This year's Northern Voice -- the 2007 edition -- was a great event. In terms of the things I wanted to get accomplished:

Chris Pirillo -- who I have butted heads with in the past over at techpodcasts.com -- was also at NorthernVoice but in something of a more exhausted state. Chris popped in later Saturday morning, I was hoping to get a few minutes of his time for the podcast but he was not in a talkative mood. I told him how I felt his writing was getting richer, more on point; which I attribute to his marriage. Chris thanked me profusely and apologized for not being more engaged at NorthernVoice. He explained it to me and here is his explanation for you.

And here is something else I got at NorthernVoice -- 2 days off work when I really need to be at the office. It seems like a lot of us got sick there. On Tuesday a fever of 38.5. Very memorable.

NorthernVoice NorthernVoice2007 NV2007

Photo by Eric Eggertson of commonsensepr.com

It was a day of MooseCamp fun but the big dividend was our table of four at Vancouver's Shiro -- which roughly translated means "great Sushi". How I ended up sitting with Buzz Bruggeman, Robert Scoble and Maryam Scoble had more to do with Buzz's leadership and the small size of the restaurant than anything I did, but sometimes you just have to show up.

So what do you want to know?

The blogging community -- those that really believe this is a discussion not an elevator pitch -- know that we're all here to engage. We talked. What else can I say. Maryam is a compelling woman; charming and delightful. Robert is pensive, which may mistakenly be taken as aloofness. Buzz is engaging, articulate, a leader and an encyclopedia of personal experience. Buzz remembers things and he pulses with the connectedness of our digital age. When you sit and eat raw fish with these folks you know why the digital web can never match the analog stimulus of eye contact and great conversation.

When it's your turn to have dinner with Buzz and the Scobles, don't think about what you need to do to get a link, be noticed or sound controversial. You made it to the table; you are part of the tribe. Be prepared to listen. Ask questions. Some of the things you are doing may or may not be relevant. That's okay, we're having a conversation here.

Thank you very much Robert, Maryam and Buzz.

PS: Robert, we will hold a night open for you in Calgary when you come through this spring for the W3C. Come on Calgary bloggers and podcasters let's treat Robert to great dinner!

NorthernVoice NorthernVoice2007 NV2007
Buzz Bruggeman Robert Scoble Maryam Scoble

It was essentially about "Your Online Identity" but an alternate sub-theme of this year's Lexi.net Conference in Calgary would have to be about the power of women online. There was great online talent here from the likes of Kristin Darguzas, Janine Warner, Regina Lynn and the dooce herself, Heather Armstrong.

This was my first of the biennial Lexi.net Conferences and if they get within 50% of what Sharlene was able to do this year, I'll be back in 2008. Having spent a bit o'time at the likes of Northern Voice 2005 and the Portable Media and Podcast Expo 2006, what was especially nice about this Confab -- as they say in the land of memories -- is that I got to meet Calgary bloggers like D'Arcy Norman.

For my money, the killer tech mind in the room was Aaron Seigo . I missed Aaron's presentation because it coincided with equally killer content from JC but we spent a few minutes at lunch talking about "Why Software Stinks". Expect a lengthy podcast exposition from Aaron on the Bradcast in 2007. This guy makes KDE desktop software and if I don't post for a few days it'll be because I'm playing with Kubuntu, which is the KDE desktop based distro of Ubuntu Linux.

John Armstrong (the other half of power couple 1, he being Mr. dooce) was outstanding with his non-bullet point intro to design and identity. John's thing was more extemporaneous than I think even he realized -- I was mulling the subtleties of his links between appearance and message for most of the weekend. There is clearly an art in impression but it can be fulfilled in a variety of ways as he demonstrated with his impactful collection of logos.

The women were definitely inspiring. Kristin is one of the first "big-time" blogher.com members that I have met and she has agreed to a future chat so that we can talk about that. Her success seems to come from a perfect balance between the nonchalance of her frank writing and the nervous insecurity of her own questioning. She knows there's a big audience out there but when she sees them there is a touch of writer's anxiety in her delivery. That trait is also a characteristic of Heather Armstrong. Heather's journey is a perfect accident of need and deliberation. It's risk/reward in a new environment and it is something I saw too in each of Janine and Regina; although their topic spaces are worlds apart. The dooce was not someone I had read much. Her story is well known and she put a face on it that spoke to the inevitability of its outcomes. While she is all moving hands and fine boned fragility to see her, the dooce is also a woman of power and charisma.

A last thought; as one half of a great couple, it was motivating to watch working couples like Janine & David and Heather & John in action. Now all we have to do is get Janine & David blogging...
Update: Okay, I found David's blog. Where's Janine?

lexi.net_conference_2006 lexinet lexicom

An update to my feed story regarding the Podshow bunch. While The Bradcast is still listed in the Podshow search engine clicking on the show "information" link takes you to a blank page. My copyright notice barring caching or complete reproduction of my feed for subscription purposes is clearly visible. You cannot download attachments or subscribe to my feed through their site; it's a small victory.

I strongly urge all podcasters that do not want an inferred relationship with Podshow to make sure that they exercise their right to be independent. You do not have to be listed if you do not want to be.

Content in this post has been edited and transferred to the Current Thinkers List at currentthinking.com. You can find Ethan Johnson in the blogging and writing category in the list.

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...)

I'm back from my self-administered cone of silence. And look what's happened while I was away; another Election!

You will notice that this site has removed it's articles from the last campaign. This time around I think I'll just point to other sites that will give a prospective voter some good background. My initial hunch is that the campaign will be very low key until the week after the New Year. A smart strategist may introduce some key discussion points for family and party conversation in mid-December, but I wouldn't expect the real scrapping to begin until after the Holidays. There is a possibility that the Liberals will have to go very negative in this campaign in order to hang on to what they have.

Best candidate-on-the-go site that I have seen to this point is Garth Turner's The Turner Report. It's fact filled, the comments look real and the response is pragmatic. Garth is a savvy journalist and a former cabinet minister. Experience and frankness in the quantities he delivers bode well for the team that could be forming the next government.

I recently re-edited my newsfeeds on this site. Every so often it's a good idea to do a review and cull the feeds that are not maintaining the level of content intensity that you want. You also need to renew; to get some fresh feed info into your aggregator and look at some new ideas.

That's what I thought I was doing when I added Scoble's favorite, tech.Memeorandum. Memeorandum has been lauded as a tech blog engine that focuses on the "top" stories. No, I don't think so. It's just another one of those tech nerd ideas -- I can say that because I'm part of the club -- that really isn't a very good idea at all. I'm not sure what kind of ordering or editing principles get used at tech.Memeorandum but the m-PHA-sis is in all the wrong places. The "meme" is becoming so influential in this little techno-blogger world that it is driving attention to some pretty marginal ideas.

So "meme", my good fellow; you're fired. I'll do the work myself. Get out of my aggregator and rest in peace.