I’m glad I was able to attend Northern Voice this year – it was informative and inspiring for the most part. All the clicking laptops around me were a bit daunting, but gave me something to aspire to.
The morning kicked off with the keynote address by Matt Mullenweg, founder of WordPress (the excellent blogging platform on which this website is based). Listen to the audio here.
I then listened to a talk by the CEO of Broadband Mechanics, Marc Canter on bringing social to software. Next was an inspirational diatribe on the state of our stats-obsessed blogging world by Dave Olson.
In the afternoon, Alan Levine gave us 50 web 2.0 ways to tell a story (his was a tearjerker about a dog). Vancouver photographer Kris Krug then faced off against his mentor Alex Waterhouse-Hayward on the best medium for photography – hard copy or digital?
Finally, Rob Cottingham gave a talk called Blogger 911, about using blogs for crisis communications, something we’re doing a lot of in PR class. He also draws some great cartoons about social media – check them out on his page.
Overall it was worth going and I’ll be going next year – hopefully with a laptop this time!
5 responses so far ↓
DaveO // Feb 27, 2008 at 6:44 pm
Glad you enjoyed my schtick – I had hoped to catch my amigo Kris and Rob’s sessions but alas, i shifted to chillaxin mode and missed out.
Rob Cottingham // Feb 27, 2008 at 7:03 pm
Hi, Antoine -
Thanks for the kind words about the cartoon! And I hope the session was helpful — I’d be interested in your perspective as a PR student.
Glad you liked Northern Voice — we went to the first one and found it completely transformative!
Antoine // Mar 1, 2008 at 8:06 am
Thanks for the comments Dave and Rob – You were both terrific.
As a PR student I find that social media channels of communication are sadly neglected in our curriculum – Seriously, how can a press release and media conference do the job any better than the socially driven media of a blog, podcast, wiki, youtube video, etc. It doesn’t make sense to me.
kk+ // Mar 2, 2008 at 5:46 pm
great wrap-up antoine. thx and nice to meetcha!
Antoine // Mar 4, 2008 at 3:04 am
Thanks Kris!