Busy / Blogstravaganza

I’ve been a bit on the busy side, what with work — both Tucows and TorCamp related — and the usual hoo-hah that goes along with the holidays, but actual posts are forthcoming!

I wanted to give a quick shout-out and thanks to all of you who attended last Friday’s Blogstravaganza. It was a fun event where bloggers of all stripes — liberal, conservative, tech, religious, secular, news-ish and personal — got together to meet and chat over beer, sub-par pub food, and then later half-decent Chinese food. I’d like to sent an extra special “thank you” to Bob Tarantino, who masterminded the event.

Topics at conversations I heard at the event:

• There are a lot of physics majors studying to become pilots
• When content management systems go bad
• Open-pit mining in Colombia
• “Wow, you really do have an accordion!”
• 70s vs. 80s: which decade had the better music?
• My “we’re a TV show in some parallel universe” theory
• Wanting the comfort of religion, but unconvinced to move from atheism
• What to do when your teenage daughter breaks the rules
• Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is the greatest movie ever
• Functional requirements-based library categorization
• Home ownership is the way to go
• The recent Liberal Party convention
• How James Kim came so close to beating all the odds, and how badly we feel for his family
• The SmartCar: chick repellent? How about the Mini?

Wendy and I had a bit of “small world” moment when I discovered that one of the bloggers there, Chris Taylor, lives with his lady friend Wanda (later that night, spurred on by Andrew Coyne, the group decided that “lady friend” sounds more spicy than “girlfriend” or “wife”) lived not only in my building but on the same floor. We’ll have to have them over sometime.

James Bow — who I somehow managed to miss chatting with — has a pretty this observation to make, based on the event:

I feel that the Canadian political blogosphere is actually quite special, bucking several trends that we’ve seen develop over the years in the American political blogosphere. Where else would Liberals and Conservatives set aside their differences and work together to organize something that celebrated the spectrum as a whole? And this really is important. I met people on Friday that I agreed with, and I met people on Friday that I disagreed with. I even met one or two people with whom I shared a heated word or two, and yet we were able to smile, shake hands, laugh and talk. Despite how we may lean politically, events such as this remind us that we’re all not that different.

Anyone who still would rather hide under a rock and not get out and meet their fellow bloggers should go take a look at the article I reference in Why the 21st Century is Making Us Miserable.