Northern Voice

Northern Voice Wrap Up

Moose Mosaic by Duane Story

Northern Voice is finished for another year and we had awesome sessions! And talented/awesome participants, the moose mosaic was produced by Duane Story from 1600 of the some 2700 Flickr photos taken.

It doesn't seem that long ago I was seated at a table with the other organizers in the speaker/session selection process. We had a great batch of submissions to pick from, which is exactly the situation to be in, but with the downside we couldn't accept all the sessions we wanted. There was much discussion around number of tracks, session length, over-all day length. So many trade-offs. This is a great bunch of people to work with and I witnessed one of the smoothest journeys to consensus I have ever seen in a room with more than four people in it (including Darren and Julie with a virtual presence from Malta!).

Of course there were bumps along the way. There always is. Hiccups with the web site because of misbehaving software, teething pains with payment gateways, last minute venue details big and small (we did try to get a coat rack this year, honest) and sadly, rubber duck fratricide. Did I mention the organizing committee is a great bunch of people to work with? All these issues and more were handled with grace-under-fire. And then the day of the conference was here.

Embracing My Inner Moose - Northern Voice 2007

Northern VoiceNorthern Voice is one of the few local technology conferences not focused on technology. It's less about the technical fiddly bits of the technology and more about the social stuff enabled by the technology. Anyone that knows me knows I love the technology fiddly bits, but fiddly bits are pretty sterile unless they're doing something. Northern Voice is about the doing something part!

More importantly, Northern Voice has a great energy. Not only have there been good presentations but the majority of the people attending are passionate about what they're doing, creating a nice, positive vibe. And the diversity of people makes for a terrific melting pot. I loved seeing all of the different purposes, methods, ideologies and techniques. My idea hamster got a dose of adrenaline.

I've liked Northern Voice so much I decided to volunteer. I expected to do some general dogsbody type work but found myself somewhat more involved: Dale McGladdery joins the Northern Voice team as webmaster. And I'm having fun.

February 2007 is Conference Month

February 2007 is a busy month. There are three Vancouver conferences, each focused on a different aspect of web technology. Two of them are very affordable, one is non-technical.

Web Directions North

February 7 - 9, 2007
http://north.webdirections.org/
Before Dec 31: Conference: $895, Optional Feb 8 Workshop: $395 ($495 without conference)

Vancouver PHP Association Conference 2007

February 12 - 13, 2007
http://vancouver.php.net/confschedule
$100 before Dec 31st./ $150 regular

Northern Voice 2007

February 23 - 24, 2007
http://2007.northernvoice.ca/
$30 for 1 day/$50 for both days

David Sifry Talks Leadership Hacks

Northern Voice LogoDuring a desktop file cleanup I (re)discovered my notes from this year's Northern Voice conference. Well, technically it was the Friday Moose Camp which preceded Northern Voice proper.

The following notes are from the Leadership Hacks session lead by David Sifry, a self described "serial entrepreneur", founder of Technorati, cofounder of Sputnik, and cofounder of Linuxcare.

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