Halfway through the second day of this conference, I am slightly overwhelmed, but very happy. It is an amazing gathering of like-minded folks from across the country, who are rallying together to create something super cool. There's a ton of information being shared and discussed.

Day one kicked off with a plenary, which was, well, somewhat long-winded and kind of intense. Still interesting, though. Straight into workshops and what have you from there. I am learning lots about community radio - it's really interesting to see all the different perspectives on it, given the difference from station to station. In the evening, I toured the CFRC studio and joined Scott Hanson doing some guest programming on his show, This Is Not the Ice Age. Lots of fun. Their station has been broadcasting for the past 90 years (!) and there are tons of cool features, like  really old mixing boards, a huge vinyl catalogue, and some cool old artifact pieces of radio and sound equipment. Oh, and it's big. Really big.

CICK is already known to many of the stations here, which is no doubt due to Glen attending past conferences, and it's really great to experience the sense of community among stations from all over the place. It's also a little daunting to realize what kind of budgets some of the stations in bigger centres are dealing with, although there is definitely something to be said for being the little guy. With those bigger budgets, comes bigger royalties and certainly a lot more paperwork.

I'm off to... Hmm, what am I off to next? Ah yes, to a gratuitously fun workshop on "Circuit Bending" - taking electronic toys and re-wiring them for purposes of sound manipulation. Oh, the life at an NCRC conference...