Thanks to Tom, Michele, Francesca and Joshua’s awesomeness and gentle but insistent prodding, I decided at the last minute to get on a plane to Geneva for LIFT ‘07, which runs Wednesday through Friday.
Tom raved about LIFT ‘06 (see his Flickr photos) and has been insisting that I simply must go. With Toronto Transit Camp out of the way (fly my pretties!), exciting new things taking off, a major year-long project starting soon physically anchored in Toronto, I figured that I had a small window of now or never to take advantage of the opportunity. Even more amazing conversations with incredibly smart people. Heaven on earth for a Citizen Wonk like me.
If you’re attending Lift, I’d love to get in touch on topics of mutual interest. See my LIFT profile page:
I’m interested in conversations with people on the emerging peer production paradigm enabled by social media and the power of open creative communities.
Big thanks to Passports Canada!! Yes, that’s right. Yours truly pulled a classic me and let my passport expire. But I will have it by noon today, same-day emergency service (extra charge, of course). Tom and the TorCamp Skype chat swarm gave me great tips and insight from having done it before, and gave the needed boot to the butt to say it is possible. I did my part and Michelle N (hi Michelle!) at Passports Canada made it a very straight-forward process. Here are my tips:
- Show up VERY early. The Victoria Street office opens at 8:00am. Show up by 6:30 to be reasonably front of line right now (new US requirements have swamped the Passport offices)
- Have EVERYTHING super documented: you will need your guarantor and references, proof of citizenship as usual. Your guarantor and references must be available to verify your references by telephone.
- NEW RULE: (effective this week) emergency requests must have documentation of the rationale for the emergency. Mine was based on potential negative impacts to my business and earnings, as well as prospective business currently in development
I’ll blog what I can, but expect to continue my pattern of insufficient sleep and daily brain explosions. Life is good.
Technorati Tags: lift07, liftconference, peerproduction, torontotransitcamp