Dave Winer wrote this post about patriotism and highlighted the canadian singing of O'Canada at Gnomedex.
Anyway, the last day of Gnomedex happened to fall on Canada Day, and in celebration, Chris and Ponzi brought out a big cake and the Canadians rose, and sang their national anthem, Oh Canada. I had heard it before, but never in its entirety and for some reason this time it really grabbed me. Patriotism is moving, even when it's not your patriotism. Maybe even more so, because it doesn't get all mixed up with personal stuff, you get to experience love of country through someone else's eyes, and it's really beautiful. But then I saw a friend of mine from Berkeley, Kaliya Hamlin, standing, and singing. I had to look twice and think, and then I remembered, she's Canadian! That's right. I'll never forget that image, Kaliya is tall and strong, opinionated, a bit nutty (in a nice way), a leader, and underneath it all, she's even more different from me than Jackie Robinson was, because she's patriotic to a different country, and Robinson and I are both from the United States.
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</div>This was actually a very moving moment for me to because I have been living in the united states for a about 10 years. I have not travelled back all that often. (In part cause I didn't have the papers to return for quite a while when I was in paper limbo - yes I know what identity issues are first hand). It was just so wonderful to be an American context that celebrated the diversity in the room that included Canadians. I got to sing with my Canadian Geeky friends the anthem in front of our American Geeky friends. We got to share an identity moment together. It was lovely. Since when do you sing anything let alone anthems at tech conferences anyways.
So today I also by chance joined the Canadian Tech Mob.... the trouble is I can't seem to get WP to actually display my recently uploaded sidebar so the code is in there just not 'displaying'.
Related posts:
Unconference.net
