My random thoughts on Day 2 that I felt it necessary to record in my notes:

There is a lot of multi-tasking going on here. People uploading to Flickr, checking out Flickr, writing posts, etc. while listening to the keynote. Only at blogging conference would that not seem rude!

I <3 technical difficulties at techie conferences. Blue screen of death on the projector, rather than the slides that the presenter probably spent a long time working on.

Why is everyone using the word "granular" all of the sudden? They are using it to mean like "very subtle differences," which I suppose the word "granular" does invoke, but I've only heard it in the last, say, 4 days, but I've heard it about 70 times over those 4 days.

Whew, that was a super long post. Did anyone actually read it? 25 points to anyone who claims they actually read the whole thing.

*I know I promised processing. But I also promised Jorge that I would start using his Footnotz soon. Just goes to show that you shouldn't believe everything you read.

**these sites = all the sites that they were talking about... which have all been added to the wiki for the sessions, so follow the link "Mashups for Nonprogrammers" if you are interested.

**But apparently the fact that I'm not going to blog about it is interesting enough for me to blog about.

***as I discovered, much to my dismay, at this Vancouver Giants game!

****apparently the TTC currently has an atrocious website and the transit users were like, "hell, we can make a better site than that with our eyes closed!"

*****of course, as learned on my run yesterday, "bring your camera" implies that you should have your memory card in your camera. So, for example, if you take your camera on your run because you know you are going to run by a cool sign that you want a photograph of, it really sucks if you carry your camera there and then can't take the pic 'cuz you left your memory card in your jump drive on your desk and so you carry your camera for 10 friggin' kilometers and can't take any pictures. I'm just saying.