I’ve been playing in this social media game for a while, but one of the things I don’t really do is conferences. There are a million of them, it seems, and at least once or twice a month, I witness hundreds or even thousands of geeks converging on some (usually American) city for 3 to 5 days of….well I’m not always sure what. What I have seen with many social media conferences is that, though there do seem to be some great keynotes, panel discussions and presentations, not a lot actually gets DONE. People come away saying things like “I got to go to some great parties”, or “that talk by that famous blogger was really inspiring”, or “I got so many business cards!”. But rarely do people seem to leave conferences with actual real things that they put into practice.

This is where I think conferences like PAB are different.

First, let’s clear something up. PAB stands for Podcasters Across Borders, and although when it started in 2006 it was actually a conference about podcasting, it has evolved into a conference for anyone who creates content across any medium (audio, video, photography, text, semaphore, you name it.)

I am relatively new to the world of PAB, though I’ve known the organizers, Bob Goyetche and Mark Blevis for a long time. In fact, if it wasn’t for Mark and Bob, and a couple of other unsuspecting smart people, I probably wouldn’t be doing any of what I do in social media today. My first PAB conference was last year. I had somewhat of a sense of what to expect, but I what I actually experienced was so much more. Here is what makes PAB different from other conferences.

Everyone is equally important.
At some of the big conferences, it’s easy to get lost in the crowd. You see signs and posters everywhere for all the A-list mucky mucks that are speaking. You can’t get into certain rooms because they are filled to capacity, while other, lesser known panels happen in near-empty rooms. There’s a hierarchy, and I’ve always gotten the sense at these events that if you’re not as well known, what you have to say isn’t deemed as important (Podcamps are the exception to this, by the way- I’m talking about the big, expensive conferences here).

PAB takes place over 3 days in one single room. There are usually not more than 120 people there at the most. The speakers are given centre stage and all eyes and attention. Sure, we have people who are more high profile than others – bestselling authors, popular podcast hosts, well-known journalists – but none of that matters at PAB. It’s a level playing field, and everyone is an equal, and each individual’s unique perspectives are embraced. Well known folks hang with less known folks, and nobody cares “who” you are. They only care who you actually are…as a person.

Networking happens organically.
There’s nothing that makes me more uncomfortable than going to a “networking” event. You’re forced into a room, trying to balance your cocktail and a plate of shrimp bites, while people come up and try to shake your hand and ask “what do you do?”, and stuff business cards in the crook of your arm. Ugh.

The great thing about PAB is that networking is a byproduct, not the emphasis. Social events are extremely casual, all participants are more than welcome. It usually happens in a restaurant, bar, or on a boat. There’s a lot of people at PAB who are close friends, but new people are brought in to the mix seamlessly. People are not spending all their time shaking hands and passing out business cards. Mostly they are talking about life, and passion, and media making. We don’t really talk about our jobs at PAB. We talk about what gets us out of bed in the morning. We learn what makes others tick. And we laugh, and cry, and laugh, and laugh some more.

And after the conference is over, we walk away with new connections. Maybe we do business someday, maybe we make new friends. Maybe we do both. That’s how networking SHOULD work.

Suffice it to say, PAB is one of the best conferences I’ve been to, and I think one of the premiere content creation conferences in the world. There’s still a few short hours to register, so if you’re so inclined, and can make it to downtown Ottawa in time, click here and we hope to see you there! You can see the full list of all the amazing speakers here.

If you can’t make it, then I highly recommend you plan for PAB2012. Meanwhile, I’ll be posting about my PAB experience here all weekend and you can follow the #PAB2011 hashtag to get a sense of what it’s all about.

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When I was in high school, I had the best art teacher. He not only allowed us to explore and express our creativity in myriad ways, he also spent a good chunk of time talking to us about what art really is, and what to pay attention to in order to make our art better.

One day, as we were doing a class on drawing techniques, my teacher told us that “drawing is not about the lines and shapes you’re making. It’s about the spaces between the lines and shapes. If you pay attention to those spaces, you’ll be a better artist.”

Well, I never did get very good at drawing, but his lesson has certainly stuck with me.

Too often in life, we spend all of our time focused on the content of everything. We sit in a room full of people and focus more of our time on judging them than listening to what they have to say. We rush through our days from one thing to another without really noticing anything. Then we wonder why we don’t fit in, or why our life seems like a blur.

Try this: Look up from this screen and at something around you, preferably out a window. Instead of looking at the objects, (“I see a car”, “I see a man in a green jacket”), look at the space in between the objects. Do it now, for a few minutes. I’ll wait.

What do you notice? At first, you’ll probably see nothing. But keep looking. Just observe the space without judging. It’s hard, but eventually you’ll see it.

The space between is what connects everything.

And the minute you spend more time focusing on the space between things – whether physical objects, experiences or moments in time – things will no longer seem like such a blur. You will no longer habitually pass judgement. And many things will become much more sharply in focus.

Life is art, in more ways than we expect.

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Tonight, I’m going to get into a car with three people I’ve never met and drive to Wisconsin.

10 years ago…heck, 5 years ago, this would have been a ludicrous statement. It would have raised all sorts of questions, especially from my Mom.

“You’re getting in a car with WHO?”
“What do you mean you’ve never met them before?”
“You’re just going to drive to Lord-knows-where with a bunch of strangers? Are you nuts?”

Of course, the people I’m driving with are not strangers. I know them from the Internet. That in itself may seem a little nuts to some…but not me. I live online. Sure, I have friends that I see every day, in person. I DO spend a lot of time with people in the offline world. But I have a LOT of online friends too. Some I’ve had the joy of meeting in person. Others I haven’t yet, but I will be soon. Still others, I may never meet in person.

But that doesn’t make them any less my friends.

This is a new era.

When the telephone was invented, most people didn’t use it. They didn’t see the point of “calling” someone, to only hear their voice on the other end. It was far more effective to be in someone’s presence. One couldn’t possibly maintain a relationship (personal or professional) with someone only via telephone. The in-person was critical.

Nowadays, of course, we couldn’t live without telephones. The telephone connected our world. Families traveled more. Businesses expanded their reach. It was the dawn of a new era of communication.

The Web has created an entirely new era, and there are some key differences between how the Web connects us and how the telephone does. The first is the Web’s randomness (or serendipity, as I prefer to call it). In the olden days, you wouldn’t just pick up the phone and start dialing random numbers and striking up conversations with people. But on Twitter, that’s exactly what we do.

The randomness of online social tools allows us to link up with people we would otherwise never have met. I mean, before the social Web, it would have been unlikely that this Canadian TV producing girl would have ever had the chance to meet and become good friends with a pastor from Indiana, right?

The second thing about the Web that makes it different from other forms of communication is that it leaps us forward quickly. We become closer friends faster, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, we get the small talk out of the way, in many cases 140 characters at a time, so when we finally meet in person, we are already past the “getting to know you” phase. We are no longer just acquaintances…we’re friends. Secondly, we get to know each other a lot better in the online world. If I read your blog and follow your tweets regularly, I will get a really good sense of who you are; the things you care about, how you interact with others, and others’ impressions of you, too. These things go a long way to help me get a sense what you’re all about, so when we meet, we already have a rapport and a dynamic.

This evening, I look forward to good food, lots of laughter, and friendly faces, as I travel the road with friends I’ve never met.

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I love Antiques Roadshow. I’m not kidding about that. I can watch for hours and hours without getting bored. I have no particular preference over the U.K. or U.S. version. To me, it’s all about the content. These days, shows about “one man’s trash” are becoming increasingly popular. Pawn Stars, American Pickers, and Auction Kings all top the list of shows I never grow tired of.

Why the fascination with other peoples’ junk? It’s the stories.

Every House Has a Story
One of the many hats I wear is as co-producer of a television series called The House Healers. The premise is simple – The House Healers take the most run down, ugly, and dilapidated houses they can find, and transform them into beautiful, livable, green homes. Our renovation projects are not the “one week, use the cheapest materials possible and just get the job done” renos. They are not the “hire 600 people and Ty Pennington to knock down the house and build a whole new one” renos. We bring our viewers the real reality of renovation, where it takes 10 months, thousands of dollars, and buckets of blood, sweat and tears to make it happen.

In the first season of our show (we’re on season 3 now), The House Healers bought their first flip house, a 105 year old home in the west end of Ottawa. The house was in a sorry state of disrepair, with the last update done probably sometime in the 1960s. The house had stayed in the original family since it was built, and the woman who lived there had been there since her late husband’s grandparents had sold them the house some 60 years prior. Since she was elderly and no longer able to live in her family home, it was sold to The House Healers with a promise – that whatever they did, they were not to tear the house down. (Note: It probably should have been torn down).

On the first night of demolition, we were filming in the upstairs of the house. The dust of 105 years was thick in the air. Pieces of doorframe and wall and floorboard were flying. One of the team pulled a bookcase down and a small leather pocketbook slipped to the floor. We opened the pocketbook to find old postcards, a dried corsage, and by far the coolest thing – an invitation to lunch at Buckingham Palace, dated 1936.

We carefully put the pocketbook away for safekeeping, with the intention of giving it back to the original owners once the renovation was complete and the family came back to see the finished house. But for the next 11 months of the renovation, we wondered about that pocketbook. Who went to Buckingham Palace and why? Where were those dried flowers from? Surely there was a story.

The reason I love making this show is because every house has a story to tell. Every time I walk into a new renovation project, I wonder about the people that lived in that house before. Every time I admire the amazing transformations the team is able to produce in the homes they renovate, I think of all the work and thought and planning and effort, and stories of how they got to this point. I’m really lucky to be part of something that can document this process, and tell the story of how old homes get new life.

What’s Your Story?
I love old things because they always have a story, and it’s the most exciting thing to draw that story out. if I had a bigger house I can assure you it would have a lot more “other man’s trash” in it (don’t tell my husband).

Thinking about the stories the things in our lives hold is fascinating. It’s why I often get confused when people tell me they have creative blocks. I think there are so many stories to tell, that it would be impossible to run out. One just has to look around them to find stories in the simplest things – that coffee cup on your desk, sent to you from a friend far away. The big black dog, now laying at your feet, abandoned 7 years ago in a snowbank. A small leather pocketbook, fallen behind a bookcase 70 years ago.

Everything has a story.

What story are you ready to tell?

By they way, if you want to find out the rest of the story of that leather pocketbook, you can watch this.

[photo credit: andresv on Flickr]

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My favourite movie of all time is It’s a Wonderful Life. I bet I’ve seen it 100 times. Once, I watched it 4 times in the same day, back to back. Every time I see it, I wind up in tears at least 3 times. I have much of the dialogue committed to memory.

One of the things I love about the film are all the things the protagonist, George Bailey, has to teach us. Every time I watch it, I have another realization that sticks with me. I figured it was high time to sum them up, so here are some of the things George Bailey has taught me.

Do the right thing, even if it’s not popular.
Near the beginning of the film, a young George Bailey is working in Mr. Gower’s drug store. Mr. Gower is noticeably upset, and George goes to check on him. Gower tells him to take a prescription to a customer. As George picks up the medicine box, he looks and sees that the pills Mr. Gower has prepared are actually poison. He runs out of the store, not knowing what to do. When he returns, not having delivered the medicine, Mr. Gower punishes him harshly. Once George explains the mistake that’s been made, Mr. Gower realizes what he’s done, and is profoundly sorry, and grateful to George.

George knew he was going to get in big trouble for defying his boss, but he also knew the consequences of listening to him. He took the chance and did what he knew was right. Not only did he save a young child’s life, but he also prevented Mr. Gower from going to prison.

We all want acceptance. We all want to avoid conflict or trouble. However, sometimes we have to make the tough decision to go against the popular belief. Sometimes we have to run head on into trouble because we know that it will be better in the end. Sometimes doing the right thing isn’t the popular thing. And like George, we need to be okay with that, and do it anyway.

Walk your own path.
George Bailey, as a young man, had dreams of going to college, and traveling the world. When his brother Harry, who was supposed to take over the Bailey Building and Loan, arrives back in Bedford Falls with a wife and plans to move away for a big job, George is left, once again, holding the bag. This realization is very upsetting to George. His Mom, seeing this, points him in the direction of Mary Hatch’s house. She feels that the next logical step in George’s life is for him to finally be with the woman he’s meant to be with. George has other ideas. Even though, deep down, he already loves Mary, he turns away from her house and walks the opposite direction. However, as we soon find out, George ends up at Mary’s house. And so begins their happily every after.

As much as George was starting to resign himself to the fact that he would end up spending his life in Bedford Falls, running the Building and Loan, he was very resistant to walking the path everyone wanted him to. But even though he ended up staying in Bedford Falls, marrying Mary, and having a family, he went about it all his own way. In the end, he found his own truth. Nobody told him how to get there, but he ended up exactly where he was supposed to be.

You don’t need to be like anyone else, you just need to be you. Like George Bailey, you may stumble along the way, but ultimately the time and effort it takes to get there will be worth it. Carve your own path. Your life will be richer because you made this journey in your own unique way.

People first, money second.
How much do we hear these days about the “human” side of business? Everyone tells us that faceless companies cannot exist in this connected world. But George Bailey….George Bailey knew that, even back in the 1930′s! Let’s take a look at how George operated his human business.

George’s father dies the night before he is to go off to college. He puts college on hold to sort out his father’s affairs with the Building and Loan, and as he’s about to leave, his arch-nemesis, Mr. Potter, reveals that he would like to dissolve the Building and Loan, deeming it unnecessary. The Board turns down Potter’s request on the condition that George stay on to run the business. George gives up college and ends up staying, because he can’t bear the thought of people having to crawl to Potter for money to build their homes.

Over the next several years, George helps people like the Martini family and Ernie the cab driver buy houses for their families, because he believes that people should have opportunities to improve their lives, and that life does not have to be a struggle, especially for money. And, when the stock market crashes and the bank calls his loan, George and Mary don’t even think twice before using their honeymoon savings to help their customers.

The Bailey Building and Loan was the original human business. George always thought about how he could help people first, and he worried about the money later. As a result, he had loyal customers and was well respected in his community. Potter, on the other hand, was a “warped, frustrated old man”, who only cared about himself and his money. It’s pretty obvious who had the better life.

Don’t let anyone step all over you. Ever.
George stands up to Potter four times in the movie. The first time is when he is a kid and he runs into the office to ask his Dad for advice about Mr. Gower’s medicine, as Potter is chastising his Dad. George yells at Potter, tells him his Dad is “the biggest man in town!”, before being shuffled out of the office. The second time is when Potter tries to dissolve the Building and Loan after George’s Dad dies. The third is when Potter tries to buy out the shares of the Building and Loan after the stock market crash. And finally, he tells him off one last time when Potter offers him a dream job and tells George “his ship has just come in.”

Every time George stands up to him, Potter is either pushing down someone George loves, or he’s trying to push George himself down. George can’t stand the way Potter treats people. Even though George is so angry and disappointed that circumstances have forced him to give up his life’s dreams, he’s not about to let Potter get the best of him or anyone else.

There are a lot of people in the world that think they are powerful. But nobody, nobody has power over you. Always have the courage to stand up when you feel you or someone you care about is being treated poorly. The bad guys can never win this way.

You mean everything to so many.
The message of the movie is everyone’s life is precious, because every person’s life touches so many others. Everyone’s life is wonderful, and something to be cherished. At the end of the movie, Clarence Odbody, George’s guardian angel, leaves George his copy of Tom Sawyer. Inside, the inscription reads, “Remember, no man is a failure who has friends.”

I think this fact is more true than ever in our new, connected world, don’t you? I have met so many people in the past 4 years of my life that I would have never otherwise had the opportunity to meet. I have friends who have affected and changed my life in ways they don’t even realize. George Bailey learned what it was like to live in a world where he didn’t exist. Every day, the ability to connect with anyone, anywhere, reminds me how peoples’ lives are changing and being made better by the intersection of their existence with so many others.

I am so grateful to each of you – to those I have met, and those I’ve yet to meet. It means so much to know that each of you, in your own way, you have made a contribution to my wonderful life.

[photo credit: dougtone on Flickr]

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