[collage by Jen]

I can’t call this a Northern Voice wrap-up post or summation… those terms imply that the experience is something that can be wrapped up, that what I learned can be effectively summarized, and that what I feel isn’t an ongoing sense of transformation and revelation. None of those are true.

[photo by D'Arcy Norman]

It is true that in two conference days, one of which was the unscripted unconference day of Moose Camp, I had more concrete “takeaway” than I do in many times that number of days at other, traditional conferences. Takeaway includes not just ideas that are new to me, but a significant change in my understanding of the importance and utility of ideas. In work terms, I discovered some new tools, all of which will be shared here eventually, and new sites which will find their way here as well. My major work-related insights are all part of the same cluster:

1. I realized how greatly I have been discounting impromptu and informal media. I’m a word-person and not particularly enamored of my voice or visage, so participating in the audio and audiovisual space makes me uncomfortable… but I can’t deny the power nor can I ignore the growing number of ways available to create and share low-production media.
2. I was struck by the importance of the visual (creation and viewing) in understanding (for the person sharing and the person learning). We seek images and imagery the same way we seek narrative, but my expectations and operational processes had shifted far toward the latter. There are so many ways to create that everyone can find something, even if the simplest (and for me most uncomfortable due to my extremely obvious lack of talent)– pen and paper– might be the “best.”
3. My core belief that all of this only works if you can tap into passion and self-expression was reaffirmed. As trying as the length of some of the open-mic readings were, I loved the activity. It reminded me of poetry readings where sometimes the poems themselves are nowhere near as important as the flashes of insight you get into the humanity and creative processes of the person reading them.

[photo by Jen]

But the importance of Northern Voice in my life are the bigger picture items– some of which defy explanation– but all of which will shape my thought and action for at least the next year. I’m thinking here of things like the addition of “love” to my deep vocabulary of understanding social networks, learning and media, where it joins two other apparent abstractions: “scale” and “resonance.” I have a feeling everyone around me will be sick to death of my invocation of these terms, but I can’t get out of my head how love– and all of its facets (in both the popular and classical senses)– are woven so deeply into culture and interaction that we can’t ignore them if we hope to understand what is happening all around us.

[photo by (for) Alan Levine]

Like last year, the people-power of Northern Voice was overwhelming. While there are many people I want to meet and work with, my super-duper shortlist was made considerably shorter by getting some quality time with Alan Levine and Jen Jones. I hate to start listing names because I will inevitably forget some of them, but I want to pass some link love to as many people as I can… if I forgot you or just ran out of time, I apologize in advance!

[photo by D'Arcy Norman]

• Scott Leslie - we complain about other conferences, but not for our shared frustration at a bad conference session we may never have met, I may never have met most of the people on this list, and I surely would never have attended Northern Voice! You are da(standing, dancing) man!
• Brian Lamb - I was a bit nervous– being sick and without a voice last time meant I had to live up to expectations this time around (and live down my sadly un-pirate-like and not-so-deep real life voice). We share some records, a lot of books and a whole lot of ideas. I can’t thank you enough for your hospitality and contributions (and your spoon-playing + kazoo wizardry).
• Keira McPhee - you might be surprised to be the inspiration from someone you don’t feel you know very well, but it doesn’t surprise me at all. Your dedication to your community and passion for change are clear and entrancing.
• Jim Groom - your encyclopedic knowledge of film and unabashed WordPress fanboy-ism can’t obscure your dedication to changing the world for students. And you sing a mean blues too. The Eduglu Blues will be in my head for a long time.
• Alan Levine - you were a rock star in your session and on the guitar and you might just be the one of us who actually reaches the end of the internet and starts over in an attempt to lap us.
• D’Arcy Norman - you let your camera speak for you sometimes, but then you let loose with crazily incisive comments. Your five minutes on EduGlu was a masterpiece of concision… EduGlu is going to blow up!
• Jennifer Jones - it’s no wonder you have 500+ Twitter followers. I’d follow you around in real life if I could (and if your husband wouldn’t be unsettled by it ). Your U-Streaming of sessions was great, but your company and thoughts about technology and education/distance education were even better.
• Nancy White - having your visual participation on my panel was incredible– participating in your session and talking with you were highlights of my time at Northern Voice. Your thoughts on love and respect and groups have already changed my thinking.
• Bill Fitzgerald - in addition to having a company whose name is so completely me, you are a generous coder, philosopher, and english literature wonk… in other words, you fit right in with the crowd and write code better than we can…
• Mikhail - I enjoyed your words, as few as they were. I think I understood– I felt similarly at least year’s event. Those other guys (and gals) can be overwhelming
• Thanks for thinking of me for a podcast interview, goetee-less Chris Heuer. How great was it to not only serendipitously meet the charming Kristie Wells, who I know as a Joyent customer/Textdrive VCer, but then discover she is your wife!?
• Doug Symington - you’ll be hearing from me soon… it was great to meet yet another crazy Canuck Twitterer!
• Robin Yap– you are even more intensely energetic in person than online. Try to make it to Alaska during your travels!
• Jeffrey Keefer– maybe I’ll make it to New York next. Thanks for your Northern Voice liveblogging… and for your own blog, which I do read year round. I appreciated your comments throughout the conference and recognize much of myself in your assessment from year to year. 

[collage of Northern Voice photos by Duane Storey]

I suspect that most of my fellow Northern Voice speakers are as tired– or more– than I am. So I hope we get a blanket pass for not yet blogging more in the aftermath of Northern Voice. I’m trapped in the airport here for five more hours, but I have another presentation to finish preparing for, so it has to wait.

Northern Voice was a fantastic event that I can’t recommend highly enough. I know some people looked at the informal, laid-back nature of NV and assumed it was lightweight, but it’s really the kind of (un)conference that will give back as much as you want to put into it. Needless to say, the “networking” opportunities are endless (I hate to use the term networking because it sounds so business-like and clinical when the reality is so much warmer and rewarding… let’s say that the opportunities to connect were endless.

I learned a lot. I think I had a mini-breakthrough in the model I have been developing regarding education, social software, technological change, and learning communities. I met an astonishing number of accomplished and interesting people. I finally got to work with a number of people that have influenced my thinking and met many more who will do so in the future. I met some real friends, not just like-minded colleagues. And Vancouver is a great city. Despite their funny looking bills, two-dollar coins, and the whole rational metric system thing, I would have no problem spending a lot more time in Canada. Hard to imagine how the whole weekend could have been much better.

While we are here celebrating blogging and its power, let’s not forget either our fortune in being able to say what we like or those who are paying a price for speaking out.

Islam does have more than its fair share of violent activists and terrorists, Hosni Mubarak is a tool, and Egypt is– despite being an ally– showing itself as a backward nation. No one should be in jail for saying it.

If I unplug, I lose my social intelligence.

From Bruno Giussani’s great blog-reports from the LIFT07 conference.

David Weinberger has quite a series of brief interviews with web notables at the FastForward conference, including Tim O’Reilly, Chris Anderson, John Battelle, etc. My favorite blurb:

MIT’s Michael Schrage explains why getting highly relevant results from a search can actually inhibit the iterative process by which we discover and learn. [Is this the first use of the term "post-relevant results"?]

I guess it depends on the goal, but if the goal of search is to find, then isn’t this like complaining about the insidious effects of the calculator? That searching is currently an effortful act that can itself be a learning process is just a byproduct of poor search tools… [tags]search, google, conference[/tags]

The Connectivism Online Conference is being held Feb. 2-9. I won’t be speaking, but my friend Terry Anderson will be, and there’s a good lineup including George Siemens (of course), Will Richardson, and Stephen Downes. And it’s hard to beat the price: free!

Working to deadline as usual meant staying up too late and getting up too early to prep for the Socialware tutorial session which went, I thought, better than expected. Afterwards I retreated to my room and promptly passed out. Which meant I missed the trip out for dinner with “the gang” and– not feeling like socializing or sitting and eating alone– I ordered a nice bacon cheeseburger. Which, after the 19% gratuity and $5 delivery fee cost around 23 bucks.

Ahh, resort life. The land of $4 Diet Coke and $40 T-shirts. Per-diem reimbursement is clearly a joke!

Anyway, this side of the island is a strangely beautiful place. I like the barren folds of the old lava flows even more than the tropical plants and palm trees. I love the sound of the ocean and the spray of the surf crashing on the rocks. And I adore sitting outside in the warm dark with the strong trade winds blowing and the trees all around moving like living things.

But the whole places is about consumption and consumerism. Super-size and lots of it. The hotel complex itself has a train and a boat to ferry people from one end to the other. A man-made beach 50 yards from the real thing, a dolphin pond, world class tennis courts and golf courses. Grand and overwrought. Everything costs too much, people are constantly in motion shuffling from one recreation activity to the other… it’s like being at work but in resort casual apparel.

Not to mention that the whole resort area is an artificial oasis in an otherwise barren lava desert, a man-made blight that just feels deeply and intensely wrong somehow. I’m enjoying meeting people at the conference, but the whole resort lifestyle is so not me. I don’t hate it. I’m not complaining… it’s just strange.

After a long red-eye flight to Seattle and a stop in Maui, I’m now on the Big Island, safely ensconced at the Waikoloa Beach Resort, tagging items and generating links for the HICSS Socialware tutorial tomorrow. Should be fun. More on the tutorial (and Hawaii) later…

Confabb is one of those applications that I see and want to slap my head V-8 style at not thinking of it myself. Simply, Confabb is a social networking site built around– to support and supplement– those other amazing social networking events: conferences. It’s not just a database of events, but a place to create and view session information, aggregate blog entries and photos, have discussion, create itineraries, see what sessions friends are attending– all the kinds of things you want to do when you’re at a conference trying to figure out what to do. Anyone can add a conference, but it will only be truly useful if conference organizers at least promote its use, if not directly integrating it.

Some of these features are already fairly common– group tagging and aggregation– but the tie to participants itineraries, reviews and specific conference sessions are what could set this apart from those efforts.

Audio files for the recent Bloggercon IV are available from the official site and Doc Searls has live notes available for each session.