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.

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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!

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Buzz Bruggeman Robert Scoble Maryam Scoble

Boris and the cooking crew got us going with the grub and Lee LeFever charmed with a NASCAR intro to his world wide odyssey. This could only be Northern Voice.

Hey, if you want a micro-view of the kind of stuff that goes on here then picture Keith Bao and I raving and lamenting about the wonders of drupal. Keith loves the platform for the obvious community functions and that's really important for his over 700 player Vancouver Dodgeball League. Man, if the web had existed when I was a twelve year old dodgeball savant who knows how far I could have gone.

MooseCamp tomorrow and then the "real" conference stuff on Saturday, stay tuned.

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This is the first in a series of new web radio, netcast, podcasts: Current Thinking Radio, which is sourced at its new home on www.ctiweb.net. I'm retiring the Bradcast in favor of a more direct focus on technology business leadership. Please be patient with this new media "re-branding". I will be unveiling more concepts over the next few weeks. In the meantime you can pick up the podcast feed in the same place. I will make sure there is adequate overlap in transitioning to the new Current Thinking web feeds.
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Michael Sikorsky, CEO of Cambrian House software, may be mistaken as a man of maxims:

"Cambrian House; its like open source but with money."

"If nobody hates it, nobody will love it."

"Act as if Karma exists."

Listening to Michael at a recent DMAA event in Calgary, Alberta , one could tell that there was more than maxims and slogans to his vibe. Cambrian House is a crowdsource software company with some bright ideas in the web & software space. Michael clearly has an plan for the start, middle and end-game of his ventures. He lays out some interesting plans for marketing and product development in this presentation.

Products can fulfill needs -- "vitamins", solve problems -- "pain killers" or create new categories -- "viagra", of which the Blackberry is a classic technology based example. Listen to Michael as he explains tech marketing and company development in a way that you have never heard before. What's Michael's "bias for action"? How mass collaboration can change everything.

Recorded live by Brad Gibson with great thanks to the Board of the DMAA and Michael Sikorsky. This content is evergreen and is suggested for those interested in:

• marketing
• technology management
• new media development
• business development

This web radio podcast originates from the Current Thinking Radio site at www.ctiweb.net and from the Bradcast, podcasting since 2004 at www.bradfordgibson.net .

Have you noticed how popular all the gadget and gizmo sites are? Those sites are always full of upcoming product info; secret photos, leaks from manufacturers, rumours and hoaxes. Well -- in advance of THE most IMPORTANT product annoucement since... well... since the last one -- here is some interesting conjecture regarding product development of the Zune line.

Let's put two and too together; Zune rhymes with tune and, according to podcaster Paul Colligan and Scoble, there is no obvious podcast tie-in for Zune. You want to know why? Could it be that Microsoft will release a Zalk just for talk and that by next year we will all be Zalkcasting? There may also be a further spin-off with a Zame that will only be for gamers. The Zame unit will feature digital rights managed claymation. Sources say these units may be delayed until the plain English EULA's can be re-written so that all legitimate uses of the units can be disallowed. Test units at research locations have also been spotted -- code-named Zribble -- that shake uncontrollably within 10 feet of a person using an iPod.

The on-the-spotters and rapid reporters have already told you how great the Podcast and Portable Media Expo was this past weekend (Sept 29 & 30, 2006). Best general re-cap is available from Leesa Barnes -- who I'm making my "most important podcaster I did not meet". (Expect an email soon Leesa...)

I went with a sense of irreverence -- don't worry I still have it -- but also picked up some great vibes around podcast commercialization, specialization and pure podcast passion.

So; is podcasting disco? I was glad to see that a group at the show had picked up on a thought I had some time ago to create "podcasting sucks" t-shirts -- everybody got a laugh out of it and we need to be laughing. It was Trucker Tom Wiles though who has really articulated what we all hope is the best metaphor for podcasting. Tom says that podcasting is more like email than disco.

That's the difference between history and trivia. Listen to his chat with the inimitable Michael Zwerling on Tom's episode 382 and you'll get the whole American philosopher buzz around Tom. (Update: Tom sent me a link to the show)

Hope to see you at the Podcast and Portable Media Expo. I'm looking forward to some face time with the likes of Victor, Tom, Todd, Kevin and others. With some luck, I may get some quality sound-bites as well.

I'm approaching this conference/trade show in two ways; I'm going to treat it as one part Star Trek Convention and one part Franchise Show. As a non-aligned, amateur with some experience in the broadcast space, it's going to be really fun watching the podcast groupies follow their designated swamis around. There may be some real business done both on the floor and in the suites so I'll try and sniff out some of the deals.

I will not be following the standard blogger template for conferences:
1) You gotta go!
2) Coolest un-conference ever!
3) Promise to blog every word
4) Blame the wifi for not blogging a single word
5) Following up with a post days later that rapturizes the attendees, the presenters and JUST How Important! everything was.

It's a podcasting conference folks. How important could it be? The one big question to be answered is this... If podcasting is disco, then is it 1976 or 1979?

Every project starts with a request. (Click here to play now)

Shout Outs:
Not a lot for this week -- just a reminder that I will be at the Podcast and Portable Media Expo with iPod and TuneTalk in hand. If you want to meet or be interviewed for The Bradcast then drop me a note: thebradcast AAATTT gmail.com

Main Line:
Riffing on a topic I broached a few weeks ago, this podcast looks at those ubiquitous PIM and email clients. I focus on Outlook, of course, because that's the one that now dominates.

Our email clients are dumb. They are not able to relate our commitments to our tasks and they have no ability to derive any context from the stuff that gets entered into them. Sure we have "rules" and routing features but we don't have the ability to provide meaning to data on-the-fly as we reply to emails.

One way we can move toward that goal is to open the proprietary nature of the data in the hope that somebody else will build a tool that does something new. As a result I looked at this blog entry on the "Holy Grail" for synchronization, the ScheduleWorld.com site and this tantalizing peak at something called Taskmaster from PARC.

This show was recorded entirely using the on-board microphones of the Belkin TuneTalk Stereo recorder for gen 5 iPods to give you an idea about the sound quality. I did get pretty aggressive with the low-pass filter and the compression. The sound is okay but it's sibilant and is prone to noise from the hard drive on the iPod. Use an external microphone if you don't want hard drive noise spoiling low volume level sounds on your TuneTalk.

Click here to stream the show through your favourite player.

Notes:
Length:00:35:33
Recorded: 2006/09/25
Bradcast_20060925 is copyright 2006 by Brad Gibson and he is solely responsible for its content. The Bradcast is not associated with any technology blogging group or association. Opinions represented in the podcast are not those of any client, customer or employer organization, past or present.