layout: post title: Northern Voice 2008 Wrap created: 1203855334 categories:

• northern voice
• Northern Voice 2008
• nv08
• CaseCamp
• CaseCampVancouver3
• Music Directions
• Invoke Media
• Vancouver
• Social Media

Northern Voice 2008 is wrapped. Exhilarating. Fun. New faces. Old faces. Good discussions. Sore throat. Vitamin C. A bit too much beer. People. Talking. PEOPLE.

Been a long couple of days starting way back on Wednesday night with the launch of Music Direction supported by Invoke Media and then CaseCampVancouver3.

The pic is Megan Cole as captured by Chris Heuer, leading a social media mecca. Inspiring.

Thursday was work, tons of stuff on the go, but day flew by and then off to the tiki-themed kick off party. Roast pig! The blogger "open mic" was AMAZING. So many great writers. Big thanks to Airdrie for organizing this, and to both of the Lipstick and Lipgloss gals for the fantastic door prizes of MAC cosmetics. Northern Voice: I go for the skincare products. I really do have to make it back to the Waldorf and their tiki awesomeness. Opa along for the ride, is chaperoned by some wonderful ladies.

Friday was my birthday (33!) -- started it off with a free breakfast at Denny's with my dad, right across from my apartment. Been living here for 4 years and that's my first time in there :P

I get in, hand out sheriff badges to the volunteers, and start playing with the grid. Stand on a chair and let peeps know how the day is going to go, someone leaks the birthday and I end up with a 100 person strong happy birthday song. Phone is beeping all day with Facebook wall posts for birthday. Thanks everyone, nice way to spend a birthday :P Did I go to sessions today? I did my usual man the front booth and talked to people all over the place. Beautiful, beautiful sunny day.

Head down to Flux Bistro for some eats before my birthday get together at the Lamplighter. Beginning of too much beer, then stop in at Gallery Gachet, too. Home. Hydration and Vitamin C, feeling no pain.

4 hours sleep. Up at 6:30am. Roll out the door, grab the bus, I'm the first person outside the doors. Mmmmm...chocolate croissant plus coffee. Prep for morning intro to everyone, run around doing organizer type things. Do the morning intro, goes reasonably well and I hand it over to Matt. Am surprised when he goes into open source as the latter half of his presentation. Open source from code to processes, government. Yes! Very, very inspiring (audio).

Got the expert expert">pull booth up and running, Darren and Julie via video in Morocco. Good to see them, feels a bit empty here without them holding down the fort with us. Booth was tough, sessions were well attended, so not lots of people asking questions. Maybe submit ahead of time next time? Had a good time talking Twemes and Jaiku with Voxant peeps. Yeah, it's too complicated. Let's set up Facebook mobile instead. Set up VictoriaRevay.com, starting fiddling with Image module for Drupal 6 for someone but called away to solve something or other.

Caught some time with Marc Canter. I don't know which one of us mellowed, but it kinda seems like we have. Or maybe we just went through a bunch of the same stuff and have ended up at the same place. He's still building his heart out.

Talked to Dick about VEF and more tech stuff locally, along with leaning over watching the Flock guys demo to Marc and Dick. Interesting stuff there -- bunch of folks in Victoria. Good excuse to go over and visit, get DemoCampVictoria fired up.

Ended up doing a session because of missing Net Neutrality presenter winging in from London. Think we'll do that one later next week at WorkSpace? Tod helped wiki-fy a big feedback session into a Northern Northern">pull Voice Post Mortem. Stayed in the room to intro the Facebook 101 session. Still so much to work through with that. Open web wins, need to remember that, everything else is noise over the long term (ref. Matt's keynote).

Saw dad off to his Bowen Film stuff. Didn't get much chance to spend real time with Opa, but lots of people were happy to meet him and he had a good time. Took pictures with my camera the whole time, I have a ton to sort through and upload tomorrow.

End of day thanks and wrap up. Gave out posters, t-shirts, Flock bags. Did I mention Flock has some cool stuff going for it (again)?

Figured out a dinner strategy so Lance could meet Matt M. Went to Susie and Travis' with a bunch of people first to hang out, then cabbed to restaurant.

Chris Heuer and Kristie Wells are SO AWESOME. Damn it, people, we need some frickin' teleporters or everyone just move to Vancouver, kthxbye! Marc Canter picks out dinner for us all at Sun Sui Wah ... Matt got an awesome picture of the giant Alaska King Crab. Rob and girlfriend join us too and then give me and Matt a ride back to Susie and Travis'. Lots of good talk about open source and collab and ecosystems and such (my WDN08 presentation we talked about, still needs audio to make sense).

Beer. Tales of the early days of Chrispitality escapades. He's moving to Cairo, hook him up with the Drupal peeps there. Played some Danger Wii Tennis. Drive home from James and Monique. Blogging here. Still keyed up. Need to sleep, gotta catch brunch tomorrow...