You’ve heard the old saying, I went to a fight and a hockey game broke out (maybe it’s only for Canadians), well last week I was at Web Community Forum and while the conference was about Facebook, the real fun was the community.

One of my pragmatic (or curmudgeonly) thoughts about Facebook is that it isn’t the be all and end all of social networking/media.  Sure it’s hot right now, but that can change in the glimmer of an electron.  However, what Facebook represents is the enormous sea change that it is a part of, technology that helps us connect with each other in new ways.

So while we were all chatting about FB, the good, bad, ugly, and goofy, we formed a community.  The conference was small enough to meet and chat with about everyone.  There were no pretenses about "experts".  Who can be an "expert" in Facebook yet?  I met awesome people, had great discussions, and added a bunch of people as Twitter followers and Facebook friends.

Perhaps, then, what the true outcome of Facebook is … we’re learning more about each other.

Like I said in my post, Mark Cuban’s keynote was awesome.  Now you can enjoy it to, or watch it again just because:

Thanks to Simon Chen for recording and posting this.  I’m going to look for some of the other keynotes now…

I missed NorthernVoice last year, but this year I’m planning on being there.  I’ve already put it into my calendar for February.

NorthernVoice was Canada’s first blogging conference.  It was at the downtown UBC campus for the first two years, this year it will be at the main UBC campus (wow maybe I’ll get to the museum finally!).  NorthernVoice is known for being a great conference to catch up with people and the favourite of folks like Chris Pirillo and Scoble.  If you’re in Western Canada, plan to attend … if you’re even remotely close by, try to … it’s worth it.

As both TechVibes and Darren Barefoot announced they are looking for speakers and session ideas.  I haven’t spoke at NorthernVoice yet, though I submit a suggestion every year, so fair readers …. if you were coming to NorthernVoice, what would you like to hear me speak on?

Health Information is hot online.  Has been for years.  Believe me, I know from building health sites and communities for big pharma for about 7 years.  Wellocites has received $1M from XDL Ventures which, according to their press release, will be used to build/expand their online health portal for Canadians (of course chronic health issues are borderless):

Toronto-based Wellocities has raised $1M in seed funding from XDL Ventures, having been incubated by the firm. Wellocities is nothing if not focussed. It has launched a network for Canadians with chronic health conditions. Source: alarm:clock: Canadian Health Network Wellocities Raises $1M Seed

The site currently is a community for diabetics, with this new money I expect them to expand into other chronic health areas.

The buzz around BlogWorld Expo Friday surrounded two topics, Mark Cuban speaking, and Mike Arrington not.  I wrote about it, talked with Rick, replied to Om, and kept the post updated.  Mike gave us his side of the story, and now so has Rick–This is not Mike Arrington’s Fault. It’s Mine | Blog World Expo Blog–clearly all I have left to say is Mike, I’m sorry.

It’s been a long week for me.  BlogWorld was nothing short of fantastic, okay that and very exhausting.  Jim Turner and I gave our talk on hiring (or becoming) a professional blogger in the last block of sessions before the keynote.  We felt like Mark Cuban’s warm up band.  And you know, that’s not a bad thing.  So after picking up some gifts for the folks at home, I went to the keynote and, yes, I did have a chance to say hi to Mark, give him my card, and shake his hand.  Yeah, that was cool.

Jim Kukral introed Mark.  Jim, who I met in person for the first time this week, did a fantastic job relating the story of his "Mark Cuban Please Call Me" site.  The best, the best part of Mark’s keynote was that he was billed, and lived up to, the title-Mark Cuban, Blogger.

Yes, Mark has amassed more wealth than I could ever dream of in my lifetime, however he came across to everyone has just a normal guy.  An extremely wealthy normal guy.

Below are some notes and bullet points I took during his talk.  I think there is some value in just reading them as I wrote them … so here they are:

• Blog started in 2004 after Dallas Morning News article misquoted him
• New voices, new perspectives.
• Having and bringing a voice
• Honesty, brutal honesty is key to a successful blog.  Honesty defines our personal brand
• Pandering to readers, turns you into mainstream media
• http://www.blogmaverick.com/2007/11/04/an-open-facebook-api-vs-google-opensocial/
• Hard part is deciding full time or part time, which leads to the monetizing decision.
• "are you still a blogger if you’re getting paid by someone else"
• Mark Cuban uses all the tools you’d expect (Google, blog searches) to learn about new potential hires.
• Be aware of the consequences of what you write.
• Question: Should you stay away from ads on your blog when you start off?
• Answer: Yes.  Mark feels that blogs filled with Adsense look cheap–yeah he’s right, but sometimes you have to find a way to pay the bills.
• On closing comments: No problem with blocking people or closing comments when people get out of line.

I didn’t want to live blog the keynote.  I wanted to listen and absorb it.  Sure I took notes and had some commentary on Twitter (me on Twitter), but I wanted to take full advantage of this opportunity.  Of course I don’t always agree with Mark.  But I certainly respect his opinions.

What I have I learned, then, from listening to Mark.  Like I’ve said, Mark seems to be a nice, normal guy.  I’d certainly have a beer with him.  He also, IMHO, has a great sense and opinion about social media and blogging.  While I don’t agree with his stand on ads on blogs, he isn’t a fan of them, nor do I agree with him on giving your audience the topics and info they want to read,  I do agree that honesty is the truly most important trait of a successful blogger.

Look people can help you with your grammar, they can help and direct you to sources, but they can’t tell you how you feel about something.  Being honest, sometimes even painfully honest, is freeing.  Clearly there are limits to one’s openness, but that doesn’t make you dishonest, it makes you smart.  In fact if you read back through the nearly four years of blog posts I’ve amassed, you’ll find that I am honest about my limits to my openness.  Sorry folks, some things are just for me alone.

Update: PodCasting News liveblogged the keynote.  It was the only one I’ve been able to find thus far.

ThinkFree and Australia’s BigPond announced this week that ThinkFree will be providing their online office suite to BigPond customers as BigPond Office.

SAN JOSE, Calif. and MELBOURNE, Australia (November 6, 2007) - ThinkFree, a leading provider of Internet-enabled productivity software, has announced that it is working with BigPond, Australia’s largest Internet service provider, to power a set of Web-based productivity tools. The tools will be offered to the public as BigPond Office, now available at www.bigpondoffice.com.au.
BigPond Office allows users to create, edit, collaborate on, store, publish and share word processing, spreadsheet and presentation documents. It is compatible with document formats used by popular productivity suites such as Microsoft Office and Adobe Acrobat. It will be available for use wherever BigPond access customers have Internet access worldwide, and it is offered free of charge to BigPond Broadband Members.
BigPond has exclusive rights to ThinkFree’s office productivity suite in Australia and New Zealand as part of a multi-year technology licensing agreement.
"ThinkFree is proud to be supplying technology to BigPond," said TJ Kang, founder and CEO of ThinkFree. "While other telecommunications companies are struggling to overcome the increasingly commoditized world of data access and data storage, Telstra (BigPond’s parent company) is building new revenue streams while providing users with the services they need." Source: ThinkFree - ThinkFree Powers BigPond Office

This is something that is better for customers that spam, spyware, and firewall solutions in my thinking because it helps people get stuff done.  How many people have computers at home and need to write a letter, etc?  Even open and print a document.  These are things that people, I think, get more stuck on than getting rid of spam, viruses, or spyware.  All of these can be found online, for free, and with awesome features.  Office suites?  Yes, there is OpenOffice, but it is nearly as huge, it seems, as MS Office.  ThinkFree is light, compatible, and familiar.  What could be better?

Congrats to ThinkFree on this deal.

BlogWorld Expo is kicking into full swing today.  I missed Matt’s keynote because my laptop battery was flat and I needed to recharge.  Regardless I will find a post to link to later.

Amy Garhan has a post that is the basis of the panel, and has links to all the panelists.  The questions being presented about transparency, access, etc.

Josh Lasser has a great example of a blogger getting cut off from access to early looks at TV shows because she wrote a bad review … you wouldn’t do this to a journalist … or would you?

"Blogging is free speech, journalism isn’t always" — Lynne d Johnson (senior editor, FastCompany.com)

"Don’t make stuff up, don’t take other people’s stuff" and "Quote them if they can’t take a joke" –Charlotte-Anne Lucas

As a side note, this panel is awesome.  I’m having trouble remember to write.

Astroturfing … bad.  The EU is cracking down on this now.  Toby related her, now, well-known blogging research story, and Amy just related that the CIA has been told that Freedom of Information Requests sent in by bloggers should be treated the same as journalists.

Charlotte-Anne relates a story of someone going ballistic on a podcast … and didn’t want that to go to air.  Just because you can edit a post to "fix it", you shouldn’t …  do a correction statement just like print.

[had to step out to get water…thank goodness for the speaker’s lounge!]

Should there be an organization for bloggers?  Media Bloggers Assoc is working on getting a libel insurance for their members.  Bloggers can still be sued for libel.

"Don’t be lazy is a good ethic regardless" - Amy

GrayDancer (link NSFW), a blogger and podcaster who talks about bondage and S&M, really got to a great point, especially given his topic, about not doing harm to people and their reputations.

In case you’re wondering, no blogger ethics isn’t an oxymoron.  We do have ethics.  For me the bottom line is being transparent.  You, my readers, will know who my clients, when I’ve received software for review (therefore free)…I think that is extremely important to being a credible source for you.  Do I have biases?  Of course I do.  I know lots of people and some are closer friends than others, and that will be pretty apparent–you know though this credibility is also what gets me the access and scoops I can.

Heck I’m sitting next to my bud Jeremy Pepper who I’ve known for a while.  Jeremy knows that I’ll give him a fair shake.  Bottom line, ethics are important.

The questions from the audience now are interesting extensions of the topic.  However…has there been anything earth shattering discussed.  Sure there are sticky questions.  But I really don’t think that these are issues any different for other media.

Tim O’Reilly BloggingCode.org … good example of ethical guidelines.

Bloggers and anonymous sources … when do you cross the line from blogger to journalist? Would you go to jail to protect your source?

Can you be used as an arm of the government or law enforcement against your will?

What about information about clients?  Toby, doesn’t consider herself a journalist at this point.

GrayDancer brings up, a point I deal with all the time.  I’m a dad like him, and I try to keep my kids out of the public eye.  Which is really hard sometimes because they are both geeks in training and my daughter is a very savvy social media/networking person.  Love to quote her more, with her permission, because you all would appreciate her insight.

I’ll have to finish the post in a bit…dern battery.  Yeah, yeah, if I got a Mac…

Heard of Shel Israel’s SAP Global Blogging Survey?  Well you should have.  This a prelude to a conversation I’ll be having with Shel and Mike later in the conference.

Here is the the gist (while Shel is doing the intro)… SAP wanted to know about the global use of blogs, they asked Shel for help.  Shel knows North America and Europe, but for India and Asia..not so much.  So Shel did something truly innovative he asked the world to answer a few questions about social media in their countries.

Very quickly Shel lost control of the process and the questions.  And this was the best thing that could have ever happened to this project.  People have expanded on the original questions, asked new questions, and expanded the scope and scale of the whole project to something that neither Shel nor SAP could have ever imagined.

Telling stories and social media is as old as communication itself, the only change has been the tools.

The point and value of social media can’t always be measured to the complete satisfaction of the enterprise…and they have to just deal with that.

It’s going to be the kids who will drive social media and technology, not the geeks (hey!).  This is very true.  My kids have a world view and a concept of "friends" and conversation that I couldn’t have conceived of even five years ago.  What will the world be like for them?

While the world isn’t flat, yet, it’s getting there, technology is helping to bridge the chasms.

Mike Prosceno comments that if done in the "traditional way" SAP would probably still working on the foundations (methodology, panels, vendors, etc) … using social media to learn about social media gave SAP something that is richer, larger, and fuller than they could have done with other means.

Shel let us know, and we’re the first to know, btw, that the Global Survey will continue on beyond what Shel has already done.  Shel knows that he didn’t reach everyone not to mention that many of the stories have changed or have been updated.

Bringing bloggers into SAP conferences and getting access to the C-level execs.  Stephanie Agresta expanded on Chris Brogan’s question on the perception of social media within SAP … is it expanding? Is it pervasive?  Mike says, nope, not at all.  It’s a "something to watch", but is growing.

Video … where is video going?  Shel knows that it’s growing and getting bigger.  There is something powerful and more moving about images.  Video and pictures are very, very powerful.  Don’t forget that.

Culture…culture and geography is still vitally important.  Considerations that English is a predominant language of social media, but what about China and Japan?  Are they walled gardens?

As the discussion continues…my battery is going flat.  However the discussion is reflecting how we are expanding our world to include diverse audiences and if you’re in communications, you have to look at the social media in each country, note the differences, and adapt.

Don’t know what category this is but here it goes…

I’m heading to BlogWorldExpo in a few short hours.  It’s going to be my first time in Vegas (I hope there is a CSI tour or something) but really this is really and truly the first blogging conference of its kind.  This isn’t a tech blogging conference, or a political blogging conference … it’s a blogging conference.  Everyone is going to be there.

Hats off to Rick, Dave, and my biz partner at One By One Media Jim Turner for pulling it all together.

I’m looking forward to meeting bloggers outside the tech blogosphere.  It’s really easy to forget that the blogosphere isn’t owned by tech.  I know, shocking.  I bet that political bloggers, sports bloggers, mommy and daddy bloggers all have the same passion, and concerns, joys and pains as us techies.

If you are in Vegas and would like your company profiled here on blognation (you don’t have to be Canadian, ]since I’m bn’s official rep at BWE) feel free to e-mail me at tris.hussey [at] blognation [dot] com.  You can follow my tweets on my personal twitter stream (http://www.twitter.com/trishussey/) or blognation Canada (http://www.twitter.com/blognation_ca/).

See you in Vegas baby!