Personally I was a bit blazé about this whole Olympic event. But once it got started, I found myself caught in the whirlwind of excitement. Walking through the city, the buzz just took control of me and I became an immediate fan. We invited ourselves to a few friends place and went to a pubs to watch the events on their TVs, but we couldn’t justified doing this everyday.

To my delight and more importantly my husbands’, we discovered that we could watch most events on the Internet. CTV streamed all of the events including the medal ceremonies. Using my dual monitor set up, I was also able to follow most of the events at work.

As Mhairi wrote a few weeks ago in a post discussing Social Media and the Olympics, this year was also the first “Twitter” Olympics. Using a series of hashtags such as #van2010 and #olympics following the events became quite fun. I was also able to get and share info about the different houses and free venues using Twitter. For example on day 2 of the Olympics, I found out that the queue for the zip line was already 2 hours long an hour before being opened and posted the info on Twitter. A follower thanked me and made different plans for the day. How great is that?

Prior to giving up TV I also stopped my subscription to the newspaper. The only time I ever looked at the sport section was during the Olympics, but now I no longer had that option. Flickr of course came to the rescue. Following the appropriate tags led me to discover fantastic photographers and photography blogs.

I’m not sure that Vancouver 2010 would have been as much fun without the Internet and I didn’t miss having a TV one bit.

LocalDelicious.com is a new blog which aims to get the scoop on local food in and around the Lower Mainland. As more and more people try to eat locally produced goods, this blog aims to provide tips and advice on where to find the best markets, products, events and books.

The Amuse Bouche Food Blog is Edible BC’s daily blog which looks at restaurants, wineries and various BC products. Whether you are a local, visitor, event planner or someone looking for info about BC’s culinary offerings, Edible BC’s blog is another great read.

More info about local food, recipes ideas and gardening can also be found by visiting the Edible Vancouver blog while the Earth To Table blog is a collaboration between chefs and farmers that promotes logical, sustainable, righteous, and above all, delicious food.

Not enough time to follow blogs… No worries, twitter is another great a way to get the lowdown on what’s going on in the food industry. You can follow three of these bloggers on twitter @LocalDelicious, @Edible Vancouver and @Earth_to_Table.

Before taking the plunge and spending serious cash on a blog set up and design, I’ve often recommended  to first try blogger, as it makes a great testing ground. If worst comes to worst and blogging isn’t for you, you will not have invested too much time and money and won’t have a blog with no entries.

On a side note, Patricia is now accepting corporate sponsors, so if you know anyone who would be interested in advertising on a successful Interior Design blog, please visit her site and contact Patricia.

The wonderful thing about Northern Voice is that it’s very informal. You won’t find any big wigs walking around with chips on their shoulder. Everyone is friendly and easy to talk to. While the subject of social media is not new to me and generally I’m hearing stuff that I already know, once in a while I find out about a few things that make me go “hmm, I didn’t know that”. For example, I didn’t know what a sock puppet was and even though I was told to check out Radio 3 on CBC years ago, I never did, and Steve Pratt reminded me why I should.

Attending conferences, takes a lot of time, costs money and can be exhausting, but I find the following benefits outweigh the drawbacks.

1. I always leave each conference with new ideas and renewed energy.
2. I love to see how great speakers behave in front of the audience. Brianna Tomkinson and David Eaves gave exceptional well articulated presentations.
3. There’s always someone who makes me laugh and this year, Rob Cottingham’s keynote was hilarious yet insightful.
4. I always meet new people who share the same interest.
5. I don’t always, but often connect with old friends.
6. I’m reminded of things that were on my to-do list and never got around to.

Seeing how people use social media in every day life to help a group of kids and hearing how traditional companies are daring to break the rules proved very inspiring and I hope to see more examples of these next year.

The folks behind Northern Voice have asked for feedback and all I can say is keep up the great work. Your conference is always exceptional and well worth making time for.

This site is definitely worth bookmarking and investigating further.