Net Neutrality is a *big* topic which will be addressed more in a primer post next week but in the meantime, check out this interview by Nicole Scott with Kris Krug on bnetTV.com. Kris offers some savvy suggestions about how to "frame" the conversation about net neutrality by emphasizing digital human rights in Canada with a suite of progressive policies towards access, privacy and competition.

{Cross posted in various forms at Vancouver Drupal Camp Group, Urban Vancouver and Now Public - please spread the word}

First there was an idea, then we chose a date (May 9-10), set up a relevant Drupal Group, now there is a location (SFU Wosk Centre and Workspace) and finally a Drupal Camp Vancouver website.

Indeed, the rag-tag band of volunteers is steadily working to wrangle Drupal Camp Vancouver into a knowledge-sharing fest of unparalleled fun and untold benefits.

Consider this notice that DrupalCampVancouver.org is alive and slowly percolating up with the relevant details and useful information including Sponsor info (and checklist), Volunteer info (and organizer props), and the important Call for Speakers.

Registration will open this week so keep your eyes open for details to be among the chosen.

For those who don't know, Drupal is an open source Content Management System which powers many of your other favorite community driven sites.

How can you help?

Great question! 'Tis a busy time for all (including many involved with Open Web this week) so volunteers are important to spread the work around. Big thanks to those who've signed on so far. Have a bit of time? Then consider signing up by Contacting the organizers to help out (no big deal eh) and see ya at DrupalCampVancouver.org.

Well, the three days of the CCI2008 conference are coming to a close. Unfortunately, I had to head out a little early due to feeling a little under the weather, but it gives me a chance to get this blog post up.

My presentation at 11am this morning went pretty well, I think. I had to scramble last minute to get a video adapter (thanks, Paul Brown from Quark!). But oh no, no remote clicker to advance my presentation while I wander around the room!

Well, Salling Clicker to the rescue on my Mac and on my cellphone, using Bluetooth. There were some fun technical snafus and the Bluetooth only lasted about half way, but I definitely liked the way I could control the system from my phone.

Here is the SlideShare link to my presentation:

| View | Upload your own

Please also do go and vote on my session on the Confabb site if you attended. I'd love some direct feedback. From my point of view it was fun and I got lots of audience participation. Special shout out to Todd O'Neill from DoingMedia for participation, although lots of people got into things, including Michael Priestly.

Djun and I talked with Michael Priestley (who just happens to be the Lead IBM DITA Architect) about DITA over lunch. In particular, DITA support in Drupal. The main dita.xml.org website actually runs on Drupal, which is fantastic.

So, I'll be talking a bit more with Michael about how to "pitch" DITA to the Drupal community. It will come at an interesting time as we explore the Semantic Web technologies. My very very brief summary is that DITA is sort of like a universal import / export format for content, component content, mappings, and topics. Heck, even there I got a bit confusing. I'll be looking for some "intro to DITA" slides from Michael to help understand this more.

Thanks to the CCI2008 conference organizers (esp. Rahel), speakers, and attendees. It was a really great event, from which I originally really didn't know what to expect. I have lots of follow ups to do, and it was definitely a great experience.

I'm attending the first day of the Content Convergence & Integration 2008 Conference. Here's the conference boilerplate:

Content Convergence and Integration 2008 is for content professionals who need to find more strategic ways to manage their content in a world where content now gets created and syndicated, integrated, repurposed, and redistributed. Content professionals, from Web to marketing to technical communication professionals, from content management to knowledge management to information management consultants, are searching for new techniques to stay ahead of the curve.

Also of interest about this conference is that it is using Salim Ismail's Confabb conference platform. It's been cool to kick the tires on it, I need to spend some more time looking at it and then I'll do a review.

I'm currently sitting in Todd O'Neill's session on User Generated Rich Media: Make it, Manage it. I got to raise the point that "community manager" is a new career track, sometimes from within organizations (the hobby photographer who starts taking pictures for the company and posts to Flickr) or hired in from the outside (the social media evangelist who injects this new school DNA into).

The phrase "free blogging package" is coming up a lot, but not open source. I think that will be a strong theme of my presentation on Friday -- Get out of the Silo - Using Open Source Software to Share Content. Djun is also presenting on Friday: Exposing your content to the Semantic Web. The Friday track is theoretically "Relationships", so we'll see how to weave that theme into these two presentations. I know I'll be talking about my favourite phrase: community ROI.

Now I'm in Web 2.0 and the end of DITA and just got called out specifically to live blog, so I better get this posted :P

Raincity Studios' Dave O and Roland Tanglao at New Town Bakery in Chinatown discussing upcoming Vancouver social media and open technology conferences, Northern Voice (including Moose Camp and Internet boot camp) and Open Web Conference - both in Vancouver in the coming months.

They talk about some presentation ideas, advantages of attending and handy tips for transport and sustenance while enjoying bowls of tasty food and strong tea.