Blogging, Friendship and Weekend Recap

I officially woke up this morning sometime around 10am, quickly packed my things and headed down to the airport for my flight back home. Somewhere around 30,000 feet, a few minutes out of Toronto, I realized that I didn’t really have anything to read, my iPod was basically dead, and I had seen all the movies on the in-flight entertainment. So I did what I do quite often on planes — stared blindly at the GPS indicator of where the plane is, and did some thinking.

The whole weekend was pretty amazing. I spent most of the last few weeks doing some late night iChats with Dale, so it was great to finally meet him and his girlfriend in person. Watching Matt’s concert with Dale, Sara, Raymi, Patrick, and Phil from backstage was a really special experience, especially given the content of the album, the people that were there, and the importance of Massey Hall.

[1]Massey Hall, waiting for the first encore

While flying at 37,000 feet, I suddenly realized that all the fun I had during the weekend, along with every new friend I made or hug I gave or received, was basically a direct result of blogging. And that’s a pretty amazing realization really, given that I consider myself a social person, and yet I often find it difficult to meet new people given the constraints of working life. Even the friends I hang out with most of the time in Vancouver only came about due to a chance encounter at a blogging conference back in February.

On Saturday afternoon, after waking up slowly, Dale and I went and had coffee with Matt, and then spent the rest of the afternoon just bumming around the hotel watching TV. Tony swung by not long after, and we spent the next few hours just chatting about technology, blogging, life, women, iPods — pretty much everything under the sun. Dale had to get up early, so Tony and I grabbed a cab and headed down to the karaoke bar. There we met up with Raymi, Phil, Chad, and eventually Christie. I’ve always been a fairly outgoing person, and I always love meeting new people, especially given that I frequent everyone’s blogs from time to time. It was a real pleasure turning my computer on at home in Vancouver here, and seeing 15 or so emails waiting for me, all related to the good times we all had this weekend.

[2]Dale, Mac'in, photo by Duane Storey [5] [3]
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License [6] [4]Dale Mugford, unfucking my Mac

The one part of the Northern Voice blogging conference that really amazed me (and if you google for it, you might find me commenting on this somewhere in cyberspace) — most people greeted each other with hugs, even those people who had never met before. For the most part, nearly every blogger I’ve ever met has been genuine, and has had a really big heart (as well as fairly active liver), including the ones I met on this trip. Given that I’m a guy that’s fairly disenchanted with the current state of most personal relationships, and that it’s fairly difficult (in my opinion) to meet quality people in Vancouver without any sort of agenda, it’s definitely refreshing meeting good-natured people that are sincere and friendly right out of the gate.

IMG_0270.JPG, photo by Duane Storey [5] [3]
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License [6] [4]Christie and Raymi, sort of hugging

I’ve now attended two BLOGSLAYERS (which is the gathering formerly known as blogstock), one of which was local, and this last one which probably cost on the order of $800 or so to attend, once you factor in the hotel and the airfare. Was it worth it?

Well let’s see — I danced in a karaoke bar, shared a few war stories, broke a styrofoam eyeball with my ass, played with leopard, had some great laughs, watched hockey with an american, split some pretty decent nachos, hugged a few old friends, and even managed to sneak in a few hugs with some cool new ones. I also got to watch a friend perform an amazing show along with two encores to a sold out crowd in Massey’s Hall that spent a good deal of the last half hour on their feet, all backstage next to a cool guy I’ve only seen through the dim glow of my computer monitor this last year.

So yeah, it was worth it. I’m definitely looking forward to the next BLOGSLAYER, wherever it is.

And for your viewing pleasure, mostly just to share with everyone how pumped the crowd was, here’s a small video I took in Massey.

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