Long time readers may have noticed that a few months ago I switched from the domain my blog had been at since 1999, WillPate.org, to WillPate.com. It was a little experiment in a few things, with mixed results, and it’s served its course. From now on you’ll always find my blog at WillPate.org – where it has been for 8 years now. Geek cred!
This year, my favorite un-conference (or “learning party” as I call it) Northern Voice has some travel bursaries to give away. Normally, I wouldn’t ask for one and either pay out of pocket or expense it as a business trip…well worth it. But right now I find myself sans full time gig, and having paid for two moves in four months (the latest to Toronto only yesterday).
Why should I get sponsored? What do I bring to the table you ask? Well, I think the folks in Vancouver know how passionate I am for the local tech community. I’ve been very lucky to see it grow and mature over the past two years and to count many people inside as colleagues and good friends. What I want to do at Northern Voice is soak up that community wisdom and spirit and bring it back to Toronto’s TorCamp community. I want to become an ambassador between Canada’s two strongest geek/tech/new media communities. I want a dose of the west coast flava to take back to the east with me and give to others.
The only criteria for selection I have a bit of a hard time meeting is diversity. Being a white guy doesn’t help me much in that respect. But I’m also an Acadian and Prince Edward Islander – and I bet probably the only one of either of those present. 
But seriously, I do bring my own viewpoint – that people and the communities they form are of the utmost importance, how problems get solved and the whole technology matters. Sure I get excited about shiny technologies like any other geek, but to me I’m thinking “how does this help regular (non-geek) people, is it easy enough for them, how does it make their lives better?”. That’s an unfortunately rare way of looking at things and makes me somewhat unique, or at least part of a small minority.
So there it is, there’s why I humbly ask for a travel bursary. If I don’t get it, I hope I can work some magic and find a way to come somehow. Hope I see you there!
This is my new mobile number now that I’m in Toronto.
416-877-1801
If we haven’t chatted in a while, give me a call to catch up and make sure I have your number. If you don’t reach me, I love getting voicemails done in song.
Jay Goldman invited me to be a part of a group of Toronto web geeks thinking hard about how to make a better TTC website. Our first meeting included an all star lineup of developer David Crow, technology evangelist Joey DeVilla, TTC guru Madhava Enros, policy wonk Mark Kuznicki and your humble narrator as the “online community” guy. They all did a better job of explaining than I can right now, so click their names to find out more.
The current TTC website is quite outdated and needs a lot of work. With a new young TTC Chair Adam Giambrone showing signs that he’s willing to listen to the Toronto bloggers leading the call for a better TTC website, there is a great opportunity here to go from being a negative example to a positive one for the TTC and city of Toronto.
I echo Jay’s thoughts for next steps.
1. The TTC should re-open the RFP for the Website Redesign. The original RFP closed on Thursday, November 23, 2006 and received responses from a number of traditional web shops…The Planned Award date is February 1st, 2007…but we think a strong case can be made for the requirements having changed substantial as a result of the change in Commission Chair and the process kicked off by Robert’s post – strong enough that the original RFP should be replaced.
2. The TTC should completely embrace the community. Soliciting feedback via blogs is a great start, but we’d like to see Adam Giambrone extend that initiative by keeping the rest of this process open and transparent…Collecting feedback in such a public fashion is an amazing step forward and we salute it wholeheartedly! Let’s keep moving in the same direction.
3. The TTC should set a goal of building the best Transit Authority website in the world. Our former Mayor, Mel Lastman, was perhaps overly found of calling Toronto a world-class city, but he was often right. Even the best Transit websites out there don’t set the bar very high and we feel that this is an opportunity to demonstrate our technology and transit leadership by establishing a new watermark.
Hopefully we’ll have some good news on the subject soon. We’re on the right track. Bob Brent, who built the current website, says “where were you 6 years ago when I needed you? 
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Passion is very much like fire. If applied properly it can start new fires in people and groups. If applied improperly it can burn down houses, or get wasted trying to boil the ocean.
technorati tags:passion