Canada Day 2005

Well, as I look at my last blog post, I see that it’s been just about two weeks! My how time flies! There’s been plenty of things happening in the last couple weeks, so I’ll likely try to jam a few new posts on right away to catch anyone up who’s been wondering what’s new. To the left, you can see a lovely picture of Parliament Hill as seen from the air. April 29 marked my father’s 65th birthday, and he drove all the way up from Westville, NS to celebrate with his family up here. Yup, he’s now officially a Senior Citizen in the eyes of the man. You wouldn’t think it to see him and hang out with him for a while. He’s still sharp as a whip, and has plenty of stories that definitely make my life seem pretty pedestrian by comparison. Just ask him some day about the 6 months he spent slogging through the jungles, attempting the first land crossing of the Darien Gap (see this great story about the Darien Gap) in an amphibious vehicle ( a DUKW to be precise), which promptly broke down, leaving his team to slog on by foot, till he got dyssentry, and on and on! I’ve told him on several occasions that he must write out his memoirs some day. If for nothing else than for my sheer enjoyment of it all. It’s cool to hear stories from your maker about their life experiences!

Howdy all! Well, this past week, I attended a conference in Toronto called ICE ’07 (Interactive Content Exchange) as part of my new role in which I am doing research on New Media. This conference was a relatively small affair with about 440 attendees, most of which were owners and/or high-level company officials form some of Canada’s cutting edge New Media companies. It was a great networking opportunity, and I met many interesting people with whom to chat about technology, shilfts in consumer behaviours, and web trends. The bulk of the conference was panel discussions, not straight presentations, which I think was actually better. Of course, it meant I had to take a lot of notes myself, but it sparked some interesting debates. This was also an opportunity to learn more about some of the latest web properties fighting for eyeballs in the vast emptiness of what we know as the Internet. This has prompted me to step back a bit and re-examine my online presence and the tools I’ve been using to promote me. As you are all well aware, it consists mainly of this site, as well as all my pictures up on Flickr. Not a great Web 2.0 presence, is it? Well, read on for some of my thoughts on where to go next.