Well, the reviews are in for NorthernVoice and they are generally favourable. Due to a few delays enroute I only got there for the last session and the post-conference socializing, however I did get to meet up with Boris Mann and Roland Taglao, both of whom were very gracious and helpful to this travelling stranger.

While Scoble and Pirillo were in the room -- surrounded by blog bunnies and mullet-headed geeks...YES I'm kidding -- I decided to set off with Canadian blog & radio superstar Tod Maffin and about 15 others for a tour of the CBC Vancouver Broadcast Centre. A big thanks to Tod for his enthusiasm and his energy in answering our queries -- I'm sure it was a long day for Tod. I especially enjoyed dinner with Tod and our academic colleagues, who for the most part seemed to get it; even if it was in a more circuitous and introspective way.

Heard in the crowd about Scoble -- "He's arrogant", "Isn't Robert Great?", "He's a sponge" and "He's Microsoft's meme". The neat thing about Scoble is that he effortlessly handles the lightning rod effect. Good on you too Robert for dragging your butt up here even with the energy level sagging a little earlier in the week.

One tool that impressed me in about 3 minutes of demo'ing was Qumana. It looked great but when I got to the web site... Yuck! The site misses the essence of what looked like a sublime tool. I also cannot figure out whether this is one tool or two and what the licensing terms are from the web site. If any site cried out for an in-your-face Flash demo, the Qumana site is it.

The strange thing about sitting in a room with the NorthernVoice crowd is how different it's tech-quotient is from normal business. Looking at the laptops in use, about half were PowerBooks. So this is a very, very different group of users from the norm. Something to bear in mind.