[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]

[photo by Alan Levine]

The opening night Tiki-themed dinner at Northern Voice was a loud affair but it’s always good to meet new people and re-connect with others I haven’t– despite our oh-so-social Web 2.0 world– had occasion to interact much with. Shiny new friends I finally met after connecting online through blogs and Twitters include Alan (who I’ve been following since my days of Macromedia Director more than a decade ago), Jen, and Bill. And I was fortunate enough to have a bit of time to talk with Alex Waterhouse-Hayward, a local photographer and iconoclastic blogger whose presentation here last year worked its way deep into my thoughts months later.

Since I’m supposed to be at breakfast right now, I’ll just note that it was great to see everyone I’ve seen so far– many more should be recognized and will be when I have time– and the idea of having bloggers sharing their favorite posts, poems, stories, and reasons for blogging and being at a conference like this was a great one. It leads to a paradox for me, though, that the more I share in their passion the less I feel I belong here… this is the feeling that wormed into my blogging heart last year at this very event. More on that later.

Eight hours until I need to be at the airport to catch the red-eye down to Seattle, where I will have breakfast with my friend Kirsten, Benevolent Dictator of The Learning Curve, and make a stop at the poetry only Open Books bookstore before driving up to Vancouver (hopefully make it across the border without my special Canadian Insurance card that my company insisted had to be snail-mailed because it was printed on "special paper").

All I need to do before then is prep for class, teach class, follow up on a few dozen work and class items, make a list of things to pack, finish some laundry, pack, figure out what I forgot to pack, get my kids ready for a week sans-Papa, find/load/charge iPod and camera and extra laptop batteries and webcam, etc., etc., etc.

It’ll be fun. Northern Voice is a conference that does things right– implementing ideas to fix the things I complain about at every other conference the rest of the year. I will be assisting the inimitable LLoyd Budd in the WordPress and Your Problems session on Friday, then facilitating my The Blog is Dead! Long Live Bloggers panel on Saturday with a cast of luminaries that make my fingers tremble as I type this. There are so many people to see and talk to… which will be much easier since I can’t possibly catch Moose Fever that quickly, meaning I will have a voice to speak with this year!

Ceviche at Casa del Lamb, originally uploaded by D’Arcy Norman.

This may be the only photo taken of the Friday night dinner at Brian’s house. Clockwise from the bottom left are:

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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.

The flu refuses to give in completely and sometimes I literally have no voice (and when I do I sound, to myself at least, like a cartoon character), but I am off to Vancouver, B.C. for Northern Voice 2007. I just can’t pass up the opportunity to meet and learn from so many great people, including quite a number who have been extremely influential on my thinking and career. Unlike most other conferences, NV seems to be as much about good old fashioned personal networking and discussion as presentations. I’ve had the privilege of attending quite a few different conferences and hearing from luminaries of every stripe– and occasionally even getting to spend a few minutes with them– but the chance for real discussion is usually rare.

And sometimes it’s just nice to have a chance to be “in the fold” with others who labor in the same areas and share so much background. The O’Reilly Emerging Technology conference has a similar comfortable feeling of being someplace I belong, but the lack of people involved in education, humanities, social sciences and citizen journalism is hard to deal with. NV appears to feature the best of all these worlds– the stellar attendee and speaker list of a “big” conference with the social and learning opportunities of an un-conference filled with my peers and mentors.