Zero 8 was the scene of the crime where the deed was done. It’s a Montreal-based allergy-friendly restaurant that delivered on taste and service. Everyone was so impressed with their dishes and some were struck by the magnitude of the cote de bouef which was compared to that as seen in The Flintstones.

The meatness

It’s no easy feat to feed a crowd of folks well, provide exceptional service and allow the bride and groom to play some pretty loud punk rock towards the end of the evening. The team at Zero 8 went above and beyond in providing us with a memorable occasion and left our guests convinced that this restaurant is well worth returning to again in the future.

The drinkness

The decor of the restaurant is very zen (a complement I don’t give out that often and reserve mainly for zen centres!) and features a bar area that is a giant ‘Z’ which could have been made by a woodsmith version of Zorro.

The Z-ness

The kitchen overlooks the space, but didn’t interfere with the activites in the main dining room, but allowed us to peek in just enough to see what the cooking team were up to.

Menu-wise, we chose to have a mix of dishes to ensure that there was something for everyone. Starters consisted of an endive salad that introduced a new love affair for endives for many of our guests, a warm mushroom and artichoke cassolet and a carrot ginger soup.

Mains were the aforementioned monsterbeef, duck confit and a veggie pesto corn pasta dish which alarmed those who had it without being privvy to it being known that it was corn and not wheat pasta.

Dessert was an orange rice pudding. Now don’t turn up your nose. My description isn’t doing it justice as it was far more complex that I’m making it out to be. I’ll let this photo do the talking.

The team at Zero 8 were fabulous and truly understand that customer service and exceptional food are essential to a restaurant. We noticed that they tucked away a card for us signed on behalf of their staffers congratulating us on our marriage and served us up some champagne on the house as thanks for booking with them.

To close out this rather long post, please drop by Zero 8 if you are in the St. Denis zone and try them out, or be sure to recommend them to any of your allergic friends or those with kidlets with food allergies. It’s important to support local businesses and especially those that are doing such good in the allergy friendly community. I recently watched a news report where a woman was there having a birthday meal with friends and she raised her glass in toast to all of the other folks in the room who also had allergies. Now talk about inclusion.

*****All photos by Taran Matharu

I just recently got hitched a few weeks ago and I’m still getting used to checking off ‘married’ in any forms that I fill out. It just feels so foreign but not in a wrong way. Just in that kind of way when you take on a new role and you set up your sig file.

How romantic.

Speaking to the romantic in me, I had made a vow to myself to keep my grubby hands from posting Tweets about my wedding every 5 minutes. As tempting as it was to share every single heart-bursting, teary-vowed moment, being in the moment with friends and loved ones (as well as the new mister) was more important to me than I could sum up in any 140 character blurb.

OK. So I did check my Twitter feed during supper. And I did tweet once…Proof to the social web that the deed was done.

And it was a pretty good sign that the next day, I had the following tweet..

Beyond all of this lack of tweeting, webstreaming, powerpoint presenting or flickrering up the whole event, getting married really illustrates the power of community. Bringing people together to meet, reconnect and get to know new faces really does illustrate how community is at the center of getting married. I could really have titled the ceremony WedCamp!

Working with some great folks in putting together the wedding ceremony was another area where I got to see some big-heartedness in action. It’s been amazing to work with exceptional folks who provided top notch service, products and helped me to pull off the biggest of any event that I’ve ever put together.

It’s important for me to give thanks to these folks and to also help others discover some great people who have gone above and beyond in helping me out. I can’t thank them enough.

Taran Matharu was our photographer and he was a true professional. He knew how to work our room and brought out the best in everyone. He definately wasn’t one of those annoying wedding photographers that would constantly stick their camera in the faces of the guests. He was a chameloen and fit in perfectly with our family and guests. Taran is highly recommended. I’ll be sure to post some photos soon enough… but here’s one for now.

Part 2 of this post will follow shortly. I started writing it and realized it’s turning into a monster post!

Maybe the reason that so many of us who are online choose one of two roles – that of the troll or that of the protective friend who wants everyone to fit it. Human psychology could lead us to go down one of these paths and I think that based on our life experiences, this leads us to trend towards one lifestyle or another. I realize I may be sounding very black or white in this, but just thinking to my own personal experience, I lean towards wanting folks to feel welcome. I want to introduce all my friends to one another in the hopes that they’ll bond, find jobs for each other, create businesses or just purely share a drink and have someone to laugh or vent with.

I refuse to be the high school girl that gets jealous when the popular girl is invited to the party for fear of her stealing all the attention. There’s room for all of us in this and we all have something unique to bring to the party. Try to examine this in yourself the next time you start to feel negativity towards someone in your network. Ask yourself if they are truly someone who you should be so catty towards? Are they deserving of your negative emotions or should you just whip out some jazz hands and break into chorus with them? That happened this one time at band camp…

In this post, Powazek advocates that for online crowds to be wise, they need the following elements: simplicity, clear interfaces, aggregation, participation, selfishness (yes, selfishness!), scores, leaderboards,  explicit vs. implicit feedback and savvy voting systems.

It’s well worth investigating this post in detail as it does take Surowiecki’s initial thesis and offers up suggestions on how to empower the energy of community with tools to allow it to become effective and truly – wise.

Photo of some wise people at a Montreal Tech Entrepreneur’s Breakfast by Montreal Tech Watch

Thanks to the talented and giggily Anile Prakash for her non-BabaWawa interview style and her skills with the beautiful and omni-directional Snowball microphone.

Photo by Jan Tik http://www.flickr.com/photos/jantik/477005319/

I was recently reading Rue Morgue magazine (one of my favourites) and was struck by the dedicated community that surrounds the rabid group of horror fans that follow the genre. The magazine has a great thing going for it and knows fully that its success depends on the participation of its readers.

By following their Twitter feed and listening to their podcast, I’m engaged with their magazine (and the wild cast of writers, artists and fans) long after I’ve stopped flipping though the glossy print pages chock full of gore and creepiness.

A few weeks ago,I watched a program on the Space Network called ‘Pretty Bloody‘ about women in the horror industry. The editor of Rue Morgue, tattooed hell-goddess  Jovanka Vuckovic spoke quite a bit about the close-knit community of hardcore female fans that, although are small in number, are active and supportive of one another.

Over the weekend I finished reading tattoo artist Kat Von D’s book “High Voltage Tattoo” where, rather than write an entire book on herself, she shared the spotlight with others within the tattoo, art and music realm and gave them mention for helping to inspire her along the way. The book is gorgeous and features photos of the tattoos she worked on from those on her friends, family and rock stars to those of her clients.

What I appreciate so much about these two ladies is their commitment to bringing a sense of community and respect for others as well as their desire to inspire others. By sharing the spotlight with others has helped them to shine even brighter in my eyes.

This group has just melted my heart. Rescue Ink is an organization in which helps fight against animal abuse. The reference to ink relates to the fact that these are highly tattooed, rough necks who are professing their love of fuzzy critters and their hatred for puppy mills and animal neglect.

The concept of tribes is close to my heart as I am a member of many (meetups, groups and gatherings of pug moms, allergic people, punk rock aficionados and girl geeks to name check but a few) . As a member of these groups, I think it’s just in my nature to advocate for collectively working together and helping one another.

(What can I say? I was the kid who shared my 64 pack of crayons in kindergarten.)

In his latest work, Seth Godin examines the concept that great leaders focus more so on the tribe and not solely on the self-motivated ego goals that result from actions they take. He asks us to reflect on ‘How much ego is involved with being a great leader?”- a question which I think should be asked by many who participate in the often navel gazing world of social media. It’s so easy to think that the sheer number of Twitter followers/ blog posts / Facebook friends all matter but in essence what truly matters is the footprint we leave, the number of people we impact, whether we enjoy the work that we do and if the digital traces we leave are positive ones.

This is why I’m not surprised that Seth mentions Buddhist nun Pema Chodron in ‘Tribes’. I’ve been appreciating her work for many years and found comfort in her audiobooks and writings as well. (Looks like from this interview with Seth, he has been a longtime “Pema-fan” too!)

“We work on ourselves in order to help others, but also we help others in order to work on ourselves.” – Pema Chodron

This to me, this quote exemplifies what tribes are all about.