Urban Vancouver

The Changing World of Information series: Blogs and Wikis

By Lindsay on January 27, 2006 - 2:54am

I also posted this entry on my own blog at dizzyisland.com, but I thought I would post it here too.

I attended the 'Changing World of Information series: Blogs and Wikis' presentation at the Vancouver Public Library tonight. It was pretty informal, but interesting. I went into it not really knowing what to expect, and it wasn't too bad.

The speakers, Brian Lamb and Marc Schneider (didn't catch his URL, unfortunately -- if anyone has it, please pass it on), wer great. Brian opened up, and he was pretty hilarious. He did a great job at demonstrating the magnitude and potential for blogs in terms that a newbie could understand by reviewing some of the relationships and distributed discussions that take place on his own blog (shameless, yes, but effective!). He didn't really present anything I didn't already know, so that was a bit disappointing. But he did provide some great laughs and insights though, which I appreciated, and by the end I was thinking, "wow, I have to visit this guy's blog more often and hopefully I can get to know him!"

Marc followed Brian, and his presentation focussed more on the evolution of journalism and media in relation to blogging. He said some quite profound things about objectivity vs. authenticity in blogging, I wish I had written it down. He said a lot of other great things too that I suck at paraphrasing due to their brilliancy, so I won't go into too much detail for fear of taking away from his message. I thoroughly enjoyed his presentation though, and I hope I get a chance to hear him speak again.

I think where this presentation fell short was in advertisment. There seemed to be a very mixed crowd there; everyone from "hardcore Vancouver bloggers" as Brian called us seasoned folk, to people who wanted to know how to start a blog, all the way to people who didn't even know what a blog was. With such a mixed crowd, I could see how it would be difficult to cater the content to everyone. The MC buffered things a little bit for the people in the audience who were completely clueless and told them about some computer courses that the library offers. I got the feeling that some people left a bit disappointed though. (It was free, suck it up, I say!) I was also bothered by a few audience members who kind of tried to steal the presentation away from Brian and Marc, which I thought was a little weird. I'd never experienced that before in an informal presentation setting. Too much personality in one room I guess.

Afterwards there was a Vancouver Bloggers Meetup at the pub, but we didn't go. If I wasn't broke, I would've gone and seen who I could see. It's probably a better idea to get to know some of you Vancouver Bloggers online though before I go off trying to meet them in real life... heaven forbid they're all like, "who the hell are you?" HA! Maybe next time.

Anyway, it was a fun night. If you happened to be there too, feel free to share your comments.