Today is a special day for the city of Vancouver! Guess why?

Haha…yes…the title says it! It marks the one year countdown for Vancouver 2010 Winter Games!
As excited as other citizens of Vancouver…I’d want to be among the first to welcome the world to the beautiful British Columbia. This is it. This is the place you want to be in the next year…all athletes will be coming down to Vancouver to more or less train for their games within this year. And…as we get closer and closer to the games…I think Vancouver is going to turn into more or less like Toronto and New York. CHAOS!!!

Don’t think Vancouver has hold an event this big for the world since the EXPO. Well, as a Vancouverite… this is sure exciting. Yet, frightening at the same time. With ppl from all across the globe coming to Vancouver…Vancouver will be even more multi-cultral than before. And I guess…we’ll just see whatchanges the world will bring to Vancouver in the next year or so…

Let the COUNTDOWN begin!!

Reporting LIVE in Beautiful British Columbia

Sources: CrackBerry.com

As John Perry Barlow or John Ptrick once told me (I forget which), the World Wide Web isn’t about pages, it’s about people. It isn’t about information, it’s about the ideas and insights of people around the world.

Regardless of whether you regularly read Salon.com, The New York Times online, or any number of frequently updated blogs and personal Web sites, the true value of your experience, evolutiopn, and insight doesn’t lie in the words you read on the screen but in the minds of the people who write them, as well as your reaction to their writing. We as readers need and deserve to know who those people are. And we need to recognize, reach out to, and embrace them.

In the blog world, on the Web, such outreach is easy. We can see who writes what, and lives of their proprietors and magazines are much the same. For the most part, we can easily and effortlessly make contact, correspond, and collaborate with people like Dan Gaillmor (formerly with the San Jose Mercury News), Eric Zorn (Chicago Tribune), and other with just a few simple keystrokes.

But with most media – inclulding Web sites, newspapers, magazines, books, music, and film – gatekeepers stand between us and the meaning makers. We need to fire the gatekeepers.

Entire industries and professions exist to keep us from interacting with the people we need to know: politicians, business leaders, writers, musicians, and other cultual creactives – people who make things happen and contribute to (and refect) our collective reality.  Traditional media, even, is largely designed to keep us from the knowldge we need, not to facilitate learning. So we must find a way around the approved channgels of communication – the PR agencies, media trainers, publishing houses, record lables, film producers, and so on.

This is already happening online as media and meaning makers reach out to us. But if they’re not reaching out – if it’s not in the vested interest of the organizations controlling the more economically lucrative modes of promotion and distribution – we need to help these thinkers and doers to do so anyway. We need to reach out to them.

In Califronia, Hyland Baron, an indepedent arts, economics, and urban-developement- oriented community organizer, reads the Oakland Tribune religously. She underlines people’s names, details about projects, and other useful information. Then she writes those people e-mails or letter or calls them on the phone with recommended resources, incentives for introductions, and other expresisions of support and congratulations.

I do the same thing. If I read a book I’ve found personally or professionally importatnt and useful, I try to track down the author. If a piece of music affects me, I reach out to thank the artist for their effort. And if I want to meet, learn more form, or help someone I encounter online or off-line, I write to them.

I do this not as a fan but as a comrade, as a coconspirator. Because if someone else’s work has improved my life or my work, it is my responsibility as a consumer, customer, and fellow creator to help imrpove their lives and work in kind. By doing so, I don’t just benefit them, I benefit myself. Perhaps an idea, introduction, or resource will inspire and lead them to create additional media that you – and others – can tap into and use. You never know.

Such an approach to life requires an assumption of indirect reciprocity. We must assume that the people who makes things happen are visible, accessible, and responsible to those who use their tools to make still more things happen. It also suggests that we need to open ourselves to such outreach from those who wish to approach us.

Once we fire the gatekeepers, we can keep the gates of inspiration, implementation, and interaction open.

Source: The Big Moo