At Northern Voice a few weeks back, I was doing my best to shoot as much video as possible.
The action and the great presentations kept me from getting too much coverage, but during lunch one day I did sit down for an interview with Lee LeFever of the Common Craft Show, to talk about the rising popularity of their “paperworks” how-to videos. This is also the very first time I’ve embedded a video using Kyte, a new video broadcast service I signed up for while dining with Kyte’s CEO in Austin during SXSW:
Well, I have to say it was terrific weekend at Northern Voice.
Once again I was among friends, talking about all of the things we are especially passionate about, and I learned tons. It occurred to me several times throughout the weekend that I like every little thing about Northern Voice; from the fact that it is organized by volunteers (and is now even a non-profit society) to the diverse range of folks attending and topics discussed, and everything in between.
My favorite presentation of the weekend wasn’t about blogging at all, but rather a homage to making art; a visually stunning and clever rant by my good friend Dave Olson entitled “F*ck Stats, Make Art.” A standing ovation followed his talk, and I think I was first on my feet. Rebecca wrote a great follow-up post on his talk.
I’m a tad too busy to document the entire weekend in the same kind of detail that I did last year, but luckily the nature of a blogging conference is that coverage of the event is never hard to come by. Take for instance the 3200+ Flickr photos (and counting) or the 205 (tagged nv08) blog posts from the weekend. Or peek at the Jaiku feed I set up that indexes a lot of the great bloggers that attended.
(Northern Voice collage of Flickr photos by Duane Storey)
Friday morning saw our Video Blogging 101 demo (wiki link) as part of the “Internet Bootcamp,” and it was well received. A properly post produced video of the talk will be forthcoming, but in the meantime here is a short snippet that was shot, edited and published while we were in the room presenting:
I also shot a short video interview with Lee Lefever of the Common Craft show, and soon I’ll get that edited and published here.
As part of my job, I’ll be attending a lot of larger tech conferences this year, the first up being SXSW in Austin in a little over a week, but I suspect that although I will have a lot of fun and learn lots while traveling the “circuit,” I’ll always hold a special place in my heart for Northern Voice.
Big thanks to the organizers for all of their work for putting together an excellent weekend!
On Friday, Feb 22 I will hosting a Video Blogging 101 session at Moosecamp as part of Northern Voice, a two day blogging conference here in Vancouver, BC.
My co-hosts will be Roland Tanglao and Warren Frey, and we hope to cover all of the basics of video blogging; from live streaming, direct to web from cellphone, basic video production and a little bit of everything in between. The presentation is just a half-hour long, but we hope to allow plenty of time for audience questions. Roland has set up a wiki page on the Northern Voice site, where you can add your questions in advance if you wish, and we can add to them to the agenda.
Want to meet the presenters? Check out this short video clip by Roland, which was shot on his Nokia cellphone and uploaded live to the web, via Qik:
As promised, I’ll be sharing more details about my marketing and community building with Strutta.com soon. We are just days away from letting in our first users, and at that time I’ll start to share some notes and welcome your feedback on our community-building plan.
You may recall that a few months back I received a pitch in the form of a comic strip, asking if I’d like to test-drive and review a Brother printer.
I agreed to do so, and the timing was great as I was able to set it up at our new headquarters at Strutta, and let everyone have a chance to try it. What follows is my review of the unit that we chose to have as a guest in our offices. We haven’t really put the MFC-9440cn through its paces per se, but we did run several tests and try most of its features.
Here’s a quick list of pros and cons, followed by a video review as well:
We Liked:
Scan to network, wirelessly. Options to scan to file, image, directly to email etc. Very handy.
It does it all: print, scan, fax, copy and the aforementioned scan to email.
Does all of the work of a much larger unit with a reasonably small footprint.
We Also Noticed:
Still needs to be hardwired to access network, although it can transmit wirelessly
Noticeably poorer print quality for color prints when compared to other (more expensive) color laser printers
Thank you again to Darren of Capulet Communications for a great blogger outreach campaign, and to Brother as well for trusting a gaggle of geeks like us with their equipment.
The second of my two appearances on G4 TechTV’s The Lab with Leo is now available on Google video, so I’m embedding it here.
Leo and I chat about using sites like Facebook to keep in contact and grow your personal network, and using Apps, Marketplace and Groups to reach a larger audience:
A few months have passed since this aired, and it’s funny to me how dated it already seems, with how quickly things evolve online. It is also very frustrating having to hear myself say “um” and “uh” for six straight minutes. I hope it’s considerably less painful for you.
Many thanks again to the folks at The Lab for having me on!
That was the subject of my first appearance on the Lab with Leo, and at last I have the embeddable video of that conversation.
Mr. Laporte and I talk about how to set up a Google News Alert, as well as how to monitor tags and search within Technorati. (Scroll past the obligatory G4 Tech TV promo, if you prefer)
Big thanks to Ryan Yewell and the rest of the producers for having me on the show, and then even being kind enough to have me back!
Stay tuned for my second appearance, where we discuss using social media tools to market your business, including a discussion about Facebook profiles, apps and groups.
Things will be quiet around here for the next week or so (yes, even quieter than of late) as I am going away on my annual week-long Powell Lake vacation.
Every year, we make the trip up to Powell River for a week at our float cabin, and you can believe me when I tell you, it is paradise. As proof, here’s a video of last year’s fun, edited by my wife, that includes some short clips of my brother, my cousin and myself tearing it up on the wakeboard and ski:
Heh, the bikini shots don’t start until about halfway through, when the rest of the group comes.
I’ll be sure and return to a regular posting schedule when I get back; it will almost be Fall by then and after all of that leisure time, I should be ready to get back to business.
Well, now my friend Dave Olson from Elastic Path has informed that they’re offering a free webinar on the subject of “social commerce.” Put simply, they’ll discuss the pros and cons of enabling user-generated reviews on your ecommerce site.
For folks doing business on the web, that is cool all on its own (sign up here), but it also affords me the opportunity to post another one of those funny videos they started publishing a while back:
Once again, the folks from the Common Craft Show have put together a great tutorial; this time on the subject of social bookmarking.
Lee LeFever lays out the concept of bookmarking using Del.icio.us, and along the way explains how tagging works, in just under three-and-a-half minutes:
A great resource for people getting their feet wet in the web marketing space. Remember, every time a site gets bookmarked in this nature, it raises that site’s (or page’s, or entry’s) SEO ranking as well.
With a simple idea and excellent execution, the boys over at StandOut Jobs have created a great little recruiting site that fits nicely into this world of “Web 2.0.”
Started by a partnership of Montreal-ers including friend and fellow entrepreneur/blogger Benjamin Yoskovitz, they’re “changing the face of recruiting.”
How? In a word, video. In their words:
The job market is broken.
Online job sites don’t work.
Hiring people should be an ongoing process.
Hiring people is about having conversations not bureaucracy.
Well if that’s true, then the best way to learn more about their company is to watch one of their own recruiting videos:
I guess you could say the theme here is "Marketing 2.0." I'm fascinated by the rapid changes happening on the web in the world of marketing and new media. Want to join the conversation? Leave a comment, or send me an email.
