Northern Voice 2008: MooseCamp

While they're commonplace today, I've not attended a BarCamp or unconference, as Northern Voice's MooseCamp calls itself. I love the decidedly Canadian re-branding of the format by adding some native wildlife.

I decided to make MooseCamp useful to me by asking the bright, wired minds in attendance where they see social media going in 20+ years. In particular, how do these tools add value to public life and add to the public realm?

The cool thing about MooseCamp is that if you want to lead a discussion topic, you can put it forward the day of the event and see if people are interested in joining the discussion.Not knowing whether anyone would be interested in my topic, or even how to get started I sought out organizer Boris Mann's help to try to shape the topic. After a short discussion with Boris, whose energy around the topic of social media seems boundless, he suggested we give my discussion a little sizzle by naming it "Flying Cars and Gov't Wikis: Vancouver in 20+ Years Using Social Media." I loved the name, especially the flying cars part.

Boris also told me how about the Vancouver Island small town of Ucluelet was using social media tools to develop their community plan, and promised to introduce me to Monique who is leading that project.

In the hall outside the conference rooms I met Rob Cottingham, who was camped out catching up on client work, while wearing a headset and doing final edits on a podcast. Rob like many of us at Moosecamp is a social media consultant. His specialty is working with groups doing social advocacy, such as on VanCity's Change Everything project.

Also in the hall I ran into Lee LeFever, who I met at the first Northern Voice in 2005. It's a pleasure to talk to Lee, who has the charm and warmth of a US southerner, and is the very embodiment of unpretentiousness. I always appreciate how Lee manages to cut through complexity, and his view is that for social media to be a vital part of 21st Century life it must become less geeky (a view echoed by NV '08 keynote speaker Matt Mullenweg of WordPress, who talked about how blogging must ultimately separate itself from details like HTML code).
More notes on the Flying Cars talk, other speakers and the rest of Northern Voice 2008 to follow in my next post.