B. Mann Consulting

So, we were lucky enough to get a killer deal on our space at the UBC campus for Northern Voice 2007. This meant that we had some money available to do other things with.

We decided one of the things we wanted to do was to increase the reach of the conference. We're lucky enough to have a lot of friends travel great distances already to come to the conference, but maybe there's a really passionate blogger somewhere far away that just doesn't have the money to be able to travel.

Today Darren posted the details on the Northern Voice Travel Bursaries -- six travel bursaries of $500CDN each. We'll award these based on a blog/video/photo/podcast post that the applicant makes, and then fill out the bursary submission form.

It's the middle of January, and I can't wait for the end of February to roll around. 

Today is the last (extended) day for speaker submissions for Northern Voice 2007. We'd love to have your thoughts and submissions -- the last minute rush to enter submissions has led to a fabulous selection that is going to be hard to choose from.

The organizers are meeting next week to fight tooth and nail for their favourite entries. In the mean time, registration is open, so you can go ahead and get your tickets now. We've got slightly more room than in past years, but we've sold out every year so far...

And what about Boris' traditional Northern Voice crazy plans? Well, we're still debating, but I might get to put together a geocaching / GPS adventure. We'll start it as one of the last sessions of Moose Camp, and end the day wandering the UBC campus with GPS in hand. Ideally, we'll have some photographers along to document the process, and we'll be able to combine GPS timelogs with photos and see it all on a map.

Do you know someone that knows all about geocaching? I'd like to talk to them...

Yes! We did it...or will do it. We're going to have another Northern Voice!

Update: did I mention it's going to be out at the UBC Forest Sciences Centre? Which is fantastic, according to these pictures from Cyprien.

Our "mandate" has always been to make a highly accessible event that would be of interest and educational for a wide range of people. For people who aren't necessarily techies and/or who haven't been exposed to some of the stuff we cover on personal blogging and other tech (who also tend to be local Vancouverites...can we get non-techies from other cities to come?), I like to think Northern Voice gives them a bit of a taste of what's new. Not necessarily new-bleeding-edge, but new-you-can-use-it-now.

Maybe techies are tired of Blogging 101, Wiki 101, and Photo Sharing 101. I know we can keep giving these sessions every single year. And you, the techie reading this post (hi, Mom!), should sit in and share your knowledge and perspective.

You know the phrase, "This isn't your mother's X?". Well, Northern Voice is your mother's conference. But the neat part, it's also for you techies. Cheap, fun, educational, mind-expanding.

Right now, the speaker submission page is open. One thing to note....write a good abstract, and take filling that speaker submission form out seriously. We got lots of entries from great folks who just didn't bother telling us what they would talk about, or make a case for why they should have a session (or un-session, as the case may be). Colin Brumelle (and yes, he works with me at Bryght), was the only abstract submission that was unanimously voted in on the first pass.

What kind of submissions do we want to see? Well, let me tell you what I would love to see... 

I sat down with Robert Scoble at Gnomedex, asking him what he would like to see at next year's Northern Voice (he mentioned it briefly talking about Kris' part in a MediaShift article). We talked about two things: Geolocation and virtual worlds.

Abstracting this a little, to me it means the intersection of the physical world with online. Blogging has always done this -- with people bring pieces of their offline lives online, or helping to make real life connections through communicating online.

I talked about our mandate -- appealing to a wide range of people. Geolocation and virtual worlds are still new. But, not too new that people can't start experimenting if someone gives them a few pointers. Flickr now has integrated geotagging, and Second Life continues to explode. Your barber is not unlikely to play World of Warcraft, and the Nokia N95 has GPS and photo sharing built in.

What are you waiting for? Go make a great speaker submission, and let everyone know to get their moose, like D'Arcy just did (first post -- nice work!).

P.S. What can we do as a fun live event? Scoble suggests a photowalk. I think we should do a photowalk plus geocaching plus geotagging plus constructing virtual worlds. Or something :P