or maybe something uplifting…

Sunday was a whirlwind tour of Vancouver. We saw a lot of downtown, Gastown, Granville Market and a harbour. The Game Design program at Vancouver Film School had an open house so we were able to go participate in that as well.

The Vancouver Film School started their Game Design program back around 2000. It looks like a pretty exclusive class to get in to - they accept only about 75 students each year. From what I saw in the open house, the Game Design program isn’t just about coding or art, it’s about putting together the whole thing. They have courses that cover theory of game play from the basics that make board games and paper games playable and compelling. They cover 2D graphics and gaming, from pixel art to Flash animation. They do 3D work in 3DS Max. Students build games using one of a few popular game engines, like the Unreal Engine. The idea is to prepare them for mainstream tools and they’ll be able to adapt if and when they run in to other tools they need to use.
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No time to write, just some of my favourite pictures from yesterday around the city (click for bigger of course).

Northern Voice was a big day. By the end I was wiped out in every way. We had walked in the Vancouver rain until it soaked us through, my feet were sore and tired, stomach was empty and my mind was stuffed. And I loved it all. The conference was great. I was prepared for a total blog love-in but what I got was a bunch of great ideas, some good technical advice and support from being around like-minded people.

After the keynote by Anil Dash opened the conference, we went in to a session on social software in learning. The university scene has changed drastically since I was a full time student. There are a lot of web-based programs to help bring education online. The reason I know this is that most people in the session seemed pretty fed up with them all. D’Arcy Norman talked about success using Drupal to get students blogging and using forums as an extension of the classroom. Specifically, Drupal can remove a lot of the administrative formality and busy work if it is configured well. This allows engaged students to self-organize. I’ve tried Drupal as an admin and a user and I have mixed feelings about it. I definitely believe that with the right person managing it, Drupal can be the right backend for a lot of different content management applications. Specifically, it does seem well-suited to the field of education. With the wrong admin though, users can be locked out of features unnecessarily and quickly get turned off. I guess that’s like any good tool - users make good things great.

The interesting thing was that a Jon Beasley-Murray (a later presenter in the same session) knocked the Drupal set up and pretty much all the class extension stuff. He had students go out and make their own blogs and submit some of the coursework via public posts. He showed us an example online where a student was critical of an academic paper and received comments from the author of the paper. That’s the kind of interaction that you just can’t get with any scale but the web. His opinion was that it also doesn’t happen under the auspices of a school. Admittedly, there’s a big danger in this kind of involvement, the author of the original paper could have taken offense or tried to claim libel. I think that’s what we need though. We need to get students interacting with the rest of the world so they know that they’re not “just an undergrad” or “just doing a course.” And if a bunch of students get sued frivolously, then that’s the cost of having real education and not just lip service to some ideal of people getting excited by reading a book alone in the library. There’s a cost for the students and the teachers to get more involved in the education though, and that’s time. So it’s only going to progress as much as people make the time for their education and that means they have to care about the subject more than they do about other things they could do with that time. The feedback students can get by letting a wider audience read their work, however, fans the flicker of interest that they had when they signed up for the course.

So yeah, I got a little excited by the education session. Then I moved on to Dave’s podcasting session. I have to admit that the Uncle Weed persona did put me off a bit. I guess I’m a stiff. So the subject matter of his podcasts doesn’t excite me, but the session did. Dave knows his shit. He cares about what he’s doing and it shows. So he had some great pointers and interesting presentation covering everything from getting a concept through recording and producing all the way up to promoting your podcast once you’ve got a few in the can. I only went in to the session with idle curiosity - but when he started in about how to vet an idea to see if it’s worth starting a podcast, I started to get inspired. I’ve done a couple podcasts, well they’re not episodic so some say that’s not a podcast … so I’ve recorded a couple audio file of me speaking which were syndicated in the RSS feed from my blog… But anyway, I’ve done a couple of those and I think I might like to do some more over a limited time, like a short series around a topic I like to talk about. One of the reasons I identified with Dave’s attitude was the focus on getting it out there. Get good audio quality but don’t go overboard buying equipment before you start recording. He recommended starting with a laptop if you already have one and showed the M-Audio device he uses (a Microtrack 24/96). It looks pretty sweet - two channels of audio and a CF slot. A far cry from the crap RCA puts out (which, by the way, doesn’t use any normal formats for files or connectivity).

After the podcasting session Candace and I walked all over God’s green acre looking for food in the rain. Being a Saturday, nobody on UBC wants to try to sell food. We saw a Subway sign and headed for it like an oasis in the desert. So I have to ask: why leave the signs on if your business is closed? We ended up finding a pretty good bagel place that was open and had a vegan option.

After lunch was Vlogging session. I don’t have much good to say about it. I think the citizen newscaster is in for a big surprise when they realize that big media’s not blind - they can applly a lot of the same techniques to dominating online opinions that they have to dominating offline opinions. Yes they’ve tried and failed a couple times, but each TV network has piles of money to burn through figuring this out. We live in an interesting time and the conditions that exist now won’t last for ever. It’s important for individuals who get it to use the advantages they have now, while they last.”

I liked the rest of the afternoon a lot better but don’t have so much to relate about it. The session Darren Barefoot led on why people blog was interesting and inspiring. As a long-time blogger he’s got some good insight and some good stories to tell. Both Jeff Henshaw and Catherine Winters were interesting in the virtual worlds talk, but XBox Live and Second Life seemed almost juxtaposed rather than complementary.

So, to sum up: glad I came, wish you were here . If it sticks then you’ll see a lot more blogging out of me and maybe a couple more of these introverted blogging-about-blogging posts too.

So it’s pretty late here already (12 am Pacific, though my blog is set to Eastern so it’s probably going to say it’s after 3 when I post this).

So far Vancouver’s a cool place, the Blue Horizon is a swanky hotel and the people at MooseCamp were pretty cool too. When Candace and I finally made it to the hotel yesterday we were amazed at the view. Here are a couple samples of the shots we took on the balcony.

Last night there was a dinner for Northern Voice attendees. We found our way there by Skytrain (which, oddly enough, we boarded underground at Burrard Station) and a bus. The food was good but more over it was great to start talking to the other people coming to the conference. We ended up sitting with Roland Tanglao, Catherine Winters, Dale McGladdery and some other interesting people whose names I can’t find at the moment. We all talked about a bunch of stuff and it really helped to make more friendly faces at today’s MooseCamp. In the morning Roland led a session on Social Media Diaspora. The real seed of the idea seemed to be about reconnecting with roots and how social technology is enabling that, but it got us talking and thinking about what it means to be part of different kinds of groups and what the repercussions are. Have a listen to the podcast on that page and you can get more of a sense of what I mean.
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Wow. Busy times these days. I’ve been trying to hit 58 with my main in WoW and Candace and I have been having fun with our Shammies, but that’s not what’s been keeping me really busy. (Today’s post is a brain-dump and some personal rambling, enjoy but don’t expect enlightenment )

Jeff and I have been collaborating on some stuff that’s not really ready for public discussion without ridicule. Looks like neither one of us is going to make it to GDC this year and that kind of delivered the kick in the ass to really move on a new project. So Jeff and I have some cool ideas and great progress around building simple games with a do-what-you-know attitude. Still, getting away to GDC has always been something that energizes and encourages me so that left me jonesing for a conference. I need to see some new places, meet some new faces and keep the daydream pipeline full. Jeff and I talked about Mobile Monday New York with SVG goodness. Candace and I almost did Podcast Academy. Both interesting options but neither worked out for us.

In the meanwhile some hard working bloggers out around Vancouver have been organizing the third Northern Voice conference and un-organizing the MooseCamp unconference. They’ve offered Candace a travel bursary to help cover costs of getting there. That’s a strong incentive to participate in something one is already in to. Being the friendly person she is, I’ve been invited to tag along.

Last year I read a little about Moose Camp and thought it sounded like a pretty cool chance to get out, see BC and talk to some other bloggers who are probably more active than me. I really wouldn’t have expected I could make it out there this year but here I am making plans. I’m excited to talk to some more avid bloggers than me. I try not to talk about blogging in my blog but I guess that any personal writing (which blogging inevitably is) has to include pieces of the author and a piece of that is blogging. I’m part of the crowd and it helps everyone when we share experiences.

Since Candace just found out a few days ago, we had to rush to get plane tickets & hotel. I kind of like the sort of pressure I’m under when it’s something I know how to do, so it was exciting yesterday finding a hotel that’s near the bus route (Route 44 - UBC/Downtown - PDF) and far enough from the stadiums (have a look at the hotel and the P). The short time frame meant flight prices go up daily but I think we did all right flying from Detroit Metro to Vancouver. Unfortunately, flying from Detroit Metro means we’re crossing the increasingly important Canada/US border. This leads to the next part of my story…

Crossing from Canada in to the US by air now requires a valid passport. This is a change from the historically very friendly relationship shared across this border. What ever the subtext is, I’m not in a position to make a statement, I just want to go to my conference. And my passport is expired. So last night, after the hotel & flight rush, I had to zip across the city to see my friend who can be a guarantor for my passport application. Luckily I’d already got the photos and the rest of the hoops jumped through a couple months ago. Then this morning I realized that even the fastest turn-around the passport office can do is ten working days if you apply in person. Well actually I knew that but realized that the conference is about nine working days from today. So off I went to plead for expedited service. It’s actually not hard to get express service if you bring your travel documents.
Read the rest of “Planning for Northern Voice”…