Bloggers, Webbie 2 Point Oh'ers, self-appointed tech gurus and others have prattled on at length about "the community" of various interest groups that ply the net space. Community can be a very hard thing to define.

I am newly ensconced in a south Calgary suburban community and met the neighbours on either side of me the week before I moved in. Since then, our paths haven't crossed. We're not seeing, noticing or bothering each other so perhaps we're perfect neighbours. In some web "communities" it seems to be the loudest, trash talkingest, belt notchers who garner the greatest ratings as community gurus.

I don't think most internet communities offer anything close to a real community experience and that may be why events like Northern Voice are compelling to me. Community ought to be about real people interacting in an environment that engages at least 80 per cent of your sensory capability.

Some of you have wondered where I've been lately. One of my projects has been to try to increase my "spare" time. I have been getting back to boring old stuff like skiing on really big mountains. I have put the Bradcast podcast on hiatus because it just didn't seem relevant to the discourse anymore.

More correctly; I have found the discourse and the "community" around podcasting to be directionless. Everyone is me-too-ing everyone else. Everyone with 3,000 downloads figures they should be able to "monetize" their podcast. (Hint: Reach in your pocket and jingle a few coins together. There. You're monetized!) No doubt it will probably be the inimitable Tod Maffin who pulls me out of my podcast slumber again. Tod "gets" the community thing and runs around Canada (and elsewhere) talking to people about his passion.

Another little personal project has opened my eyes to the reality of the web for the masses versus that of the "technorati". Yes, I admit it. I have spent an inordinate amount of time stalking the wild Ebay lately. Let me tell you, it's like being in another country when you live inside their web fortress for a few hours at a time. So in the near term, a new theme may develop. Something reductive, that looks at the reality of one of the web's most successful businesses and compares it to the granola spirit of the latest web prophets.

(And, no, I haven't got a clue why a giant 3D Instant Messaging banner is being adsensed onto my site, maybe the wizard is on a break...)