Blog Posts About: event

Rain City Studios and the Banff New Media Institute (BNMI) have put together a very, very cool event. It’s called Blogs-n-Dogs and it’s a four day event in Banff, Alberta, Canada that includes workshops and information sessions on topics like:

• Managing your public life online
• Blogging and the arts: Web 2.0 independent music publishing, photographers and artists
• Personal blogs and portals
• Blog writing style
• How to make money with your blog
• Building your community and traffic, connecting with your tribe in the blogosphere
• Traditional PR, marketing and the "blogosphere"
• Social networking tools, blogging tools, aggregation and technology: RSS, XML, podcasting and video blogging

If you're not familiar with Banff, it is one of the most beautiful settings on the planet, tucked into the Canadian Rockies. See these Flickr photos.

I’m honored to be a part of the august faculty that includes:

Alexandra Samuel,  Social Signal
Darren Barefoot, Head Geek, Capulet
Eric Rice, Audioblog.com
Kris Krug, Event Blogger, Sales Director, Bryght
Lee LeFever, Principle, Common Craft
Robert Scales, Managing Director, Raincity Studios
Roland Tanglao, Chief Blogging Officer, Bryght
Will Pate, Sales and Marketing  Director, Raincity Studios

So why is it called "Blogs'n'Dogs" ?

You can join us for an optional dog sledding excursion in the world famous Canadian Rockies on December 6. We will be enjoying the wilderness and scenery with some friendly huskies. Come out and take part in a two hour tour of the breathtaking Canadian mountain landscape. Be sure to bring all your winter gear. This will be an opportunity to get to know the faculty and have some fun!

The event will be December 4-8th and registration is now open. It's gonna be fun! Tune into the Blogs'n'Dogs web site for more information.

A group of friends are putting together a Bar Camp inspired gathering here in Seattle that is meant to bring together a group of 150 Seattle's thinkers and doers.

Here's a description from the site:

Seattle Mind Camp is a self-organizing, digitally minded, entrepreneur-driven, overnight Seattle confab.

What: A weekend, 24-hour, multi-track event. Think huge space with breakout rooms, broadband Wi-Fi, projectors, white boards - and you.
Who: 150 of Seattle's forward thinkers: techies, entrepreneurs, executives, gamers, artists, and anyone else with a great idea.
When: Mind Camp will take place on November 5-6
Why: Why not?

If you're a Seattleite that's been wanting to meet more people doing interesting things, you should go. Register here.

Quite unfortunately, I have an out-of-town wedding that weekend and can't attend, but I'm sure it's going to be a blast.

If last year was any indication, Northern Voice 2006 in Vancouver BC (Feb. 10-11) will be an excellent event for bloggers. I went last year and had a great time and met lots of cool and interesting people. What more could you want for $30 a day ($50 for both days) and that's Canadian dollars! Do it for me! I wish I could go...

Tags: northernvoice2006

I few months ago, I had a bar-b-cue at my house and invited the Internet to come over. It was the afternoon before GnomeDex and I wasn’t sure what I was getting into. I didn’t write about it much then, but the results were incredible and I hope others will do similar events.

It all stated with the guys at Bryght, who planned to come over that afternoon. I offered a BBQ and someone mentioned that I should have something for other folks coming into town. I accepted the offer and, on a whim, put an invitation on my blog, open to everyone. It was called “Pre-GnomeDex BBQ- You’re Invited�?. Word quickly spread to the GnomeDex wiki.

One the first times I felt a hint of panic was this comment from Carrick:
“You just invited the whole Interweb to your house for free beer? You are a brave man.�?

My response was:
“Yeah that's pretty much what it looks like Carrick, we'll see how this goes. :) If nothing else, it will be interesting."

As it turned out, I couldn’t have asked for a better group of people. For people who know Open Space Technology, this was great example of the first principle: Whoever comes are the right people. I was impressed and excited by the folks that came. Here’s a somewhat complete list:

• The Bryght Crew (Kris, Roland, Richard, Boris, Colin)
• Will Pate of Rain City Studios
• Scott Beale of Laughing Squid
• Gerry Caballero of AAA California
• Andy Smith of Reoriginalize
• Matt Mullenweg of Wordpress
• Josh Petersen of the Robot Coop
• Chris Pirillo of Lockergnome
• Nick Finck of Digital Web Magazine
• Pete Grondel of Microsoft
• Jay Fienberg of icite.net
• Dan Gillmor of Bayosphere
• The PubSub Group (B6b Wyman, Salim Ismail, Richard Treadway)
• Lee Hammond Geffen Records
• Marc Pincus formerly of Tribe.net
• Mike Buckbee of Feedmail
• Tom Conrad of Pandora
• Jeremy Hubert of http://www.jeremyhubert.com/
• Dylan Greene of DylanGreene.com
• Greg Narain of SparkCast
• Jordan Rule of Jordanrule.com

(I’m sorry if I missed others here)

Despite all the things that could have happened, the best things did. We had enough beer and food. The caliber of folks was high and I think we had a good time. I would surely do it again, if I was going to be around for GnomeDex 2006 that is. Not that this was anything like Bar Camp, but I think there is something about planning for spontaneity that makes things like this work.

Here are some photos, more can be found here:

Andy Face and the Crowd

Boris Mann, Grill Master

Chris Pirillo and Marc Pincus

PhotoMatt

Zinga (Mark Pincus’ Dog)

Dan Gillmor with Nick Dylan and Kris

I really appreicate everyone coming, helping out and being well-behaved. ;-) A BIG thanks for Boris Mann for manning the grill. I hope we can do it again sometime.

Last week I participated in a Seattle Blogwalk (which I haven't yet written about- but soon!) one of the questions we asked was who had blogged about Hurricane Katrina. I raised my hand and talked about using my personal blog to let people know that our friend David Stitcher made it out of the city. I wondered at the time if there was any chance that someone who knows Dave, besides a regular reader, would be able to find that post.

Since, I've been following some of what Nancy White, Alexandra Samuel and many others are doing around building awareness, volunteerism and community participation in the aftermath of the devastation.

When it comes to testing the online tools we talk about so much, few things can compare to how they are used in these types of situations. Like people and agencies, they get tested.

I was interested to see that Alexandra has provided a guide for how people can use tags to increase the discoverability of vital information through tagging-- related to Katrina.

With the Katrina tagging guide, she is lowering the barriers to understanding how people can participate in the recovery online, in plain English. She even includes code that can be used for the Technorati tags.

In the face of this disaster, I hope that the blog world can collectively play some part in the recovery by increasing access to vital information. I applaud the community that has risen to the challenge.

For the past year and a half, I’ve been working on a project within a big local company on an on-and-off basis. Despite being in an old and somewhat slow company, the project has been anything but. The manager of the project is a real visionary and takes great pride in defying convention. Here’s an example:

Yesterday we (16 of us) gathered in a studio in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle. Our task, on the clock, was to create a play during the day and perform it for our friends and family that night. The play would tell the story of our team and we would have the help of a group of theater professionals.

Update: The pictures from the play's production are here.

As we received our directions, we were a bit stunned. A play? What does this have to do with the project? WTF? Those of us who have been with the project have learned to roll with these types of things.

The day was spent brainstorming and playing improv games that warm you up and train you to think on your feet. One of my favorites was Bippity-Bippity Bop.

Our performance was at 7pm and our audience gathered in the auditorium. The lights went out and we stepped onto the stage. Quite unbelievably, it went better than expected. We were more emotive, clear and organized that we ever thought possible. Despite the last minute rush to finish, we actually told a story (which we didn’t realize until later).

Today we spent 4 hours debriefing the whole thing and the connection to the project became very real. Looking back on our work together, the process of creating the play was a microcosm of our development process. We organized ourselves similarly, we dealt with conflict similarly and the same problems arose.

In the end, we got to a space where we were very honest with on another about why we have the problems we have. Looking at a microcosm of the project allowed us to realize our weaknesses and opportunities and voice them in new ways.

From the outside, it may seem like a colossal waste of time, but we made progress today in the debrief that could not have been made without the experience of creating a play together. Over and above that, I got a little education of the theater, which I appreciate more than ever before.