Yesterday morning, David Akin in his CTV News guise (he’s also with the Globe and Mail) asked if he could drop by Tucows along with intrepid camerman Lucien and interview both Boss Ross and me about Google as part of a piece on their IPO. We said “come on down!” and an hour later, he was here conducting interviews.
Here’s Boss Ross in his office.
And
here I am. While “Technical Community Development Coordinator” is my
actual title, it’s just too hard to explain and wouldn’t fit on the
screen anyway.
“Carpenters need hammers, internet guys need Google.” Hah! I slay me! I am the Soundbite King!
Ross has posted the video in his latest entry — you can either get the video there or download it from me [1.9 MB Windows Media]. Take your pick!
The two weddings that I’ve attended with Wendy have both been for
Canadians of my generation, which meant that the DJ played Spirit of the West’s Home for a Rest (a song where they managed to beat The Pogues on their own turf) and a couple of
big hits that she didn’t recognize. I’ve decided to give her a hand by
making her a mixed CD of the essential Canadian rock and pop tunes for
people out age (specifically people who went to high school in the
mid-to-late eighties and university in the late eighties to
mid-nineties).
I need more songs! If you have any suggestions, please let me know in the comments. Some guidelines:
The
songs should have been hits only within the borders of Canada, or even
my area of Canada (Ontario/Quebec). There’s no point in putting Tom
Cochrane’s Life is a Highway or Bryan Adams’ Summer of ’69 on this CD;
the point is to give her music that’s new to her.
The term
“hit” is relative. It the song had a cult following in my neck of the
woods (say, a hit in the Ontario/Quebec university zone in the early
90s but unknown in New England), it counts.
I don’t blame her. She leads the BodyPump
class (bench presses to Alien Ant Farm and sit-ups to Avril Lavigne!)
for 300 people a week; I have to memorize only 10 gym staffers’ names.
I’m sure that my predilection for vintage work shorts with tags
bearing names that are not mine (save the “Hagerstown Ford” shirt,
which has a name tag that reads “Joe”) isn’t helping matters any.
She does know me as “that guy who plays the accordion”, however.
“Hey, Joey,” said my coworker Kim, “wanna come to the Beer Festival?”
And hence this morning’s slightly pasty mouth. Last night was the opening night of the annual Toronto Festival of Beer, which takes place all weekend at Historic Fort York.
Beer companies both large and small showcase their beers their at very
reasonable prices: $1 for a 4-ounce sample or “half-order”, $2 for 8
ounces or a “full”.
Here’s a little tidbit of useful information: when you first enter the
Festival, you’re given a glass that you keep for the stay and use for
the beer you’re served. Always order the half-order.
The beer servers are quite generous and alway overpour the 4-ounce
servings, but the laws of physics prevent them from pouring anything
more than the full glass.
It was a lovely evening of booze-soaked merriment, and I managed to get a few snapshots which I posted. You can view them in photo album or slideshow form.
Here are a couple of samples:
“Thank you, Giant Beer!” My coworker Greg and I make friends with an anthropomorphic Guinness.
“Hey, baby, what shay you and meeeee go shomeplashe quiet?” Darryl finds his one true love.
Rebecca MacKinnon and Jay Rosen. Rebecca is a media fellow at Harvard’s Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy; prior to that, she was CNN’s Tokyo Bureau Chief. Jay Rosen is the faculty chair of NYU’s school of Journalism, a former fellow at the Shorenstein Center, was one of the Democratic National Convention bloggers and will be blogging the upcoming Republican National Convention.
After hearing about how Hoder and I came to Canada, Jay quipped “Isn’t history so rude, the way it just interferes with lives like that?”.
In commenting on my write-ups of the PJNet conference on public journalism and blogging
(which he complimented — thanks!), he asked if my reporting style was influenced by my training as a computer programmer. I told him that I couldn’t imagine it not being influenced by it, as I’m the sort of
person who likes his information well-organized.
We also talked about the excellent but short-lived television show Max Headroom, which Jay, Jeff and I loved. Jeff said that he gave it a great review (I’m not sure if it was in TV Guide or People — he worked at both in the 1980s).
Jeff Jarvis and “Hoder” Derakshan. Jeff is the president and creative director of Advance.net (which oversees the internet strategy of Advance Internet and Conde Nast’s CondeNet). Prior to that, he created Entertainment Weekly and was a TV critic for TV Guide and People. Hoder, often known as “The Iranian Weblogger”, contributes in his own way to the reformation of Iran through his English and Persian blogs, both titled Editor: Myself. Hoder’s so influential that someone’s written a Wikipedia entry on him!
We also talked about software and hardware usability and the conceptual gaps between programmers and the people who use their software, self-expression and cultural gaps, beer, journalists’ perception of
blogging, getting Rebecca set up with a Blogware blog, Tucows and Asia.
The big topic of discussion was what I like to think of as “Changing the World”, through weblogs. It was inspired by Hoder’s blogging; he’s almost single-handedly responsible for starting a blogging revolution
in Iran. The hope is to foster the exchange of ideas, international understanding and free speech through blogging. We came up with these requirements (which I’ve cribbed from this entry on Jeff’s blog):
Promotion. Hoder says it is important to get prominent people, like journalists, blogging in these countries to bring attention to it. He wants to set up an award for Iranian blogs — not for the best blog but for the best post, which is appropriate to the medium. We talked about the need to create a blog news service that would translate and reblog notable posts from around the world: Hey, big news guys, here are the stories you’re missing but here’s a link to where you can get them. And hey, powerful politicians, here is what the people are reporting in your country. And hey, readers around the world, here’s a new perspective on a country you’re not seeing in thepaper or on TV — either because it’s not coverered or it’s covered from a high altitude and not from a human level.
Tools. We need to get tools and instruction translated into Arabic and other local languages. They need to be the appropriate tools — so, for example, bloggers can post via email when they can’t get Web access. For blogging to take off in a country, it has to be done in the native language. Efforts are underway.
Hosting. If rich folks want to help the cause of freespeech and understanding, providing free and anonymous hosting that’s not under the control of repressive governments will help.
Detours around censorship. The web technical community needs to invent new ways to get around government censors, who regularly block access to specific blogs and to blog domains (e.g., Blogspot and Typepad). Hoder’s site is now blocked in Iran, which lost him a lot of traffic that matters, but he also found that more people are now subscribing to his RSS feed instead. Separate RSS feed services, cacheing of blogs, clever redirects, and other means need to be created to keep free speech free.
It has happened in Iran. It is happening in Iraq.
Rebecca says it’s exploding in China (though I wish that news service existed so we could get an idea of what people are saying there). Where else should it be happening? Afghanistan. Turkey. Egypt. Saudi Arabia. Indonesia. Central Asia……
Thanks for dinner, Jeff, and it was great dining and talking with all of you!
