Month: July 2008

Posted on

Speaking on a panel at Net Tuesday4 – “Podcasting for Social Change”

I’ve been invited by the intrepid Dave Olson to join him, Rob Cottingham, and Roland Tanglao to be apart of a panel for the coming Net Tuesday4 on July 8, 2008. This is in the series of events in the NetSquared project.

Our mission is to spur responsible adoption of social web tools by social benefit organizations. There’s a whole new generation of online tools available – tools that make it easier than ever before to collaborate, share information and mobilize support. These tools include blogs, wikis, RSS feeds, podcasting, and more. Some people describe them as “Web 2.0”; we call them the social web, because their power comes from the relationships they enable. [netsquared]

The coming panel will be about “Podcasting for Social Change“. Essentially, we are going to gather together on this panel to talk about these tools that exist for pretty much anyone to use in order to get their message out about a cause or organization that is trying to create change within a community.

Whether it’s on a local or global scale, our intention is to give you some insight on how you can use a medium like podcasting to help you get to where you want to be. The road map is fairly wide open, but I’ll do my best to share insights on how to get started, recording methods, editing tips, and how to get that podcast episode out to the world.

What: Net Tuesday4 – Podcasting for Social Change
When: Tuesday, July 8, 2008 5:30 PM!
Where: WorkSpace, 400, 21 Water St., Vancouver BC, V6B 1A1 [google maps]

Topic: Ways Non-profits/Social Change orgs can use podcasts to spread their message

To make it easy, we’ll cover:
1) planning
2) producing tips (with toys to demo)
3) publishing/promoting

panel:
dave olson – moderater/podcaster
john bollwitt – podcaster and audio engineer
rob cottingham – social change technologist
roland tanglao – mobile pundit and tech-evangelist

And to help you think about checking out the panel, check out this great promotional video that Dave made in anticipation. Gotta say that my tequila bottle mic stand is still one of my favorite podcasting engineering feats to this day. Simple and useful in oh so many ways.

Posted on

Playing photographer at the Vancouver Dragon Boat Festival 2008

Entrance to the Vancouver Dragonboat Festival 2008

About a week and a half ago, I had the extreme pleasure of joining Rebecca on a really cool experience of covering the Rio Tinto Alcan Dragon Boat Festival for the festivities of 2008.

Cycling teams through

People come from all over to compete in this event, not to mention watch and enjoy the festivities.

The Festival was created to show off Vancouver’s growing cultural diversity and to promote racial harmony among Canadians – new and old. Vancouverites were invited to the festival to experience spectacular food, entertainment, arts and children’s programming reflecting Vancouver’s cultural diversity. At the same time, interest in paddling was taking off and more and more teams formed and registered each year.

Twenty years later the Festival still fulfills its mandate to promote cultural harmony among Canadians. It has developed into one of Vancouver’s most anticipated summer family events. [dragonboatbc]

Throw ring, win tinfoil!

This was just a little bit more than the run of the mill walking around, shooting pictures, and seeing the sights. Thanks to Anita, we had media passes to the event.

Pretending to be in the boat

Rogers team stretches before racing

Probably the best thing about the media access for this event was being able to ride in the media boat and follow the racers as they went from start to finish, paddling along until their bodies couldn’t give anymore.

Warming up

Smile

Keeping guard

Good game

With my trusty camera, I decided to try something a little different and shoot some video with it of an actual heat or two.

The Dragon Boat Festival is a real passion for some of these racers. There’s a community that comes from the numerous teams, and the action is just as intense. This is something that you don’t really get a sense of until you get away from all of the tents and vendors on dry land. When you get down to the water level, it’s a whole other experience that I’m really glad I had the opportunity to see.