This upcoming weekend is the 2011 incarnation of Northern Voice. I went to my first Northern Voice back in 2007 and met so many great and inspirational people. In actuality, that event was the catalyst that started me playing with WordPress and meeting some of the people that I now call my close friends. Since I lived out in Chilliwack during last year's Northern Voice I didn't get a chance to catch it all, but I swung by for an hour or so and said hello to some friends. This year I should I live a lot closer and will be there on both Friday and Saturday checking out the various sessions, and ...

I was over at Derek's blog this morning reading his article about the BC Liberal Party and their sponsorship of the Northern Voice social. Given that the BC Liberal Party was also a sponsor of WordCamp Whistler, and that I was one of the organizers, I thought I should share my thoughts on this. First, I want to point out the logistics of an event like this. Organizing WordCamp Whistler was literally two months of solid work. A few days prior to the event I was fielding well over 100 emails a day trying to keep the boat afloat, and pull everything together so that the conference would be successful. ...

Today was a good day. I woke up this morning fully refreshed thanks to the 10 or 11 hours of sleep I got last night. I basically had no plans upon waking up, but found a message on my cell phone this morning from Boris saying that people were meeting up on commercial drive for some brunch. Scott Hadfield and Matt Mullenweg I hopped in the car and headed down to Havanas on the Drive, which is a pretty funky restaurant/gallery that I've heard good things about. There I met up with about twelve or so people, most of which attended Northern Voice. Matt Mullenweg (now with a +1 from here for his battle ...

Last night while lying in bed I had the crazy idea to try and make a mosaic out of all the photos from Northern Voice. Tonight, while sitting in front of the TV, I decided to make an attempt at it. So, here is the end result. It's 40 tiles wide by 40 tiles tall, for a total of 1600 individual images. If you want to see it large, click on the image to download a huge version (approximate 9MB). ...

I've spent most of this last week thinking about blogging and Northern Voice, so tonight I'm going to unwind a bit in front of the TV and just relax. So, while I plan to write a Northern Voice summary, I'm going to hold off on that for a day or two. One of the aspects of Northern Voice I enjoy is the opportunity to take a lot of different photos in various settings. I practiced doing the odd wide-angle shot in some of the rooms, and used my 70-200mm for a few close ups of speakers. For the most part, I took a lot of the same shots I always take. But for some reason, something's been really bothering ...

I'm sitting here with John and Rebecca waiting for the Northern Voice keynote to begin. This year it's Wordpress' own Matt Mullenweg, who will be talking about blogging and Wordpress 2.5. Boris Mann and Matt Mullenweg Keynote is over. It was really entertaining and enlightening, and I thought some of the points about advertising overload with sites like Facebook were interesting. ...

Northern Voice is officially rolling out at UBC. Since today is an unconference, people are putting their ideas up on the wall for sessions that will happen during the day. I'm still waiting to here when the Internet Bootcamp and Photocamp sessions are. Megan Cole I have to finish my plan for the little talk I'm giving, so I'm chilling out on the side right now. Will drop a few more blog entries as the day goes on. Check my Flickr stream for photos as they happen. ...

Tonight was the big Northern Voice social event down at the Waldorf Hotel in East Van. I was really looking forward to attending, and it didn't disappoint in the least. I hardly ate at all beforehand, so the thought of roast pig keep me going most of the afternoon. First of all, I have to say I was the luckiest guy in the house, having been fortunate enough to make an entrance with these two fine looking women: Rebecca and Keira-Anne Unfortunate Rebecca's husband (and all around great dude) John couldn't make it - he was missed, but will be leading a podcasting session tomorrow so make sure you ...

It's here, Northern Voice 2008. Tonight is the big social down at the Tiki Lounge in East Vancouver. I'll be heading down with Rebecca, John, and Keira for some drinks and a full roast-pig. I still haven't figured out what I'm going to say at PhotoCamp, but I'll spend some time thinking about it during the day and see what I can come up with. Photo by Gary on Flickr Every camera in my house is currently dead, so I'm frantically bouncing between doing laundry and charging equipment. I went to the mall to pick out some new clothes tonight, but turns out I'm just way too picky. I've decided that ...

Yes, it's that time again -- Northern Voice, Canada's awesome personal blogging conference, is kicking off this weekend down at the University Of British Columbia. I'll be attending the whole event, starting Thursday night at the social, and finishing sometime on Saturday. Friday is of course "MooseCamp", an unconference where people come together and share ideas. I'll be spearheading a discussion on Wordpress plugins during one session, and will be giving a talk during PhotoCamp. PhotoCamp is organized and chaired by resident photo expert Kris Krug, and he has been organizing these ...

Wow, what's with this weather? It's been absolutely gorgeous this winter. I'm lucky enough to have a bedroom with basically a full-wall window view of the downtown core, and every morning the sun reflecting off buildings wakes me up. It's been rather nice having sunshine instead of the dreary rain Vancouver is known for in the winter. I went out to Joey's last night on Burrard Street to have some dinner with friends. It's your typical Earl's type restaurant with token hot girls and funky music. The food was pretty tasty though, with Cajun wings actually being served with a real hibachi type stove ...

One of the last conversations I had at Northern Voice was with Michael Klassen, and it was about how Microsoft had completely forgotten about the end-user. Sure, maybe they spent five years working hard to make a new OS that they hoped everyone would like, but the user-experience just isn't there. Which is really the prime area where Apple excels -- they listen to the end user, and make the experience simple and productive. Other companies simply want to focus on the "how" and not the "why". Having a really elegantly coded application with a crappy user interface is just a ...

Most of you that know me have undoubtedly seem me cursing at my computer furiously this past week or punching my laptop from time to time. The reason for this sudden change in behaviour stems from my recent installation of Windows Vista. Somehow, that whole process turned a pretty decent laptop into something completely unusable. So today, while trying to edit some photos at Northern Voice, I realized that I just couldn't go on using my laptop the way it was. Everything was really slow and most applications crashed from time to time (especially Photoshop). Since I'm about to leave on vacation, ...

I'm sitting in room 1005 at the Forest Sciences Center at UBC, eagerly awaiting the "User Generated Content and Activist Campaigns" session to begin. Prior to this was the keynote address by Anil Dash, which gave some great insights into the importance of blogging, and a few allusions to where blogging may go in the future. One of the most interesting part of this conference, for me at least, is a glimpse into the nature of bloggers. The other night at the social, Lee LeFever gave a presentation about his trip around the world, and one sentence that stands out in my mind from his presentation ...

Last night was the first event of the Northern Voice conference. Everyone met down at Heritage Hall on Main Street for some great food served by some local chefs here in Vancouver. The beer flowed like Vancouver rain, and people seemed to have a really great time hanging out and getting to know each other. Having been to many conferences, it was a pleasant surprise at how smoothly the events went and how social most people were. Here are some sample photos northern voice so far, along with a live shot of Photocamp: ...

Tomorrow officially marks the start of the Northern Voice 2007 activities. Northern Voice is a Vancouver based conference where web-bloggers meet up and discuss various technological and social aspects of blogging. I've heard a lot of good things about it, and Boris and his company Bryght are the main organizers for it. The main social is tomorrow night, which will be a great chance for everyone to meet each other and break the ice before the main activities begin. Friday is "Moose Camp", which is an opportunity for conference participants to gather around and form their own agenda based ...