Northern Voice is an annual personal blogging and social media conference that goes down in Vancouver.

Last year Ian brought you video interviews with attendees, and this year the torch is passed to me. I’ll not only be blogging about the super smart people I meet at Northern Voice this year, I’ll also be speaking.

I’m presenting at 3:45pm on Saturday. My talk is called News is Not Fun: Why gamifying the news is harder than we think. I’ll be covering what gamification is, why it sucks, and three solutions for gamifying the news. It was inspired in part by Chris O’Brien’s Idea Lab article, How Can We Gamify the News Experience?

I’ll be sharing my experiences right here on the blog over the weekend, so don’t be a stranger if you see me at the conference.

Banner image courtesy ecstaticist

Friends of mine of online and off know my love of cupcakes. I started really turning them out after leaving Parliament Hill–Twitter and baking helped pass the time. Perhaps it was inevitable that I would find the San Francisco and Toronto versions of Cupcake Camp and help bring the unconference to Ottawa on March 29 last year. Over 3000 cupcakes arrived at Jack Purcell Centre that rainy spring afternoon and a bunch of money was raised for a great charity.

So, to answer the many tweets and emails: Yes, Capital Cupcake Camp is coming back!

Last year, @Sobbee, @RantingNRaving, and @Snobiwan (Tanya, Nicole, and Andrew…) and I met week-after-week in coffee shops to pull this event together.

A quick Capital Cupcake Camp primer:

• It’s an open source event
• It’s about cupcakes. No more. No less.
• You can bake them, or just eat them.
• It’s a bit chaotic.
• Milk is served.

Click here for the MediaStyle.ca event round up from last years event.

The biggest lesson I learned from organizing an (un)conference experience was: you can never be too ready. This is where you come in. If you aren’t planning on baking cupcakes this year and have 10 hours or so to spare: our first organizing meeting for version 2.0 will be next Thursday night in Centertown Ottawa–please email me ian [at] mediastyle.ca for all the details.

Last year we raised just over $3000 for Women Alive–And, in 2010 with the cupcake-scene in the Capital just heating up, I’m pretty sure Ottawa is ready to bake harder than ever.

Backstage at the NDP Convention from Ian Capstick on Vimeo.

I’ll be giving you one delegate’s perspective. Direct from the floor of convention. Think of me as your online colour commentator. I’m going to provide coverage of as much behind-the-scenes action and atmosphere of the Federal NDP Convention as I can. I’ll keep my focus primarily on communications tactics, media coverage, emerging media integration, training sessions and major speeches at convention.

Plenty of other New Democrats Online will be covering the policy debates, panels, prioritization and constitutional ups and downs. How will you find them?

Thousands of New Democrats across Canada will be participating online – some watching via CPAC, others tuned into the NDP’s own live web stream and many more contributing to online discussion via Twitter, Facebook and blogs. These voices are important and it’s why a group of dedicated New Democrats online created DemocratsLive.ca. You can find live bloggers, photos, videos or even vote on your favorite tweets as the weekend moves forward.

Here’s a bit more about the MediaStyle NDP Federal Convention coverage plans and how I’ll be contributing to the conversation online and in Halifax:

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