Our "Left Coast" friends over at Groundwire (formerly ONE/Northwest) have just posted a great roundup of events in 2010 that any self-respecting "technologist for good" should check out.

There are a lot of conferences on that list that are new to me, so I'm looking forward to digging into the agendas and asking for feedback from folks that have attended in the past.

There are a few events not on Groundwire's list that caught my eye this year. I provide them with the caveat that I haven't personally attended these, and most haven't announce follow-up events yet. Here's to hoping they do:

• Tide's Momentum conference
• Fairsay's eCampaigning Forum in Oxford
• Journalism That Matters
• Organizing 2.0
• A local "Ignite" events
• And, finally, any one of the great events that are run by Aspiration Technology Foundation ever year

There are more, but I'll leave it there.

Know of others? Post a comment over at Groundwire.

Is it just me, or is there a bit of a collective unconscious thing going on here? Perhaps it's just a "meme" that is spreading like a avian virus throughout the networks that I'm connected to via my work; networks that typically are pretty "techie" and kinda' into social media.

When did it start? I can't put my finger on it exactly, but there was a feeling like the world had hit the backside of a bubble or a bell curve when Lauren Bacon wrote "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Twitter." A self-described Web "early adopter and enthusiast of all things internetty" had given in to the irresistible final frontier of social media: Twitter.

From that point on, there was a quickening: it was the dawn of the late-adopter-early-adopter, and then came the rush of the rest of the world. In summary: social media was mainstream. It was talked about in mainstream media and had become the basis for many a party game (Who's going to mention Facebook first tonight?).

But, there was another energy in the room that day. It was the yin to the yang, the black to the white, and the rebel to the mainstream. There it was: a collective sigh and "We told you so," followed by the question "What the !@#$% do we do now that everyone is on Twitter." And, with that, the air started to slowly leek out of the ballon. Pffffffffffffsssssssssssssssssssss. No shit. Just like that.

I had heard the rumblings! You probably heard them too? People lamenting the state of the virtual non-state. First, Second Life seemed to fall off the edge of the world as people starting getting a first life. It was like a collective cheer: "Hey Second Life! Welcome to Dumpsville, population you." Then there was MySpace and so on. And, unless you lived in the kind of country that doesn't love Starbucks, it was like all that was left was a social media monoculture: Facebook, or Twitter (or maybe LinkedIn if you're a bit square).

Well, nature abhors a monoculture, and so it seems with the InterWebby-thing. Without the b-list, c-list, and -- heck -- d-list social networks out there (coughOrkutcoughhi5coughBebocough), everyone was trying to get in on the a-list options without reading their copy of Etiquette For Dummies first. It was a classic tragedy of the commons. All of a sudden, you're following 4000 people that you don't know and have 1000 friends from a part of your life you kinda' wanted to forget.

So it was only a matter of time...

Here we are, it's the future. We rounded the corner of the 21st century and ran smack into Year of the Avatar (which was 2009 by the way, but it was a late release). The "multitude" was online, at last. And with the multitude, all of the challenging personalities that inevitability intrude on any good party (including our parents).

Then we come to this year -- 2010 -- the year where social media flatlines. Only herein lies the humour about the tragedy of the social media commons: The early adopters are becoming the early opt-outers, the drop-outs, the back-to-the-landers. Those that once built their kingdoms on social media, are now unplugging in search of a more peaceful, less distracting, existence. (It can afflict any of us at a moment's notice, it would seem.)

The search for a simple, meaningful, life takes many paths, I guess.

So, if you are weary and over-loaded and would like to opt-out too, you're in luck: You can finally get in on something early enough to qualify as an "early adopter." Everything that was old is new again, and "See you lata'" is the new "beta." Ready to opt-out? No problem: there are social media solutions ready and waiting for your call.

Let us remember, however, as we reflect on 2009 and prepare to rush into 2010, that not much has really changed in life. Those things that fulfilled us before social media are still hanging around: friends, family, nature, and so on. So, as it happens, in this one aspect of life -- second life vs. first life -- you can have your cake and eat it too. Just take care not to eat so much that you get sick.

This just in from Steve Anderson via OpenMedia.ca:

The CRTC is currently reconsidering the role of community television in Canada, providing an historic opportunity to create a rejuvenated, FRESH and innovative independent media system.

Many people are unaware that two per cent of what cable companies collect from their customers monthly is supposed to be spent on community channels. BUT, rather than provide community access to these resources as they should, cable operators have used these channels and funds to give themselves a competitive edge, and at times even pocketing the money while shutting down studios. Tell the CRTC what you think of this: http://tinyurl.com/ycf3uo5

OpenMedia.ca supports a proposal by CACTUS (Canadian Association of Community Television Users and Stations) calling for the millions of dollars already being collected by cable companies for community TV, be liberated to independent media centres for use by all Canadians. The CRTC can make this a reality – please send them a letter now! HERE: http://tinyurl.com/ycf3uo5

The best part of CACTUS’ plan is that Canadians won't have to pay another dime! The money we are already paying to cable companies will be directed to independent media!

Continuing with the theme of stories... I was struck yesterday, when speaking to David Beers, about the sense of community that he's trying to weave into the fabric of The Tyee's newsroom.

I shared with David that the idea of bringing the community into the newsroom -- or the newsroom into the community -- had recently been discussed on the Rebooting the News podcast, and by "hacker journalist" Daniel Bachhuber on his blog, under the banner of "Newsroom as cafe."

David chuckled a bit, as he described his early careers experiences working in the San Francisco-based Pacific News Service newsroom in the 80s. He described it as a place that was open to the community; where "anyone could come in for their Monday [editorial] meeting" and thus take part in the news process.

He finished with the sentiment that these ideas are not necessarily new, but they are often are the ones that have been lost in the contemporary, profit-driven, newsroom. So, as news becomes more narrowcast, and fights to be more relevant to people's lives, it would seem to that these ideas of community-connected newsrooms are ripe to be rediscovered.

It's stories like these that keep me engaged.

Interviewing the venerable David Beers today, I was reminded about the power of stories.

David is the Founder / Editor of the award-winning daily news site The Tyee and we were speaking about the changing news environment. At times, David likes to make himself out to be a fish out of water (pun intended -- a "tyee" is a salmon): the "old fashioned" guy leading the news innovation pack. But it's clear to me that it is people like David -- these fish out of water -- that are learning to survive in this new environment.

If you want to hear David's stories about news innovation at The Tyee, you can find him (along with more than 200 other media innovators) at the "Journalism That Matters: Re-imagining News & Community in the Pacific Northwest" gathering in Seattle this week. You can be sure it won't be a firsherman's tale.

I stumbled on the "lifestream" blog of Cory O'Brien today. Being a fan of "lifestreams" (an aggregation of 'actions' taken on various sites) myself, I was interested to find that Cory's site was running on an lifestream aggregation platform called Sweet Cron, which was new to me. Sweet Cron is an open-source PHP-based application developed by "yongfook."

The developer, however, has since moved his own lifestream/blog to the free service called Posterous. Posterous, like Tumblr makes blogging easy, which is great. However, Posterous, like Tumblr, also has a very opaque business plan. Call me cynical: but I can't get my head around relying on "free" hosted Web services for more than transient projects. (I'm even starting to question my own previous musings about a "Software pyramid for a healthy non-profit".)

From the recent purchase of EtherPad by Google -- leaving even their paid customers in the lurch -- to the quiet shut down of free service TwitApps, it seems that hosted services -- paid or not -- can be volatile ground these days. There's a long list of web services that have joined the "dead pool" over the last few years -- I know that I've been bitten more than once (Stikipad, Ma.gnolia, etc.)

If you've read Free by Wired magazine editor Chris Anderson, you'll know that most of these services aren't free by any means; they are simply going for the largest market possible to make it feasible for 5% of users to pay the freight for the other 95%. If they can't reach the mass market necessary to succeed, troubling times lay ahead for the service's users.

Enough of these free services have shut down that I've started moving toward installed software again for my own personal needs. After enough wasted time looking for half-baked free services, I've found it becomes worthwhile to invest in running the service myself on my own infrastructure. Your mileage may vary of course.

All that said, I'm sincerely curious about what others are doing: Are you relying more-and-more on free services like Posterous and Tumblr? Do you think about the day of reckoning when, inevitability, they introduce a premium plan, sell your data, or show ads on your site? Do you back up your data regularly, or just have faith that all will be okay? Or, alternately, are you starting to dust off your old programming books and getting to work on your own solutions?

I've had my attention pretty narrowly focused on finishing up a couple of projects for the last two weeks, which has meant being a little out of the loop (which is refreshing, actually). But it was nice to come up for air today and find this little note from a client waiting in my Inbox:

So, I'm going to call bullshit on the recent Wall Street Journal article titled "Why Email No Longer Rules...". The article's title is striving to be sensational -- and I guess it worked, as I surfed over to check it out -- but, from that point on, it falls flat and doesn't manage to land one good argument in favour of the idea that e-mail is going away any time soon. 

Here are the main points the author tries to make:

• New ways of communicating -- always-on, connected, real-time ways -- are faster and "more fun" than e-mail.

• According to some research by Nielsen Co, more people are using social network sites than e-mail. (Though, I don't see how that is possible, given that most -- if not all -- social network sites require that you supply an e-mail address to sign up.)

• In the "land of the stream" (social networks), there are (or will be) more sophisticated filtering available to help manage the information flow. 

Frankly, I think all three points are bunk. Here are five reasons why e-mail is still the king of Internet applications:

One of the things that I love the circulation-guru Jon Spencer for is his devotion to the Church of Measurement. In the recent post about how publishers can build a Twitter following, Jon raises a number of good points about how organizations can measure the efficacy of their social media efforts (should they want to). But, beyond Twitter, what are the other valuable metrics for publishers to track in the age of the Internet?? 

I happen to be a bit of a metrics addict myself, so I thought I would build on the idea of circulation metrics and try to introduce the metrics that I encourage the publishers I'm working with to track. There's no magic here: just a list of metrics that have been cobbled together over the years that -- if measured the same way every month -- can provide an organization with the information necessary to make good decisions. 

I recently received some questions from a friend who's applying for a position as an "online editor" along the lines of "What do I need to understand about Web sites to bring value to an online position?" and "What do I need to know to communicate effectively with my Web-development counterpart?"

These questions come across my Inbox often enough to justify a quick summary of what I think are "Top five" resources for folks making the transition from print to online. These aren't editorial resources, specifically, they're mostly technical in nature (as that's my "thing").