I spent the past few days in Toronto, attending the Mesh conference for the first time. Yesterday I moderated a panel entitled, rather cheerily, “Using the Web for Good”. I had the pleasure of cross-examining Gavin, Duarte and Sarah (here are a couplephotos). Marc live-blogged, and Jeremy, uh, live-tweeted the discussion.
The conference was exceptionally well-run, both totally professional and very personable. The highlight for me was an informal keynote (live-bloggage) by Jessica Jackley, the co-founder of Kiva. She’s a good speaker, but her wisest choice was not to over-sell the story of Kiva. She doesn’t have to, because it sells itself so well. It was also a little brave to start off by quoting Jesus. During her talk, an ad hoc Mesh ‘team’ (an associated group of lenders) was formed on Kiva, and raised $250.
I was curious to check out Mesh in the context of comparing it to Northern Voice. In terms of structure and size, they’re actually quite similar. They’re even held in similar spaces. The MaRS building is a little institutional, and has a large, vaulted atrium, much like UBC’s Forest Sciences Centre. Mesh is simply business-oriented, while Northern Voice is not. There were a lot more business suits at Mesh than fleece jackets.
I had lunch in Kensington Market, and was immediately reminded of a TV show that I never watched when I was a kid, but, for some reason, I can clearly recall the opening credits:
UPDATE: A bunch of videos from Mesh 2009, including Jessica’s keynote, are available here. Click the Browse videos button at the bottom of the first embedded video to navigate through sundry videos to find what interests.
I still have a Google Alerts feed set up for the all-too-common title of our ebook, “Getting to First Base”. As you might imagine, the results it generates are quite varied. I’ll be happy when we finally decide on a name for our forthcoming dead-tree edition, so that I can monitor the web for something a little more unique. Fingers crossed on that front.
Neve Campbell and I were students together for five years at Vista Heights Public School. We were enrolled in a French Immersion program in Mississauga Ontario, a suburb of Toronto, Canada. The following is the story of my life as it relates to her.
Weird, eh? Almost all of the entries were written in April, 2007, and they’re quite exhaustive. They include a couple of classphotos and extensive tales of life near Neve. They’re quite detailed:
I remembered her telling me that her younger brother had been diagnosed with asthma. We were sitting in class at the time and she began asking me all these questions about what it was like for me growing up with asthma. As she led me away I had this bad feeling she was going to tell me this brother of hers had died.
When she finally spoke, she told me that she had made arrangements to go to a private school the following year and she wouldn’t be coming back for grade 5. This was bad news, but it wasn’t the kind of ‘end of days’ news that warranted this degree of seriousness.
It’s all a bit creepy, and there’s a certain tone of Penthouse-Letters-Without-the-Sex to the whole thing. There’s no easy way to confirm the veracity of the blog, but if its faked that takes some serious dedication. Also, if it was fake, the author might have done a better job of promoting it.
We don’t have a television in Malta. The only TV we see are shows that I download and the occasional football game at the local pub. So, I’ve been watching a fair bit of TV–just grazing, as opposed to watching specific shows–here in Toronto. I was reminded how weird it is:
Does anybody else think this Irish Spring body wash ad is bizarre? I mean, the guy is rubbing Essence of Irish Lass all over his body in the shower. Weird.
I have no interest in golf, but I was waiting for the highlights and the Grand Slam of Golf (I think) was on TV. All the players (and, I think, their caddies) were wearing microphones, so we could hear their conversations about club selection and so forth. Is this commonplace? How often do they curse on-air after a bad putt?
Who watches Ellen and who watches Oprah? I noticed that they’re on at the same time–do they have different demographics?
Isn’t the subtext of Take Home Chef hilarious? A ridiculously handsome and charming Aussie greets an attractive young woman at the grocery store, helps her shop for a special meal, goes home with her while her boyfriend or husband is away and prepares the meal. It ought to be called The Cuckolding Chef Comes Calling.
Just a quick note to say that I’ll be in Toronto next week for a speaking gig and some meetings. Plans include:
October 14 - I’m having a geek dinner with Will Pate and other Toronto luminaries. Will hates all sports, so I trust the conversation about how much the Leafs suck will be brief but florid. Location to be determined.
October 15 - In the evening, I’ll give my 1100 Stacies talk another crack at Third Tuesday Toronto(or Facebook, if you prefer) meetup. Curiously, that’s a Monday. Thanks to Joseph for organizing that. It looks like the event is fully booked, but maybe Joseph can squeeze you in if you ask himi nicely.
On October 16, I was supposed to speak at the 2nd annual Word Up conference, but I was notified a few days ago that they were changing the date (I gather the website has not been updated). That was disappointing, as it was a major reason I was coming to T-dot. I’m unsure why the date was shifted. I’ve helped run dozens of events over the years, and we’ve never changed a date. It is, I think, the most sacrosanct part of the event planning.
Free Time for Work and Pleasure
So, I find myself with a day or two of free time in the Canada’s biggest city. If you’re a Torontonian who’s interested in the same stuff I am, let me know and we can probably have coffee.
By the same token, I’ve spent almost no part of my adult life in Toronto. I plan to see The Hockey Hall of Fame and The Art Gallery of Ontario. I have no interest in the CN Tower. What else do you Central Canadians recommend?
Today Neatorama linked to a photo purporting to show two islands linked by a foot bridge in the Thousand Islands region of Ontario:
the island on the left is in canada, the one on the right is in the united states. the smaller island contains the ‘backyard’ of the house on the larger island.
That would be cool, if only it were true. There was debate about the veracity of this in the comments, and a couple of commenters cited Wikipedia:
There is a pair of islands near Rockport called Zavikon. A popular tale among local guides is that the bigger part of Zavikon is in Canada, while the smaller part is in the USA, and the foot bridge between them is the “shortest international bridge in the world”. In fact Zavikon is in Canada.
I’m a casual contributor to Wikipedia, so I thought I’d go try to disprove this myth-busting fact. It took a few minutes with Google Maps, but here’s a satellite photo of the islands that maps accurately to to this aerial view.
This supports Wikipedia’s statement, that both islands are a couple of hundred meters inside the Canadian side of the border. So, it’s a myth that Zavikon’s foot bridge is the shortest bridge across an international border. I wonder what is?
And yes, I’m a massive pedant.
UPDATE: As per the comments below, Richard provided a link to this short video from 1929, depicting his ancestors on the island:
I spent the past few days in Toronto, attending the Mesh conference for the first time. Yesterday I moderated a panel entitled, rather cheerily, “Using the Web for Good”. I had the pleasure of cross-examining Gavin, Duarte and Sarah (here are a couple photos). Marc live-blogged, and Jeremy, uh, live-tweeted the discussion.