Sunday, February 25, 2007



It is not often that I ever write in my blog the happenings of the previous day. But at Northern Voice yesterday and the day before I was subject to sights and lectures, most of them well over my threshold of understanding, that I have to comment on them. This annual Vancouver based blogging conference is attended by normally unseen and unacknowledged gurus that keep our web pages and blogs from collapsing as photons into the aether. At 64 I may have been part of a handful of older bloggers yet a young one Maikopunk in her blog points out some of the sights that amazed me the most. Lawyer Kevin O'Keefe noticed the strange interaction of the conference. I sat next to a friendly Serbian photographer who could multitask in a way in which I could only stare in awe. While listening to a complicated lecture on identity and security he edited 100 digital pictures (that he had taken minutes before during a conference coffe break), colour corrected them, cropped them and uploaded on to Flickr. Or there is this different link Flickr 2.

There was a constant reference to change, a change that was much faster than most could possibly cope with or understand. There was an emphasis on blogging platforms like DRUPAL and WebPress. Friendly arguments arose on which of these platforms were more user friendly. There was a nuts and bolts lecture on how to become a citizen journalist. I was amazed to find out that an apparently sane woman admitted to having over 400 online identities.

But at the end of the day I was left wondering, as people adopt and adapt all the latest advancements for blogging for the creation of online communities, if the ethical problems that arose were being ignored or simply passed over. I would reject that any online sense of intimace can ever rival a face to face one.

For my talk on why I blog I brought a very large light jet print of Rebecca (seen above). I put it to one side of the also large screen that projected my blog for yesterday that also was illustrated by a photograph of Rebecca. At the end of the talk, nobody came down to investigate the large photograph. One woman asked me, "Why did you bring that photograph, after all you already had one up on the screen?"

Could it be that for some the only reality is the one they see on the laptop screen?