Webnames.ca Staff
Northern Voice 2008, Canada’s personal blogging and social media conference has come and gone, and for me it was a wonderful experience. This was Webnames,ca’s second time sponsoring the event and three members of our Customer Support group attended. Over the two days of the conference I met a number of great people, as well as started my own blog. Here are some of my personal observations and experiences of this “unconference”.
I never thought I’d have my own blog, but the conference was so informative, and everyone I spoke to were so encouraging and supportive that I felt compelled to start a blog. I even won a poster during the wrap up session for having the newest blog!
For those that don’t know, Northern Voice is a yearly (at least so far) conference that is all about blogging and pod casting. The conference is a two day affair, with a few parties spread through out the weekend. The parties were a lot of fun just because of the people in attendance. It’s not every day you get to hang out with a room full of like minded geeks and technophiles.
I actually attended every day of the conference, including the opening party. I have to say the opening party was a lot of fun, but it didn’t start out that way …but more on that a little later
The party was held at the “Grove Pub” at the Waldorf Hotel in Vancouver. I was surprised by the location of the hotel but once I got inside I knew it would be the perfect venue. The “Grove” is an awesome Tiki themed watering hole that is part of the Waldorf Hotel. Thanks to all of the photo-bloggers in attendance, there are many pictures of this event on Flickr. Just search Flickr for “nv08”, this is the tag used by everyone who posted images from Northern Voice.
As I hinted earlier, the opening party wasn’t really exactly fun at first. When I first arrived at the Waldorf Hotel, and checked into the conference, got my lanyard and picked up my schwag, then it was off to find some sort of drink, because it’s never a party without at least one drink. I actually arrived at the party fairly early, so when I got there the place was almost empty. I sat down at a table, and just quietly drank my beer as a surveyed the surroundings, and watched the room start to fill up.
As I continued to sit there all by myself, I was spotted by Jeffrey Keefer (silenceandvoice.com). I imagine he thought the same as me, that I sort of looked out of place all by myself. So lucky for me I was invited to join him and some other bloggers including Robin Yap (blog.robinyap.ca) and Arjun Singh (arjunsingh.typepad.com).
After the opening festivities, it was time for the MooseCamp “un-conference’ to begin. The MooseCamp happened on Friday, and was a mix of a sort of boot camp for new bloggers, and open discussions decided upon by the attendee’s. It was (in my opinion) the best part of the conference. I attended most of the boot camp sessions, as since I decided to start my own blog, I thought it would be good to learn from the pros.
For a bit more detailed report of the discussions I attended, you can check out my own personal blog at http://www.maxmorin.ca. Day two was the formal conference; it was much more structured, and was less about how to blog and more about the tools used to blog and blogging in general.
Unfortunately, I missed the keynote on Saturday on account of getting lost on the UBC Campus; it’s a very large and easy to get lost in campus. I arrived at the UBC Forest Science building around10:10 AM, about 5 minutes before the keynote ended. I wasn’t too ruffled however, as the discussion I was most interested in attending – “Network Neutrality” – was scheduled for after lunch. Unfortunately the session never got off the ground, because Jason Roks, the presenter was stuck in London due to a delayed flight. That’s OK however, according to one of the event organizers the discussion may take place at a later date for those of us lucky enough to live or be in Vancouver after the conference.
Well that’s all from Northern Voice, as mentioned if you want to read some more detailed posts about what I actually did at Northern Voice, feel free to check out my new personal blog. It’s still very new, and not exactly what I would call well designed, but it lets me get my voice out there, and right now that’s all I care about.
Blogs to check-out:
Jeffrey Keefer – http://silenceandvoice.com
Robin Yap – http://blog.robinyap.com
Arjun Singh – http://arjunsingh.typepad.com
Max Morin – http://www.maxmorin.ca