Events

My alarm woke me up at 8 o'clock, I hit the snooze button and asked myself if it was Saturday and whether I could sleep in... then i realized it was 8pm and a friend (thanks Ariane!!) had hooked me up with free tickets to tonights Matthew Good concert. Matt seemed a little bit jaded about music reviewers, and I'm sure for good reason... to quote "people who can't play music professionally can write about it" - well, I can't do either ... and don't worry I'm not really gonna attempt to.

Photo by Duane Storey

Matt's easy going "doesn't give a shit" attitude really made their stage presence a lot more enjoyable. I've seen him in concert twice before and this time was easier going and just all around funner on stage. The "lounge music" sections of the show were particularly enjoyable :).

The first thing that really stood out to me was the lighting. Amazing lighting, timed perfectly with the music. The lights seems simple enough and kudos to the lighting people who put that part of the show. Combined with the occasional smoke, the visuals in the show were great... a lot of awesome photo opportunities tonight.

Now, I'm normally the guy at the concert that when the encore comes around I kind of hope the band doesn't come back out. Not that I didn't enjoy them, I'm just ready to leave and get on with other things that have started to occupy my mind. This was the first concert in a while that I felt the opposite. And both encores were great. It was a great crowd tonight too... clearly a lot of the fans in the audience have followed him for 10+ years since before his popularity started to fade. For some reason it seems like Vancouver concert crowds tend to be a bit quiet or reserved. Tonight everyone was singing along and really getting into a lot of songs. I was in the perfect mood for it too.

thanks for a good show

Probably would have been more useful to post this before the conference started. Anyway, I decided to try to search out all active Northern Voice feeds to see what I can find, where things are, and how information is disseminated as the conference is in progress.

The focus at Northern Voice / Moosecamp is more or less about blogging, social media, and photography. Search flickr, and find photos of the talk you're currently attending, taken maybe 5 minutes ago. People live blogging the live blogging session, and micro-blogging about people blogging about people blogging at the conference. If you can follow all this, you can get your all your conference sessions and more... all without walking out your front door.

Here's the live feeds I've found (I'm sure I've missed some):

Tags: nv08 northernvoice

• flickr
• skype backchannel - not sure if there's a way to link to this
• jaiku group
• twitter
• blogs
• more blogs
• official website updates
• official NV wiki updates
• facebook group and event (both not useful during the conference)

Consolidating information is something that facebook has been able to do very well. Photos, groups, events, the wall, inbox, status updates, notes, videos, links, etc. All in one place, easily accessible. In the list above, everything there is more useful that the facebook equivalent, IMHO, however, the ability to link all of this information together is almost as useful as the information itself.

Do tools exist that can link this stuff together, on an event-by-event basis? Or is this going to be my new pet project?

Btw, congratulations to the Duane Storey for winning the Vancouver Blogger competition.

That photo pretty much sums up Fridays selection of beer. The beer tasting turned out pretty well, in fact, I'd even say it was a success ;). Lots of great beers, some not so great, a couple terrible. And yes, that is a can of budweiser you see there. I think next time we do this we're gonna have to make it a little bit more formal, so that by the end of the night I actually remember which beers I liked, which beers I have to have again, and which I'm never touching again. Thanks to everyone who dropped by, it was rad.

Yeah, it's my birthday. I don't have much to say, but w00t! Party! I'd post a pic of all the loot I scored so far, but I'm too lazy :-). Heading to Parv's tonight for some Guitar Hero 2. Nice.

Ariane and I have been in Seattle attending Drupal Camp for the past couple days, it was pretty sweet (I think this gives Ariane official geek status now ;-)). We've been boycotting the states since Bush came in, but decided to break the boycott for this event, which was worth it. It was just a bit scary driving through the border after hearing a few horror stories. Anyway, after we crossed the border the speed limit changed from 100 to 60, wtf, Ariane's car doesn't even have MPH! I guess if we got busted for speeding I could honestly tell the officer that I had no idea how fast we were going.

Drupal Camp was sponsored by Rain City Studios, Bryght, and CivicActions. It was a wicked event, and tons of great people were there. I think I even learned a thing or two about Drupal! There were a variety of sessions, mostly about theming, modules, and general drupal coding/enhancing, there was even a geek yoga session :).

Photo taken by Kris Krug

There was a bit of confusion with our accommodations (to say the least) so we're back a day early, and now I get to go in to work for a day before heading out to Hope for Scotty's birthday party. We brought back 7 different selections of US beer (our max 48 bottles) that we can't get in Canada, so we'll be bringing some of that out for the festivities.