After taking the summer off from podcasting. I just spent some time adding all the new (almost 40!) listings to the CanadaPodcasts.ca directory. To be honest, sometimes it’s a chore, but when I see the amount of new shows coming from this country, I’m motivated all over again.

Did you know this podcast directory predates iTunes’ own podcast directory? Of course you did.

A few people have asked me why we still maintain this directory even with iTunes and the other listings that exist out there..The answer is simple. There is NO other definitive podcast directory specifically for Canadian podcasts.

I think that’s a big deal. I really do.

Even though on radio CanCon has become a joke that assures us that we’ll hear Tom Cochrane or RUSH every 11 minutes on FM radio, I do agree with the original thoughts behind it. We’re a small nation, population-wise. Most of us live within 200km (and ear shot) of US Radio/TV/Movies/Music. Without those CanCon laws in the 1970’s, many Canadian acts wouldn’t have seen the light of day, or had any measurable success.

Am I advocating the same thing happen online? Absolutely not. I fully support net-neutrality, and consider media a part of that. I dare to the think that the online population is able to make its own choices. and that we may have learned from the crappy experience Canadian radio has become.

If you’re a podcast listener, you have lots to choose from when it comes to putting things in your ears. My goal with CanadaPodcasts is to give you the Canadian option. If we help Canadian media creators get more attention, and haven’t spent any government money, then we will end up with more Canadian media creators, and by volume, better content.  Should all your listening end there? Of course not.

We’re a creative nation, and I think you owe it to yourself to check out what your neighbours are doing….

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This is how the speakers are lined up at bitnorth. We (well, our names) are all pinned to a board, and off we go. Everyone who attends bitnorth must present. That’s the “academic” part of the event. A quick look at 38 talks ranging in time from 5 to 20 minutes, with topics ranging from “How to build a deck” to “The Fall of the Aztecs” to “Norwegian Black Metal“.. Well, you get an idea of how hard it is to describe this event. Have a look at  evablue’s amazing pictures to help get an idea.

I’m lucky enough to have attended all the bitnorth events (this was the 3rd – read my impressions of bitnorth’08 here). As a conference organizer myself, I find it interesting to both attend/participate in this event and watch how it evolves year after year. In fact, my talk this year was “Hosting For Humans“, where I share some lessons learned from my experience as co-organizer of PAB, podcamps, and other events. I’ll turn that into a blog post here soon..

The challenge of any recurring event is to keep the successful bits, lose the ones that didn’t work so well, and still have the event evolve. Since it’s held virtually disconnected at a camp (a band camp!), bitnorth has additional challenges, as many of the social events are weather-dependent. For example, this year, the weather couldn’t have been more perfect, the canoes and campfire were great. Last year, it was cold and rainy and we were indoors pretty much the entire time.

I love the “everyone must present” idea. It puts everyone on the same level socially, as there is no dividing line between speakers and the mortal attendees. We’re all in it together.  That being said,  having 38 presentations of course limited the ability to deep-dive into any topic. There’s good and bad to this. On the plus side, if you were bored (unlikely) it wasn’t for long, but on the other hand, it ended up feeling like a series of tweets at times. I wish some topics had gone deeper.

Where does bitnorth go from here? It’s interesting to think about. The people attending were great, not much in the way of ego and there were no rockstars.. With this kind of mix, and a genuine desire to connect, I can’t see it going wrong. Alistair and his cohorts still need to navigate that fine line between organizing an event and organizing people, but they’ve done a great job of doing that so far.

Would I change anything?  It’s truly hard to say.. It’s a delicate balance, going too far intellectually or socially will scare some people off .. bitnorth needs to keep evolving, but stay disconnected. The lack of tweets and faces behind screens is always refreshing.

I do know that I once again come away having made new friends, enjoyed seeing old ones again, and marking my calendar for bitnorth ‘2011.

Congrats to everyone organizing and participating in bitnorth’10, it was a pleasure to spend a weekend with you all!

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Ever get one room of the house clean to the point where you want to keep going and do the other rooms? Me neither.

I can imagine how it feels though. The results of my Twitter cleanup have been nothing short of spectacular. I can actually FEEL the reduction of clutter in my twitter feed.

Armed with this new found vim and vigor, I’m going to attack the socially heavier cleanup: facebook.

With twitter, the social connections are often weak, and as such are easy to dismiss. It’s harder with facebook though. It has come to take up so much space in this online world, and is used by people who wouldn’t even normally use the net (if that’s possible). The potential to offend is somewhat higher on facebook. For some, if you’re not a facebook friend, you’re not a “real” friend. We’ve all seen it.

These things are what make the facebook cleanup more touchy. While I’ve enjoyed exchanging insights into daily life with friends new and old, I can’t help but think that at around 350 “friends”, there’s a diminishing scale of value. Oh, and if you’ve got 2000 friends, I’ve got news for you – you don’t.

So the social-weighty questions arise:

• Do I worry about high-school acquaintances who’ve asked to be my friend on facebook because we happened to be on the same bus in 1984?

• Will my purge actions be misconstrued as an attack on someone who may not realize that after all, this is a classic case of “It’s not you, It’s me.”

It amazes me that a website that basically didn’t exist 5 years ago brings up this social pressure.

You know what, I don’t need to apologize for what I’m about to do. You may be a nice person, but unless we’re close friends, I don’t need to know that your kid spit up on you this morning. It’s clutter, and if it’s that important to you that I know, you can phone me.

facebook of course exposes privacy concerns, so I’ve been careful to not open up too much on there. Still, like I did for twitter, I’ll go through my facebook contacts, and undo the connections if they meet the following conditions :

• We haven’t interacted directly, ever.
• We haven’t talked since high school.
• Our interaction is only that we attended the same event once – then pretty much nothing.
• I don’t even like you.

That’s a good start, we’ll see where that goes. What would you add to this list?

Photo credit : Vacuum Cleaner, by butkaj.com.

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Like many other people, my TV watching habits have changed over the years. I’ve never been a big TV watcher, often preferring books or reading online. I wanted   a way to make the watching process less painful.

Remember when we’d actually wait for a particular time and date to watch a show? It seems so alien now. My 6yr old can’t understand that sometimes he needs to wait for the show he wants to “air”, and can’t just hit play to see the show he wants at that moment. We have a PVR, and that does wonders in assuring that Simon and I don’t miss an episode of Wipeout, but for movies we have on DVD, finding and dealing with physical media seemed so backwards compared to the rest of our setup that I longed for a better way.

I really wanted to pick up a Mac Mini to dedicate as a home theatre PC, but I couldn’t bring myself to accept spending that kind of cash for the TV. I kept looking for a better (Cheaper!) way. I ended up picking up this little beast :

Acer AR1600

It’s basically a screenless netbook with a heavy-duty video card. It’s got HDMI out so it plays nice with the TV, and comes with a wireless keyboard and mouse. I added a remote (super cheap on ebay) and I was set. I’m not a spec-monger, if you want to pour over CPU cycles and thingies like that, go to the product page. Anyway, this $199 (Canadian!) beast comes with FreeDos (though they said Linux), but I didn’t care, I wanted to install the open source XBMC media centre software on it.

From the download of XBMC to actually navigating the menus on the TV, the entire installation process took under an hour. There’s a great community behind XBMC, and there are tons of plugins available for it – I settled on basic settings: Local Weather, Movies, TV Shows, Music (online or my network drive) and Pictures (from my network or flickr!) .. Very easy to set up, very quick to get running..

The longer part was ripping DVDs to my network drives. In fact, it was often quicker to download movies I already owned (!) from bittorrent, and store them on the network.

So now, when we want to watch a movie, it’s right there, right away. I can watch IT Crowd comfortably in my living room even though it’s not available in Canada, and we’re once again enjoying the movies we paid $30 a pop for without having to worry about dirty or scratched discs or the forced 60 second anti-piracy message that only legitimate buyers ever see anyway…

Quick, cheap, and XBMC rocks – I’m quite happy with this solution…

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It was with canoefuls of sadness I realized I wouldn’t be able to participate in organizing or even attend Podcamp Montreal this year.

I love the event, have nothing but respect for the people putting it together, and wish my schedule allowed for my participation.

If you however are free the weekend of Sept 11/12 2010, can be near Montreal, and are at all interested in this online world in which we live, I recommend you register and attend.

The session schedule once again reveals what I like about this particular Podcamp. French and English sessions, and probably several where both languages will be used. It’s a great way to connect with the community, and it’s a phenomenal value for the money.

By the way, if you’re looking to do more than just attend, but don’t want to present, they’re also looking for volunteers to help with different things at the event. Volunteering is a great way to make yourself known too, if that’s your goal..

Enjoy PCMTL and thank the organizers when you see them,

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Down to about 1500 following, that’s about 300 less than when I started. It’s absolutely like weeding a garden.

Want to see something interesting? Take a look a who you’re following that’s not following you back. If the idea of the social media is to “Join the Conversation”, lots of people are getting it wrong.

How can you tell? Go to their twitter page, and see if you can message them (under the “Actions” menu).. If you can’t, they aren’t following you. You’re just a number to them, hope your ego can take it.

Twitter Karma will also let you see who’s not following you back.. Made me realize that I was accepting clutter politely from people who weren’t doing me the same honour…

Twitter may become useful for me eventually….

oh yeah, I need a picture for this post, all the “How to Blog” guides say so:

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As I was putting together the “interesting people” posts (more to come by the way), I became impressed with the amount of clutter that’s become part of my online experience.  As much as I enjoy the connected life online, I have to admit that the noise outpaced the signal a long time ago, and my ability to find nuggets in the mess is outclassed.

There has been a lot of talk recently of a kind of “social media purge”. One social media star is dropping Google Buzz, the other is giving up blogging, etc etc.. . examples are easy to find of the people shutting off one or more channels entirely.

To me, that’s like tossing out your TV because you just saw a bad show. The problem isn’t the TV, it’s your ability to choose what you watch as opposed to just watching “Dangerous Chefs stalking Dog Whisperers” when it happens to come on and the remote’s too far to reach.

I like Francis‘ approach in cleaning up his facebook “friends” list, he’s not dropping facebook entirely, just removing the connections that provide no value to him. This is the kind of approach I’m going to adopt.

My first target: Twitter.

Now I’ve been known to dislike twitter (Maybe because I gave a talk called “Fuck Twitter” at bitnorth ‘09? Nah..).. but when I think about it, the service is fine. It’s certain people’s abilities to remove value from an experience that bugs me.  I use Tweetdeck (which I find great), and will be using that to unfollow people who meet the following criteria :

• You act like you’re Chris Brogan but aren’t. Be yourself, Chris is doing a fine job being him.
• You retweet Chris Brogan. If you feel the need to retweet him, you don’t get it.
• You do nothing but retweet others with no added value.
• ANY tweet with a link to a “XX tips/reasons/methods to _______” blog post.
• I never see you do anything but broadcast with no interaction.
• Added: ANY quote from TS Elliot

What would you add to this list?

These are the starting criteria, they may evolve over time. I started this a few days ago, and I’m down to 1700 followed… How long until I reach a happy signal to noise ratio? Stay tuned!

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iPad Case,  by Yutaka Tsutano.

There are 87 bazillion iPad reviews. This makes it 87 bazillion-and-one.

Earlier this summer, our good friend Whitney Hoffman dropped by to spend a night as part of a road trip. It’s always awesome to see Whit, and the conversations with her always entertain, enlighten and inform me.

On this trip, Whitney brought her iPad. While I knew about the device and what it’s features and shortcomings were, I’d never actually used one.

I’d recently been considering picking up an ebook reader, or some kind of tablet.  Well, after about 10 minutes, I knew I wanted one. (Note I didn’t say NEED, I think that’s a word we use too easily… this was a purely consumeristic shiny-new-object WANT).

So after some phone calls and pointless drives – Did you know that one Apple store won’t tell you if another has stock of an item? (You assholes. You’re a technology company, stop being so douchy about everything.)

Anyway, a few days later I’ve got my grubby paws on a Wifi iPad. To say this has changed the way I consume media (and fling birds across a screen) is an understatement. I honestly felt I’d play with it a bit, and it would become a toy when I need a diversion… It’s instead become my main media consumption device.

It’s changed the way I interact with media and technology. I no longer read the morning paper at all, choosing to read the Globe and Mail, BBC or other trusted sources. I’ve also noticed that my laptop’s daily trip from the office to the living room has pretty much stopped. It now stays in the office unless I’m actively creating something..

I’ve yet to install and of the “Big 3″ productivity apps (Keynote,Pages,Numbers), and I don’t miss them yet. If I were doing more public speaking, I’d probably splurge for Keynote, but for now, I’m still having fun using 3rd party apps.

For blogging, the wordpress app is great for quickie things, but the web interface is still the best way to go.. The same can be said for facebook – why have an app at all..?

Perhaps the most useful surprise was the calendar integration. I’ve got multiple google calendars, Cat’s calendars, and my work Lotus Notes calendar all showing up and synced perfectly. Ok, so that’s mostly a function of Google Sync, but the iPad’s portability is what brings it home.

Even though I knew I was buying into the walled-garden that is Apple’s eco-system, I’m still really happy with it. I sure wish it supported Flash (more Apple douchiness) and that’s probably the worst thing about it. There’s a lot of flash out there, to be cut off from it is just silly.

Could I live without it? Sure, I could also live without a nice glass of wine once in a while,  but I’d rather have it around. I can’t imagine not taking this with me on my next business trip, so I guess that’s the point.

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Time for another installment of the “interesting people” series…

John Meadows, at PAB2010 by Me.

Those of us that live online exist in a world of “What’s in it for me”, and I’m sure I’m not alone in that I tend to find people more interesting the more interests I share with them. Some call it a fishbowl, but I prefer to look at it as a “Birds of a feather” kind of thing, where people self-assemble based on shared interests.

John and I have a lot in common. Like mine, his online presence has almost nothing to do with his day-to-day job. (I think he may be a spy for an overseas lingerie manufacturer, but I’m not sure).  His presence serves very much as an outlet for his (seemingly boundless) creativity. He’s into music, photography, podcasting, and has a wicked sense of humour. This year, he showed attendees at PAB2010 that he also has BALLS OF STEEL when he sang his Jolt! presentation “Thank God I’m an amateur“  a capella.

Do yourself a favour, check out some of John’s creative endeavours:

• John’s blog: Poke the Bear (features his music too)
• The On the Log Podcast (he recently interviewed me about my Pirate Radio days)
• His latest project is a photography blog, check out My Third Eye.
• A photowalk to say goodbye to Kodachrome film

That should keep you busy for a while, see you next week!

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You know about “follow friday” on twitter,  right?

It’s the thing on where you mention someone’s twitter handle with the oh-so-important #ff tag. With this simple gesture, you vouch for someone, and invite others to follow them.

The thing is, It’s mostly bullshit.

#FF is really about showing others what a great connector of people you are, and how they should be thankful you showed them the way.

Whatever. If a three character tag is all it takes to pique your interest in someone, you may want to set your standards a wee bit higher.

As my protest against this idiocy, and as a way to keep writing during the summer, I’d like to do better than a FF, and actually show you some people I read/listen to that I happen to find interesting. Each week I’ll invite you to take a listen/read to someone who may or may not be new to you. Let me know what you think.

I hesitated starting this series of posts, because inevitably, someone I don’t mention will perceive that I don’t find them interesting. That’s probably not the case, and stop taking everything so personally, ok?

Anyway, I think it’s rather timely, there’s been a lot of “You are what you eat” sentiment going around.

Pay attention to what you’re consuming. Start here:

Julien Smith – Raise your hurdles
Chris Penn – We become the company we keep

And by watching Sylvain Grand’maison – You are what you hear :

- let’s see if I can help you move off the Social Media A-list people busy beating each other senseless with their iPads, to people I (and you might) find interesting.

I’m hoping you’ll do the same..

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