Northern Voice 2008

For the past 2 semesters I've been teaching at VFS in the Entertainment Business Management faculty. I teach 'Internet Technologies 101' and 'Internet Technologies 202'.

As a part of our final project for 'Internet Technologies 202' each of the students has been creating and maintaining their own Wordpress.com blog. With Matt coming into town, and so many awesome social media types on hand for Nothern Voice I decided what better way to toss them all into the deep end, than requiring that they all come to Northern Voice to pass my class. *evil grin*

They're a great bunch of film critics, film producers, film and tv agents, network executives, video game producers, tour managers, talent agents, event managers and they've got a bunch of awesome blogs. Check them out, say hi and take their picture at Northern Voice, and /pwease/ send them some linky love. :)

Just wanted to remind everyone that it's 18 days until Northern Voice, and tickets are selling quickly. Really quickly.

I don't want to say anything scary like "We're selling out!"

I mean, it's probably going to happen, and you're going to be all bummed out if you can't get in because you didn't buy tickets in time. All your friends and co-workers have their tickets. And it's really easy to buy tickets right now.

But I don't like to scare people, so, you know, go ahead and make up your own mind. You can wait and see what happens.

(But I wouldn't wait.)

For the third year in a row Northern Voice sponsor Mt Lehman Credit Union has hired awesome Vancouver street artist Basco5 to do posters for the event. Basco5 just posted this draft of the Northern Voice 2008 poster over at Flickr.

What do you think of this years design? Basco5 is taking feedback and we're not quite done with the final artwork yet so if you have some suggestions now would be a good time. I think we're gonna add some pocast-listening critters to the mix somewhere and add 2008 to the Northern Voice type on the top.

Last year the Northern Voice organizing committee also has a lil bit of extra money in our budget and got Basco5 to design and print some awesome streetart stylee stickers for the event. This year our sponsorships are undersold and we don't have the funds but I thought there might be someone out there who would be interested in seeing this happen again this year and coming to the table with some money. If you're interested pls drop me a line... we still have time to pull it together.

To host or not to host.

Many bloggers begin their blogging days using a free blogging platform such as Wordpress only later migrating to a self-hosted version after they have become familiar with the software of their choice. This is freeing for them as they have full control of their blog for the first time.

This is NOT so for many of us. There exist benefits of migrating from self-hosting to free when you are programatically challenged. It certainly eliminates sleepless nights of asking yourself "How do I install/update/uninstall/addPHP/widgetize this on my blog?"

For artists and others this can be one of the most beneficial choices he/she can make with regards to blogging. You become an artist again.

If there's any interest I volunteer to prepare a talk on a case study using the "Dear facebook," Blog how you can mix blogging with Facebook and how to engage your blog readers and Facebook "fans".  

I run http://greenpolitics.ca, a blog about Greenpolitics and Green parties, with a current emphasis on the BC Green Party.

I'd like to see a panel discussion on political blogging/political blogs.

I suggest Sean Holman and Bill Tielman, and maybe David Schreck as potential panelists. Raif Mair and Paul Wilcocks also come to mind as possibilities.

Another possible panel/topic is "blogs as Citizen Journalism."

Stuart Hertzog,

Editor, greenpolitics.ca