Category: How I love the Interwebs

Last night was the second annual edition of Ottawa’s premiere (and only!) showcase for local blogger talent, Blog Out Loud Ottawa. This year’s BOLO was a smash hit — you only need to skim the twitter feed to see how energized and excited and plain old happy everybody seems to be after last night’s event. I had an amazing time chatting with Angela and Amy and Justin and Rebecca and Lara and meeting Tania and Glenn and Allison and so many others.

I love events like these, because they demonstrate that we have some hilarious, thoughtful and highly creative writers and readers here in Ottawa. From Nat’s f-bomb filled rant about the wasps in her basement and her resulting multiple personality disorder to Spydergrrl’s manifesto on embracing her geekiness to Stay at Home Maven’s recounting of her trauma in the cookie aisle… we were rolling on the floor all night long.

There were more serious and introspective posts, too, like Lynn’s sweet tribute to her growing daughter (oh, I hear ya!) and Don and Jenn of FoodiePrint’s post about Food and Generosity and Amy’s beautiful story of the night she and her son didn’t see any meteors.

And events like BOLO are all about discovering the voices that you haven’t heard before but wish you had known about earlier, like Nadine from Adorkable Thespian. I loved her reading of her post “Why do you want to act” because she touched on themes fundamental to why I blog. Although she’s speaking about acting, she perfectly describes how I often feel about blogging and living the life I do on the Internet:

Acting was a lovely escape for an extroverted, exhibitionist who wanted to hide, but thrived on being seen. I never felt so sane as when I was on stage, safely tucked inside another person who wasn’t me.

“Why do you want to act?”?

“Because I’m an emotionally troubled attention whore.”

And her blog tagline is “If awkward isn’t the new charming, I’m screwed.” Love it!

If you missed it last night, or if you were there and just want a recap of all the really excellent stories that were shared, Lynn has links to everyone’s posts up on the BOLO blog. And speaking of Lynn — props to you for organizing an amazing night out. Everything ran seamlessly, and you did a fabulous job. Thank you!

I struggled for quite a while to choose a post to read myself. I think one of my best-written posts of the last year was the saga of the day I totaled the van, but the story as a whole is a bit of a downer, so I went with something a little, um, different.

So not only did I stand up in front of a room of mostly strangers and read the post I wrote last year about my trip to Bra Chic and my fancy-ass new cherry red bra (oh yes I did), but for my big finish I lifted my t-shirt and showed them my still-much-loved cherry red beauty. Because once you’ve announced your band and cup size to the crowd, really, what shame is left?

Thanks again to Lynn and to everyone who participated last night, and especially to those who took the time to come over and say hi. Can we do it all over again soon?

Did the earth move for you, too, baby?

That was pretty cool, eh? I’ve been through one other minor earthquake that I remember, when I was a kid, but the one yesterday centred just north of Ottawa was much stronger. It was the first quake during which I was aware at the time what was happening.

I was, of all things, getting a pedicure! I was sitting at the little table, reading my book with my toes in the little dryer, actually composing a post in my head about pedicures and having people in a servitude position and how uncomfortable that makes me. At first I thought the noise was construction or a big truck rumbling past on Woodroffe, but when the shaking was sustained I immediately knew what was going on. The tiny oriental women in the beauty shop scattered like marbles, most of them running to huddle in the doorway until I pointed out that the doorway in the middle of the plate glass window might not be a good place to be. Since none of the nail polish bottles had even fallen off their little shelves, I was more amused by the experience than anything, and it wasn’t until later that I realized perhaps I was a little too cavalier about the whole thing.

What really fascinated me, though, was watching the drama play out on Twitter. It may be a useless time sink 99% of the time, but I was hugely impressed by the speed with which information was circulated on Twitter yesterday. Within 10 minutes of the quake, I knew that people had felt it as far afield as Toronto and Sudbury. Within 15 minutes, I knew it was a 5.5 magnitude (later downgraded to 5.0) quake and the epicentre was near Buckingham, about 20 minutes north of downtown Ottawa.

What really made me laugh was that as soon as it was clear that nobody was seriously hurt and that no significant damage was done, the quake humour started. Here are my fave 10 tweets from yesterday.

From scottcoates: 5.5 quake downgraded to a 5. We did stick the landing ok, I blame the French judge.

From DenVan: Hmm. Toronto felt it too? There’s gotta be a G20 connection. OMG: it was a #FAKELAKEQUAKE

From Phillippec: Quebec is finally separating! #earthquake

From ThatsTeenTalk: “What’s that!! An earthquake?” “YES!! RUN!!!” “OMG, WAIT” *runs to the computer and writes on twitter* EARTHQUAAAAAAKE!!! #thatsteentalk

From melle: Dear California: You do that regularly? DUDE.

From jamiecalder: .@WickedLPixie We’re fine. We’re all fine here now, thank you. How are you? We had a reactor leak. Large leak, very dangerous.

From Glen_McGregor: Everyone talking earthquake and #CBC Radio is running interview with a children’s book illustrator. Memories of epic #fail on 9/11.

From thornley: RT @kylemcinnes: Ottawa government buildings evacuated. Productivity unaffected. #earthquake #smgov

From ALL_CAPS: My television fell onto my MacBook Pro and broke my DSLR. Guess I’ll have to file a claim and get new ones.

From mynameiskate: RT @RobCottingham: In solidarity with Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto, I’m wandering through the house and knocking things off shelves.

I simply couldn’t tear myself away from the computer! (Erm, okay, maybe that’s also the case on any random Wednesday afternoon, but still…) I was truly fascinated both by the earthquake itself, and by the way people were reacting to it. It took less than 90 minutes for this “I survived Toronto Earthquake 2010” t-shirt to appear. (I’m not sure if I’m more bemused disgusted by the blatantly exploitative capitalism or the branding of it as “Toronto’s Earthquake.”)

I think both the Ottawa Citizen and CTV Ottawa did an excellent job in collating and disseminating information on the fly. Other organizations were not so, um, forward-thinking in their use of social media tools in a crisis. Julie Harrison tweeted “Dear @ottcatholicDSB — it is times like THIS when you’re supposed to tweet something! Let us parents know what to do. Pick up or no?” Wouldn’t this have been a simple, easy way to reach hundreds, maybe thousands of anxious parents? No, you’re not going to reach all of them — but I personally was chatting with more than a dozen who would have appreciated the effort.

In the end, I think this comic sums up my afternoon just about perfectly. (Click on it to embiggen!)

What were you doing when the earth started shaking?

It’s coming!

Just three weeks remain until BOLO 2010, Ottawa’s most fun bloggy meet-up. What is BOLO? In the words of BOLO’s irrepressible and endlessly creative founder, Lynn of Turtlehead, “Blog Out Loud is an Ottawa-based get-together for bloggers, lurkers, and anyone who likes to hear good writing.” And starting today, Lynn is teasing us with a day-by-day reveal of this year’s readers, each of whom will read a favourite blog post from the last year. Local photographers will also have some of their work on display.

Want to come out for a night of bloggy good fun, friends and festivizing? BOLO 2010 will be held on July 7 at Irene’s Pub on Bank Street, starting at 7 pm. If you’re feeling especially brave, I hear Lynn is still looking for a few good men and women to fill up the last few reading spots, and she’s also looking for volunteers to help out that night.

See you there!