Cinderella in PowerPoint

While in Vancouver at Northern Voice, Alan Levine used this slide show as a great example of how NOT to tell a story. I know quite a few people have linked to this, but it certainly bears repeating!

Voxant helps with a breast cancer newsfeed

While at Northern Voice, the Voxant folks put together a really great effort to help with breast cancer research, which incidentally shows what they can do.

I tried to embed their player here in my wordpress.com site, but it won’t come up (probably due to the wordpress block on advertising – which in this case is there to generate their matching funds.) So I just put in an image of it. You can go here to see it in action. They’ve aggregated breaking news on breast cancer all in one place – very tight – and you can embed it in your own site or blog too! Spread it around.

Wayback to the Internet of 1995

I’m really looking forward to the Northern Voice Conference next weekend all about blogging and social media. While checking the wiki to see who’ll be there, I came upon the name of a friend and colleague from the past: Stuart Hertzog. After saying hi to him, I went to his site and found he has an archive of the THA Media Distributors online catalogue. So what? you say. Well here’s what:

This was the first online catalogue of media in Canada and here’s how it happened. Heritage Canada was offering incentives for business and non-profits to develop sites on the new world wide web. I was working at THA at the time, and was keen for new media. We approached Sylvia from Moving Images Distribution to see if they could partner with us for this innovative project. You can see a version of the catalogue here on Stuart’s site, and note the terrific illustrations by artist Mark “Atomos” Pilon!

Now its a no-brainer for a catalogue to be online, but then this was a whole new world. And Stuart Hertzog was the man who put this together for us. We had met years ago in Edmonton, then in Vancouver he was our neighbour, and he had this new thing: the world wide web. I saw my first pictures of space from the Hubble on his machine across the hall at the Vine Street Coop. He was the first person I knew who worked on the internet from home in his bathrobe. It was a glimpse into the future, which is now past and is a present we now take for granted as a norm. Tip o’ the Hat, Stuart!

(Link here for a random post from my blog.)

Subjectivity Creates High-Grade Information

At Northern Voice Moose Camp yesterday, I was once again impressed and amazed to see the variety of intensities that bloggers represent. It’s fascinating to see how each of them (us) has created interconnecting micro-niches of interest and meaning, mined from both direct and mediated experiences. This is exactly what I was getting at, theoretically and poetically (and years ago) in my Social Research Foundation Report, which was included in the Documentary Print book. It can be downloaded (free, of course) at this link: SRF Interim Report.

Embroidered aphorism from the SRF Report

Signed up for Northern Voice

Just signed up for Northern Voice – it will be in February but I want to act fast, knowing that this one will be sold out. Last year I had been new to blogging so it was a wonderful boost. Looking back at my posts from those days, I was still finding my way. One thing I could never understand was that my posting on Dave Sifry’s Tag was never really seen by anyone, or picked up connected with Northern Voice. I thought it was really hilarious that I had found the name-tag of the King of all Tags, Mr. Technorati himself. But then, I didn’t have any authority. Still don’t. In fact, I was so lame I posted a comment to my own posting.

And I recognize that I’m working with content, not so much with the infrastructure. That’s why I went with WordPress.com. At Northern Voice last year Matt was there, and I asked him if it’s better to install wordpress from wordpress.org, or go with the current set-up with wordpress.com. I wanted a separate domain name, which he said they were looking into. So I stayed. Now that domains are being offered, I don’t know if I care right now – I’m so invested in just noodling along as is, my question has become moot. Actually, Matt was talking with Dick Hardt at the time, and they both told me that I’d have more control if I installed it myself, but I just find the functionality of wordpress.com really works for me right now. There are things I don’t want to deal with. WordPress.com seems to be keeping ahead of things for me, so until something reveals a limitation to what I want to accomplish, I’ll stick with it, gratefully.

Poetic, Iconic, Lasting

Confusion of the multiverse can sometimes become very intense. That is when I feel I don't have time to add to this blog, too much work to do, feeling there is not enough mindshare to tend to my own projects. Just too damn busy!

Then I recall the answer. When at Northern Voice conference and the blog analysis conference frenzy was high, I took a walk through a bookstore during a break. Here before me was the answer. Poetry. It was Pound who said that Poetry is news that stays news. And here in the iconic understanding of the true power of word, of language, that magical talisman "the written word" – here is the way to clarify all that perceived busyness. It could also give an antidote to the textglut: meaning. Isn't that what we are looking for, after all?

McLuhan understood all this, tried to convey it at the time. Now we have the minds to perhaps understand, the world has gone past his immediate relevancy. His thought is being retrieved of course. Let's look there.

Poetic Moment at Northern Voice

In a poetic moment at Northern Voice this weekend, I saw someone’s tag lying on the floor beside my chair. Yes, the name read: Dave Sifry. No Technorati, just his name handwritten by sharpie. Why was that poetic? Not just the resonant meaning of “tag” – but hey, I was linked to him, for an instant. Me, a new blogger, number 1,109,936. I knew he was important, so showed the tag to the guy next to me, who immediately asked everyone if Dave Sifry was in the room. (He didn’t know him, or what he looked like either.) At the end of the session, I passed the tag on to a volunteer in a Northern Voice t-shirt. The lanyards were from sxip (or dixs if you read it the other way) and they had kind of weak clips: my own tag fell off several times, but just into my own bag. But Sifry’s, his communicated.

Now that’s blogging! Thanks Northern Voice, I’m starting to understand.