Tag: northern voice Posts

Wow, what’s with this weather? It’s been absolutely gorgeous this winter. I’m lucky enough to have a bedroom with basically a full-wall window view of the downtown core, and every morning the sun reflecting off buildings wakes me up. It’s been rather nice having sunshine instead of the dreary rain Vancouver is known for in the winter. I went out to Joey’s last night on Burrard Street to have some dinner with friends. It’s your typical Earl’s type restaurant with token hot girls and funky music. The food was pretty tasty though, with Cajun wings actually being served with a real hibachi type stove so you could blacken them at will. It’s nice to see a few more places pop up here and there to check out. Today is of course another full day of work, but I’m hoping this sunshine carries on into the weekend. I’ll be out at […]

One of the last conversations I had at Northern Voice was with Michael Klassen, and it was about how Microsoft had completely forgotten about the end-user. Sure, maybe they spent five years working hard to make a new OS that they hoped everyone would like, but the user-experience just isn’t there. Which is really the prime area where Apple excels — they listen to the end user, and make the experience simple and productive. Other companies simply want to focus on the “how” and not the “why”. Having a really elegantly coded application with a crappy user interface is just a waste of time. To have a successful software project you really need to listen to the end user. Which makes what happened a few minutes ago all the cooler. I was sitting on my couch listening to music when suddenly I got an SMS message on my phone asking […]

Most of you that know me have undoubtedly seem me cursing at my computer furiously this past week or punching my laptop from time to time. The reason for this sudden change in behaviour stems from my recent installation of Windows Vista. Somehow, that whole process turned a pretty decent laptop into something completely unusable. So today, while trying to edit some photos at Northern Voice, I realized that I just couldn’t go on using my laptop the way it was. Everything was really slow and most applications crashed from time to time (especially Photoshop). Since I’m about to leave on vacation, and I really need a laptop to take with me, I debated spending the first day of my vacation reinstalling XP on my laptop. Which would obviously suck, but something really needed to be done. And then, looking around at my peers in the Forest Sciences Center at […]

I’m sitting in room 1005 at the Forest Sciences Center at UBC, eagerly awaiting the “User Generated Content and Activist Campaigns” session to begin. Prior to this was the keynote address by Anil Dash, which gave some great insights into the importance of blogging, and a few allusions to where blogging may go in the future. One of the most interesting part of this conference, for me at least, is a glimpse into the nature of bloggers. The other night at the social, Lee LeFever gave a presentation about his trip around the world, and one sentence that stands out in my mind from his presentation is that “lunatics don’t blog,” something that seems completely apparent walking the halls here at UBC. Never at a conference have I met such a jovial and social group of people, and it’s been a pleasant surprise to see just how many people greet […]

Last night was the first event of the Northern Voice conference. Everyone met down at Heritage Hall on Main Street for some great food served by some local chefs here in Vancouver. The beer flowed like Vancouver rain, and people seemed to have a really great time hanging out and getting to know each other. Having been to many conferences, it was a pleasant surprise at how smoothly the events went and how social most people were. Here are some sample photos northern voice so far, along with a live shot of Photocamp:

Tomorrow officially marks the start of the Northern Voice 2007 activities. Northern Voice is a Vancouver based conference where web-bloggers meet up and discuss various technological and social aspects of blogging. I’ve heard a lot of good things about it, and Boris and his company Bryght are the main organizers for it. The main social is tomorrow night, which will be a great chance for everyone to meet each other and break the ice before the main activities begin. Friday is “Moose Camp”, which is an opportunity for conference participants to gather around and form their own agenda based on things they want to discuss or participate in. I plan to attend the Photocamp which is being moderated by Kris Krug. One of the things I’m excited to see is a real high dynamic range display, courtesy of one of the attendees who does research at UBC. If I’m right, […]