For me, these falls into the theme of curation. Small groups that have high signal to share with each other on a peer level are much more interesting than much larger gatherings where there is a high disparity in interest/skill/expertise between participants.
I miss the 100 person Northern Voice days.
And at the same time, I hate the bullshit “curation” (because it isn’t) of TEDxVancouver. I don’t know that you can curate more than about a 100 people.
END QUOTE
My two cents :-)
Yes, small groups that can meet together in real life around common interests, skills and expertise are powerful
The tension is that you don't want to "over-curate" the people which is what Foo Camps and TED do but you also don't want to have a random group of people without any common threads or cohesion or even an overly large group of people which is what Northern Voice has become (unless you you have the network to meet up with cool people at Northern Voice and also meet new people at Northern Voice and make them part of your network to learn from and do stuff with; something that I always try to do and usually succeed only partially!)
in response to air's comment, here's a video version (select the HD version if your screen is big enough!) of the penmachine barcode which hopefully is more fun and more self-explanatory:
To me, the idea of a co-locative co-temporal automatically created without passwords and users social network aka "co-created photo and video commons" is great; not sure if that's mainstream, perhaps it will be
The App is flawed: no obvious way to browse by users, no help information, no tutorial (there is one on the website, but since this app-centric, there should be a tutorial accessible from the app!)
The App is flawed: no way to unfollow a user or at least delete a user's photos.
The App is flawed: no way to "unPost". Would be great to be able to delete your photo or video within 10 minutes of posting it.
There is no web presence. Why have a website if it doesn't have proper permanent links for each user? (is this unfriendly link my permanent link:http://color.com/s/6a0esD?)
10 second videos are cool, but 1 minute or ideally 1:30 like flickr would be great
Color is yet another social media ghetto where you can't get your stuff out with full metadata. Please follow flickr's example and provide an API that allows full metadata to be extracted along with the photos and video.
No obvious utility even to digital hipsters as evidenced by its lack of takeup; not everybody is an environment of iPhone and Android users who will try and both use this app. Color needs to promote themselves at conferences or events where lots of folks use the app (e.g. a geek conference with lots of iPhone & Android users; perhaps Northern Voice but probably not because it isn't iPhone and Android-centric) and thereby bootstrap their network. I think with the improvements above and heavy promotion at events with heavy Android and iPhone usage, it could be big, but there's no evidence that this will happen so far.
Conclusion: Great idea, D for execution. Color will not succeed but somebody else who's hungrier will take this idea and do it right eventually. A "co-locative co-temporal automatic social network" aka "co-created photo and video commons" will happen with or without Color.
Now running Drupal 7 courtesy of Richard (thanks!), who I had the privilege to work with at Bryght and Raincity Studios. Richard, like myself, has been working with Drupal since 2004 (wow, has it been that long?) and he has a deep technical knowledge of both working with, and administering Drupal sites as well as debugging and writing Drupal code and modules. And Richard is a gifted trainer & educator as I've experienced first hand watching him working with social media newbies at Northern Voice and at Drupal events helping out Drupal novices.
As Paul Weller sings, "Time Passes". I feel like yesterday was 1999 December and I had just started my Manila Blog, dreadnet.editthispage.com. I feel like it's yesterday that I first met the Northern Voice Organizers but that was back in 2004. 6 years! Incredible. Thanks for the great memories to each and every Northern Voice participant and organizer past present and future!
I was right about flickr (80000 photos in 2 flickr accounts and growing!) and blogging (Countless folks told me as late as 2003 that blogging would die and they couldn't see the ROI :-) )
I did not foresee micro-blogging and twitter and the rise of the 21st century walled gardens like Facebook. I figured that we had learned our walled garden lesson with RSS and blogging and had left walled gardens behind with AOL and Geocities!
I thought we'd have usable video calling and multi-party video conferencing and ubiquitous 10MB/s bidirectional access Canada-wide. Wrong.
I didn't foresee Apple's iPhone. I thought and I still think that Nokia could and would get software. Unfortunately it looks like the big N is pulling an IBM instead of an Apple but I remain hopeful :-) !
We are happy that people enjoyed watching Barb and I dance (our dance is the Lindy Hop but we love and admire all social dancing and dance in general) at the Northern Voice 2009 opening party at Federico's. It's always for us been about having fun with whoever we are dancing with and the music; not the steps. People ask us how we did it or they wistfully say, I'd love to do it but can't because I don't have a partner or my partner won't dance with me or I don't have time or ...
Well this blog post is to say "YES YOU CAN"!
You don't have to be musical and you don't have to be a natural born dancer. You just have to practise practise practise practise.
The Lindy hop basic step ("the swingout") is difficult. It took us two series of dance lessons and social dancing with each other and lots of other people for six months two to three times a week to "get it". Which is to say 75-100 hours.
Then before the kid was born we danced twice a week, took more dance classes went to two Lindy Hop week long dance Camps (Swingout northwest 2000 and 2002) and so after about 1000 hours we are where we are at today. Able to dance with any Lindy Hop Dancer socially. Aware of the imperfections in our technique but having fun with the music and the dance on the rare occasions when we do get out. And all of this without either of us being dancers or having been dancers in our youth (which would obviously accelerate the process a wee bit although I think Barb's musicality and my obsession with swing music and Duke Ellington's music helped a bit).
So what are you waiting for? Find the time, and get out there and dance :-) ! Or develop software or fix bicycle flats or whatever you REALLY want to do that you have been puting off! Just make the time and do it! (And thanks to our awesome swing and Lindy Hop teachers: Graeme and Lisa and Elizabeth, Tyler and Viva, JoJo, Toby and Tanya, and so many others! And thanks to those who we've had the pleasure of dancing with over the years!)
[crossposted from the Northern Voice 2008 Website]
New to Vancouver or just not into figuring out the bus system? And need to get to the NV08 Opening Party? Then join me at Blenz at 508 West Hastings (at Richards, in front of SFU Harbour Centre).
WHEN: Thursday Feb 21, 2008 at 5:15p.m.
WHERE: Blenz Coffee at 508 West Hastings (map, pictures)
BRING: $2.50 Cash fare (and another $2.50 to get back)
BUS ROUTES: One of Number 10, 20, etc. (many routes lead to the Waldorf)
Want to speak or lead a discussion? Then fill out the speaker submission form (speaker submissions close Monday December 10).
Got an idea for a topic or discussion but don't feel like speaking on it or leading a discussion? Then check out our Call for Ideas (we've seeded the list with two initial ideas: microblogging and mobile blogging but these are just examples!) and add your own idea and rate others' ideas!
I really believe this was the best Northern Voice ever. Why? The people ! The right mix of people! People of all "skill levels" with something to contribute. A diverse set of people with diverse skill sets. And a willingness to learn and humility from everybody (local or not, famous or not and we had plenty of famous and expert locals and famous and expert out of town people) to learn from each other.
No, I don't get any commission from Adobe for p*mping Lightroom, LOL! As I said at Photo Camp I kind of feel that I've grown up with it as I watched the program improve from Beta 1 to 4 to 1.0 and listened to the Podcasts and except for the lack of unsharp mask functionality, it really is a "do ALL of your digital photography workflow" for serious amateurs who shoot a lot of "giggage" and heck it seems like a lot of pros are using it too (and unlike Aperture it runs on my three year old Powerbook G4). Anything requiring more editing requires a program like PhotoShop or Elements, etc. I definitely am saving my pennies and hope to buy Lightroom at the initial offer price of $US 199.
I only wish that I had felt better so I would have taken more photos; it seems that every Northern Voice I end up being a little sick. More rest for 2008!
There was a lot of talk on workflow, something that is increasingly becoming an issue for your average digicam hobbyist. In particular, Roland Tanglao gave a presentation on Adobe Lightroom, and Adobe ought to put that boy on commission, because I bet fifty people are going to buy it. That would include me.
UPDATE: For those who are academically "challenged" like myself, you don't need high grades in school or anything academic like that. It's all about contributions, need, a high quality blog post, video blog or podcast and diversity!
According to dictionary.com, bursary is "British English"! Is this true? For those who are British English challenged, a bursary is the same as a scholarship. We've received several interesting applications already! Apply today and see you in February!
This year Northern Voice is offering six travel bursaries of CAN $500 each. The organizing committee will be awarding these bursaries based on a number of criteria, including:
* The contributions you can make to the conference * Your level of need * The quality of your submission * The diversity you might bring to Northern Voice
We’ll announce the recipients of the bursaries on February 2nd, 2007. The bursaries will be paid out via cheque mailed out to recipients or picked up on the day of the conference.
To apply, write a blog post, or record a podcast or video blog post describing why you want to come to Northern Voice. Then submit it via our travel bursaries page.
Some great news about Northern Voice 2007 (which I am one of the organizers of):
Speaker Submissions: The Deadline has been extended to December 1st as Lauren wrote. You don't have to be famous or a professional conference presenter: we're looking for both fresh and experienced voices who wish to present or chair a panel on topics related to the blog-o-sphere, videoblogging, podcasting, virtual worlds like Second life, the two way web/read write web/web 2.0, blogging 101, podcasting 101, etc. It's all about the abstract. If it's well written and topical, your chances will be much higher. Submit today!
Registration is open now! Pre-register and save $10. That's right it's only $30 for a single day and $50 for both days as opposed to $40 for one day and $60 for both days at the door. I bet we'll sell out like last year so pre-registration is recommended. Register now!
If you are on the wait list, don't despair, being a free conference with a suggested $20 donation, there's always a few people who don't show up.
If you are on the fence, sign up on the wait list! Looks like there's going to be some great sessions about podcasting, Drupal, Rails, mobile phones and devices, a PhotoCamp led by Kris Krug to reprise his fantastic MooseCampPhotoCamp (from NorthernVoice 2006), non profit technology and many other topics!
I think Jon is onto something. Mesh sounded great (could people blog more podcasts and videoblogs of the conference please? That's it, my goal will be to make sure that Northern Voice 2007 is 100% podcasted and videoblogged at decent quality, sorry Tim but not everybody can do awesome HD video for everything) but we are missing the common Web 2.0 thread that "meshes" everything together which I think lies somewhere in open source, ubiquitous inexpensive broadband (fixed today and mobile tomorrow), RSS, people (not just white male Californians, but women, Canadians, Indians, Filipinos :-) , etc.) and "Silicon Valley everywhere" (including Vancouver in my biased opinion with great startups like sxip, Dabble DB, eqo, etc.)
There was lots of good content and obviously some great energy. I'm sure the successes of the show were a happy mix of good planning and putting everyone together to share and feed off each other. I definitely learned a lot, but for someone who is on a steady diet of VoIP and telecom conferences like VON, Internet Telephony and Globalcomm, this is a different world in many ways. Didn't hear much talk about VoIP or podcasting or SIP - stuff like that. But that's ok - Web 2.0 is about so many things.
And that's where the challenge lies for me. A lot of great perspectives were put forward at Mesh - both from the speakers and the attendees. However, there wasn't a lot of connecting the dots - maybe by design - but I'm left with the feeling that for as much as I learned, I still don't have a sense how these things fit together.
This actually brings me back again to the Mesh logo. You can't help but be drawn into that image and the energy it seems to radiate - which is exactly what happened at the show - so, kudos for the logo designers. The energy was there alright, but like the logo, I didn't really feel that all the strands - yellow, blue, green, etc. - connected. They're oscillating around each other, and bumping into each other a lot, but never really intersecting or truly meshing into a unified form. At the end of the day, much like Earth at Creation, I'd like to see this humming mass of energy and chaos sort itself out and unravel nicely like a ball of yarn.
My conclusion is that this did not happen, and I'm concerned that for some, the conference was just a blur, like this....
A plea for somebody in Toronto: organize a Bar Camp Toronto (should be easy given the success of TorCamp and DemoCamp4, maybe call it CanadaCamp and encourage people from Vancouver and the East Coast to converge in Toronto; I wish I had time to help organize this but other than throwing out crazy ideas I don't!) before or after the Toronto Web 2.0 conference at a place with lots of rooms, central location and good WiFi and convince some West Coast people like the following to lead sessions (the following short list off the top of my head shows omits many cool folks apologies in advance):
Boris Mann - one my Bryght partners - could lead sessions on starting and running an open source company, open source product development and evangelism since he is Drupal evangelist #1 in my book. Boris could also be a session leader on Jabber, VoIP and web application platforms.
Avi Bryant and Andrew Catton of Dabble DB could lead a session on Smalltalk and why it's relevant to Web 2.0 as well as why doing things differently makes sense
Dave Sifry (not a Vancouverite person yay!) could do a leadership "hack" session - the one at Moosecamp was fantastic from what I could tell
Our Web 2.0 Toronto Conference date and location are set. Mark May 8 and 9, 2006 at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto in your calendar. The keynotes and panels are shaping up nicely, and we will have a site up by mid-March with all the details.
where the author gives me permission to use his/her photos and distribute the movie with the photos for non commercial purposes on blip.tv, You Tube, Google Video, etc.
Looking forward to seeing you at MooseCamp and making a cool movie out of your cool photos!
