Fade to Play

I am so excited today. I have been jumping up and down since going to my mailbox after arriving home late tonight. On Feb 21st I ordered my MOO cards, on Feb 25th they left MOO headquarters via DHL in the UK and today they arrived at my Vancouver residence.

Wow. I am in love with my MOO cards. Thank you MOO!!!!!

Relevance: I am so happy that my MOO cards arrived in time for SXSW. I am so worried and I very glad I didn’t use Canada Post.

Next week I will be flying to Austin, Texas to attend SXSW (interactive). It should be an awesome experience and alot of my interweb and real world friends will be there. Below are the list of my Vancouver/Victoria friends that are heading down. Hope to see you there.

The Canadians are taking over Austin! (twitter names in brackets)

Phillip Jeffrey (tyfn)

Jordan Behan of Strutta (jordanbehan)

Kris Krüg of Static Photography and Raincity Studios (kk)

Dave Olson of Raincity Studios and happyfrog.ca (uncleweed)

Robert Scales of Raincity Studios (scales)

John Biehler (retrocactus)

Todd Sieling of Ma.gnolia (magnolia)

Tod Maffin of the CBC (todmaffin)

Tris Hessey of b5 media (his blog is Maple Leaf 2.0) and Intruders Canada (trishussey)

Colleen Coplick of 99 Directions (colleencoplick)

Roland Tanglao of Raincity Studios (rtanglao)

Travis Smith of hop studios (nep)

Danny Robinson of Strutta (dannyrobinson)

Arieanna of Blogaholics and b5media (arieanna)

[Continually updated including other Canadians coming]

Joseph Thornley of Thornley Fallis

Jay West of Jaywest Production Inc.

Peter Andersen

Dave Delaney of Emma Email Marketing (davedelaney)

Cecily Walker (skeskali)

Shane Birley of Left Right Minds

——-

Make sure you party with the Canadians at the SXNW party.

Relevance: Looking to interact with fun people doing cool Internet stuff.

I am attending the Opening Party at Northern Voice 2008. It started about 20 minutes ago and it is very cool to be able to see my social media and blogging friends again. This is the kickoff to a great conference with awesome speakers and I am looking forward to Moose Camp tomorrow.

Kris Krüg, Northern Voice opening party

Cinci Csere (left) at Launch Party Vancouver 3

There are a number of creative people that continue to organise interesting and diverse events. Casecamp Vancouver 3 is occurring on February 20th. Cinci Csere, whom I know, is a dynamic person and she is providing a great occasion to network and interact with marketing companies and individuals.

Casecamp is:

CaseCamp is an unconference for marketers. Following in the footsteps of BarCamp, and building on the model of DemoCamp, CaseCamp brings together people interested in marketing-oriented activities to learn from their peers via case study presentations. CaseCamp is structured on purpose. The goal is to create an independent forum for for great dialogue. Typically, a presenter presents a case (good, bad, ugly, lessons learned, etc.) and then a lively discussion ensues during a Q&A period.

When: Wednesday Feb 20, 2008

Time: 5:45pm

Location: Lamplighter

Process: Presenters have 8 min. to talk about their case & then 2 min. for a rapidfire Q&A period. Music comes back on @ 7pm & we continue the conversations!

Contact Cinci to sign up as a presenter or attendee here.

Relevance: Another example of a fun, social event for Vancouver marketing people to attend.

Matt Mullenweg photo courtesy of flickr user Kris Krüg

I just found out (through his blog) that Matt Mullenweg, the founding developer of WordPress, is the keynote for Northern Voice in 2 weeks. Although I have never met him, I have become of a fan of WordPress since I switched in 2006 and I am looking forward to hearing him speak.

This is awesome news and I would like to offer thanks to the organising committee.

Those that are undecided should register and book your flight today. It will be a great networking and social experience.

See you there!

Relevance: I <3 WordPress and I am interested in hearing about his ideas regarding tagging, social media, and the future of blogging.

As Americans are voting across the nation, Twitter, Twittervision, and Google Maps have combined to create a Google Super Tuesday Map of instant updates. According to the Official Google Blog,

We’ve joined forces with Twitter to give you instant updates on Super Tuesday. Instead of sitting on the sidelines, you can send a simple text message about your voting experience. Huge turnout? Taking too long in line? Did you just vote for the first time? We want it all, if you can keep to 140 characters or less. (And if candidates can keep their posts to 140 characters, anyone can.)

Google News has also participated today through a special election section.

A special gadget tracks how the candidates in both parties are progressing through the night.

found via Laughing Squid and Miss604

Relevance: It is exciting to watch the power of the participatory process through the world using mobile and web 2.0 technlogies. Maybe next time flickr or utterz could be integrated as well.

In a couple of weeks Northern Voice, a premier social media/blogging conference will be taking place in Vancouver. I will be attending and I’m looking forward to the interesting talks and chilling with the cool tech people .

Northern Voice is a two-day, non-profit personal blogging and social media conference that’s being held at the Forestry Sciences Centre, 2424 Main Mall, UBC main campus, Vancouver, Canada on February 22-23, 2008. This is the 4th annual incarnation of this event, see the 2005, 2006 and 2007 websites for previous information.

Thursday night will be a dinner at the Polynesian Room in East Vancouver. Friday will be Moosecamp. Saturday will be the conference. Check out the schedule.

I recommend registering as soon as possible as it will sell out. Hope to see you there.

Relevance: Great opportunity to meet fun geeks.

On Monday I attended the Vancouver Facebook Garage 2. I had attended the first Vancouver Facebook Garage last October in which the room was packed and I knew that this would be a beneficial experience.

Megan Cole of Kinzin

It was great to see motivated local programmers creating useful applications for Facebook. Rebecca Bollwitt officially liveblogged the event for miss604.com where you can read about the demos. Megan Cole was the host. Both women gave exceptional performances. Duane Storey was the official photographer and took excellent pictures as he always does.

Ben Neville, MainSocial

Thanks to Gerald Bauer for organising an informative event. Please join the Facebook group.

Rebecca Bollwitt

Relevance: Another example of how innovative Canadians are getting together to share and learn from one another.

If you don’t have any plans on Thursday night, I would recommend coming to Democamp Vancouver 05. It is a great place to network and if you have something you would like to share (concept, product, idea), it is a great opportunity to do so. Boris and Megan will be organising it and I expect non-stop fun.

Demo Schedule

• come in the door and post your demo idea on the board
• 30 minutes of meeting other attendees (promote your idea, get votes!)
• presentation process starts at 6:00pm
• 30 second elevator pitches by all presenters
• attendees vote on top 4
• we will have 4 x 6 minute talks (time limit enforced, includes feedback time!)

Of course there will be Battledecks:

1. 2 people from the crowd are chosen (by elimination or volunteering or voting…) and go head-to-head in DemoCamp’s installment of BATTLEDECKS
2. Each contender is given a 6-to-8 page Keynote Presentation on the spot and will present their fabulous, ground-breaking, earth-shattering, mind-blowing business/project/idea/nonsense to the crowd, inspiring us all on whatever it is they are revealing.
3. Think: “Gesture. Flow. Credibility. Jargon.” It will really help.
4. Winner will be professed by crowd applause and cheering.

For those that attended Democamp Vancouver 04, you were witness to Linda Bustos‘ takedown of Jordan Behan. Can you last 3 minutes?

If you are planning on attending, add your name to the wiki and sign up for the Facebook event.

Relevance: A great opportunity to share your demo with some of the influential members of the Vancouver tech scene.