Last week, I went to the Northern Voice 2010 (un)conference (located at UBC, in the Life Sciences Centre), and what a time it was.

Office Chicken was in fine shape for the day

Day 1: Keynote

The two-day conference started on Friday with a keynote by Bryan Alexander, on Mystery and the Internet (not the real title, but I didn’t have my pen out when he started talking). The presentation was sans Powerpoint, so it had much more of a storytelling, around the campfire feel (if you can picture that with a crowd of 500 in a big sunlit atrium).

Bryan talked for an hour about the sense of mystery that we carry with us, and hat has been transfered onto the internet over the years. Do you remember those horror stories you used to tell yourself as a kid? Urban legends and things that to this day keep popping up on Snopes? We’re moving it all online these days.

Facebook spreading syphilis? Cyberaddiction killing babies? Mysterious severed feet appearing on the shores of BC? (okay, Bryan didn’t mention that last one in the talk, I just bring it up because I like to talk about The Feet). It’s all part of how we are drawn to stories of mystery and horror. The change of the medium doesn’t change the import of the stories. In fact, urban legend has always attached itself to new technologies. Haunted radios, voices of doom coming down the phone lines, a warning not to adjust your television… it’s human nature to create a sense of the mysterious around things we don’t understand, the morality tale in the mysterious, and in return we’re drawn to experiencing those things just a little more.

To get a bit of an idea what Bryan was talking about, I highly recommend checking out his blog. When the conference videos are posted online, I also recommend watching the keynote, it’s interesting.

Rob Cottingham drew a mind-map of Bryan’s talk.

Friday sessions

The first session I went to, One Way to Tell 50 Stories was pretty interesting – a look at how Faculty of Land and Food Systems students used podcasting as a way to communicate their issues of interest to the public at large. Using the ‘citizen journalism’ model, the idea that everyone has a story to tell, the students  learned how to tell their story as well as to focus on the journalistic angle rather than the advocacy angle (which, quite frankly, can be far easier to do if one is passionate about an issue. I suspect that’s our default option when telling a story).

One of the points mentioned in the presentation that, previous to the beginning of the course, some of the students weren’t entirely certain about this whole podcasting thing… but nothing helps folks to overcome their own fear threshold like doing it.

Takeaways:

1. Podcasts can be a great way to tell a story, especially for those who are experts on a subject
2. Don’t let fear hold you back from trying new stuff when it comes to social media. If you fail, at least you learn something new for next time.

Slides are online at http://www.slideshare.net/duncanmm

Online Publishing and the Law, by UBC adjunct prof Dan Burnett (on Twitter),  was the session I was looking forward to the most (so sue me, I’m a libel-law nerd). Basically, he spent the session telling a room full of bloggers how to avoid being sued for defamation, and it was great.

And no, I’m not being sarcastic – the points were highly relevant. Not thinking about all the bad things that can happen doesn’t make them go away. In the case of being sued for libel, it can be damned expensive.

Some highlights (if that term can be used to describe warnings that strike fear into the hearts of bloggers):

Repeating a libel is still libel (and yes, that extends to RTing on Twitter). So if someone says “That John Doe is a dirty liar” and you blog about it (copying in the words to your post) or even RT it, you may be liable for libel.

There’s an exception to the above, however,  something called the  “Responsible Communication” defence: Basically, if the comment/story is in the public interest, is properly attributed, and you give the person at issue a chance to respond to the allegations. This is why we’re starting to see things like “Person X did not respond to a request for an interview by press time” in the media.

Everyone who participated in publishing is considered a publisher. This may seem obvious when you’re blogging on your own blog, but it can also mean that you’re considered a publisher if someone writes a defamatory comment on your blog. This means you need to keep an eye on your web presence.

In Canada, people are free to write their opinion, without being afraid to be sued. Where one can stay into an area of vulnerability is if you make a negative statement of fact that you cannot prove.  Keep it clear in your own mind the difference between the two. As the late American Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said, “You are entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts.”

(A quick note from me: Libel is written defamation, while slander is spoken. Anything that appears in on screen, be it in the paper, blogged, or even emails, is considered written)

Out in the world, there was some noise over the last little while about someone being sued because they linked to a potentially libellous story. The Supreme Court of Canada a provincial court (it’s going to the SCC in a bit. Stay tuned for details) ruled on this, that a link on its own can’t be libellous; it’s more like a footnote.

After that rousing session (in which some of the room seemed a little stunned), Dan reminded us that it really come down to being smart about what you post, keep an eye on comments, and if you’re stating your opinion be darn clear that’s what you’re doing.

After all, most people aren’t likely to sue you for badmouthing them. But then again, if they do, they don’t actually have to prove their reputation was damaged. Defamation in Canada’s tricky like that.

Moving on.

Good Science: It takes an online village, presented by UBC’s very own David Ng (on Twitter), tied together ideas about science education with the games the kids these days play, and they came up with Phylomon. As a biology nerd (I have a plethora of nerd hats), I love the concept of the game.

Rob Cottingham illustrated David’s talk on his iPad.

Also, this is David’s slide on the scientific method. Repeat steps 1 thru 5 as necessary until step 6 has been achieved.

I couldn’t make my way into the Finding Your Voice session – I plan to watch it online as soon as it’s up, as most folks who did squeeze in were raving about it afterwards. Sigh.

The day in general

Outside of some technical sound  glitches in the keynote (that LSC atrium is not good with the acoustics), the day went well. I only wish the morning sessions had been longer, as 30 minutes doesn’t leave much/any time for questions and discussion, which, given the crowd, would have been fascinating.

Up next: Saturday. Because this post is far too long as it is.