I sat down right now to write a blog entry, and this is the one I came up with. There have been numerous entries on various websites over the last few weeks that have hinted that blogging is dead. While I don’t necessarily believe them, I can’t help but see some truth in a few of their statements.

First, let it not be forgotten that the *ability* to blog is at an all time maximum. Thanks to the work of Automattic and WordPress, it’s relatively painless to start a blog, either on WordPress.com or on your own hosted server. That being said, I have to question just how many people are listening these days, and of those, how many really care to participate in genuine discussions.

With regards to my own blog, traffic has stayed fairly constant over the last year or so. The proportion of traffic has changed, moving slowly from direct traffic to organic traffic (from search engines). Unfortunately for me, there are a lot more people looking at my photographs via my site these days then there are people reading my actual content. Given that I spend a great deal of time writing some of my entries, part of that is obviously a bit alarming.

Whenever I have encountered a new technology or a new phenomenon, I have always attempted to evaluate its viability by imagining the extremes. An example of that is advertising. In my head, the advertising revenue model has always faltered simply because it cannot exist at the extreme. That is, we cannot and would not live in a world where advertising was dominant. First, people would become desensitized to it and probably stop clicking or buying. Second, advertising revenue has to ultimately come from somewhere — if you’re not building, making, or selling something tangible, then the whole system breaks down. That’s why I think the advertising revenue model will ultimately fail (despite people telling me I have been wrong for years).

With regards to microblogging, I see the same sort of problem. Yes, it is awesome to get relatively instantaneous feedback from your peers. But can the world exist with only microblogs? I would like to think no, since they ultimately don’t represent intelligent thought or discourse. Yes, they entertain. And yes, they are useful. But I think they can only exist in a world where they are augmented by intelligent discussion, either in the real world, or in the blogosphere.

Services like Google reader have only resulted in the further fracturing of the blog community. Many people who used to comment on blogs now seem to reserve their comments solely for use on Google reader’s “Shared Items” functionality. Unfortunately for the rest of us, the comments I’ve encountered have usually been intelligent, and would have probably sparked intelligent discussion should they be posted next to the source material. Why they were not posted on the original website is sort of beyond me. I have seen, more times that I would like, people commenting on shared items that originated from my blog. And yet, those people have not posted comments on my blog.

If Google reader provided an API to extract comments from blog entries, I would have long ago written a plugin to automatically post comments on blogs from their service. But unfortunately they do not. And since Twitter doesn’t really provide any kind of threading ability with regards to messages, there’s really no context to the information there. So today, we live in a world where it somehow seems easier to fracture content than to create it, which is dangerous and disadvantageous in my mind.

In my head, my blog has always been paramount to the world of Duane Storey. Twitter, Flickr, and Facebook should all be secondary. The content that ends up there, in my mind, should somehow originate from here, and likewise, comments and meta data should end up back here. The internet representation of Duane Storey is, and always will be, duanestorey.com. It will be my goal, as long as I have the ability to write PHP and boot a computer up, to try and bring all this information together instead of letting it all drift apart. And while I don’t mind these services using the data (there’s nothing wrong with filtering data or representing it a different way), I always want my site to represent all the content I generate, and likewise, want the discussions to end up here. Maybe that’s a pipe dream, but I really don’t think it is.

Wow, that seems like a title from 24. Anyways, Ryland Haggis was by tonight for a few beers, which was definitely cool, since we’ve been talking about it for a while now. For those of you who don’t know Ryland, he’s an extremely talented photographer who also happens to be an amazing bass player — he’s currently in Jessie Farrell’s band, and has been touring with her this last year.

Ryland Haggis 2, photo by Redpilot Photography
All Rights Reserved

If you haven’t heard of him, go add him on Twitter, or also check out his professional musician website.

Also, make sure to check out Jessie’s website — Jessie’s currently down in Nashville writing some of her next album.

I did something similar in Feburary of this year for Northern Voice, and I thought it would be a good idea to try again. Given that Barack Obama was one of the first presidential candidates to embrace social media, I thought I’d do a celebratory mosaic using a public photos posted to Flickr.

Yes We Can, photo by Duane Storey
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License

The image is constructed using Flickr photos from everyday, normal people, the same people who helped Obama and his grass-roots campaign to secure the presidency. The search tags used on Flickr were “obama election victory” and “obama celebration”. The result is a mosiac using 1600 images.

Enjoy. If you’d like to see a higher resolution version, head on over here.

Victory, photo by Sam Javanrouh
Attribution-NonCommercial License

It’s been a few days now since president-elect Barack Obama won the election, and I thought I would share a few thoughts. The day of the election I saw an interview with a prominent African American on CNN who said that should Obama win, you would literally be able to divide the history of the United States into two time periods: the period before Obama, and the period after. He said from that moment on, you would no longer be able to say that certain things were not possible in the US if you were a person of colour. For the first time, he would be able to tell his son that he could become whatever he aspired to be in his lifetime, and could point to Obama’s victory as an example of that.

The historical significance of having an African American become president, especially given the history of the United States with regards to slavery, cannot be understated. And more importantly, the fact the Barack Obama won at all, given that he was the clear underdog in the beginning, speaks volumes to the number of people who genuinely want change in the United States.

Let it also not be forgotten that the victory the other night was not celebrated by the United States alone. In Vancouver, I saw more people watching the TVs in the Yaletown Brew Pub than I’ve seen for any playoff hockey game in Vancouver, and far more tears (although the Canucks losing the Stanley Cup that year was a close second). In Kenya, they celebrated by declaring a national holiday. People were cheering in the streets of Tanzania. The photo above was taken in Toronto. It is clear that the election was not only a great importance in the United States, but also of importance on the world stage.

It will be a few months before Obama takes control of the White House, but I’m extremely optimistic about his ability to inspire change, not just in the United States, but also throughout the world.

On September 11th, 2001, I was working in the middle of a clean room in a tiny building somewhere in the middle of Ottawa. Upon walking down the hall, I learned from a co-worker that a plane had just struck the World Trade Center. Thinking it was just an accident, I continued on with my job without any more thought to the event. Upon learning that another plane had hit the second World Trade Center building less than an hour later, I began to realize the magnitude of the day’s events.

A few hours later, I would find myself across the street on Hunt Club, watching history unfold on a small television perched above the bar inside the local Boston Pizza. Tonight, while sitting on a small table at the Yaletown Brew Company with Dave, I felt once again like history was being made.

Today is an historic day. Not just because the United States has elected the first African American president, but because it is once again a nation united together in its belief that things can indeed be better.

Even north of the border up here in Yaletown, Vancouver, the tears were flowing freely during Obama’s acceptance speech. It is clear that people are tired of being lied to, tired of having their freedoms trampled upon, and tired of a life spent slaving away so that the rich continue to get richer and the poor continue to get poorer. Obama represents (not just for the citizens of the United States, but for the entire world), another chance, an opportunity of a life filled with promise and hope, not just hardship and unmeasurable loss.

I sat there tonight watching history unfold, proud to be a Canadian, and proud to be a witness to such an historic political event. Yes, it is true that Obama may let the United States down. And it is true that he may let the entire world down. But now is not a time for defeatism or pessimism, now is the time for hope: hope that the world will be better, hope that the times ahead will be easier, and hope that all of us, despite our differences, will find a way to live together in peace.

It’s finally here. After over a full year of campaigning, tomorrow the United States will be voting on who will be the next president of the United States. As I’ve blogged about many times before, I’m hoping Barack Obama wins. Compared to most politicians in this day and age, he seems upfront, humble, intelligent, and with an honest desire to improve the state of America.

I’m probably going to hole myself up tomorrow near a TV and watch the coverage as it happens. Without a doubt, this is bound to be the most important political event that I’ve witnessed in my lifetime. Whoever wins tomorrow will have eight years of damage to work on repairing, eight years of failed foreign policy to contend with, and an economic crisis (that many believe may ultimately be comparable to some aspects of the Great Depression) that threatens jobs and consumer confidence on a global scale.

If you have any thoughts about the election, feel free to drop a comment. I predict a record turn-out of voters tomorrow, with Obama ultimately winning.

Yes, that’s right people. How does going up to Whistler and spending a weekend boarding/skiing and talking about everyone’s favourite blogging engine, WordPress, sound? I suggested this briefly on Twitter tonight, and immediately got a message from Rebecca along the lines of “hell ya!”

I emailed a hotel already tonight at the heart of the village to see what kind of group rates we could get in December or January. I think it would be awesome to go up for a weekend, hold a WordCamp during the day, and do afternoon/night skiing in the off time, or on the second day.

Rebecca and I helped organize the last WordCamp a few weeks ago, and it was a ton of fun. Given that it was a great experience and everyone learned a lot, I’m definitely interested in helping get this event off of the ground. What better way to talk about WordCamp then up at North America’s number one ski result, surrounded by awesome people, great scenery, and of course, a bunch of Canadian beer.

I really need to get some numbers to give a hotel for some rates, so please drop a comment if you’re interested in heading up for a weekend. Also, if you’d be interested in talking about something, drop me a comment as well. Any help getting the word out for this event in the planning stage (i.e. right now) would be great.

Updates:

• Whistler official opens on November 27, 2008. So I’m thinking January might be a good time.
• I added a wiki page WordCamp Whistler. If you want to edit it, the password is “c4mp”. Please add yourself to the list if you think you might attend.
• There’s also a Facebook event for the wiki-challenged people out there. check it out here.
• The RSS feed for this event is here. Feel free to subscribe to it to keep up with the updates.

Lately I’ve actually been sleeping fairly well, given how much trouble I have routinely had in the past. I’ve been trying to keep a fairly consistent schedule these days, going to bed sometime around midnight, and trying to be up around 8am or so. There’s a period of time between about 7 and 8 in the morning that is pure bliss these days, where I just kind of fade in and out of sleep and stretch periodically. Now that it’s a bit colder, my heater is on slightly, so my room is nice and toasty at the point. Plus, it’s still a bit dark at that hour, which makes it easier to continue relaxing.

Aquarium 040, photo by Duane Storey
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License

With that in mind, I’m not really looking forward to the upcoming time change this weekend. It’ll mean that my one hour of joy each morning there will be interrupted with sunshine, which will probably make it harder to continue sleeping. That being said, I’m still looking forward to being a lazy bum this weekend and sleeping in on both days. I have to take my car into the shop on Saturday to finally get my replacement stereo installed.