In an effort to get a more “global” recap of the Northern Voice experience I have invited Jennie Roth of 37Roses to write up this guest post.

Coming back home to Pittsburgh I almost feel like a little kid giving a really excited and nearly hyperventilating speech about what I did at summer camp.

I’ve been a small part of the Pittsburgh social media scene for about a year now and I’ve made connections in Vancouver this past year time as well. I wanted to attend Northern Voice 2008 to get a feel for what the west coast has to say about social media and to gather new insights to take back to the Pittsburgh social media scene.

NV08 was held at a great venue and had great food, but more importantly, it provided an outlet for like-minded individuals and incredibly talented people to get together and talk on the same level, face to face. There was probably more than a million dollars worth of laptops and cameras floating around and I wasn’t afraid to put my Macbook in a corner to charge because we’re all very respectful of each other. There was however some Twitter banter during one session about how to distract John Biehler in order to obtain his Macbook Air which was pretty entertaining.

The sense of community evoked at NV08 was incredibly refreshing. I always felt like I could talk to anyone and I was able to meet several cool new people. The web of social media makes the world so tight. I met Phillip Jeffrey and told him I was from Pittsburgh and he asked if I knew iJustine, as he follows her on Twitter. iJustine is a pretty famous viral video creator / life caster from Pittsburgh and I didn’t realize the global acclaim she carried. I also heard people throw around the name Chris Brogan, a Boston based social media mogul who presented at PodCamp Pittsburgh this past August.

I couldn’t believe I was able to be in the same room as the creator of WordPress, Matt Mullenweg, as he was having informal discussions with the crowd about open source and the future of social media. I was also astounded to be in the same room as some great photographic talent at PhotoCamp such as Kris Krug, Alex Waterhouse-Hayward, Duane Storey, and Matt Trentacoste to name a few. The passion these presenters have for their art forms, whether it’s writing, photography, or web development is truly impressive and inspirational.

I wish I had been able to take some other social-medialites from Pittsburgh to NV08 with me not only to experience a great conference, but also to experience one of my favorite cities in the world.

With the experience of NV08 under my belt, I will be bringing some fresh ideas to the planning of PodCamp Pittsburgh 3, which will be held sometime in August 2008.

Many thanks to the organizers of the conference for a great incubator of thought provoking discussion and learning. Also, thanks to the sponsors for providing great shwag including a $400 MAC gift basket that I won at the opening party!

You can read more by Jennie Roth on her blog 37Roses

There are still two blocks of sessions underway that I can now follow remotely from the comfort of my couch, while the sunshine beams through the windows breathing life into some leftover Valentine’s roses on the kitchen table.

It was exhilarating to take part in the biggest Northern Voice on record and I have to say the discussions that brewed and the personalities that beamed through will not soon be forgotten. From passionate speeches to mellow and informative talks, I was glad to be a part of it all. I think our sports blogging and podcasting panel was well-received and we’ve been getting some very flattering comments and feedback for which we’re grateful. We just wanted to share a slice of what we do, how and why. Also, even though this is my second NV and I go to meetups all the time, it’s still VERY intimidating to throw your hat in the ring and be a presenter. Thank goodness for my co-host/panel.

Tonight we’re meeting up at Fogg and Suds with about 8 other people so far, but more are always welcome. The have decent priced beer, towers of beer, and lots of food. But the best part is that they will be showing the Canucks game, which is in town tonight against Detroit. If you feel like meeting up around 7pm, please by all means, stop in.

There’s an official post-mortem wiki page up for all your conference feedback (from the 101 sessions at Internet Bootcamp to the white choclate cookies mmmm…) so I’m just going to close off today with some photos.

Our panel from TheCrazyCanucks.com - Photo Credit: Duane Storey on Flickr

Megan Cole’s session - Photo Credit: Robert Scales on Flickr

Room 1003 - Photo Credit: Derek Miller on Flickr

Watching the keynote - Photo Credit: Derek Miller on Flickr

Jennie came from Pittsburgh to attend, and Dan’s all the way from the centre of the universe aka Toronto.

I still have like 40 stickers left out of 50 (note the bottom left of Jennie’s Macbook). I guess I could have put them out on the swag table but I was hoping to bump into more fellow bloggers that might be interested. Oh well, maybe I will have to do a mail out campaign for those interested. Thanks so much to the sponsors and we’ll see you all next year or at least in a few days for the next meetup of sorts.

Update: Duane mashed together 1600 NV photos from Flickr into this uber-mega poster. I have a feeling he’s gonna have many many requests for print of this sucker.

Back in the large auditorium after a lunch that was picked apart by 300 people (all the salsa and guacamole were gone by the time we got there).

Alan Lavine is presenting “50 Web 2.0 Ways to Tell a Story“. He’s listing off some tools he uses, starting off with Slideshare.net (which is like Powerpoint meets YouTube) and this is based on a presentation he gave in Australia a while back (which is available here).

Following along the lines of storytelling, Alan has an amusing “what not to do” up on his presentation site (above).

Side note: the woman in front of me is liveblogging using CoverItLive. Thinking back I’m not certain I’d use it again for a conference or meetup since I do enjoy the link love, sending people places to find more information etc. HOWEVER, I would totally use it if I did another concert liveblog like the Matthew Good living room show (Vegas or Vancouver) because it creates a great interaction with the readers.

Next media tool Alan presents is Blabberize. The idea is that you can upload a photo, select the mouth, upload audio then when you press play, the mouth animates (opens and clothes) to the beat of the audio. Quite amusing.

Have I mentioned before that our pal Dave Olson is awesome? He’s here to talk about how Art Makes the Future. History may have been forged by popes and generals but the only reason we KNOW about it is because someone took the time to write and paint about it.

Update: “If you’re going to get serious you have to take serious classes”. “I did hard time doing grade 11 in Utah.” “I had to bring a note to say I was allowed to read a book, wow that’s fucked man!” “I didn’t go to Art School and I don’t own a black turtleneck.” Looking for the live stream, I bet Jay’s got it on his BlogTV.

“This was the earliest blog post I could find - I think it was about cats”. Dave is talking about craft, passion, simplicities and defining your heroes. Dave’s sessions are always the best - filled with an organic and creative visual presentation (just photos) mixed with witty comments dashed with a truly natural humour.

Dave is still bringing up interesting and inspiring people, from centuries ago til now - even mentioning the amazingly talented Bev Davies (buy her calendar!) and Jer Crowle.

Photo Credit: Dave Olson on Flickr

He’s going through various ways to get your message out like being creative and just starting somewhere - even with Xeroxed fanzines from the 1970s. Embrace transparency translucency. “Transparency” is this year’s “synergy” or “leverage” - “I don’t want everyone to be transparent!” Photo document, share things, put things out there but keep your ass out of trouble.

You can have something (a blog) that is lovely and scenic but “it’s still a dump” if you don’t have your own content. Study about yourself, read the classic, just go make stuff. “Everyone can type on a keyboard but there’s a difference between typing and writing.” Dave goes on to explain how sitting on a grassy knoll inspired charcoal drawing, which lead to oil painting, then writing and podcasting about said grassy knoll and the experience of sketching and painting it. The creative snowball effect can be achieved by anyone - you don’t need fancy tools, just go for it.

Update: Okay for the rest of the post I’m just going to paraphrase and capture some of the main points Dave is tossing out there.

You’re not constrained by time, it’s the beauty of a blog. “Local man provides commercial-free commentary to the world!”.

Photo Credit: Dave Olson

What’s of more value… writing the book or having someone print copies and send you around on a book tour? This flows into Dave’s next point about redefining success. What to you is successful art creation? It’s for you to define.

Share your stuff, don’t get wound up, things will get ripped off, at what point does imitation become stealing? There’s not black and white answer here but the words “Relax” pop up on the screen. Dave notes the “Hunter S Thompson” rule, being that he could get away with anything because he could just write very well. Build your own artistic integrity while you’re building your brand and push yourself.

The value of validation. Dave notes it’s more precious to him to receive an email from a podcast listener about being an inspiration than it would be to have 100,000 views on some YouTube photo of some dude “smashing his nuts on a BMX or something”. Declare yourself - “let your freak flag fly!” “get on the train” get out there and enjoy it!

Even though the wifi is chugging along today, and Flickr is jammed up like the Port Mann bridge at rush hour, here we are in the session. James Sherrett of AdHack is leading, “Is Advertising Killing Blogging“.

Update: Starting off with full-on participation from the audience, getting some views about advertising. Do you have ads? Are you a non-commercial contributor? Do you feel pressure to put ads on your site? Do you have a personal blog and feel it’s not right? Do you have ads on your archives? In your feed? Are they unobtrusive? Are your ads for major profit or just to cover your hosting?

Side note: Ads on Miss604.com contribute towards hosting and site costs. I’ll have a blog post up soon enough about my trials and horrible experiences with hosting. Thanks to some great ad contributors (all Vancouver-related and a great fit for my site) I’ve been able to make the move to a reliable (knock on wood) host this past month.

My big question is how am I improperly using adsense? I mean I really don’t want to saturate my site with ads but seriously, after 12 months I’ve just touched the $50 mark with Google… and they still only pay out at $100/month.

Update: More input from the audience is going up on the board, “I have ads but basically in exchange for free stuff”, “I haven’t found ads that don’t look hideous”. I just overhead someone say they charge $500/week for ads on their site. HOLY dinah! (to quote Keira). Am I undercharging (I don’t think I am) or are some people just REALLY ambitious??

On that note, I just went to that website and they’re an aggregator that is scraping content from my friends’ websites… so they’re charging loads for advertising on their site whose content is purely taken and copied from our websites. Wow. I mean I’m a little off topic here but maybe I should ask about this if there’s a Q&A later.

Photo Credit: John Biehler on Flickr

Back on topic, reasons people don’t have ads: “clutter”, “ugly”, “what about kids, would the ads be appropriate?” on the ‘yes’ side, “we have a tip jar”. This session is currently being streamed on Ustream.

Speaking to the subject of aggregators, we have two sides of the argument. The one I mentioned above where I get no links and no ad money but then someone mentioned Google - they refer tons of traffic to your site and they’re making a heck of a lot more money than you. I think speaking to that, a lot of aggreators scoop FULL posts - Google doesn’t. Also, Google links, a lot of aggregators don’t and they just purely violates licensing etc. It’s a whole other ball of wax but in greatful for the lively discussion in the room and seeing both sides and perspectives. I (heart) Northern Voice.

James just asked for a show of hands, “how many of you then think that advertising is killing blogging?” One hand raises.

Update: Oh crap. I just realized that I hadn’t even PUBLISHED this post yet. Crap. So much for “live” blog. It’s up now.

As everyone slowly trickles in the auditorium for day two and the official ‘conference’ portion of Northern Voice, we prepare for another day of social media geekery.

This morning starts with a keynote from Matt Mullenweg, otherwise known as the father of WordPress and much more. Once again I’ll be semi-live blogging throughout the day, taking notes and following along for those attending, and those absent folks we’re missing.

WordPress has been around for five years (we just passed the anniversary) and was born out of open source platforms, which is essentially key to its growth. “Form dictates blogging”.

To follow along with Matt’s keynote, check out Jay’s live stream.

Matt’s actually got two net peeves, one of which is that it’s WordPress, not Wordpress. The other involves his new domain name, oddly enough he’s jockeying for top “Matt” position with Dancing Matt of WhereTheHellIsMatt.com. Side note: his video including Vancouver will be up this summer.

Exhortation #2: Respecting people’s time (spam, ads etc.) now Matt shows an “prime example” of what not to do in this respect and JohnChow.com pops up on the screen. The room erupts in laughter and “oooohs!” as John’s actually from Vancouver and is at this conference. Clearly discerning between content and ads is key.

Just found out via Twitter that someone else is doing a more minute-by-minute live blog of the keynote as well.

Matt’s speaking to unfiltered interactions and comments, “who actually reads the comments on YouTube?” and speaks to the usefulness of their related videos box on the side as opposed to thousands of useless comments. “I would like to add you to my network. Would you like to be my friend.” The social aspect of the internet is now focusing around objects and filtered contents. You now just want to see related content, content from your friends, information you actually want instead of frivolous conversation.

Now he’s speaking to Open Source, and a new set of responsibilities and freedoms. He steals a phrase, “ask not what your software can do for you… but”… you know the rest. The taste of freedom and realizing that software you could pay $5 a month to use is more useful and more applied than enterprise software that costs you or your company thousands of dollars to work with.

We’re into the Q&A portion and a half-hour coffee break then the next block of sessions will begin. Check out WordPressIdeas to contribute to the process. FYI more reasons to like Matt Mullenweg? He created Akismet.

I’ve been blogging all day but between the interesting and dynamic sessions, the nanaimo bars, and meeting some really cool down to earth people I’m spent.

There are a couple parties going on tonight all around town but I’ll be staying in since tomorrow’s another big day (starting with an intro at 9:15am). We’ll be doing our sports blogging and podcasting panel at 14:15 and then heading out after the conference to watch the Canucks spank the Red Wings.

Here are some images from today’s MooseCamp and Internet Bootcamp which I’ll post before melting into the couch for a quiet night in.

Alex and Jordan - Photo Credit: Jordan Behan on Flickr

Jacob - Photo Credit: Chris Heuer

DaveO, Megan and Lloyd - Photo Credit: Kris Krug on Flickr

Adorably lovely couple, Airdrie and Derek - Photo Credit: Derek Miller

Chris! - Photo Credit: Lee Lefever

My man - Photo Credit: Duane Storey on Flickr

Side note: Duane Storey is really great for driving us today, Boris is cool cause it’s his birthday, and today is even more fantastic cause it’s my Dad’s birthday today too. See everyone in the morning!

I’ve left room 1003 (missing out on the upcoming Wiki 101, Liveblog 101 - ironically, and Tagging 101). Instead I’m in room 1001 for PhotoCamp. Admittedly the only camera I have on my is on my iPhone but a couple people I know will be leading mini-sessions within PhotoCamp and I know they’ve got some valuable insights to share. Watch for updates throughout the next hour.

On a total side note, there’s a blogger meetup tonight for NV’ers and non-NV’ers alike at 6:00pm.

Update: PhotoCamp presenters will be Kris Krug, Rachael Ashe, Derek Miller, Tim Bray, Alex Waterhouse Hayward, Novak Rogic, Duane Storey, Matt Trentacoste, Miranda Lievers and Reilly Lievers.

Update: Rachael Ashe is up first, talking about light painting and prolonged exposure. First, shoot in complete darkness leaving the shutter open, then add your light source candle, flashlight, lamps etc.) for all the cool effects (see examples here).

Next up is Tim Bray talking about pocket cameras - the fun and practicality of not just walking around with a high-end SLR, but having something small with which you can just point and shoot quality photos.

Update: Alex follows with a topic about photographing nudes and the concept of shadows and contrasts.

Photo Credit: superNova K on Flickr

Novak’s got the next slot, talking about making ‘photographic mini-planets’, I just realized I’ve seen his photos around the Vancouver Flickr’sphere before. The trick to making one of these is to grab several panoramics with a steady camera on a tripod. Post-capture, use a program called Autostitch (for Windows) and also Photojojo. From the audience there’s a comment that there is a version of Autostitch for OSX called Doublestitch.

Update: The DUANIAC is next and he’ll be talking about selling photos using Smugmug.

Miranda is now speaking about the simple portrait: shooting down in soft window light, stressing that the light is the most important element when taking a photo of a person. Base your location on that light source.

PANIC While trying to save my post I got a strange Wordpress error re: snoopy.php so after some sleuthing I found out it’s a problem with the Google Sitemaps plugin I had installed upon recommendation. The plugin has been deactivated now so I’m hoping I can now save.

Okay back to Miranda talking about different types of light that can be used ie. sunshine, lamps and urban light and also how to adjust your subject to compensate for shadows.

Update: Miranda’s other half, Reilly is now talking about the opposite: modified light (see his notes here) like off-camera flashes, flashlights, video lights etc.

Derek Miller is the last presenter of the day with depth of field shots by manipulating aperture. (I’m just happy to see Derek @ Northern Voice this year… and I’m not photographer enough to comprehend all the f-stop stuff). He’s got a cool shot up of a guitar fret board… searching his Flickr stream for it now… found it! He’s also got a tip on how to post a Flickr set onto your blog so all the little photos within display in neat little cubes - like how they look when you’re looking at the set in Flickr. Simply right click, view source, find the code where the photo thumbnails are located, and past that into your blog post - tada!

Update: Whoops, I was wrong. Matt Trent is the last to present at PhotoCamp2008 referencing the digital sensor, photoshop, and how they help out the black & white photo.