Alan Levine

I’d been a reader of her blog for a while, but met her at the Northern Voice 2006 conference in Vancouver… she had a packed room on her session on Seven Competencies of Online Interaction, which I spontaneously managed to record the audio, leading to a fascninationg series of loosely joined cooperation from around the world as others added imags, turned it into a annotatide slide show, and more:
http://cogdogblog.com/2006/02/11/nancy-white-nv06/
http://cogdogblog.com/2006/02/21/social-software-in-action-no-real-software-required/

That was one of the most profound experiences of how “social software” really ios more about the social end, not the software.

And despite her love of chocolate and me being diabetic, we have a great connection!

Must have been, what? 1994. I was learning Macremedia Director (or was it still MacroMind back then?) The only online resource that helped out was something called “Director Web” – hosted out of Maricopa Community Colleges. Some guy named Alan babysat it, adding links and news (a proto-blog, perhaps). Alan was active on the Direct-L listserv that every Director user on the planet subscribed to.

Fast forward almost a decade, and Alan Levine bumps into me online via our new blogs. Along with some guy named Brian Lamb, from Vancouver. We wind up doing a presentation together, without ever meeting in person.

After all these years, I’ve only had the chance to meet Alan in person a handful of times, but consider him one of my most valued friends – especially online. His knack for stretching and bursting metaphors is simply second to none. As demonstrated by his table display at the NMC2004 summer conference…

We actually crossed paths in the 1990s in the DIRECT-L listserv… I always was curious about the guy with an apostrophe in his first name.

Years passed, and we ended up collaborating on some projects and presentations related to RSS, learning objects, blogging, etc. We met first at NMC conferences/meetings.

D’Arcy is on the top of my iChat list for asking technical questions.

... is I am curious if his name means “Heads Pace” or “Heads Space” or ….?

I’ve read Jeremy’s blog for a few years and we have exchanged some emails and photos, but look forward to meeting up F2F. Hey I am attending NorthernVoice 2006.. are you?