On Saturday, June 5th, 2010, readers, writers, editors, publishers, educators, and technology-type-folks will gather at the Sobey School of Business at Saint Mary’s University for a full day of listening, talking, discussing, suggesting, thinking, mulling, considering, and brainstorming.

It will be awesome.

Yes, that word is overused. Someone just mentioned that to me today, as a matter fact. Still, the fact remains.

The way information is delivered to us has been changing rapidly over the last few years. Longer than that, actually, but we’ve really started to see a shift in the publishing paradigm over the last decade or so: blogs, e-books, magazine and newspaper websites, RSS feeds, smartphone web browsing, and netbooks have all made their presence known and have made information both easier to grab and easier to publish.

Everyone can be their own publisher now, it seems.

So what about the venerable book? Is it doomed? Will it have to change? Is there room for the dear old thing in this whiz-bang, breakneck world in which we live?

Come to BookCamp Halifax, and let’s talk about it.

As one of the organizers of BookCamp Halifax 2010, I’m particularly excitied about the event, as I’m seeing it come together first-hand, watching the registrations come in and the session leaders step forward. My co-organizers—Kimberly Walsh (East Coast by Choice), Ryan Jones (Clear Mirror Editorial), and Robbie MacGregor (Invisible Publishing)—are all pumped to meet everyone and hear what discussions emerge from this confluence of content creators and consumers.

If you haven’t registered yet, go to our Eventbrite registration page and grab a free ticket now. Seating is limited, so don’t delay. Call now. Operators are standing by. Offer void where prohibited. Some restrictions may apply. This is not a solicitation where prohibited by law.

Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.

Okay, sorry. Back to the topic at hand.

Just ignore that last bit. There aren’t any restrictions, really, but we’ve had to limit attendance to three-hundred. So, yeah, the “don’t delay” part is right.

Just to give you an example of the types of things that BookCamp Halifax has in store, Kimberly and I will be leading a discussion about on-line writing communities. There are a ton of them out there, and as my readers know, I’m an active member of Protagonize.com, which is a collaborative writing site for creative writers. I’m looking forward to talking about this whole concept and how it affects writing and publishing.

This should be a fun, interesting, informative, and social day. We hope to see you there.

Okay, back to the planning.

Don’t forget to leave a light on.

(Here’s a clip of my friend Nick Bouton talking about his baby—one of my favorite websites—Protagonize.com at BookCamp Vancouver back in October 2009.)

I do have a topic for today, but before I get to it, I feel an odd compulsion to share with you the rather bumpy and circuitous route by which it arrived in my brain. Synapses work in mysterious ways, and this is a fairly good example.

Bear with me here. The link density in this first bit will be rather high.

One of my Twitter friends, who goes by the handle @AliasGrace (and whom I met in person for the first time at PodCamp Halifax two weekends ago), has a blog entitled East Coast by Choice, for which I wrote a guest post three weeks ago. She’s had a number of guest posts over the time she’s been blogging, the most recent of which, entitled “The Death of Barrington Street?” and written by Paul MacKinnon (Twitter handle @downtownpaul), was a really interesting read.

Paul’s post mentioned a number of well-known buildings on Barrington Street, but the one that caught my attention was the Green Lantern building. Now, being the geek that I am (you knew that, right?), you’d think I’d have known Halifax had a Green Lantern building. For some reason, though, I didn’t remember the name at all. But, of course, I was tickled by it. So I went to my dear friend Google to see if I could find some pictures.

And find them I did. The Coast (our local artsy/cultural/gritty/emo/freebie newspaper) has an article about the building, complete with historical pics from the time when the building actually housed the Green Lantern restaurant. The building’s official name is the Keith building, and it currently houses Pogue Fado, a traditional Irish pub. Nice to know the green is still there, anyway.

Still with me? Good. ‘Cause I’ll be getting to the point any second now.

When I looked at those pictures of the Green Lantern restaurant, taken in 1941, I very nearly audibly sighed. The shiny newness of the tables, counters, seats, and fixtures made me want to step into the images and experience what it would have been like to sit there, order a meal or a coffee, and watch the people go by. It all just looked so… nice.

How weird is it to suddenly feel nostalgic for a restaurant that opened a couple of decades before I was even born? Well, it did operate into the sixties, but I don’t remember ever going there. Even if I had, I would have been extremely young, and the shiny newness seen in those pictures would have long since faded.

The whole experience of finding these photos and reacting so strongly to them reminded me of how much we romanticize the past. I know I often think fondly of times gone by and wonder what it would be like to visit times before my birth. Sometimes I want to pick a spot, stand there, and move progressively back through the years so that I can see the changes unfolding backwards.

Intellectually, I know that the past was not better. Previous years of my life all had good points and bad points, ups and downs, high and lows, just like the present time does. And some day down the road, I know I will look back upon 2010 with the same gauzy filter through which I now gaze upon my childhood.

So why do we do it? Why do we remember selectively? Why do we idealize past events and put them up on pedestals built of nostalgic longing? Why do we filter things so much? Is the present really that bad?

Well, I have my theories about that.

From what I’ve observed, people tend to get more nostaligic as they get older. This applies not only to people I’ve met, but also to myself. The older I get, the more stuff I have in my head, and the more stuff I have in my head, the less attention I have for the world around me, and the less attention I have for the world around me, the faster time seems to zip on by.

Remember when you were a kid? (Yes, let’s get nostalgic for a moment here.) Remember how long the Christmas break was? Remember how long the summers were? Remember how each school day dragged on and on? Time was different then. There seemed to be more of it. Even the pleasant days lasted longer.

That’s because there was less stuff in your head back then. Less worry. Less planning. Less responsibility. Less distraction from the moment. You were free to soak it all up, see it for what it was, without all the voices in your head tearing your attention away from it.

We talk about the carefree days of childhood. And for a lot of folks, that’s pretty much what they were. Obviously, not everyone has the same experience. Childhood was a nightmare for some people, and they look back with a different filter entirely. But for many, thinking about childhood brings back fond memories. We might not have been free of cares, but we certainly had less of them.

As we grow older, however, and accumulate knowledge, skills, and responsibilities, our attention is more frequently hauled away from the here and now. And so the present becomes something less than it could be. We miss the moment because of our inner time travel. We fret about the past and worry about the future. We go over and over things we might have done differently and try to plan things we can’t possibly control.

And suddenly, the present is not so great. But it’s not the present’s fault. We’re clouding it with hurts from the past and uncertainties from the future. The poor present moment doesn’t stand a chance.

And therein, friends, lies a profound irony. As much as we look back on certain past events with pink gauze over the lens and sigh about how much better things were back then, we are simultaneously corrupting the present moment with ghosts and shadows of past events that just weren’t that shit-hot at all.

Today, I purchased a book entitled The Secret Pulse of Time. It’s a science book, and it looks like it’s going to be an interesting read. I’m looking forward to it, because, well, I’m a little obsessed about this whole time thing.

As I’m sure many of you are as well.

Don’t forget to leave the light on.

(And, in keeping with the nostalgia theme, not to mention the time theme, here’s a live performance of “Time” by Pink Floyd.)