At a tweeted prompting from Nancy Wu, who suggested Saturday morning in reply to my FourSquare post that “I should definitely report back to the Listserv/Graphic Designers of Canada community” about my experiences with this event, held at the NetWorkHub offices in Gastown on Saturday. I did some notes, which now look somewhat cryptic.

Since then, in the process of trying to assemble a report that will make sense to others, I have realized that while my notes mean something (increasingly less, as time passes) to me, every other person there was also taking notes, photos, videos, recordings, etc., AND POSTING THEM ON THEIR BLOGS.

What was remarkable about this event is that, until 9:30, there WAS NO AGENDA. That happened, alá Bar Camp, on the fly, with people proposing topics, then a show of hands and some jiggery-pokery around scheduling. Clearly everyone who ran a session had planned what they were going to do, but this looked damned amazing from where I was sitting.

Here are some places to go for more information:
MC & NetworkHub advisor, Raul Pacheco-Vega’s Blog post, with the running agenda of the day: http://bit.ly/d3aJkL

But I needn’t have bothered including that, as the organizers built A WIKI of the complete day, including notes from all the session leaders: http://freelancecamp.pbworks.com/

Jeremy Lim’s Excellent photography of the event: http://bit.ly/dCfIur

Catherine WInter’s Post: http://bit.ly/9pQfso

If you are on Twitter, feel free to look up all the entries for #604FreelanceCamp.

Google also pulls up Twitter posts, so there is a pretty good archive available there as well.

Honestly. Who needs to take notes any more when people can publish this amount of stuff in REAL TIME?

I’m thinking of leaving my Caps Lock key on all the time now, I’m so freaked out about the amount & quality of information available.

Ok, there still must be people who can’t figure out what all the Social Media fuss is all about.

On the morning of Wednesday, May 19^th, David Akin, a journalist I follow on Twitter who covers the Ottawa beat, specifically the PMO, retweeted (RTed, for those who need a glossary) some messages (tweets, ibid) from Mark Mackinnon, a a fellow journalist working for the Globe & Mail as a correspondent in SE Asia. Mark is in Thailand right now. Right where the bullets have been flying, literally. I didn’t follow Mark, but I do now.

Here’s the thread I saw that morning:

davidakin 7:34am, May 19 from TweetDeck

RT @markmackinnon: At least 5 wounded around me in park behind Wat Patum temple, one a friend and colleague.. gunfire continues

davidakin 7:35am, May 19 from TweetDeck

RT @markmackinnon: we’re the only corros left in temple. People around us terified. Red Cross can’t get ambulance to injured cuz of gunfire.

davidakin 7:35am, May 19 from TweetDeck

RT @markmackinnon: 7 dead 10 injured inside Wat Patum temple, which was supposed to be sanctuary. I’d guess 1500 to 2000 terrified ppl

davidakin 7:36am, May 19 from TweetDeck

RT @markmackinnon: Please RT. People around me are dying because they can’t get to hospital across the road because of fighting

davidakin 7:36am, May 19 from TweetDeck

RT @markmackinnon: More people will die inside Wat Patum unless we get ceasefire to get to hospital across the road.

I started following Mark after that. Here’s the result.

markmackinnon 8:08am, May 19 from mobile web

Thanks to all who Rt. we got all injured out in ambulances. Twitter may just have done this.

markmackinnon 8:15am, May 19 from Twitpic

Wounded man in ambulance leaving Wat Patum. Ceasefire negotiated to let wounded leave. http://twitpic.com/1p5j5l

When I mention stuff like this to people, especially in older forums like mail lists, I seem to always get questions about why it’s relevant to them, the group(s) being “interrupted” or to justify the off-topicness of my interest.

OK, there may be a challenge in linking what I posted to the mandate of communications design (which was the forum I initially posted to).
I’ll take a stab at it though.
Communication channels in our world are changing, in many ways, and very, very rapidly. Speed of communications, delivery mechanisms, production methods, and probably far more relevant to both culture and economy, in ownership.
There is a lot of push-back in the world (and, dare I suggest it, on this list) towards these new kinds of comms channel. We all know (and quite a few conveniently forget) the typical comments about the “silliness”, “pointlessness” ADHD-culture that, if Twitter isn’t an exacerbation of, it’s certainly a presenting symptom. Unfortunately for people who are still thinking this, the numbers suggest those opinions aren’t valid.
If professional visual communications design is to stay relevant, doesn’t it behoove the practitioners to ensure they fully understand the attributes & applications of any ascending communications channel? YouTube with 2BB items, FB with 400MM users, LinkedIn with 100MM+ users, Twitter with approximately the same. These are tomorrow’s mass media outlets. They’re just not controlled by the 20th Century Status Quo media corporations (at least, not yet).
How is posting an example of great, effective, IMPORTANT  communications, using a channel that only allows 140 characters at a time, but reaches a significant percentage of the connected population of this planet in near real-time, any different from posting a link to the latest Swiss poster or retro book cover design exhibition? Each has constraints about the media and approaches to execution. Each channel can be made to sing in the hands of someone who truly understands the constraints imposed by the choice of outlet, and knows how to push the envelope on the media to hand. Oh, and the visual part? How about celebrating that due to the efforts of countless interactive designers, the content of these communications channels can be viewed via dozens if not hundreds of different presentations, through the work of various developers and standards users & promoters.
Subject matter aside, it’s the meta-lessons to be learned about execution within this channel that I found important.
Which is why I posted it.

Update

I’ve had a few people thank me for the list, and while it may be some time before I get any robust feedback, hopefully people will find something useful, mind-altering, or entertaining out if these recommendations.
A friend of mine recently asked me for some suggestions of good stuff to read, as she’s on a bulk-it-up read-avore diet. Here’s my list of the past year or three’s “Must-reads”—

Non-Fiction

Misha Glenny, “McMafia”
If Capitalism won the Cold War, why is the world worse off now than it was then? A very, very scary read… but then I WANT to know what’s hiding under the bed!

Douglas Rushkoff, “Life Inc.”
Does more to clarify WHY the world is the way it is now than any other book I’ve read. Ever.

Noami Klein, “No Logo”
Journalistic work about the ascendency of branding in our world, and the marketing/propaganda efforts that made it so.

Naomi Klein, “Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism”
Exposes the cabal of Chicago School economics and multinationals & imperial ambitions of certain nations, and the effect this is having on the world.

Naomi Wolf, “The Beauty Myth”
Brilliant dissection & analysis of the economic creation of beauty and how gender roles & stereotypes have been pegged to a market valuation, just like gold or oil.

Naomi Wolf, “The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot”
A polemic on the end of the republic and the creation of an empire. Says more emotively what Noam Chomsky has put forth in some of his works on the subject. While published in the height of the Bush/Cheney years, when totalitarianism seemed a more overt danger in the US, all the forces that created that risk are still in place, and could become ascendant again. The parallels to the death of the Roman republic seem terrifyingly strong to me. There is (or was—you never know when stuff gets pulled—very Orwellian!) a YouTube video of Wolf lecturing to a University audience on this topic. A must see!

Sam Harris, “Letter to a Christian Nation”
Epistle to wake up, grow up, and put aside childish things, stop believing in the “Sky Bully” and stop using “Faith” as a control of others with less power. Not as dry or ego-filled as Dawkin’s “God Delusion”, it’s tightly structured, and soundly written.

Rhonda Britten, “Fearless Loving”
Seemingly out of place on this list, I found this book helped me understand myself, and how I fit into the world, why I thought about things and emotional attachments to things, and how to stop worrying—or at least begin to stop—about what people thought about me, or whether they would like me.

Three Novels:

Arthur C. Clarke & Stephen Baxter, “The Light of Other Days”
A brilliant romp through what happens to society when the rules of time, matter, and therefore people change from those we all assume work.

Andrew Davidson, “The Gargoyle”
This thing is a gothic romance. The best damn gothic romance I could never contemplate picking up, much less flash though, enjoying every word, and being completely transported. Magical work. Literally.

Will Ferguson, “Happiness™”
Another “Magical Reality” tale, about the search for that ultimate, final, universally effective self-help book… what if someone actually wrote it? How would the world we know, designed to make each of us as miserable as possible to generate a maximum as possible profit, look like if we could no longer be positioned or restrained by our fears & neuroses?

Video

But of course books aren’t the only way to ingest information. A few videos online that I found both moving and enjoyable:

Joss Whedon, accepting the award from the Harvard Humanist Society:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTY8-XPhTzQ&feature=player_embedded

Joss Whedon, delivering a keynote speech at the Equality Now Conference:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYaczoJMRhs

George CarIin’s two most memorable routines:
George Carlin – Religion is bullshit.

George Carlin – Saving the Planet

And, this video of the noted author & co-father of the cyber-punk sub-subgenre, Bruce Sterling, delivering the keynote to Reboot-11.

Other

For a continuous feed of things happening in our world, filtered & focused by intelligences not yet in the power of the Status-quo media channels, and unbeknownst to them, these upstarts are cybernetically enhanced! BoingBoing.Net

If you are aurally inclined, tune into the Blog/Podcast DyscultereD where hosts Anthony Marc, Andrew Currie & Mike Vardy tell it like it is (or at least, how they think it is) about technology, politics, culture, entertainment, gaming, etc. with a uniquely Canadian spin.

And, for more another eye-opening experience, Cory Doctorow is Canada’s own superhero: a mild-mannered Science Fiction author by day, evil corporate giant prosecutor by night. Cory has written Down & Out in the Magic Kingdom, a short story collection calledA Place So Foreign and Eight More, Eastern Standard Tribe, Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town, a collection of essays called Overclocked: Stories of the Future Present, and the current run of books Little Brother, a NY Times best seller, Makers, & just released, For the Win. So why aren’t those books all up in the Novels section?
Because Doctorow’s really hard to categorize (like, *blush* me)—he’s an activist (ex-Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation), an entrepreneur, a journalist, and an extremely outspoken & passionate advocate for sane, intelligent legislation regarding creative works, intellectual property, and copyright. You can find free downloadable copies of his stuff at his site, Craphound.com.