Rob Cottingham's blog | Social Signal

Here's an event that looks terrific: a one-day conference in downtown Vancouver for women in social media.

The details:

Chicks Who Click, a conference and networking event for women engaging in social media, is expanding internationally and will host its next conference in Vancouver, British Columbia.

I can't believe it!! Your organization isn't on Twitter? You don't have a Facebook page with discussion groups and a wall? You're not on MySpace, Bebo and FriendFeed?! OMFG, that's so weak! What are you thinking?!

Well, maybe you're thinking, "We don't have a large organization, and we have very few resources." Maybe you're thinking, "Some platforms make it easier to manage conversations than others." And maybe you're thinking, "I'm going to put our limited resources and finite attention where they'll do the most good."

You know what? Good for you.

A few weeks ago, Alex and I got bad news: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles was being cancelled. And not just cancelled: the production studio isn't even shopping it around. (In Terminator terms, this is like pulling the chip out of the show's skull and incinerating it.)

I like to think there are lessons to be had from even the oddest event.

Take today's "holy-crap!" story currently making the rounds of the digital watercoolers: that poor guy in Georgia whose house was torn down by mistake. Reports say the demolition crew went to the wrong location, reducing a half-century-old brick house to rubble.

There's chilling Internet news out of China. And as bad as it seems at first glance for human rights and privacy advocates, there could be something more disturbing in the wings.

The Chinese government has announced that, starting in July, it will require all computers sold in China to come with Internet blocking software. The goal, authorities say, is to protect children from pornography.

A few days ago I got a super-special birthday present (xoxo, Alex!): a new 12" Cintiq, Wacom's combination graphic tablet and display.

We had a great two days at Net2 this year. There's always a feeling of homecoming when Social Signallers arrive at the Cisco conference centre in San Jose: the Net2 online community was one of our very first projects, and its extraordinary success is a tribute both to its participants and to the visionaries at Techsoup Global.

For folks who weren't able to make it this year, or who are thinking of coming next year, here's a little taste of what went on:

Yesterday was a big day for anyone who cares about opening up government, especially when it comes to publicly-owned data.

The Obama administration launched data.gov, making taxpayer-funded data available in machine-readable form to the public. While the service currently offers only a limited number of feeds, the plan is to have it grow dramatically in the coming weeks and years.

This morning at Convergence 09, Barack Obama's campaign manager David Plouffe took the stage. His message: technology helped connect people in a way that's never happened before, to elect a candidate who might never have been able to win before.

Here are my notes from the session.