Vancouver

A whole bunch of events you might be interested in:

The Summer Dream Literary Arts Festival

Saturday July 26, 2008
http://www.pandorascollective.com/sdrfestival.html

If you're a literary reader or lover of poetry this is a great event. I don't fall into either of these categories but enjoyed the performance poetry and story slams of past years. Quite a wide range of presentations, with some having a Hip Hop feel and others more traditional.

Vancouver Blog-a-thon 2008

Saturday July 26, 2008
http://blogathonvancouver.wikidot.com/

Local bloggers raising money for charity by posting every 30 minutes for 24 hours. Fellow podcaster Colleen from 353 Review is participating, as is local big gun blogger Miss 604.

Slow Food Circle Farm Tour

Saturday August 9, 2008
http://www.slowfoodvancouver.com/index.php/AgassizTour

From their site: a self-guided bicycle ride following the popular Circle Farm Tour. Embark on a leisurely cycle and learn more about local food production. Riding your bicycle, you will get to experience and taste local food products produced close to home, while getting to know and supporting your local farmers.

VinoCamp 2008 (aka Wine Camp)

Saturday August 16, 2008
http://www.eventbrite.com/event/137449114/bmann

From the site: An outdoor gathering of wine tasting, learning, and sharing, done in an informal style. We'll learn about growing, tasting, and pairing wines from a wide array of enthusiasts and experts. Mash this up with techies that like to record and capture these types of events in an unstructured style, and you have a fun one day event. This is Definitely Not The Wine Festival.

At the beginning of the month I posted a YouTube vid of a people freezing in Grand Central Station. Marina discovered a Vancouver version captured in this photo by Mark Klotz. Head over to her site for the video, and some other hijinks involving computers and Starbucks.

People are doing cool stuff all over the place. Someone I recently met who's definitely in this category is Ifny. We crossed paths at the Vancouver Drupaliers January meeting. Ifny is involved with a number of community organizations using technology for "real world" community building and good works. One of these is the bicycle bee. It's a come together, get to know some people, eat, and fix/build a bike group.

From their website:

bicyclebee.blogspot.com - Why Bike Bee?

Bicycle Bee isn't about work. We will not enslave you to some dull-as-dishwater project. The idea is similar to the quilting bee -- a way to foster communication, take bike repair and building out of the sometimes offputting workshop, and into the hands of anyone who has, or wants a bike. Works in the same way as a quilting bee. A group of people get together and toss various tips and advice back and forth, in an accessible language we all use. Instead of a quilt, the project is a bike, but the process is the same.

Right out of the launch bay it was clear the "re-imagined" Battlestar Galatica (BSG) was sometime different. One look at Katee Sackhoff's Starbuck made it real clear ("Oh my god, Starbuck is a woman?!"). That it was simply great drama quickly became apparent, but going on to win a Peabody award was icing on the cake.

Given the affinity great shows have for attracting fan groups, especially science fiction shows, it's surprising and a little ironic there isn't a Vancouver BSG fan group (it is filmed here, after all). That's just changed. A fan group named The 13th Colony has just started with Meetup as its home: http://battlestargalactica.meetup.com/16/

Their inaugural coffee and chat is scheduled for Saturday, February 10 at 2:00pm.