Northern Voice, by Reilly Lievers (CC by-nd licensed)

I didn’t much enjoy attending the Northern Voice personal blogging conference last year, but I decided to give it another go this year, for several reasons. First and foremost, in the last fifteen months I’ve met a lot of local bloggers. So I was more comfortable in the community than I was last year, and I knew I wouldn’t be compelled to stand in a corner feeling shy and confused. On top of that, I decided to pitch a talk. My talk was rejected, but I was asked to sit on a panel instead. So I felt like I got a cookie, even though I actually wasn’t too jazzed about the panel concept (I just said “jazzed”. Why? I have no idea). More on that later.

So.

The Great

Northern Voice is ostensibly about personal blogging, not about blogging for business, and many of the sessions were very much about the personal. Two, in particular, really hit that nail on its head. Kimli Welsh‘s talk on Overcoming Social Anxiety, or “How to Win Friends and Influence People (in 140 characters or less)” was outstanding, and I’m not just saying that because she’s my friend. Her talk was great because she told her own story, and she told it with honesty and with humour. The full room laughed with her and nodded as they related to her stories about being so anxious about socializing that she’d bail on plans more than half the time. The “how to” part was about how she started to overcome her anxiety by changing the way she thought about socializing, and about how she used social media in ways that helped her achieve that. Nothing technical, all social.

The second nail-hitting talk was Steffani Cameron‘s on How To Screw Up Your Personal Blog. Again with the honesty and the humour, and this time also with some tears. How did Steff screw up her personal blog? She went through some serious personal shit, that’s how, and she did it publicly, and then she made some bad choices when it came to the basics of blogging (she changed her URL without redirecting, and stuff like that). There was no how-to at all in her talk, yet I think it was one of the most valuable and educational off all the ones I attended.

One of the themes of the conference (no, I don’t actually think the organizers ever actually said the conference had a theme) was about finding your voice. Kimli and Steff certainly reiterated what I hear was said during Monica Hamburg‘s and Dave Olsen‘s session called, ba-dum-bum, Finding Your Voice. I missed that session because I made the regrettable decision to attend the Copyright and Online Expression talk instead (more later on how bad a decision that was). The chatter on Twitter, however, indicated the voice session was very much loved and adored.

I spent a significant part of the first day of the conference in what Zak Greant likes to call “the corridor track” (or something to that effect). I wasn’t interested in some of the topics and I was very much into catching up with people, so I did a lot of chatting and catching up.

After lunch (oh my, the food was yummy) I went to David Ng‘s talk on Good Science: It Takes An (Online) Village. He talked about science and culture! Hallelujah! It was a great presentation, and the project he’s heading up, Phylo, is awesome. David was also all over Twitter, starting conversations with people both in tweets and in person. He shot me a tweet after our Fibre Arts Online panel asking if I’d want to chat about possible science projects, like knitted human organs or crocheted animals. He’s about to go on sabbatical, but I’ve made a note in my calendar a few months from now to drop him a line to see if we can’t cook up some crafty science projects.

I was more of a joiner the second day of the conference. I hopped from session to session happily, despite being painfully overtired (thank you, Cleo, for waking me up at 5:30 that morning). Chris Messina‘s keynote address was perfect. It was to the point and smart and well-delivered and thought-provoking. And, unlike the first day’s keynote which I couldn’t understand because of the insane echo in the room, I could hear Chris loud and clear. It was a very good start to the day. In fact, I believe I stood up after his talk and mumbled for a while about how I wish the overall level of discourse about blogging would raise up to the level Chris started us out at.

Then, the sessions, starting with How (Should) Journalists Use Social Media. This was a paired session, which is a format I’m going to complain about in the next part of this post. But half of it was great, and that was the half presented by Lisa Johnson, who’s a reporter with the CBC. Lisa’s a great speaker, and her presentation was informative and useful. It was useful because the way she uses social media as a reporter is relevant to personal bloggers. Both because she really gets it, and we can all learn from people who really get it, and also because she looks for stories and leads and information from the people she follows. And the people she follows are, you know, people.

Then there was the sex panel. Northern Voice 2010 will mark that point in time after which I’ve hung out with sex bloggers. And hanging out with sex bloggers has severely fucked with the very natural and well-considered boundaries I keep when it comes to what I talk about publicly online. The reason it’s fucking with me so severely is that in private, I talk about lots and lots of things I never talk about online, using language the likes of which might shock you despite my using the word fuck three times in this paragraph. And talking about these things and in that manner with other people who spend as much time online as I do may end up shifting my boundaries a little. Only time will tell.

Anyway, the panel, A Four-Letter Word Called Sex, was good. Steff reiterated a point that blew me away from her solo talk the first day, which is that when we share our fears and insecurities with each other, it makes it easier for everyone. Nobody’s a freak when we’re all freaks. And dude, we’re all freaks.

Our panel on Fibre Arts followed the sex talk, in the same room, which was really maybe not the best of scheduling decisions. It was like a television station leading into Mr. Rogers with Deadwood. But anyway, I had a really good time doing the panel, and I think Felicia Lo and Mandy Moore did, too. People asked lots of great questions, and I had some fun chats with folks afterward, too. And hey, check out the totally wicked visualization Rachel Smith did of our session!

Fibre Arts and Social Media, by Rachel Smith (CC A-NC licensed)

I was in the right mindset after our panel to attend the one on Art and Social Media (in a different room; see my above note on television programming). It was a good panel. I love hearing about how artists and performers use social media, and how publicists use it to benefit all. It wasn’t so much a personal blogging session.

Tod Maffin podcasting cartoon, by Rob Cottingham (CC A-NC-SA licensed). Click for a larger version

Last, the session I found most valuable of all, Tod Maffin‘s on Awesome-izing Your Podcast: Secrets from Radio. Radio is my favourite medium and always has been. And though I’ve dabbled in podcasting, I’ve been stuck on exactly the thing Tod focused on in his talk: podcasting is different from broadcast radio, but most podcasters treat it exactly like radio. Podcasting is far more personal, even though radio can be very intimate. My brain expanded as he highlighted qualities of outstanding radio shows and explained how those qualities make for good podcasts. He’s a great speaker and a fabulous presenter, and in my opinion this session alone was worth the cost of admission (admittedly, as a speaker my admission fee was waived. Whatever).

And finally, a note on moderated panels. All moderated panels should be moderated by Darren Barefoot. Every one. Even if we have to clone him. Darren does the following when he moderates: he introduces the topic; he introduces the panelists; he sets out the rules for Q&A; he keeps the discussion moving at a good clip; he works some serious browser magic to bring up relevant websites, pages and information so it shows up on the big screen while the panelists are talking. Darren didn’t moderate our panel, and that makes me sad.

The Meh

The venue wasn’t great. It was gorgeous and friendly and open and fun to be in, but the sizes of the rooms weren’t well distributed (two of the four rooms always seemed to be over-capacity and therefore either uncomfortable or inaccessible), and the atrium used as an auditorium for the keynote speeches has terrible acoustics.

Speaking of acoustics, I’m going to weigh in on the child-friendliness of the conference by saying one thing only: Being child-friendly does not mean being disruption-friendly. I couldn’t understand whole swaths of what Chris Messina said because an adorable baby was cooing loudly on the other side of the echo chamber. Yeah, I’m also that cranky ass in a movie theatre who gives the evil eye to the people with the screaming baby who chose to ruin a movie for dozens of people instead of hiring a babysitter. Parents who bring kids to grown-up gatherings are responsible both for the joy people find because of it, and also for ensuring their experience isn’t disrupted.

Ok, enough of that. Let’s talk about panels. As I said, panels moderated by Darren Barefoot are amazing. Our panel wasn’t moderated by Darren, and I felt like we were kind of tossed to the wolves. So we moderated it ourselves, but it would have been great not to have had to do that. Especially because, since our panel was fabricated by the organizers and not based on a pitch, we were pretty much counting on them to frame the topic. For example, at one point I said, “I’m not sure if it was intentional, but a lot of speakers have mentioned the importance of finding your voice, and that’s just as important in crafts blogging,” and the moderator said, “Yes, it was intentional.” Good thing I’d been able to attend the entire conference to that point to get the right impression.

Good vs. not-good moderation aside, and going back to what I said way back in the first paragraph, here’s why I wasn’t jazzed about our topic to begin with: Knit blogging ain’t a new phenomenon, and nobody who’s not a yarn freak knows or cares much about “fibre arts”. I would absolutely LOVE to attend or participate in a panel on hobbies. Everyone’s got a hobby. And every hobby has a place online. Everyone’s got some niche interest even if it’s not a hobby, and every niche interest has a place online. That, in my opinion, is a far juicier topic for a personal blogging conference. It’s one that has the potential to appeal to every attendee, not just the few who know something about a given niche.

Why, you might ask, didn’t I suggest that to begin with? Mostly because of two things. First, it seemed to me this topic was a sealed deal; if I chose to pass on it they’d find someone else. Second, I don’t know the organizers and I don’t know the culture of the committee. I don’t know how flexible they are or how fluid their ideas might be. If I had it to do over again, I might have suggested we talk about the topic further, and talk about ways to make it relevant to any conference themes and to as many attendees as possible. In my opinion, our session should have either been about hobbies online and hobby blogging, or about how aspects of the online yarn community and blogging practices might be appropriated or adapted by other hobbyists (things like craft-alongs, the Ravelry community and database, the online community surrounding yarn bombing, the brilliant #craftsocial Twitter events, etc.). The latter isn’t suited to a panel, but rather to a presentation.

I also think it would be great (though time-consuming, yes) for a conference organizer to meet with a fabricated panel before the conference, or at least before the session. I should have suggested this before our panel but I didn’t think to, this being the first conference panel I’ve been on. We three panelists got together a few weeks ago, but then we realized we didn’t really know what to plan for. So we enjoyed our coffee and cobbled together some topics we thought would be interesting to cover. We ended up just doing a Q&A-style talk, which worked great because the attendees were so chatty and great. If we’d had a shy group, it would have been awkward and possibly full of stinking suckituge.

Don’t get me wrong – I love that I was able to participate in Northern Voice as a presenter. Since my previous experience I’ve come around to see the great value in this conference and I was proud to be a small part of it. I’m aware that my bellyaching might not exactly endear myself to the committee that will choose speakers next year, but I’d rather give what I hope is constructive feedback and not be invited to speak again than to sit on my hands.

Enough about that. Let’s move to the other half of the journalism panel. As I said, Lisa was awesome in the way she made her presentation relevant to a conference on personal blogging. Kirk LaPointe, managing editor of The Vancouver Sun – not so much. His shpiel about print not being dead is relevant, but not the way he talked about it in the context of Northern Voice (or, more specifically, he didn’t talk about it in the context of Northern Voice) (unrelated, nihilism doesn’t mean what he seemed to think it means).

Now, Kirk’s splendid smack-down of Vancouver Observer editor Linda Solomon, while entertaining, did highlight a topic I think would be perfect for a conference like Northern Voice: how bloggers and traditional media (should) do their special dance. It’s not an original topic, but I’d love to see it done well.

It seems I can’t put off that copyright talk any longer. It was awful. I deliberately missed a session I’d been interviewed for (Monica had asked me and others a bunch of questions about how we found our voice) so I could go to a session on my favourite topic. Bad decision. The copyright talk was terribly organized (no topic sentence, no stated point), the collage films they showed were great but weren’t shown with any copyright-related commentary, and the law talk was boring. Note to Northern Voice organizers: Please revisit this fascinating, confusing topic again! And soon!

Finally, some further wee notes directed more to organizers than anyone else:

• Themes tying the talks together – please be open and specific about them.
• Themes in general – please decide on some before the call for pitches is announced. As a speaker, I’d love know what the focus is on so I can come up with a brilliant idea for a pitch.
• Paired sessions. It’s great to get two-for-the-price-of-one, but it would be even better if those two people planned a joint talk rather than splitting things up.
• Please allow time for people to move to a new room between sessions. Three minutes, even, would be a godsend. Oh, make it five and we’d have time to pee!
• Yes, I’m more than willing to put my time and any relevant skills where my mouth is as I sit here making demands.

The Ugly

Huge thanks to Kimli for including some Mighty Ugly dolls in her swag bags. I had a very good time talking with people about the Mighty Ugly project, and it was very cool that my interview with Sheryl MacKay on North by Northwest (mp3) aired the morning of the second day of the conference. In fact, as it was airing, I got a tweet from Cathy Browne saying she was listening and wanted to meet me, and I replied asking if she’d be at Northern Voice (not knowing she’d actually be presenting, too). And then she ended up having dinner at my house with a fabulous bunch of other people, which was the best end to that Twitter story, EVAR.

And oh, that dinner. I made new friends, got to know old ones better, and I very much enjoyed decompressing in the most absurd of ways at the end of a conference I definitely plan to attend next year.

Hi Cynthia!, by Mike Browne (CC by-nc-sa licensed)

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And holy smokes, she’s doing it right!

I have some opinions about how-to/DIY-oriented video shows*. Some strong ones. And having just watched Diane’s inaugural two-minute video, I’m compelled to shout to all the world that she’s nailed the three most important rules I think MUST be followed to ensure the healthy progression of how-to video into the modern era:

1. She’s unscripted. Thank the gods! Know what makes for awful how-to video? Reading. People rarely sound natural when they’re reading, either from a script or a teleprompter. And unnaturalness means I want to change the channel or close the window. Goodness, it’s boring. Diane’s a natural in front of the camera, and her unscripted chatting makes it feel just like that, like she’s chatting to ME.
2. She’s online. In my opinion, the future of how-to television is online. Low(er) budget, less rigid formatting, more relaxed, more sharing, more interacting, no scripting. (Of course it also needs to be a great concept, well-organized, well-shot and lighted adequately. All of which I’m sure Diane will nail.)
3. The video is short. In the scheme of online how-to videos I’ve been chewing on for over a year, no video is longer than six minutes. Diane’s sticking to two. It’s fabulous.

That’s all. I just needed to say all this in something longer than a tweet (obviously).

Go watch her video.

*Yes, I’ve spent some time on some. I’m heavily critical of my work on them, too. The thing I’m most critical of? Not seeing myself as myself. In my opinion, a how-to show’s only worth watching if the people on it are REAL. And not boring. Two key things.

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I know, “nearly approved” is like “almost pregnant.”

Still, we really are nearly approved, and I’m itchy to talk about it.

Over the last several weeks we completed the final major part of our application to be approved to adopt: the home study. As I think I’ve said, this isn’t what you might think it is if all you know about adoption you’ve learned from sitcoms – a social worker doesn’t show up at our house unannounced, looking for stray toxic chemicals, neglected pets, and dusty baseboards.

Here in British Columbia there are particular requirements for the home study. At least one meeting has to be at our house. The social worker has to meet with each partner separately at least once (if you’re applying as a couple, which obviously we are). There’s a minimum length of time she had to spend with us. There are particular topics we had to cover.

We ended up doing all of our meetings at our house. We talked about all manner of things: our relationship, our childhoods, how we came to decide to adopt, our work, our hobbies, our friends and family, our religious and spiritual beliefs and practices, our anticipated approach to parenting, and more. We adore our social worker, so these conversations were completely stress-free and enjoyable.

And now she’s writing up what will essentially become a dossier about us. Once the agency approves it (and there’s no reason they shouldn’t), our file will become available to birth mothers creating an adoption plan for their child.

In sum, we’ve completed our application. It took about six months. It can often take longer, but our flexible schedules allowed us to take the first four-day workshops that were offered (they’re only offered a few times a year) and to schedule our home-study sessions in a fairly concentrated period of time. (If you’re itching for me to jog your memory about the rest of the requirements, here’s the paperwork bit: initial application, four references, forms from our doctors, criminal history checks from every state or province we’ve lived in since reaching the age of majority. I think that’s it. It doesn’t seem that daunting from this side of it all.)

What happens once we’re approved? We wait to be chosen. Hopefully we’ll be chosen soon. And as you can see from the photo, above, I’ve been struck by an inclination to knit (and crochet, and maybe even to sew).

Which brings me to a note about superstition, and another one about cause and effect.

A note about superstition: I may not practice the religion I was born into, but its culture is my culture. And part of Jewish culture is a (usually) healthy dose of brutally practical superstition. Jews don’t have baby showers before a baby’s born. We hold off because of the slight-yet-devastating chance of something going horribly wrong. Of course, we attend baby showers when they’re thrown for other people (though I admit I’m often uncomfortable due to my congenital superstition; I do my best to hide this from pregnant people at showers).

The superstition goes so far as to demand that no crib be set up, and no baby items be kept in the house. My in-laws will hopefully be game to keep a box in their basement for us. When I finish the simple hoodie blanket in the photo, I’ll leave it at their house. Now, yeah – if it’s years before we’re picked, we may need to add a second box.

The only thing we’re going to purchase ahead of time (aside from, um, yarn) is a car seat. Because it’s possible we’ll become parents on a day’s notice, and I really don’t want to have to go shopping when I otherwise will want to focus my full attention on freaking out. The car seat will live in my in-laws’ basement, too.

Jews have a natural baby-shower-like milestone when babies are eight days old – the bris (circumcision) or baby-naming ceremony. We will have what I’ve begun thinking of as Day 31. A birth mother has 30 days from the birth of the child to change her mind about making an adoption plan. I think this is a very good thing. Still, as an adoptive parent, I imagine that 31st day will be one of unanticipated emotion (or, perhaps I’m anticipating it now…). That’ll be when we’ll want to celebrate.

A note about cause and effect: Based on some comments I’ve received (by the way, every single comment has been enthusiastic and supportive. I love you all for that), I feel I must clarify that the baby that will come into our lives will not be a blessing (a joy, a wonder, a momentous change in our lives for which we’ll be forever grateful and loving – yes, it will be all of those things to us). There will be nothing supernatural about their coming into our lives. In fact, this baby will join our family only because their mother spent months and months of her life agonizing over the best decision to make for them both. Her decision will come about for her own reasons, and that we’ll become parents because of it, that we’ll rejoice and feel lucky and overwhelmed, that we’ll be overcome with emotion, all of that will not be a blessing. Our joy will come from her pain, no matter how happy we’ll be. Unlike getting pregnant, having kids through adoption means some people will grieve while we celebrate.

Ok, now it seems like I’m ending this post on a downer. I don’t intend to. I just don’t want to gloss over the hard parts because the happy parts are so shiny and cute.

I’ll distract you with thoughts of baby knitting! It’s so small and quick!

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We had our first home-study session for adoption yesterday.

Contrary to what we’ve all seen on television — a social worker shows up to a home unannounced on the day the vacuum broke and the neighbour’s kids trashed the place and the dog’s vomiting and there’s Fruit Loops everywhere and one of said neighbour’s kids has a black eye from walking into a doorknob and your hair hasn’t been brushed in three days because you had the plague and you curse profoundly when you open the door — well, it’s not like that in reality.

People keep assuring us it’ll be fine, and nobody seems to believe me when I tell them we aren’t worried.

In reality, the tough parts – the part of judging – is pretty much over. The agency has already read our references, criminal background checks and doctor’s assessments. We’ve already sat through the four days of mandatory workshops. The home study is a series of discussions during which our social worker gets to know us, and upon which she bases her write-up. The write-up is what a woman looking to place her infant for adoption sees when she’s choosing a family. Sure, something might come up that gives the social worker pause, but we’re not actually concerned we won’t be approved to adopt.

The session yesterday took place at our home (which we did not feverishly scrub down in a panicked frenzy), and it was relaxed. Cleo played her part perfectly, except for her timely flatulence. At least we weren’t flatulent.

I get the impression there’s stricter regulation of adoption in B.C. (and possibly all of Canada) than there is in the U.S. Please correct me if I’m wrong.

In B.C., there are no private adoptions; all adoptions are arranged through one of six agencies. We don’t prepare a dossier ourselves; the social worker prepares it. There’s no exchange of goods or money between the chosen adoptive parents and the pregnant woman – no paying of medical bills (which in Canada isn’t an issue anyway), no paying rent, etc. This absence of the exchange of money is what makes me comfortable adopting. There’s a lot of room for ethical disaster when money and children are transacted, and it’s very, very important to us that every party to this adoption is acting in the best interest of the child and in the best interest of a happy and healthy life for everyone involved.

Anyway. During each of the handful of home-study sessions we’ll have, we’ll cover different topics. Our childhood experiences, schooling, work life, religious and spiritual beliefs, parenting philosophies, home life, etc.

Yesterday we just got to know each other and we talked about how we came to decide to adopt. During the conversation, the social worker asked me what my experience with infertility was like, and I described the physical trauma and the emotional stress. She asked how I felt over the years as I’ve watched my friends get pregnant, and I told her that aside from one isolated pang of jealousy, I’ve felt only happiness for them.

This is the truth. I’ve wanted to adopt since I was a teenager. I don’t feel a burning need to procreate. I’ve always assumed I was an outlier for this. And yesterday, the social worker confirmed it. She told me it’s extremely uncommon for a woman not to really grieve through infertility.

And you know, it’s pretty sweet to be told by an experienced professional that I really am different. It’s certainly why I find pretty much all the adoption blogs I’ve come across to be unsatisfying to read. I mean, there are other reasons to find them unsatisfying. Some are terribly written. Many are a lot about god. Most are about a burning need to have kids.

But I just want to have kids. I want to have a bigger family. I want to show a child the world and I want to nurture them and work hard to make them happy.

And I’m okay not getting what I want.

Which doesn’t mean I’m not crazy excited about adopting. All it means is that I don’t relate to the desperation I know so many people feel. I respect and appreciate it, but I don’t share it. I’m a little on my own, which I don’t mind. On my own, I mean, with my understanding and supportive partner, with our wildly enthusiastic friends and family, and soon, I hope, with a daughter or a son.

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This weekend on Twitter I mentioned for the first time publicly that we’re applying to adopt, and I was really psyched by the enthusiasm lots of people shared. Thank you!

We started the complex application process about six weeks ago, and although I don’t anticipate sharing every detail here, I’m very much open to chat more about it now and into the future. Lots of people hinted at questions that are hard to answer on Twitter, so I figured I’d just open up a thread here. Ask anything you’d like, and I’ll do my best to answer as long as I’m comfortable doing so publicly. Please also chime in with answers if you’ve got ‘em. I’m no expert – I can only speak from our own experience.

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Don’t Mix ‘Em, originally uploaded by pantufla.

[Link to WPA posters via Faythe Levine]

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Greetings from Philadelphia, home of the founding of humidity, the cheesesteak, and where, as contrasted against the wee state to the south, everything is named after Ben Franklin instead of DuPont. I’ll be on the road for the next couple of weeks, and will try to post some brief dispatches.

I was pleased as all-natural, none of that corn-syrup-crap punch that Tara over at Blonde Chicken Boutique tweeted me about today’s xkcd comic. I just love spreading the Papyrus hate. Talk amongst yourselves.

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You know about statistics, right? About how to judge whether the news you’re hearing or reading is actually reflecting the numbers behind it? Because you really, really should. (This post is inspired by the stats quoted at the end of this AdAge piece about the recent KFC grilled-chicken promotion fiasco I didn’t hear about till today.)

One of my biggest pet peeves: Election poll coverage. News agencies seem to love ignoring a little thing called the margin of error. Since elections are over in my world right now, I’ll switch to entertainment as an example. The principles are the same.

Statistics are compiled on a sample of the population in question because in most cases that population is too big to be polled in its entirety. So lets say a network wants to know what youngish women think of the host of their talent show. They can’t ask every woman, so they hire a polling company to compile some statistics for them. The polling company will randomly pick a fairly large number of people who belong to the population they’re interested in (say, female Canadians between the ages of 25-34), and they’ll ask them the question(s) the network is interested in. Depending on the size of the sample (this is where the math comes in), a margin of error is calculated to account for any errors involved in polling the smaller sample. These errors might result in discrepancies against what the entire population’s results would be.

This means the statistic quoted (for example [and I made this up], 52% of Canadian women between the ages of 25-34 like Ben Mulroney as host of Canadian Idol) includes a range. It could really be that 49% of all women of that age like the host (that’s the quoted 52% minus 3% to account for possible error), or that 55% agree (that’s 52% plus 3%). If this were an election poll, perhaps you can see that the difference in impact of 49% vs. 55% could be huge.

Now consider if the statistic quoted compares results from people polled this month versus the same demographic polled with the same methodology last month. Say 51% of women 25-34 liked Ben Mulroney’s hosting of Canadian Idol last month, and this month their support has dropped to 49%. This might make entertainment-news headlines (“Mulroney popularity plummeting!”), but it shouldn’t. A 2% change like that falls within the margin of error, which means that change could just as easily be due to chance.

It’s not interesting news to report that “Opinions have reached an all-time constant!” It’s up to us, consumers of news on all topics, to judge statistics ourselves and not to blindly trust headlines that are often simply aimed at selling papers and magazines or getting eyeballs via Twitter.

Be smart, people!

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Twenty years ago today in the suburbs of Albany, NY, wearing a white frilly dress purchased from the store where one must purchase such things in Brooklyn, NY, I sang in public for the last time. As it was quite literally on the occasion of an honest-to-god rite of passage, nobody fell sick as a result.

Per tradition in the Northeast USA, my parents threw me a huge party at a hotel on the occasion of my Bat Mitzvah, with catered chicken fingers for all the kids. I had a perm and was infatuated with a boy in my Hebrew-school class. I led the conga line. There is video evidence.

At this point in my life I have very consciously and actively eschewed everything about the events of that day, but I’m going to focus on the positives. Of spending a day with my whole extended family, of obsessing over that boy.

I had a long post written about religion and judgment and expectation and friends and family, but sometimes cutting 600 words is the best thing to do.

Searching our dusty albums basement archives hasn’t turned up a photo of me on that day, so instead why don’t you post a photo of or comment about yourself from twenty years ago? A day of reminiscence is in order!

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This is take two of a post I started writing yesterday. I’ve tossed that post, but I’ll sum up: I didn’t love the Northern Voice blogging and social-media conference. I enjoyed hanging out with Carol Browne (who also crocheted her badge lanyard), and it rocked to bump into Zak Greant, with whom I’m already enjoying thinking up some fun stuff. Overall, though, I found the sessions were too short or not particularly valuable or both. I see blogging and online social media as being pretty much entirely about conversation, and that was, fairly shockingly, something that was missing from almost every session I attended. Given the predominant attendance by locals, I’d prefer to have individual conversations not in a crowded room, and I doubt I’ll attend next year.

That said, the Saturday keynotes kicked some serious ass, and I did attend two sessions that made me think.

Nora Young of CBC’s Spark radio show and podcast delivered her keynote, of course, about the intersection of technology and culture. She’s brilliant, and her keynote reflected it. If you don’t listen to Spark, you should. She was followed by Rob Cottingham, the only comedian I’ve seen address a niche audience and actually be funny (he was wonderfully funny).

Ok, the two sessions I thought were valuable. The first was Darren Barefoot‘s on “whether there is profundity to be found in social media, what it looks like, and how we can make more of it.” He did a great job of only giving his talk for half the session; unfortunately, the group was too big—and, given we were in a lecture hall, too all-facing-forward—to have a truly interactive conversation about it. But people did participate, and it was great.

Steve Pratt‘s session on CBC Radio 3, though, was the only one that blew my mind. I guess I’d had the impression that the conference as a whole would be a bit higher-level than it was. I wanted to talk theory, I wanted to encounter case studies of good and bad, I wanted to learn. Steve’s session was the only one where I learned. And what I learned is this: CBC Radio 3 is a living, breathing, working example of content distribution gone glaringly, beautifully right.

I work and play online, and I have a fair amount of professional experience in print. And over the last few months, I’ve been paying a lot of attention to the conversation going on amongst publishing types about what on earth to do to save print. Now, I don’t think print is dead, or dying. Well, perhaps the tangible print products we assume must exist in order for the world to spin rightly on its axis might not end up being so plentiful, but text—text is not going to die.

Print people of the old-school variety have been pointing at the music industry and crying, “See? See how digital distribution killed the music industry? We can’t let that happen to print!”

Dude, there’s no crying in progress and innovation.

Print types, please direct your attention to CBC Radio 3. They’re part of the music industry, too, and they’re doing what many publishers should be doing, give or take a thing or two. Here’s what I couldn’t help but tweet during the session because I was so jacked up by what Steve was saying (read from the bottom up; they’re in reverse chronological order):

My husband argued with me when I told him how exited I was to see a living, breathing, successful example of all this. His point of contention, of course, is that CBC is publicly funded. He doesn’t fully buy my answer, but I stand by it: When an audience is engaged with a site/person/magazine/whatever; when creators are given control and engagement and are valued; when an audience feels it’s gaining tremendously from its involvement; when that audience feels loyal to it—people will pay for it. They’ll pay for subscriptions, for products, for dues, for whatever as long as they see value in it. Note the bit up there about Radio 3 specifically not shooting for enormity. We’re not talking about a model that would be based on tens of millions of people agreeing to pay up. (Look at Ravelry.) We’re talking about niche content, niche-oriented design, and niche-involvement. Need I say it? Need I go there? Long tail. There. I said it.

Are there other examples of success following this model? I might be in slightly too curmudgeonly a mood to think of any right now. They must exist.

There’s a big, important discussion to be had about this. Lemme know if you want to talk more about it.

(One of the tweets I took out of that montage because I needed to make it fit on one screen to take the screenshot: the one where I say I want to work with Radio 3. Who knows what I could do that they’d want, but that’s irrelevant. What’s relevant? That even just seeing what they’re doing—I hadn’t even ever listened to Radio 3, but I’m listening to it as I write this and it’s kicking Vancouver music radio’s sorry scrawny ass—I wanted to give them a part of my career. I don’t give parts of my career lightly.)

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