Northern Voice 2010: Day Blog

I have just checked into the Northern Voice conference at the Life Sciences Centre at UBC. Each year this blogging conference (probably the largest of its kind in Canada) features workshops and sessions about personal blogging and social media topics.

Photo credit: Tinfoiling on Flickr

I have been attending for the last four years and each time I cover the event in a different way. I probably won’t be liveblogging all of the sessions I attend however here are a few that I am looking forward to today:

I’ll be updating this post throughout the day and will pull in the Twitter feed from the conference using the tag #nv10.

Update Northern Voice is known for its conference t-shirts that read, “Bloggable”. Today we have the youngest attendee ever (and probably the cutest) sporting his own conference tee.

Update After a welcome from Darren Barefoot and sponsor shout outs from Julie Szabo we’re onto the keynote by Bryan Alexander.

The keynote is engaging and captivating so I won’t be liveblogging it (I’d like to pay closer attention). However, every talk today is being recorded on video and will be available for viewing later on. I’ll post links here when available.

Sans PowerPoint slides for his talk, Bryan immediately points out the giant chicken in the audience (yes, there’s a giant chicken mascot sitting here). He references a tweet posted a little while ago: @BryanAlexander I’m going to argue for the importance of mystery in digital storytelling and social networking, in a few minutes #nv10.

Bryan is quoting a few social media fear-mongering articles including one from Slate that says when you’re online, “You’re neglecting the people around you, sometimes at the risk of killing them…” This garners chuckles from around the room. Do you blame the post office for a bad letter? Do you blame the phone company for a distressing call? How distracted are we by social media – and is this a a bad thing? How important is design?… On Twitter people are using words such as “spellbound” and “wizardry” to describe Bryan and his talk – it was amazing.

Update I’m hanging out in the atrium at Northern Voice uploading photos and catching up with friends (which is also a great part of NV).

Update I’ve finally made it to a few sessions at Northern Voice including the one about Copyright featuring Martha Rans & Hart Snider. Cut and Paste is an online movie remix project by Hart Snider, here’s a clip of his:

The essence of the work reminds me of RIP: A Remix Manifesto by Brett Gaylor.

While this is going on I hear Dave Olson is joining co-presenter Monica Hamburg by video in a moment for their talk about Finding Your Voice online.

Update Rachel Smith took some visual notes of the talks she attended, here’s her graphic for the keynote:

Photo credit: Rachel Smith on Flickr

Update Here are some links featuring thoughts on Day One.

Update On to Day Two…