Ball of Confusion Love and Rockets

Sure, you can listen to The Temptation’s version as well.

Monster The Automatic

Because that’s what you’re going to be saying in the aftermath: “What’s that coming over the hill? Is it a monster?” And yes, it will be a monster and it’ll eat you.

The Killing Moon Echo & the Bunnymen

It’s a great song and I like the idea of the Moon killing everybody.

Cities in dust Siouxsie and the Banshees

It’s about the destruction of Pompeii, but it’s applicable.

Burning down the house The Talking Heads

Since we are into the burning of stuff…

Fire Arthur Brown

“You’re gonna burn!”

Eve of destruction Barry McGuire

The Turtles also have a great version.

Psychobitches outta hell HorrorPops

‘Cause that’s all that’s gonna’ be left. And zombies.

She’s not there The Zombies

Told you there were going to be zombies.

The Death Song Marilyn Manson

This is a good one to finish with, since death is so final.

I was then off to a session called “Why we podcast” featuring a panel of well known podcasters that I’ve never listened to just because my interests lie elsewhere. Nevertheless it was a very lively conversation on what motivates this group of people to podcast regularly and keep doing it despite there not being any money (nor getting girls, as Keith complained repeatedly).

After that I moved a few doors down to hear how to get started in games journalism. I admit that PC games are my thing, and getting paid for playing games sounds like a good thing. However, to get to that stage you have to go through a lot of what sounds like hard work that will eat into your game playing time. This session tried to make that transition a bit easier and provided a few good pointer on what you could do and a bit more insight on what’s involved.

And finally, to end the day I went to the session on photojournalism with HiMy Syed (I met him years ago in the first Jane’s Walk, he led one). Unfortunately there was not enough time to go through everything he had prepared, but in the short time available he did share several very good and important points on making your photographs available and selling them. I wish there had been time to go into a deep discussion on Creative Commons vs traditional copyright, but I guess that could’ve easily taken half a day all by itself.

In all, an excellent first day of sessions, learning and sharing.

So, this morning instead of my usual 2:00 pm wake up time I raised up at the break of dawn and made my way down to Ryerson University.

The sessions have been pretty good this morning. I attended first the “Hello World” Podcast, mostly to know about the process of making a podcast quickly. One of the things that stops me from making a regular podcast is the time in production and all that. I’m not fancy, I prefer to make something quick and just throw it out there. And this session was really good for that. Paul took us quickly through a script, shared his hardware and software tools used for the occasion and had us record a quick minute audio and sent it to a self-hosted WordPress blog. Good for a start.

For the second session I chose a talk on Podcasting as the “new” media tool, Karim Kanji, host of the Social Media Show, and a last minute fill-in (sorry I didn’t get your name). It was an interesting and lively conversation between presenters and participants, talking about recording equipment, coming up with content, and putting it out there. Good stuff. And @marcopolis was there as well.

To end the morning I headed up (it was on the third floor) to listen to Ryan Wiseman speak about videocasting, or podcasting video, or whatever the kids call it. It was very nice to see how he’s done it and also how some of the big players do it as well. It’s amazing how much one can do these days with relatively little equipment.

It’s been great and I’m really looking forward to the afternoon sessions.

However, he still misses the point on captchas and why use them at all: that the fact that the comments are written by a human or a machine is irrelevant, what’s important is the content and what it adds to the conversation.

It’s easy and cheap to get humans to do the dirty jobs that bots are unable to do just yet, but as Watson recently showed in Jeopardy, it’s just a matter of time before bots can get through any kind of practical test you can implement in your blog or website to keep them out.

And besides, it doesn’t matter. The important thing is to keep empty, spammy content out, and that’s easier to recognize by looking at keywords and phrases. After all, for humans to respond it has to be worded a certain way.

Bots can do more than just leave spammy content. They can read your blog post, tell what it’s about and produce a relevant and helpful comment. Sure, it may link back to some site trying to sell you something, but that’s what we humans do and it’s an accepted practice that as long as the comment is relevant and valuable in itself it can link back.

And if you have a bot of your own watching over the comments and producing smart answers of their own, you can have a conversation. Who said the net was only for humans?

Anyway, captchas are useless not because they can be beat, but because they focus on something irrelevant.

In the words of Ken Jennings: I for one welcome our new computer overlords.

I like it much better than rain at any rate. Specially cold rain.

So, here I am at the beggining of WordCamp Toronto 2010, hoping that the blogging by email feature on my site still works (it did!)

The attendance is great. The room is full and still expecting more people. My panel is at 1:00. Should try to find an organizer before then…

First up is blogging and social media with Jeremy Wriight in about 10 mins.

Jeremy’s presentation about angry camels is done and it was great! He’s actually a very good and funny speaker. He’s pretty much spot on about why social media efforts fail. Taking questions now.

Success story number 1 is about Mary and her blog, LunchwthMary. She thought it would be a good idea to have lunch with interesting people and learn stuff from there, then blog about it.

Richard Mitchell’s experience’s both in Georgetown University and the non-profit are very similar to what we went through at Maytree with our website before WordPress. Except for the money part (we didn’t have a CMS, expensive or cheap) the issues with time, flexibility, etc. were pretty much the same.

The talk on using social media and WodPress to win an election was more focused on tools you can use to promote your campaign, not so much on campaign strategies per se. It would have been interesting to have more about listening to the voters, polling, getting proposals, etc.

Up next, lunch. And later George sharing a little about how GM Canada started with the social media thing and Emma’s story of success through challenging someone else to a blogging contest.

Now it’s time for WordPress for n00bs, I mean, newbies.

That was interesting! I thought I still had time to go to the washroom and prepare for my short presentation, but I had to step up as soon as the previous one was over and for longer that I was expecting. I hope I didn’t do too badly and that people are not just saying I did will out of politeness! Thank you all!

Now, Mark’s presentation on how to manage multiple blogs, for strategies to come up with ideas, tools and inspiration to write many posts. He has very good tips, unfortunately I forgot to record it.

Maybe by now you will have noticed I stopped following your updates and you are perhaps wondering why, what you did wrong and if there is a way to set things right and if I will follow you again. I have to be honest with you, there probably is no way I will follow you again.

You see, we are just not made for each other. I am looking for worthy insights, links that will help me advance as a person and a professional, someone who will expand my horizons, challenge me and is able to call me on my bullshit and is not offended when I call bullshit on him/her. However I have noticed that of late there is nothing I can take from your tweets that’s valuable to me. Sure, I understand, my tweets are not 100% all-value, and I don’t expect yours to be either, but something nice from time to time is not too much to ask, is it?

The thing is… there is just so much fluff on my timeline and I don’t have the time to deal with it all. But you have other followers, I’m sure they find your style of tweets worthwhile.

Don’t think of this as your failure, I probably was looking for something different without realizing it and just gave you some false hope, sent you the wrong signs, clicked on the “Follow” button before knowing more about you. I don’t want you to feel bad about yourself, you did nothing wrong and, if it’s any consolation, you are not the only one I’m unfollowing. You see, I made some choices that I now must sadly go back on. It’s all my fault. It’s not you, it’s me.

But this doesn’t mean we can’t still be friends.