Northern Voice was a blast. Lots of fresh ideas, although I did find the whole social media genre as daunting as usual. For my part, I found a couple of presentations as standouts: Matt Mullenweig, the boy wonder of WordPress was as relevant as he was at WordCamp in SF last fall, which I also attended. Matt is that unique combination of Geek and visionary that m
akes you feel inadequate, but in a good way. New WP client is due March 10th and looks to be good fun and again, relevant. He’s looking to release three major updates this year. Good speed for guys like me. I always enjoy hearing Matt.
WP has become a phenomena, but he remains an approachable regular guy who sat in on a lot of sessions and was accessible to any who wanted some of his time. Bigsnit.com has the audio of his presentation.
There were two more sessions that were seminal. First, Dave Olson producer, writer and visionary gave a great talk 
about the need to make art, not stats. Truly great rant that put a number of things in perspective for me. We get so caught up in the techno, the art suffers. It shouldn’t. And if Dave has anything to do with it it won’t. When everyone seems bent on promoting wikis, blogs, 3rd Life and all the other accoutrements, Dave was extremely refreshing. I would suggest you follow his work. This guy is truly unique.
Finally, and likely the most powerful 45 minutes was a discussion between photographers. Specifically, Alex Waterhouse-Hayward, likely one of the best known photographers around today and Kris Krug. While half Alex’s age Kris has a sense and sensibility to the genre that is equally compelling. It would be simple to drill this down 
to film vs digital, old school versus new age. Mistake. Each had insights that were common and well, insightful. The general focus–no pun–had to do with generational, marketing and distribution themes. Reputation built versus building a reputation. And like Olson, these guys were approachable and even deftly fielded a fairly pointless indictment/support of Flickr.
Alex accepts no comments at his blog. A tempting plan. Guess I have to get some first.
All in all, a great couple of days, mainly because everyone was friendly, intelligent and generous of their time, even with a fairly curmudgeonly dork such as moi.
Made some decent business connections as well. I like to make connections and find the best people to subcontract work too. Makes me look good, clients are happy and the subs make some coin.
I’m all about everyone getting what they want and need.
And yes, I’ll go back next year. Old dog, new tricks…
Still abit otl regarding tagging. Perhaps someone will find me. I’m not that old…yet.
8 Comments
No. You’re not to old. It was great to have you there. Thx for attending, asking questions, and writing about Alex and I’s session.
Great post — and tagging isn’t the only way folks can find you. Writing real good stuff helps, too.
Thanks for the comments. There are facets to the whole social media that make perfect sense and those that seem narrow/esoteric at best. My fear is that the technologies will appear too complicated to the very clients who need to adopt these tools, both to expand reach and increase the top and bottom lines.
My experience has been that corporate change needs to be presented within an established framework for adoption of new technologies to occur. In reality, while the whole thing is interesting, there is a lack of “what can this sector do for my business?” in most presentations.
I believe that a series of targeted real-world case studies–actual and illustrative–presented to groups such as the HTCE and groups of CEO/COO’s will markedly increase adoption.
Just my C$0.02. (US$.0195)
While there are certain to be “blogging for business” events I am not sure that Northern Voice is the place for it.
I know it seems like everyone is “preaching to the converted” in many of the sessions, but I think there is a place for these sorts of love-in/enthusiast events, too.
It can be a lonely time being a blogger and as much as anything Northern Voice is a place to meet those people that you only see online if at all.
By the way, I was prompted to write this comment because of your twitter post about loving comments; just another example of the importance of an interleaved/multiprong approach to the web/internet – just having a blog isn’t enough any more, tedious as it might seem to keep on top of all these feeds/tweets/posts/emails.
I would agree, except that if one merely preaches to the converted; without new devotees, the ‘religion’ can eventually wane. Business needs these tools to compete and I believe a more focused approach is called for, whether NV, Chamber of Commerce, Trade Associations or other appropriate venues.
That said, it is nice just to hear people who have already spent the time processing the stuff and can articulate to the rest of us who are both interested and have a business need to know.
Well, we were at three of the same sessions and still managed not to meet, but there’s always next year.
Matt is a dream in terms of his presentation skills – I’ve worked with a couple of clients like him who were just naturals in terms of presentation skills and sheer professionalism – such a joy.
As I try to sort my way through the plethora of social media options available to us I remember what a product manager from a leading software firm once said to me (in 1999!): “Most people already have far more software than they will ever use – or learn to use.”
Our job as consultants is to deftly guide clients through the maze. Now if only that were getting easier rather than harder!
I look forward to it, Ruth. As long as I survive my twitter intervention. My son (24) seemed appalled that I use twitter. Guess it’s already so last week.
Keep in touch.