Arrived in Seattle on the AC shuttle from Vancouver. Sitting behind me were two people from Wisconsin, on their way to a conference else where in the US.

They have a 5 hour layover in Seattle, and since they’d never been here before, decided to make a dash to the cab stand and see as many things as they can in the time they have.

With 30 minutes travel time downtown from SeaTac, and give them a slim 30 minute check-in, that leaves them about 3.5 hours.

Got me thinking. What would I do if I only had 3.5 hours in my city, Vancouver.

More on this later…

An open letter to Ricky Gervais.

Ricky. I know you’re about to visit Canada for the first time. I heard you say so on CBC Radio’s Saturday Afternoon show.

Despite what the host of the show said, Vancouver is a wonderful place. You’ll love it. And it will love you.

Speaking of that show, it’s too bad that after all these years they still haven’t figured out their guests are far more interesting than they are. On behalf of all Canadians, we apologize.

You, on the other hand, were brilliant, as always.

PS: My wife was born in London Ontario – maybe you’re related ? She says since you’re going to be in Vancouver, you should come for dinner.

Bloggers generate a tremendous amount of content every day. There’s a new blog post written every second.

At the recent Northern Voice conference in Vancouver, a number of us commented on how much ‘media’ gathering was going on – by the participants. Along with the ubiquitous clickety-clack of fingers on laptop keys, there were cameras and audio recording going on at every turn.

For a measure of how much media we’re talking about, just check this out. As of this morning, there are 2587 photos at Flickr tagged Northern Voice.

Let’s assume that number includes all the pictures taken at last year’s event. Let’s also assume that no-one ever sleeps while at Northern Voice (a fair assumption from what I could tell).

That’s 96 hours of conference time. That’s 26.94 pictures every hour. That’s one picture every 2 minutes.

Now that’s media coverage !

Hey – Monique. Thanks for the photo from Northern Voice.

That’s a transistor on the screen. For the whole story on THAT you’ll need to come and hear me speak.

Do I look fat in this presentation? Damn those wide angle lenses.

It was really great being on a panel today with Mark Schneider and Michael Tippett at Northern Voice 2006.

We were meant to talk about the Changing Face of Journalism, and I guess we did, but it really turned into a discussion that seemed to float around mainstream journalism, citizen journalism, and alternatives to the mainstream.

It was flattering to see the room full at UBC Robson Square, considering the panel in the other room was Music 2.0: Where It Came From and Where It’s Going with Colin Brumelle. It’s usually pretty hard to compete with those music panels!

In any event, we had great questions from the crowd that was there, and probably could have talked for hours.

Thanks to everyone who showed up, and thanks to the Northern Voice gang for putting on such a great event.

This is brilliant. Forget about plugging that microphone into a fancy new digital recorder – make the microphone into a digital recorder.

From the HHB web site:

The world’s first professional digital recording microphone. Combining a high-quality, Sennheiser omni-directional condenser capsule with an inbuilt, broadcast-quality Flash recorder, FlashMic is a convenient, easy to operate and durable recorder that’s perfect for press and broadcast journalism, or any other voice recording application.

With no messy cables, just one button press is all it takes to start recording in either linear or MPEG 2 formats. Simple ‘drag and drop’ file transfer at up to 90x real time to a Mac or PC for editing or onward transmission is enabled by a ‘plug and play’ USB connection. Two AA batteries provide more than 6 hours continuous power and, with a 0 – 10 seconds pre-record buffer and 1GB of flash memory, you can be sure that you’ll never miss a word of that important interview with a FlashMic.

I’m not sure I’d like to spend a lot of time hand holding this 13 ounce baby, I’d prefer removable memory, and who knows what happens if you drop it – but this looks like a fabulous idea for certain situations.

The real issue is the price. $ 1400.00 Canadian (that’s the discounted price at Oakwood Broadcast in Winnipeg) is a pretty steep price to pay for the convenience.

For the same price, you can pick up a great digital recorder with a lot more features, a decent mic, even some pesky cables, and still have money in the bank.

Check out this close up of the function keys and display

We’re thrilled to be part of the new British Columbia Sport Event Hosting and Resort Guide.

It was launched today in Torino, Italy. We’ve been working with a fantastic team at 2010 Legacies Now, Tourism BC and the Ministry of Tourism, Sport and the Arts to create the site, the first of its kind.

And here’s the press release about it.

Ipods (and other media devices) and on-demand content are big themes at conferences everywhere this year, including those for public broadcasters.

I’ve been invited to speak at the Integrated Media Association’s Public Broadcasting New Media Conference in Seattle, Washington Feb 21-25th.

This is an international conference featuring some of the world’s top public broadcasters, as well as representatives from software and hardware companies that work in this space.

Looks like I’ll be involved in a number of presentations and panels on the 22nd and 23rd.

I’m presenting on new models for broadcast and how they challenge existing media for audience loyalty, where I get to team up with my pal Tony Walker of DiG radio at ABC Melbourne.

Looks like I’ll also be on a panel called The Web 2.0 and Public Media which also features speakers from PBS powerhouse WGBH in Boston, the Research Channel, and university station WILL in Champaign-Urbana.

More on this conference here.

CHUM Ltd and Citytv today launched their new “Diversity Online” project. We’re thrilled to have been involved with it, and were super impressed with everyone at CHUM and Citytv. Big thanks to Prem Gill for making this happen.

The site is at diversity.chumtv.com

Here’s the press release about today’s launch.

My son Garnet’s grade 3 class was doing a civics exercise this week. They each wrote a letter to BC Premier Gordon Campbell.

Garnet’s teacher told him that since the letter was going to the Premier, he didn’t need to put any postage on the envelope.

Canada Post disagrees.

I’ve always known that you can send letters free of charge to federal politicians. I don’t recall hearing whether you can do the same with provincial politicians – but apparently not.

Garnet’s bummed. And who can blame him. I mean, look at the care he took addressing the letter.

His lesson in civics now includes that there is a world of difference between provincial politicans and the feds.

KK didn’t start it, but he got me started on four things…

Four movies I can watch over and over:
1. Comfort and Joy
2. The Godfather
3. Jaws
4. Alien

Four places I have lived:
1. Portage La Prairie MB
2. Toronto ON
3. Calgary AB
4. Vancouver Paradise

Four television shows I love to watch (ON DVD):
1. The Office, UK
2. Six Feet Under
3. The Wire
4. Kids in the Hall

Four places I have been on vacation:
1. New Orleans
2. New Zealand
3. Newsome Creek
4. Newton Entrance

Four of my favorite dishes:
1. Kung Pao Chicken
2. Tako from Musashi on Denman
3. Crepes, made at home, just like Celina’s
4. Any Gelato from Brazza in North Vancouver

Four websites I visit daily:
1. Cypress Mountain
2. Gizmodo
3. You Send It
4. Vonage Canada

Four places I would rather be right now:
1. N48 23.728 W123 59.152
2. N48 51.259 W123 30.158
3. N49 24.251 W123 11.706
4. N49 30.297 W124 12.840

Four bloggers I am tagging:
1. Monique
2. KK
3. Roland
4. Ben

Just back from Cypress and the mounds of snow. Woaw.

Driving up from Vancouver in the rain into a blizzard up top. Too bad about the Audi Quatro in the ditch. My old Jeep managed just fine.

Tons of fresh snow, no lineups and the most fun I’ve had all year.

I managed a not-ready-for-the-Olympics face-plant-cartwheel-thingy off Hutch into waist deep snow, measured head first.

After digging myself out, and digging the snow out of my helmet and goggles, I couldn’t stop laughing.

My new Nitro Darkhorse is giving me all the thrills they promised over at Second Wave.

With all those updates I keep getting for IE I wonder why they never update the copyright dates?

I have a love-hate relationship with iTunes. I’m extremely inarticulate when it comes to WHY.
This post by Anil Dash pretty much gets it right. Here’s the preface to his itemized list of things to do better:

See the list here and check out the comments.

Monday Jan 9th I’ll be a guest on the Bill Good show on CKNW in Vancouver.

You can listen live on AM980 in the Vancouver area or online at CKNW.Com

I’m scheduled for the 11:30 slot, which is the last slot on Bill’s show, so I could get bumped for a big , medium , any real news story.

Why am I on the show ? Talking about the web of course – and I’ll try to work in a plug for Northern Voice while I’m there.

Who Knew ?

I’m the same age as Marc Canter. When we met at Vidfest in Vancouver last spring I could have sworn I was older. And for the record, I find I agree with 73.2 % of what he says, but only understand 19% of it.

I’m speaking at Northern Voice 2006. This is a real honour, because even though I’m the same age as Marc Canter, I’m hardly a web 2.0 guru. I do know media though and it will be real pleasure to present with respected journalist Mark Schneider. (I wonder if we’re the same age too).

A Bump Key. Go figure. Details at Lot 49 , who, like Marc Canter, links out to Om Malik’s blog.

Who says BC gets wimpy weather. Check this out:

Marine Forecast issued for Strait of Georgia.
Issued: 4 PM PST Wednesday 4 January 2006 for the period ending 4 PM Thursday with an outlook for the following 24 hours.
——————————————————————–
Synopsis:
A complex 970 millibar low southwest of Vancouver Island will Move northward across the western Bowie tonight. The associated Front will rotate over northern Vancouver Island tonight and over The north coast Thursday morning. A weak low will move toward Central Vancouver Island Thursday night.

From northern Vancouver Island northward gale to storm force southeast winds will rise to storm to hurricane force overnight.

Winds will veer to southwesterly behind the low Thursday morning and will gradually ease to strong late Thursday.

Over southern waters strong to gale force southeast winds will Rise to gale to storm force this evening. Winds will ease to Moderate southerly Thursday morning then will back to moderate to strong easterly late Thursday afternoon ahead of the approaching Weak low.

From the Environment Canada marine forecast.

By the way, Hurricane force winds are 119-plus kilometres per hour.