About six years ago I wrapped up what I would consider to be my first full year of doing web work. Six years ago was also the inaugural year of Northern Voice, Canada’s first weblogging conference. And even though this year’s NV was the first I’ve attended, it almost feels as if I’ve been along for the ride through the years as the conference, and the web, has matured in this short time.
Continue reading →
Last week I attended my first class on Social Media Fundamentals, a course offered by UBC Continuing Studies and taught by Rob and Alex from Social Signal. Opening night covered the basics of social media, and our first assignment was to write a blog post. Given I’m a sporadic blogger at best, I can safely say this class has already helped me out by prompting me to write another post, so here it is!
Continue reading →
“The smartest planning for online communications has to include knowing that something else is going to happen four or two or three years from now that you don’t know about yet.” – Graeme Menzies, Director of Online Communications, VANOC
With the Olympics about to kick off here in Vancouver, signs are everywhere that the games have arrived and one of my favourites so far has been lighting up the night sky: Vectorial Elevation.
Continue reading →
Building a new site in Drupal is always a learning experience. Whether it’s your first Drupal site, or maybe you’re a seasoned pro but now need to build out a site with some new functionality you haven’t tackled before – just about every Drupal project takes time and some careful decision making along the way. I still have lots to learn, but here are three tips from what I’ve learned so far.
Continue reading →
Acquia, the commercial open source company founded by Drupal creator, Dries Buytaert, recently released a white paper, TCO for Open Source Social Publishing, that looks at the “total cost of ownership” for open source social publishing. Reading through the paper, I can’t help but think about how much open source has matured as a viable business model.
Continue reading →
If there was a list of Frequently Asked Questions of the holiday season, there’s one that I think might rise to the very top that would actually have nothing to do with the season: “What’s new?” You’ll get asked this by friends you’re reconnecting with, relatives you haven’t seen in a long time, even new people you meet for the first time at holiday parties. It sounds like a simple enough of a question to answer and it gets asked all the time, but it often catches me off guard. As innocuous of a question as it may be, it’s one that really deserves more than the usual passing reply of, “Hmmm, not much.”
Continue reading →
Here’s a list of things I’m currently reading and learning about (minus the obvious half -joking ones like “life”). In some cases I’m learning through reading, in other cases through a teacher/mentor/instructor/friend, in other cases by teaching myself, and for some of these things, I’m just keeping tabs on them. In some ways, this is a little bit of a peek into what’s on my mind.
Last Updated: Dec-8-2009
