Yesterday was a travel day so I had some time while driving to reflect on the Northern Voice conference experience on Saturday, where I blogged six of the sessions. This was the first event blogging that I did and it was fun, although a bit frenetic at times on a Tablet PC. The UBC Robson had excellent WiFi and this was a definite plus, but as I’ve mentioned before, it’s not a very good experience blogging on a Tablet PC slate. I recorded audio of every session using OneNote and made some notes, but most of my notes were blogged. I also tried out Technorati tagging for the first time during this event. Not completely sure how I feel about tagging yet (I wonder if it will be food for spammers).

I heard the number almost 300 or so people batted around with 40% being female and 60% being male. It seemed like the mix of people, based on the questions being asked and the conversations I had directly was of varied experience with most tending to be new or having had a blog for a year or so. The panel, of course, was filled with recognized seasoned bloggers.

My parking costed more than the conference ($20 Canadian) itself so bravo to affordable pricing! I sat next to a blogger at the conference who does SEO (his site is in Japanese, but promised to write me when he has an English site so that I can link to that) and we grabbed lunch and talked about business blogging.

Out in the hall, I got another chance to talk with Chris Pirillo, Jake Ludington and Greg, the guy behind beercasting. Chris downloaded and checked out Stumbleupon. We also talked a bit about tagging and some things that must remain “off the record.” Actually, I had a couple of those type conversations and I wonder if that’s going to be the most common words used at blogging conferences among the people who give seminars when you talk to them privately: “off the record.” Naturally, I respect NDAs and comments not intended for public consumption, but I will say this: it sounds like a really exciting year for blogging and technology on the web.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get any time to talk to the sponsors of the event. There was a table with some material on the various sponsors and I picked up some of that material to digest at a later date/time. I know Flickr was one of the sponsors and I’ve talked about their service here several times before. Thank you to all the sponsors of the event.

The bottom line is Northern Voice was well organized, had all the amenities a blogger could ask for, had diverse, informative speakers and panels (my already blogged comments give specifics there), provided information of use to podcasters and bloggers alike and was priced so that just about any blogger of any financial level could attend. Well done to all involved and responsible! Grade: A

Tag: northernvoice

Other bloggers thoughts on Northern Voice (will be updated):

• arieanna from Blogaholics: “If you are a small business or a new business trying to make your place in the world, blogging is your best tool out there.”
• Northwest Live!: “I heard a lot about listening at Northern Voice.”
• Mark on Media: “Props to the organizers of the conference for doing a great job of putting together an interesting day.”
• Tim Bray: “I think I�ve never previously been to a blogging conference. The whole idea seems somehow ludicrous. Still, I enjoyed the day and learned things and met interesting people; hearty thanks to the people who put it on.”
• Constantin Basturea: “If you didn�t attend the ‘Northern Voice’ conference (Vancouver, February 19) and want to get a glimpse of the ideas discussed there, you can start on this page at the NewPR Wiki“
• Todd Brill: “I�m back from the conference now and although sitting though some of the presentations was painful, I must say that I learned alot about blogging in the first couple of hours and then a little more later on.”

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