5 Questions with... David Newland

Every Wednesday this column usually begins by making sure everyone is prepared.  I humbly ask all of you to grab a coffee and a seat as I introduce you to the fortunate one who gets to grace the weeky 5 Questions.  This week I'm going to ask all of you to do something a little different: 

Go grab your ukulele.

David Newland is based in Toronto, where he makes music by night and media by day. 

As Director of Social Media at Canoe.ca David is the editor of The Canoe Dossier, a finalist for the  2009 Online Publishing Awards  for “Best Blog”. He does occasional appearances as a speaker, focused on using new media to build community. 

As a photographer, writer and web producer, David covered the 2002 Eco-Challenge from the jungles of Fiji, produced TV segments and podcasts with Jay Ingram, rode the rails across Canada with Valerie Pringle, flew the skies with Phil Keoghan of the Amazing Race, and photographed hundreds of guests on the set of the Gill Deacon Show. 

When he’s not making music, writing, working online or organizing something, David rides his bicycle, paddles his canoe, potters about in his backyard garden, and generally lives in a whimsical way.

What motivates you to do what you do on a daily basis?

I'm motivated by the desire to foster the Canadian conversation. For me that means helping nurture communities.  I use digital tools to help grassroots communities remain vibrant, but I also use a lot of grassroots thinking to help online media speak to real people. If there's no real-world output there's no point.  

Do you have any success tips for people wanting to create a name for themselves in your industry?

My first tip is that "creating a name for yourself" can be a very vain and meaningless endeavour. You need to look inside, to find out what is your unique contribution, and look around, to find out where is the need you can meet. The combination of those things will be some important part of your purpose. If you do that with integrity, your name will reflect that. 

In your opinion, why is Toronto such a hotbed of tech activity?

I don't know a lot about tech. I'm a content guy. But I think Toronto's a hotbed partly because we're fortunate enough to have time and money to play with all the latest toys. This is city awash in media, too, so there's a lot of awareness of what's out there. Internet culture is pretty strong, for example, which helps create a sense of community around tech.  

What’s your favorite tech toy and social media site and why?

My favourite tech toy is the ukulele. It's not a digital gadget, but it's small, portable, affordable, easy to use, artistically challenging and rewarding, and it brings people together. I wish a lot more tech toys could be as elegant as that.

I couldn't say I have a favourite social media site. Facebook is the one I use the most and as much as it's flawed, there are certain aspects of it - like keeping in touch with all your friends on a daily basis - that I think are magical. In terms of functionality, I think LibraryThing.com would be my favourite. They make better use of tags, clouds, relationships and data than any other site I've seen.

Who would you say is one of the region’s social media and tech stars and why?

I am leery of the term "star." It suggests someone is successful because they are well-known, which is often simply wrong. I look up to people who have a genuine combination of reputation and contribution, and the one I think of in this context is Cory Doctorow. He's helped establish the culture of the Web through his work at BoingBoing. He's channeled his creativity into creating successful sci-fi books. And he's made an important social contribution via his Guardian articles and tireless work around copyright issues in the digital age. If you can manage that - balancing creativity, social contribution, and culture creation - you deserve to be called a star.