Favourite Site or Blog for Humour
Noise to Signal (http://socialsignal.com/n2s) – Rob is one talented dude. n2s feels like it’s about my life. Invited Rob to do standup at Northern Voice party.

Favourite Site for Events
Vancouver I am (http://vancouveriam.com) – Johanna Duprey about to rock yer world! Flyin low under the radar, gettin’ shit done.

Favourite Food Site, Directory or Blog
Scout Magazine (http://scoutmagazine.ca) – My award in this category goes the Old Kid on the New Block. Andrew Morrison is doin’ a great job with Scout.

Favourite Multi-Author Site or Blog
The Tyee (http://thetyee.ca) – several good contenders in this category including Beyond Robson and Sexy in Vancity… but while still kinda ‘not getting it’ The Tyee fills a big whole in the blogoworldisphere and readin’ it makes me smarter.

Favourite Site of Blog for News
Now Public (http://nowpublic.com) – bein’ innovative on an international level from right here in Vancouver earns these guys the award in the news site category.

Favourite Photo Site or Blog
Kris Krug (http://staticphotography.com) – Haha… whatcha gonna do? No seriously tho, I’m friends with every nominated photographer in the category and not lookin’ to start a war. Love to all! Vancity Allie (http://vancityallie.com), Blue Olive Photography (http://blueolivephotography.com/blog), Tiny Bites (http://tinybites.ca), Raymond Chou (http://raymondchou.ca), Julia Kozlov (http://juliakozlov.wordpress.com), Jerk with a Camera (http://jerkwithacamera.com), Sakura Photography (http://sakuraphotography.com/blog), Lisa Bettany (http://mostlylisa.com), Waxy Photography (http://waxyphotography.com), Marc L’Esperance (http://luxmatic.com), Jackie Connelly (http://jackieconnelly.com), Basil Gazing (http://basilgazing.wordpress.com), Carol Browne (http://carolbrowne.com), Tyler Ingram (http://tyleringramphotos.com)

Favourite Site or Blog for Politics
Matthew Good (http://matthewgood.org) – in general political blogs grate on my soul but Matt Good does a wicked job with his blog/site/community where he provides insights and analysis on world affairs from a very personal perspective.

Favourite Sports Site or Blog
Ha… I don’t have a favorite sports site or blog.

Vote: Best Style/Fashion Site or Blog
In this category we have a tie between Terri Potratz (http://theconveyorbelt.com) and Victoria Potter (http://demicouture.ca). Hear me now believe me later I think Vancouver blogs stand out in this category. Victoria and Terri have both done an exceptional job developing their voice on their sites. I tune into to both just to read their wit and humor on the topics they cover. Good job guys!

Favourite Tech Site or Blog
This is a tough one as Boris, Steven, Alexa, and Tod are all smart cookies… but the winner in this category and overall winner for most improved goes to the peeps over at Techvibes (http://techvibes.com/blog).

Favourite Audio/Video Blog or Podcast
In this category literary superstar Dave Olson’s Gravelly Beach (http://gravellybeach.wordpress.com) narrowly edges out Uncleweed’s epic stoner adventures on Choogle On (http://choogleon.com).

Favourite Personal Site of Blog
First off I’d like to point out there are like 500 nominees in this category. *sheesh* Pls I don’t want hate mail from all the looooosers. Let’s all play nice. In light of all the awesomeness represented in this category I’ve decided to pick my top 3. The winner in this category are……. ….. …. .. Derek Miller (http://penmachine.com), Alex Waterhouse Hayward (http://alexwaterhousehayward.com/blog/blog.html), Duane Storey (http://duanestorey.com). Derek is brave and inspiring, Alex is creative and insightful, and Duane is interesting, funny and I like his code.

Favourite New Site of 2008
Scout Magazine (http://scoutmagazine.ca) – this years only double award winner is Andrew and Scout.

Favourite Company or Business Blog
Raincity Studios (http://raincitystudios.com/blogs-and-pods) – before you accuse me of nepotism have you read this stuff? About the Olympics? About Drupal? About jQuery? About community building? About uses of technology for mission-based work/social change? I’m proud of the work we do here and happily give the award to the whole RCS crew that contributes to making it one of the best corporate blogs I’ve ever seen. *assslap*

Today was an interesting day. I went to the protest in the video above. I had friends, bloggers, who i respect, on both sides of the line: Jonathan Narvey wearing his Star of David shirt supporting Israel on one side and Sean Orr lookin like a commie-pinko-hippy-faggot on the Palestine side. Both are smart, articulate, compassionate guys but this is a topic on which it seems there is little common ground and the two found them hollaring accross the street at each other before they recognized each other.

I spent time filming on both sides of the straight and while we were hanging out JNarvey asked me what my take on this all was. I paused for a good long while, choosing my words careful in order not to become snared in typical rebuttals or knee-jerk responses. My answer was something like…

It makes me sad that in 2008 there is a such an immovable mountain of a conflict whose central tenants seem to be based on racism and religious intolerance. On both sides. All sides.

I feel sad and my had hangs a lil lower every time I hear about an escalation of the violence in the middle east. I like to be positive and optimistic in general and am frustrated not only in the terrible things that are taking place in terms of violence, but also that we don’t seem to even have the institutions in which we can seek forgiveness and resolution. I’m disappointed in all of us.

Sean’s post.
Jonthan’s post.

Tags: israel, palestine, gaza

The Raincity Studios crew is heading south again this year to the geek-tacular spring break conference SxSW Interactive in Austin, Texas. We’ll have a trade show booth, make shows at the Studio SX, and of course throw the SxNW party with our pals. More on these topics later, today is to announce the China business panel.

China Business Panel

Last year I moderated a panel called "Blame Canada" and this year I’ve been selected to moderate another panel. I’ve assembled an all-star group and planned a choice of topics which I’ll get into. But first the details so you get it into your calendar now.

This year’s panel is titled: "International Business for Fun, Profit and Revolution – The misconceptions and conundrums about doing web business in China" and the date is Monday, March 16 (time and place TBD).

Here’s the gist: There are myriad misconceptions about doing business in China, but with a massive market, talented workbase and intriguing culture, there are also many compelling reasons for entrepreneurs to consider expanding their enterprises to Asia. A panel of experts debate and discuss the pros and cons and answer the practical questions about doing business in China.

The Roster

Panelists:

1. Christine Lu, Founder of The China Business Network & Host, The China Business Show (christinelu twitter)

2. Andrew Lih, a new media researcher and writer based in Beijing, China (fuzheado twitter)

3. Dan Harris, International Lawyer, editor of China Law Blog (danharris twitter)

4. Sage Brennan, Co-Founder, Mobile Monday Shanghai (sagebrennan twitter)

Moderator: me dammit! (Kris Krug – Raincity Studios) (kk twitter)

Topics

An hour goes by fast on stage so I want to get your opinion on which topics are most important to cover. Whether you are actively running a business in China like Raincity CEO Scales (who is also China Desk Editor for Now Public) or someone who’s recently travelled to China with an eye towards business like Robert Scoble and/or Mike Butcher or others from the China 2.0 Tour like Dutchproblogger Ernst-Jan Pfauth.

I want to know what you want to hear. Which topics below do you find most compelling? What’s missing? Which would you hate to miss out on? Which seem like a waste of your time?

Chime in with a comment below with your thoughts on any of these ideas:

1. Setting-up shop: i.e. How does one work through the byzantine permits and bewildering paperwork? What’s required? What are the business structures? How do you find partners?
2. Practical Living: i.e. How do i eat, sleep, breathe, live etc.? Info on visa types, language and business resources, etc.
3. Ethics, culture, values: i.e. How does one resolve the personal social/political tension created when doing business in a foreign country with policies you don’t agree with or don’t understand? Why does the West think about China in the way we do?What does China think of the west these days anyhow?
4. Risk & Reward: i.e. Why should I bother expanding to China? What’s in it for me? money, glory, adventure? What is the profile of tech labor force in China? What are the business benefits of outsourcing to yourself? What are the dangers/drawbacks of doing business in China?

Recap:

• China Business Panel, SxSW, March 16th (time tbd)
• Leave a comment about the topics you wanna hear
• Party on at SxNW, March 16 at Iron Cactus (FB Event)

Tags: sxsw,, texas,, china

Before running headfirst into 2009 we wanted to take a minute and reflect on all the awesomeness that was 2008 for us here at Static Photography . Let's start by saying this has been one of the most exciting and diverse years ever in terms of the projects we've been able to work on.

Over the past 12 months we made time to raise money and volunteer hours for charity, organize the photography for Vancouver Fashion Week and BC Fashion Week , attended the summer Olympics in Beijing, and had photographs published in National Geographic just to name a few. Some highlights of 2008 include:

Three times this year Static shot for the Arson catalog. The shoots are always a blast and we always get some great shots for them. Keep a look out for the Spring 2009 looks from Arson comin out soon and check out Spring 08 and Fall/Winter 08 to see our work.

Static Photography's Kris Krüg exhibited photographic works at no less than 4 shows this year., check out the blogs to get all the details.

1. Timeraiser was an art auction where the guests bid with volunteer hours for their favourite local charities. Kris's photo sold for 100 hours and contributed to the 6000 hours raised that night!
2. Body Language Exhibition – Photos and videos showing the art and discipline of movement were shown at the interurban Gallery.
3. The Art of Giving was an auction for charity at the new ORB clothing store in Kits. Money raised went the the buyers choice charity.
4. The Cheaper Show was in its second year and it was a huge success again. Art lovers lined up around the block for the chance to get great art at a great
   price.

In terms of publications, we spent a lot of time this year working with big, international magazine and hope to continue to have the opportunity to shoot with more world class names in the future. A few highlights include:

1. Rolling Stone – He shot Jack White and the Racounteurs when they were playing in Vancouver for Rolling Stone.
2. National Geographic – At Pop!Tech 2007 Kris got a photo of Zinhle Thabethe that was then published in Nationial Geographic Feburary 08.
3. New York Press- While at SXSW Kris got some great shots of R.E.M and one of Micheal Stipe made front cover of the New York Press.

Throughout the year Kris had photos published in Canadian fashion and music magazine ION and took the position of Online Editor this summer.

We also had the opportunity this year to participate in both Vancouver Fashion Week and BC Fashion Week in the role of Director of Photography for both events. Check out therunway images over at Flickr. Vancouver Fashion Week – Spring/Summer 09 BC Fashion Week – Spring/Summer 09 Vancouver Fashion Week – Fall/Winter 08

August 2008 was the Summer Olympics in Beijing, China and Kris was there representing Static Photography . His photographs from the event are beautiful and unique and he had two photo essays fromt he Olympics published in the LA Times . Steets of Beijing and Faces of Beijing . Check out the photos on Flickr.

2008 kicked a whole lotta ass and 2009 shows no signs of slowing down. We just booked our tickets for New York Fashion Week in February. w00t! Thanks to all our friends and family for your ongoing love and support.

In light of this I had been spending a lot of time listening to SeeqPod. Seeqpod allowed you to search and then stream any and all music ever recorded and stuck online. It was amazing. You could create playlists of stuff you liked, save them, and share a link to them on Twitter or wherever.

Over the weekend Seeqpod stopped working. I am sad. I’ve heard they might be trying to sell their music search technology to the record companies instead of being sued of existence by them.

Either way I need to find a new source to get my fix.

Here’s some rad sites and services I’ve discovered today as I look for a new place to get rad music, from any machine in the world, anytime I want it…

Hype Machine – Mashup of music blogging and tastemaking with streaming of the songs people are writing about and favoriting. Music hipster online hangout.

8Tracks – make streaming online mixes of other peoples music and share them easily around the web. “8tracks is a simple way for people to create or listen to a mix, a short playlist containing at least 30 minutes — roughly 8 tracks — of music. ”

GrooveShark – Fancy streaming and sharing web application. The founders are on Twitter. Their site crashed my browser. *whine*

Songza – Music Search Engine and Internet Jukebox

FavTape – Lotsa lotsa music to stream online. Super lightweight and sexy interface. Love their Top Lists. iTunes Top 100, 2009 Top 100, etc.

FoxyTunes – search and streaming embedded into a browser plugin for Firefox. I try to keep my Firefox plugin free.

Musicovery – Music discovery app that stream on your mobile device. Concept is cool but it needs some love!

In an effort to catch everyone up on what we’ve been up to lately we’ve posted a series of recap blog posts over on our site. In the near term we’ll be updating our portfolio, pulling together an accurate client list, and exploring other creative ways of getting our work in front of the right people. We’ve been working really hard on getting this ship in shape for the future as well as shooting almost everyday.

As a part of making sure that our studio runs like a well oiled machine we’ve brought on Danielle Sipple as our Studio Manager. She’s been working on photo editing, photoshoot production, estimating, invoicing, and promotions. She’s awesome and if you work with me and the team over at Static you’ll likely meet her.

Here’s what some of what we’ve been up to lately…

Mercedes-Benz New York Fashion Week (NYFW) 2009 – Our first trip in February of this year was Mercedes–Benz New York Fashion Week in the amazing city of NYC. Static photography traveled with local Vancouver fashion writers/bloggers Shallom Johnson of Stylefinds and Terri Potratz and of The Conveyor Belt .

South by Southwest 2009 – Band & Live Music Photography – The next big trip for Static Photography was traveling down to the southern section of Austin, Texas for the yearly festival of South by Southwest . SXSW includes four days of Interactive and Film followed by four final days of Music.

Portraits of World Changers for Renewal Partners – At Static Photography we not only shoot fashion photography (catalogs, lookbooks, editorial, runway, etc) and music photography (album art, publicity shots, live concerts, etc) but we also shoot headshots and portraits with for all sorts of people, projects, and companies.

Creative Class Gets Together at Pecha Kucha Night 5 in Vancouver – Translated as the sound of conversation Pecha Kucha is the optimized vision of creative presentations. At every Pecha Kucha Night around the world, each presenter is allowed 20 images shown at 20 seconds a piece, with a grand total of 6 minutes and 40 seconds for their entire presentation. Having this time limit really keeps presentations down to just the good stuff.

This was the fifth time that Pecha Kucha has happened in Vancouver . Kris Krug was chosen with 11 other presenters to speak on varying topics. Krug’s discussion was a visual handbook on open-sharing . He was positioned along side Rex Weyler ’s photo presentation from the startup of Greenpeace , Dolly Hopkins ‘ discussion on her involvement with the Illuminaries Festival , and Shawna Cox ’s documentary adventure with the desert races.

Mentoring Photographers & Teaching Photography Workshops at the Purple Thistle Youth Collective – The Purple Thistle is an awesome space designed for and by unschooled youth in Vancouver. Ranging from 11-25 kids from all over come to the Thistle to create art, hold workshops, learn from mentors and discover the social nature of being involved in a collective.

Matt Hern started the Purple Thistle back in 2001 with 7 teenage youth. Carla Bergman is an adult mentor who helps the youth run the collective today. Carla is also the founder of Rain zine which features art and writing from youth at the Purple Thistle as well as us at Static Photography .

Lotsa other stuff goin’ on out there for us too but no time or space for it here. Follow me on Twitter. See ya soon!

Christine Lu and Sage Brennan decided to organize the first TEDxShanghai which was also the first TED event ever in China. I was asked to speak at this all day event which was sponsored and held at M1NT, a unique shareholders’ nightclub in Shanghai. TEDxShanghai was scheduled the day after BarcampShanghai, which was the main crux of the Shanghai schedule for the Geeks on a Plane tour.

Chinese African Drum Circle – TED Shanghai from kris krug on Vimeo.

I was really excited and nervous about presenting at TED in Shanghai but was able to prep my ‘Open Everything’ talk that I gave at PKN5 a few months back for the event. They placed me last in the list of speakers for the day, defining my talk as a perfect closing keynote. My anxiety of the day was eased by the other amazing line-up of speakers and musicians that preceded me in the programming.

The program included Jason Hsu and Kevin Peng, who started TEDxTaipei, talking about Youth 3.0, Isaac Mao talking about the Sharism Philosophy, Mihela Hladin talking about the Common Sense Index, An Zhu talking about his 1KG concept of travel, Stefano Negri talking about China’s urbanization, Su Yunsheng talking about architectural artistry, Mao Jihong talking about his documentary and his work in the textile industry, Dave McClure talking about Money 2.0, Andrew Lih talking about designing the Internet’s new Public Spaces and four university students talking about topics from animation, free trade and neuro-science. The day’s event also included three performances by local Shanghai musicians: JAMMALA, a drumming musical group, Zhou Yunpeng, a blind troubadour who has an incredible life story and Ginger & Greg, pioneers in the Shanghai jazz scene.

This was the first event TEDx event in China and was broadcasted thru a live video stream on Tudou. All of the talks were recorded and some of them will be selected for the TED website. The Shanghaiist wrote up a great article covering the event and all of the day’s happenings. It is planned that TEDxShanghai will happen a few times a year, with the next one being scheduled in September/October.

Despite all of my anxiety the event went off without a hitch and I really think that my ‘Open Everything’ talk was a great way to end the day. I have already started brainstorming the planning for the next TEDxShanghai with Sage, Christine and Andrew. A geek never sleeps I guess.

UPDATED: The SXSW Panel Picker has been released! You can cast your vote for this panel here! Voting ends September 4th.

So it is a very exciting time of year when the official Panel Picker form is released for panel pitches for the Interactive section of the SXSW festival in Austin, TX every March. The crunch time, once the panel pitch form is released, is a mere two weeks which can cause quite a flurry of ideas. The chaos is worth it for I have had the chance of participating in some really amazing panels at SXSW.

Last year at SXSWi I had a chance to moderate a China Business Panel with Christine Lu, Sage Brennan, Robert Scales and Andrew Liu. Our panel focused on incoming new businesses emerging into the Chinese business/tech economy and practical suggestions/advice for such business advances into such a potentially unknown market. The panel was really well received and the session was just jam packed with information. The year before that I moderated a panel called “Blame Canada: 7 Ways We’re Ahead in New Media“. In 2006 I participated in the “Snakes on A Mutha Fuckin Plane” panel.

Also last year at SXSWi, my good friend Dave Olson, aka uncleweed, gave his amazing presentation titled ‘Fuck Stats, Make Art‘ which gives practical advice to all artists everywhere of how to bypass the numbers and statistics and focus on doing what we love the most: making art. Dave is a fantastic story-teller, often utilizing props and hand-painted crafted signs to aid in his presentation. ‘Fuck Stats, Make Art’ was nothing short of a visual journey down the road of inspiration.

This year, the deadline for the panel picker was extended by an extra two days! The whole internet who was holding its breath to get it in for the midnight deadline, breathed a gigantic sigh of relief I am sure. Those two extra days gave me time to prep the finishing touches on the two panel pitches that I entered into the voting selection.

The first panel was titled ‘Robots have ears, too: Listening to the Internet’. This panel was pitched as a panel discussion with myself, Amber Case and Randall Fishkin as participants.

The (long) description of the panel:
This session discusses how to use listening to the internet as a strategy and move beyond the basics and into the advanced methods of using cyborg technology to do your work. By setting up personal dashboard for tracking topics across multiple channels, and automating advanced searches to surface conversations before competitors, you can actively participate expeditiously (and appear to do the work of 50 people!). Further, by fostering multiple publication streams, you can tailor and spread your message with significantly more impact than (yet another) corporate blog.

Listening and tracking strategically allows you to base corporate decisions on data, instead of relying on hunches. Once you engage in listening to the internet, the next step is building a concise strategy of how to listen to the streams of information that are coming in. Utilizing a personalized platform that brings the information to you, it is in your hands how you track that information, what dialogue is created from what you are listening to and how you weed out the unnecessary noise. This new approach to interacting with the digital world inverts and redefines the action of searching the internet. You no longer search the internet, for with robot technology, the internet searches for you.

The pitched (short) description:
A blog, google alerts and Twitter aren’t enough to compete anymore. We take social media beyond the basics and into advanced cyborg technology Set up a personalized platform that will help you make decisions on data, not hunches. Filter out the noise and let the Internet build your brand.

Ten Questions to be answered during this panel:
1. Why would you want to listen to the internet?
2. How to train your “ears”?
3. How would you set up search aggregation dashboards?
4. How to make cyborgs/robots your friend?
5. How do we understand trending topics and popular vernacular?
6. How do I make sense of the information in the boardroom?
7. Besides the obvious, what channels should i track?
8. Why is this information important other than for PR?
9. How does this new way of “listening” change our way of “talking”?
10. What might the future of search look like?

After submitting, it is merely a waiting game. Voting begins in a few months!

UPDATED: The Panel Picker for the SXSW festival has been released! You can vote for this panel here! Voting ends September 4th.

I often talk about the internet theory that the web is being moving from a web of pages to a web of streams. We are all familiar with the traditional method of internet content being hosted on sites specifically. The new method is how our identity is being dictated by the individual streams we leave behind on the web. I really wanted to give this talk in a discussion session at SXSW Interactive 2010.

The panel that I pitched was titled ‘Your content is you, your website is dead’. This panel was pitched as solo session with just me.

The (long) description of the panel:
The structure of our identities are constantly evolving at the speed of the evolution of the Internet itself. The web site is no longer the only place to build your online reputation. It is becoming more apparent that the destination is less important than the artifacts along the way. We’ve moved from a web of pages to a web of streams in which your online identity and its subsequent creations live decentralized in various eco-systems, communities and contexts. Your stories – whether as photos, audio/video, words or code – live everywhere/nowhere. Not only in static destination pages per se, your stories are a combination of the footprints and interactions it leaves behind everywhere.

The stories you comment on, favorite, tag, and share says more about you that your .com. In this panel/lecture/conversation, photographer and Internet future thinker Kris Krug will discuss examples of your content taking on a life of its own, why this happens and, most importantly, why this matters. The issues will be examined through the multiple lens of identity, IP/copyleft, cyborg anthropology, cultural remix, and the sharing of his massive personal photo catalog and the resultant relationship and opportunities.

The pitched (short) description:
The stories you comment on, favorite, tag, and share say more about you that your .com. Join photographer and internet future thinker Kris Krug as he discusses how the destination is becoming less important than the artifacts you leave along the way.

Ten Questions to be answered during this panel:
1. Who are we on the Internet?
2. Why do people want to control their identity?
3. Why does some content “take off”?
4. Why not keep everything in a silo?
5. Why should I give my stuff away?
6. Why can’t I control my own identity?
7. Why should I share my life/artifacts?
8. So is this just RSS you are talking about?
9. How can I share my stuff to gain a wider audience?
10. How does CC licensing make sense for artists?

I definitely wasn’t the only person from Vancouver that was submitting panels this weekend. Dave Olsen, aka uncleweed, submitted two panels as well. The first one is a solo discussion titled ‘Hitchhiking to the Boardroom‘ with helpful knowledge taken from along his travels. His second panel pitch is titled Rock n Roll Photography. This second one would be a panel discussion with myself, international photographer Bev Davies and others, with Dave as moderator. This panel would be an extended version of the one we did at Northern Voice 2009 called Rock n Roll Photo. Very excited for all of these panels!

photo by penmachine

Now it is just a (fun) waiting game. Voting starts on August 10th until August 28th! The public voting counts for a major part of the winning panels selected for the SXSW Interactive Conference 2010!

When you live in Vancouver, summer time is all about spending time on the Gulf Islands and this summer is no different. I just got back from a seven day adventure on Cortes Island which five of those days was spent at Hollyhock at the Summer Gathering. The Summer Gathering is an invitational conference that gathers the best thinkers, activists and social change agents from around the world! Artist Chris Jordan, scientist Rupert Sheldrake, wordsmith Rachel Bagby, photographer Kevin W. Kelley, filmmaker Bill Weaver, social technologist Leif Utne, engineer Jeff Vanderclute, and educator Rennie Keats were just a few of the participants of this event.

The entire week was hosted by Rick Ingrasci who specializes in consciousness research and poverty eradication activist Torkin Wakefield. Each day started off with an opening circle invocation, a series of morning talks that were organized around a specific topic and then an afternoon of offered workshops from all of the 120 participants.

The morning sessions included talks like global climate change with Tzeporah Berman, student activism with Michael Cox, living with hope and a spirit of possibility with Pravin Pillay, the support & healing of marginalized people with Aqeela Sherrills, the destruction of the world’s oceans resulting from plastics with Chris Jordan and Manuel Maqueda, global peace and social justice with Dot Maver, aboriginal and first nations issues in Canada, and lots of other super intellectual powerful presentations… thankfully the intensity of the topics was broken up by performances by some of the remarkable musicians in attendance. At any given point I could hear drums beating, a flute playing, a trumpet, guitar or even Christen Lien-McArdle’s viola carrying a melody somewhere on Hollyhock.

There were so many really brilliant people here that often times the morning sessions were so jam packed with information. When proposed with what afternoon session to attend, I was drowning in the flow of awesomeness. I managed tho and spent my time attending sessions on akido, climate change activism, creative writing as well as swimming in the ocean and hangin w/ people one on one. I really liked the closing night puppet show by Little Woo for it was a highly creative way of incorporating new media with brilliant story-telling.

I had the opportunity to give one of talks during the ‘emerging cultures’ morning session. I gave my ‘Open Everything‘ talk from Pecha Kucha 5 Vancouver and TED x Shanghai. It was great to be able to share the ideas of free culture and openness with a group of individuals where some had never even heard about Creative Commons. My talk was a lead into an afternoon skills workshop I facilitated with Leif Utne called (New) Media Literacy. This session was a success in the fact that it was well attended but also generated a lot of discussion around new media skills that could be great additional skill sets for all of the other discussions that were generated this week around activism, global issues like climate change, social justice, empowerment through technology and poverty eradication.

The Summer Gathering was also a full week of exchanging ideas and making connections with people from all areas of study to find cross-disciplinary connections. Wilford Welch announced his Beyond Sustainability conference in 2010 which connects the weeks discussions on climate change with the notion of what is really beyond the next step in such a task. Another connection that was announced was Manuel Maqueda and Chris Jordan’s morning talk about the effect of plastic on our society and the devastating effect of it in our oceans. They announced, along with Bill Weaver, that they were taking a trip to Midway Atoll to explore and document the effects of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. This garbage patch is one of the largest collections of plastic and garbage in the ocean and is destroying the local oceanic ecosystem. Combined with the artistic talents of these three individuals plus their drive in activism, this trip will be a huge eye-opening experience for everyone on the downward spiral that is happening to our oceans.

Established over 25 years Hollyhock is a retreat center that hosts many conferences all year round that range in topics from writing, to social entrepenuership, to leadership and philanthropy. Often quoted as providing “learning holidays”, each of the retreats provides information sessions by talented experts in all fields. Their mission statement says that they inspire, nourish and support the people who are making the world a better place. The actual land of Hollyhock is surrounded by beautiful ocean, a flourishing garden full of flowers and 15 different building structures that host the talks, workshops, meditation and sessions for all of their programs. A few really amazing conferences happen at the center are Bill Weaver’s Media That Matters, Jason Mogus‘ Web of Change, Open Everything which was a retreat conference focused on the open culture and Joel Solomon and Pam Chaloult’s Social Venture Institute. I had the opportunity to attend a few of these conferences and the experiences were life-changing.

This September Hollyhock will be hosting Web of Change again. This conference gathers the upcoming leaders and forward thinkers that are involved with social media, technology and the digital world. Started back in 2001 as a smaller gathering on Cortes, Web of Change has just continued to grow every year with the newest addition of Social Tech Training being added to the WoC umbrella. This conference helps leaders and peers to share their wealth of knowledge and become adept with skills in the digital social change area. When I attended in 2005 I was connected with many different people interested in the area of social change in the digital/online spectrum. I learned a lot from these connections. I hope to attend the Web of Change 2009 at Hollyhock!

The original interview appears in 3 parts here:

The Digital Footprint: Lessons from Kris Krug (1 of 3)
The Digital Footprint: Internet Philosophy with Kris Krug (2 of 3)
The Digital Footprint: Kris Krug Educates (3 of 3)

Kris Krug is a technology, idea and thought leader with a strong presence in the digital world. He is also described as ‘a tech-artist, quasi-sage, cyberpunk anti-hero from the future’. The more you get to know him the more that description rings true.

I like to imagine him as a cyber surfer on the front of the wave enabling arts and culture in the internet age. If you’ve never heard of Kris check out his Wikipedia page here. Kris describes himself on kriskrug.com as, “a photographer, web strategist and author based in Vancouver.” Kris speaks all over the world on the topics of technology and the arts. I was inspired by his presentation at Pecha Kucha in Vancouver titled, “Open Everything”. In the presentation Kris talks about the move away from traditional blogging towards a digital footprint.

To Kris the ‘digital footprint‘ is represented by his photos on flickr, his videos on YouTube, his blog posts, links he shares, comments he leaves, interactions he has and comments others make about him. See a digital footprint by googling his name or mine. I am writing with many links embedded in the hopes that if you are interested you will explore and try these tools for yourself. Powerful computing tools are increasingly moving online and Kris knows his stuff. So join me as I go into the mind of a current thought leader for a lesson or two.

When did you realize that technology was part of your vocation?
I really started working with web technology while I was at University. In early 1996 I was introduced to Netscape(?) and I started creating web pages. It was when my Communications professors approached me to build web pages for them that I knew things were really changing. It was an upheaval of the traditional power structure. Normally students want help from professors, suddenly these same professors were coming to me for help with their work. I went onto to create web pages for my professors, to promote and sell books, and the university.

In 1998 I created Spark-online.com, an online magazine exploring electronic consciousness and digital philosophy. It grew pretty big and we were using content management systems before blogging which required us to build new HTML pages every month. 11 years later my life is a continuation of those explorations and the addition of more. I am publishing online and speaking live exploring how we are changing and how the medium is changing.

On Blogging…
When blogging first started it was for everything [pictures, videos, discussions]. Now each of these media has their own tools outside the blog [flickr, YouTube, Twitter/Facebook]. People are no longer blogging every day; comments on blogs aren’t the place for discussions they once were. One great new tool [Disqus] aggregates tweets about a particular post and then includes a link or embeds those tweets into the blog in the comments section. 

Now, instead of writing a blog post after an event I can tweet from the event, post photos and video directly to the web in real time and the day after the event I can do a blog post. I can use tweets from others about the event, embed some of the photos or videos I posted the day before into the post. I feel like we are moving from a web of pages to a web of streams. These streams allow us to aggregate our presence into one central place.

On the Olympics… [from a video of a recent Olympic roundtable w/Kris]

I currently represent “The True North Media House” and we are working to build an independent, alternative media center for the 2010 games. There will be a period of time in the future where the stories we are sharing 20 years after the games will be things that happened online. This is the first Olympics sitting on that brink and I hope to help tip the scales in that way through the organization of this 2010 media house.

KE: You often talk about a ‘digital footprint’, what does it mean to you and where do you see it going?
KK: Every time we interact online we are leaving digital breadcrumbs. These little digital ‘bits’ leave a trail of information about us. We reveal things about ourselves and others make statements about us. This could be what you read, when you favourite a video or post a comment. It’s an amalgamation of what you do online. Even when we think we don’t exist on the net in fact we do.
[Google your name and add your main city of residence to see for yourself]

What do you think of Aggregators? Will that be the digital footprint?

Tumblr is one aggregator but it sucks things from other people and puts it together so it is not necessarily original content. Friendfeed is for your own stuff. These days we aren’t spending all our time in one place online so aggregators do a good job of bringing together our online persona. Our information and activity online makes up our persona. I see aggregators like Friendfeed but with better filters and more ways of making things fit together enabling a true digital footprint.
[Get an idea of how FriendFeed represents the digital footprint at Kris' feed or mine]

Do you see any really good Filters out there?

I am currently consulting for 2010 and the David Suzuki foundation, building custom dashboards. I am running searches for “Cultural Olympiad” through PostRank. It tells me who is saying what about this topic anywhere on the internet. I am also using Netvibes and Yahoo Pipes mixing and filtering feeds, Technorati and Google Alerts to track online content in real-time. The really good filters are custom built for their users to enable the most focused result.

[Also try Social Mention or Twitter Search for tracking internet chatter about your topic of choice]

Should we be using custom or proprietary filters to gather information?
The easiest to use and cheapest solution is good for the average individual. For companies or individuals needing custom in-depth solutions complete with statistics and analytics a custom solution is the way to go. The current market for these custom solutions is a bit of an arms race and the key is to dial in and refine searches and filters. Techniques like keyword segregation and optimization help enable custom solutions to increase the value for users. To those who understand the power of the media, know what’s possible and want to utilize that power will use custom systems going forward.

The internet is an incredibly visual medium, what does this mean for the written word?

I don’t know. Media literacy is very interesting. In the advertising age with TV we saw a movement away from literacy and ads towards visuals and real stories. Young people are continually tuning out traditional advertising. The internet is based on text, HTML=Hyper Text multi-language. It’s all about machines being able to read text and understanding linking and language. We are observing changes in communication. Things may not be better or worse, but they are certainly they are different. The approach to media is changing as media power becomes more decentralized. We are now able to receive many different perspectives, a myriad of voices representing different sides of an issue. Biases are now more explicit compared to the old system where biases were less obvious and people were tuning out advertising a lot less.

What would u like to see on the internet/web that is not currently available?
I would like to see more philosophical dialogue and less pure entertainment, more art and culture and less funny cat videos. I would like to see more true art online, more cultural interaction and above all; more collaboration. Canada Code is a great example. We now get to tell our own stories. VANOC’s people are doing a great job working inside an organization [the IOC] which is resistant to the internet as a means to create culture and identity. I would like to see us reaching out to artists and Canadians because we can tell the best stories.

You are an artist and creator who wears many hats, how do you keep it all in order?

I am constantly trying to do things that I love. I was raised on TV and the internet. My advice is to stay engaged in your passion projects. My love has resulted in my business. I love teaching, photography, geeking, creation, web design and promotion. The tools I am leveraging are fulfilling the promise of greater efficiency for me. I see a drastic increase in digital literacy, but there are still a large number of people who believe that if you reveal info online you will be stalked. This is the fear. Geeks used to be loathed and laughed at. Now there is great credibility to the knowledge that former geeks possess. Any people or businesses that steadfastly stay away from the internet will need a new solution to remain relevant in the digital age.

What about bloggers or creators whose work isn’t really seen by anyone?
In regard to doing stuff that no one sees, if they keep it up people will eventually stumble upon it. Do it for the love of subject matter and it will come; the audience and the money. Learn more about your subject matter and figure out how to use it. I am a firm believer that there are different strokes for different folks. ‘Create your own reality’ with these tools and a community will grow around you if you engage them.

Do you think the sale of the Pirate Bay is a turning point in the proliferation of piracy on the net?

People’s attitudes about piracy are changing. BitTorrent is becoming like TCP/IP to email. In the sense that everyone uses email but few people know its backend is TCP/IP. People will get content anyway using peer to peer sharing. BitTorrent is a way to handle billions of users.

KE: Is web video the new billboard?

KK: A billboard thinks one message is good for all. The internet is the best place to spend your ad dollars because you can customize your message to your audience. It’s the best bang for your buck and you can’t argue with the measurability of it. Billboard analytics are messy at best. They’re hard to track while web tracking and analytics are freely available and very measurable; segment and target. I see more Facebook ads of friend’s businesses. Targeting ads to my interests is pushing me to click more. We want to know more about what we are interested in. Advertisers are picking up on this and making smarter decisions based on that data. -kk Photo Tim Bray
[For great free analytics for your site check out Google Analytics]

In your opinion are Facebook Apps an effective way to engage your audience?
I love connecting other info into my Facebook account using Facebook Connect. Spammy apps, like quizzes, will eventually die off. Smart apps are rad. They can now add cool functionality to Facebook through outside sites and applications. The old way of site transition was difficult and now with various API (application programming interface) I can integrate everything. This is the promise of the internet. Using widgets and linking I can unlock true power by transferring my work, stories and reputation from one medium to another.
[Check out Kris' Netvibes page it is a great showcase of some of his 'hats']
 
You have spoken in the past about the ability to access your all of your personal information online from any internet terminal anywhere on earth, how does that work?

Storage is the essential thing in this concept. Amazon s3 (simple storage services) is the simplest storage area right now. That is where I would store files and information. You can use Plaxo to store all of your contacts online, while videos can be stored in one place and pictures in another. Using web based email access allow you to access your email from anywhere. (Gmail, Hotmail, etc.)

What do you think the iPhone will do to the mobile computing landscape?

The iPhone essentially puts the power of a printing press in your pocket. It has the power of video creation and study with YouTube integration. Oh yeah, it also has access to all of mankind’s knowledge. It allows us to be always connected to everyone and to all the information in the world. All consumers of this product also have the ability to produce as well as consume. It will help bridge the digital divide. With an iPhone I can do 70-80% of the work I normally do on the computer. The iPod Touch and the iPhone are available to a larger group of the people than conventional computers. This fact has the potential to allow a whole new group of people access to computers.

What do you think educational institutions should be doing with new media/social media that you don’t see them doing right now?
A lot of the changes we see in the classroom will be around wikis and online collaboration. Students and teachers are moving towards posting homework online. They are using technology to create roundtables and meetings, to share more freely. The essence of this shift is the integration of collaboration. I have really enjoyed the benefits of using twitter at events and conferences by putting a Twitterfall on a background at the front of the room. The discussion is democratized and leads to more diverse feedback.

How do you think higher education institutions could be using new media and social media to improve recruiting practices?
Recruiting is only one area where social media should be used. Collaboration is the most interesting aspect of these tools in education. It changes recruiting from a traditional top down system to an inside out system. It’s about drawing people into the real community/culture that is going on around the institution. There is an opportunity to highlight the content being created from inside institutions. It’s about being a storyteller inside the institution not about marketing and sales. It puts the responsibility on the institution to have programs, research and teachers to draw in students in a real way.

What is your least favourite thing about all of these new tools?
I love all of these tools although I can’t see my screen very well at the beach. So I have to be inside too much. The one thing I miss is being outdoors more because this stuff ties you indoors. Also because it’s always on, sometimes it feels like a moving goal post. There is a feeling that, whether we are present or not, things continue to go on without us. It’s hard to get away from. There is no more end of the work day. These tools bring the world into our lives 24/7.

[Kris' photography was brought to global prominence by a bizarre situation where another user attributed his work as theirs.] 
Can you tell us about that incident?
It was back in 2004-5, I had developed an audience online and they had a good sense of the style of my work. Eventually it came to my attention that this young photographer was passing off my work as his. It was obvious that it was my work. I proceeded to blog about it and the blogosphere was angry and pushed back at this guy. The subsequent blog posting was picked up by Digg resulting in over 1700 ‘diggs’. I was then was sent a phony cease and desist order to try and get the post taken down. You see because of the strength of my blog in search engines whenever anyone searched his name this story about how he stole my work and passed it off as his own would come up at the top of the search results.[Three years later the incident is still the top three search results from the thief's name]

He was trying to pull a fast one on the internet, but it didn’t work. Legal academic journals have used this case study as an example of intellectual property rights and the internet. After I was served this fake cease and desist order he has continued to beg me to take down the blog post, but it remains up to this day. At one point I even told the guy that he should change his name, it’s the best option.

Thanks so much for all of your great insights Kris it’s greatly appreciated. I look forward to speaking again in the future. –Kemp Edmonds

For the last two years I have had the opportunity to be the official photographer of Pop!Tech , a 4 day fall conference that happens in Camden, ME. Over the past two years I have shot dozens of speakers while they were presenting on a wide range of topics, including inner-city violence , the fate of the oceans , musical possibility , linguistic theory and emotional robot technology . From musicians to leaders to the change makers of the present world, Pop!Tech has hosted them and I have photographed them.

Pop!Tech started in 1996 as the Camden Technology Conference . Originally it had a more focused theme which was the impact of information technology. Since its creation this conference has broadened its topics to encompassing discussions with world leaders and the social change makers about issues that revolve around the events, media, information and projects that are affecting their lives globally.

Each year Pop!Tech has a designated conference theme in which all of its discussions and talks are more or less focused around; the past few years have seen such themes as "Dangerous Ideas", "The Human Impact" and "Scarcity and Abundance". The entire conference is held in a 19th century opera house which provides a visually stimulating and inspiring environment. Andrew Zolli has been the curator and director of Pop!Tech since 2003 and has helped develop the conference into what is known for today.

There are many different components to the Pop!Tech conference that happen before, during and after the actual fall event. One the really amazing ones is the Fellows Program that has since evolved into the Social Innovation Fellows Program . This program is an intensive training for 10-20 people from around the world that are working on global change through the vehicles of innovative projects with potential widespread positive repercussions.

This program provides the skills in networking, media relations, branding, social media, finances, organizational development as well as many other areas that are necessary skill sets in the work that they are doing. All of the fellows involved in the program also get a chance to present briefly at the actual Pop!Tech conference with additional mentorship for a year following the program. Last year I was also given the opportunity to photograph the Social Innovations Fellows Program, which was its first official year.

This specific conference hosts a variety of speakers and often incorporates music from innovative creative musicians from around the world. Some of the musical highlights from the past years have been John Legend, Amos Lee , Imogen Heap , Zoe Keating , Vanessa German and Abdominal . Each of the musicians presents and performs at the conference which provides a musical interlude between some of the heavier topics.

Between shooting presenters and discussions, I had the opportunity to help out in the National Geographic Photocamp that was held at last year's conference. Whether it was documenting other young and inspiring photographers as they took photos at sessions or general photo assisting tasks like holding up reflectors, I had the chance to share my photography knowledge with others.

Each year the conference hosts so many amazing people from around the world that is definitely hard to pick favorites from all of the various sessions. Each presenter is creatively captivating on the topics that they are speaking upon combined with the vibrancy and impact of their presentations, which are often filled with infinite energetic passion.

Pop!Tech Conference 2007:

Elizabeth Streb is considered an action inventor and presented on her dreams of the future of human body motions.

Jonathan Harris redefines the theory of story-telling thru various platforms.

Van Jones is an activist whose new plan of promoting a green revolution for green jobs instead of jails.

Pop!Tech Conference 2008 :

Frank Warren , the founder of PostSecret, discusses his initial solicitation of people's secrets on the streets of Washington, DC. His presentation was just a snippet of the thousands of secrets that have accumulated into PostSecret.

Malcolm Gladwell , author of the Outliers, discusses what separates the extraordinary people from the average people.

Saul Griffith , inventor, engineer and the recipient of the MacArthur Genius Grant, discusses his own investigation into his personal carbon footprint and the shocking discoveries that are made in that journey.

It is very exciting that I get to shoot Pop!Tech for the third year in a row. This year's conference should be just as amazing as the last two!

TED is a great conference format that is focused on the theme of ‘ideas worth spreading’ in technology, entertainment and design. Showcasing the brightest and coolest minds our times, TED is an all around impressive event that videotapes all their speakers and puts the videos up for free on their TED talks list. They really stand behind their principles of sharing ideas, even if people are unable to attend the highly anticipated TED event.

They just recently announced TED x which is a franchised community version of the bigger TED conferences. They’re encouraging folks to take the spirit and format of TED and have local events focused on the coolest in technology, entertainment, and design. It’s a great concept that initiates community support, discovery and definitely promotes ideas that are worth spreading. I had the chance to speak at TEDxShanghai this past June. It was a great experience to give my ‘Open Everything‘ talk to an international audience in Shanghai and I was surrounded by brilliant local and international speakers that were incredible. TEDx is a great experience and really opens up the TED idea to a broader audience.

It is very exciting to hear that we have a TED x Vancouver event coming up for the first time. Vancouver (and its surrounding area) is saturated with brilliant innovators and pioneers, especially in the sectors of technology, entertainment and design. This event will hopefully be a great presentation of the amazing people and ideas that are coming out of the Lower Mainland. Nominations are now open for speakers and everyone is welcome to throw the names of their favorite heroes in the hat. Here’s some hardworking, interesting, kind peeps that I think would be great to consider as speakers for the event. Some of these people I know, some I don’t know, but either way they’re doing good work and it’d be rad to hear them speak.

Bev Davies is an international rock and roll photographer. She has been photographing live concerts since the 70s and has pioneered the art of capturing the energy of live concerts. Her most famous work is based around the punk scene in Vancouver for the last three decades.

Michael Turner is a Canadian poet living in Vancouver who’s writing explores the concept of the seemingly ordinary adapted from the concept of the means towards a desired end. Turner is also a musician and a film maker.

Carla Bergman is a youth activist who’s theories around working with youth are revolutionary in their dissemination of minority status. She works with the Purple Thistle Youth Collective, the Rain Zine Collective and is part of the Unschooling movement.

Dan Savage is the author of Savage Love, which is an international relationship and sex advice column. Located in Seattle, Savage is poignant in his discussion of sexuality and rounds out explicit controversy with humor and wit of pen.

Irwin Oostindie is a Canadian activist who co-created Under the Volcano, a music festival that has a social-activism theme. He was also the executive director of Gallery Gachet in Vancouver’s DTES which is an art gallery geared to promote DTES resident artists. He is currently the executive director of the W2 Woodwards project that is a legacy project for the new Woodwards building.

John Fluevog is a internationally renowned shoe designer whose flagship store is based out of Vancouver. His designs often push the conventional boundaries of shoewear but have maintained a popularity devoid of mainstream conversion. In 2002 Fluevog opened up Open Source Footwear which allows people to submit shoes designs and if chosen, the shoes are produced and named after them.

Dave Olson is a literary genius that has dabbled into the visual arts as well. Whether it is constructing love letters from a Russian War era to water color paintings of natural settings, Olsen captures the renaissance attitude of the modern day beat generation.

Tzeporah Berman is an environmental activist who lives on Cortes Island. She first began her work with forestation in BC and most of her work was put into national forest campaigns. Lately her central focus has been around Climate Change and has started up PowerUp Canada to spread information to Canadians about climate change.

Tim Bray is a Canadian software developer. He co-founded Open Text Corporation in 1989 which helped create a commercialized search engine. He was also selected to co-edit XML and XML namespace between 1996 and 1999.

Eoin Finn is a yogi instructor who created the wellness portal that is Vancouveryoga.com. He also co-founded the largest yoga-focused fundraiser called the Camp Moomba Yogathon & Blissfest in 2007. He founded Positive Force Yoga System which is framework for a healthy yogi lifestyle.

A few other noteworthy nominations: SFU professor of Communications Richard Smith, semantic web programmer Jim Pick, founder of Happy Planet/Vancouver mayor Gregor Robertson, security specialist Dragos Ruiu, former politician/writer Gordon Gibson, electoral reform activist Shoni Field, and former Minister of Education and Children and Family Development Christy Clark.

It is a pretty amazing time that individual communities can host TED events like these. Hopefully the spectrum of speakers will represent the diversity and awesome people of this area. Make sure to nominate someone! You can find the TEDxVancouver speaker nomination here.

PS. I’m not involved with the planning of TED x Vancouver… just an excited and hyperactive community member!

Mid-august can be exciting for a few things: summer vacation, hot weather, long days. For the geeks of the digital community, this is always a very exciting time of year. It is this time of year that the panel picker is released for panels submitted to the SXSW festival. This year over 2200 panels have been submitted, all of which 300 are selected for the Interactive portion of the SXSW festival. Of the voting system, 30% of community user votes count towards the final selection. The list is quite impressive but it can be a daunting task to sort through all the awesome submissions. I did a bit of wandering through the list and found a few rad ones.

Pretty Rad Panel Submissions:
Tantek Celik – Open Science on Today’s Web
The open movement is growing in all areas and this panel on open science should be a really interesting introspective into how open science will play out in the internet. The idea of developing science in the open and public eye will revolutionize the way science discoveries are made.

Angela Schroeder – Photoshop and Other Photography Tips for Concert Photography
This panel should provide a interesting overview of the basics for live concert photography. Capturing the energy of a live concert can be pretty confusing while worrying about your gear, the lighting and your camera. This should be a rad discussion with tips that can be applied for the music section of the SXSW festival.

Hillary Hartley – Building Your Local Open Government Tribe
The idea of an open government is an important issue that is becoming a reality. Having an open government makes information available at a public level which can create better informed decisions and dialogue.

Tassos Stevens – Beyond “Choose Your Own Adventure”: Theatre meets Games
Theatre is often overlooked when commentary is made about the digital evolution of the arts. Is the next step in theatre a radical one that eliminates the actors and dynamically creates the show from the audience? Sounds awesome.

Roy Elkins – Self-Made: Record Labels Battle Social Media
We are having to rethink how music is distributed. The music industry is quickly evolving and a lot of bands are turning to new media outlets for new ideas of distribution, licensing and representation.

Ian Davis – Set Your Data Free
Data is definitely different than content and this talk should shine some light on data within the context of copyright, creative commons and public domain. Concise talk about data is perhaps one of the few not addressed issues in new media literacy.

Funny Ones (we like clever):
Zain Memon – The Ballmer Peak: How Alcohol Intake Affects Coding
clever insightful discussion about effects of alcohol consumption on coding.

Donnie Davies – God Hates Donnie Davies, But He Loves Viral Marketing
find out how a fake ex-gay christian rock group got picked up by major media outlets and got an opening spot at SXSW.
Andy Gibson – #kebab Presents… Whose Panel Is It Anyway?
creative and disruptive humor about anything and everything, SXSW style.

Vancouver Peeps and their Panels:
James Chutter – Beta Campaigns: Planning for User Driver Advertising and Ubiquitous Participation: Graffiti Streets to Social Networking

Robert Scales – Social Media and the Olympics: A Case Study

Joy Gugeler – Make Friends with Cannibals: Linking Print & Online Publishers

Dave Olson – Hitchhiking to the Boardroom and Rock ‘n Roll Photography

Alexandra Samuel – How to Make Your Users Love You and Are You Smarter Than a Social Media Expert?

John Biehler – Do Cool Kids Leave When the Suits Arrive?

Cecily Walker – Can I Reserve This Book With My iPhone?

Elliott Hurst – Online Community Saved the Radio Star

A few other awesome people who submitted panels: Tara Hunt, Michal Tsur, Pamela Castillo, Sameer Vasta, Tony Walsh, Saul Colt, Christine Lu, Violet Blue, Micki Krimmel and Molly Crabapple.

I also submitted two panels to the Panel Picker.
My first panel is called Listening to the Internet: Online Media Monitering with a full description here. The second one is called Your Content is You, Your Website is Dead with a full description over here.

Thankfully I am not the only one tackling the 2200 SXSW panel submissions to give a list of suggestions! A few others have done the same with awesome lists of their own. Rebecca Bollwitt and Dave Olson provide great suggestions of panels submitted by Vancouverites. TechZulu provides a great listing of panels submitted by people in the SoCal area. Alexandra Samuel gives some awesome suggestions of panels submitted by women.

Phew. That was alot. Have fun voting! (voting ends September 4th!)

Gnomedex is the geek’s geek conference. This single track conference produced by Chris Pirillo and Lockergnome has always provided the best and brightest in high-tech to technologists and enthusiasts alike. This conference is in its ninth year. The first few Gnomedexs were held in Des Moines, Iowa, with a quick crazy year spent in Lake Tahoe and then finally settling into its Seattle home where it has been for the last few years. This conference has always hosted a prolific line-up of speakers and created an experience that is optimum for attendees.

We all get our own electrical outlet and power-strip.

There are some really awesome speakers this year at Gnomedex 9.0. Here are just a few from the rockstar lineup.

Amber Case – Prosthetic Culture
Amber Case is a cyborg athropligist who resides in Portland, OR. Spending her time taming the robots and spiders on the internets, Amber is a wealth of knowledge on human interaction with the cyborg culture. Her talk on Prosthetic Culture will be an interesting look into prosthetics and human interaction with enhancements. Her talk will be the closing session on Saturday at 4:15 pm.

Drew Olanoff – My Cancer is Social
Drew Olanoff is a community director at GOGII who currently resides in Philadelphia, PA. Drew was diagnosed with Lymphoma cancer earlier this year. He has turned the unlikeliest of situations into a new media campaign based around Twitter hashtags called #blamedrewscancer. His full of life approach to a heavy topic has changed the way people interact with new media on topics like cancer. This talk will surely be informational, awesome and might even shake a few tears out of some eyes. His talk will be on Friday at 4:30 pm.

Leah Nelson and Jay Grandin – 20,000,000 vs. 20: Audience versus Impact
Leah Nelson and Jay Grandin are a dynamic duo that are integral components to the video production and media studio Giant Ant Media in Vancouver, BC. Their studio has produced documentaries, micro-campaigns, web series, commercials and even stop-motion productions. They have lots of experience with how numbers can dictate how content produces a general impact and what kind of audience is created in the wake. Their talk will be on Saturday at 11:30 am.

I will be creating a photography showcase/recap of Gnomedex 9.0 on Saturday at 5:00 pm right after Amber Case’s talk. It will be a selected portion of the photos that I will be taking at this year’s conference. It will be an awesome experience to recap live the chaotic events of the conference in real time with new friends and old.

There should be a lot of fun events planned around the Gnomedex single track this year. From parties to networking the events somehow tie all the awesome presentations together to make this two conference the awesome geekfest that it is. One of these events being scheduled around the main track of programming is a photowalk with some professional photographers that will be in Seattle for the conference. Robert Scoble, Chase Jarvis and myself will be heading up this fun outing Friday morning at 7 am. The early bird gets the worm and the best photos.

Just a side note: I will also be booking some photoshoots during Gnomedex this year. This would be the good opporunity for those of you who need to update your headshots / avatars.

Gnomedex is always a blast. Hopefully I will see you in Seattle!

Here is some more information about the geekfest that is Gnomedex:
Kris Krug’s Gnomedex 2005 photos on Flickr
Kris Krug’s Gnomedex 2006 photos on Flickr
Kris Krug’s Gnomedex 2007 photos on Flickr
Kris Krug’s Gnomedex 2008 photos on Flickr
Gnomedex on Wikipedia
Gnomedex on twitter
#gnomedex on twitter

My photograph studio Static Photography has had the opportunity to travel to many different conferences for awesome photographic opportunities! Whether it is shooting portraits at Microsoft Tech Days , or giving a photo recap talk at Gnomedex 2009 , or even heading back to Pop!Tech to be their official photographer, Kris Krug is definitely busy at conferences. Come this November Kris will have the awesome opportunity to lead a PhotoCamp at the first annual [Re]Think Hawaii conference .

(Re)think Hawaii is proposed as an intersection of forward thinking leaders from all corners of the world. Focused around technology, sustainability and business, this five day conference will provide networking events, panels, discussions and other various events to further the discussion. The attendees for this conference will span a wide spectrum of career and business levels, intention levels and motivation levels. Disclosed as a space to retreat from the confines of your daily thinking, meet offline and rethink the ideas that are the crux of your daily life, this conference is sure to be a one of a kind.

This conference is the by-product of the hard-working team of Christine Lu from Cilantro Media and Neenz Faleafine from Pono Media . This dynamic team has helped organize almost all the details of this conference, with some special help from some amazing people from around the world. These two are the main organizers but have delegated international organizers to spread the world to their communities. By connecting global communities in the organizing process they have set the stage for a diverse conference attendance. Kris is also working on a book with Christine titled Chinameme Vol. 1 Shanghai . We are very excited to working with Christine on another project!

This conference will be four days of events that are ensure to inspire and connect all the participants to each other and especially to Hawaiian culture. With a Welcome Party on the first night of the event with an introduction to Hawaiian culture including music, food and traditions. Larry Chiang will be teaching an all day workshop called 'What They Don't Teach You At Business School' . Startup2Startup , which is a group of geeks, entrepreneurs and investors that provide education and help to new internet startups, will be hosting a dinner during the conference. Blogworld will be hosting a Social Media Business Summit on one of the days of the conference. Lead by Rick Calvert and Jim Turner , this Summit will provide information and support for businesses of all sizes. Dave McClure will be running a one day workshop called Startonomics . This workshop, designed by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs, will provide information on how to create metrics that will continue for long-term growth.

Kris will be leading a full day Photocamp during the conference as well. Photocamps are fun because they give experienced and novice photographers a safe and creative environment to explore new territories with their cameras. The day will include sessions on basic photography techniques, low light event and portrait photography, photography and social media, stock photoraphy and then an afternoon photowalk. This kind of camp offer a space for collaboration, information sharing and just general awesomeness. Plus set upon the landscape of beautiful Hawaii, this event is sure to provide amazing scenery for photos.

There are still spots available for this rad conference! If you are interested, you can request an invite here. There is also an Rethink Hawai Eventbrite page that has more conference details. There are day passes available for individual tracks as well as full week passes for the whole conference. If interested, feel free to use the referral code of 'Photocamp'. Whether you attend the Photocamp, a single day of Technology, Business or Sustainability or possibly seclude yourself to the beach for a week and attend the whole conference, this event is is sure to be an inspiring one! From attendees, to speakers to organizers, the island of Hawaii isn't going to know what hit them when all these geeks arrive!

Over the past 5 years I’ve been involved in various event planning and management activities as a part of my community development work. I’m on the organizing committee of Northern Voice & BarCamp Vancouver. I plan regular PhotoWalks and PhotoCamps for photographers in Vancouver and around the world. I helped organize the first BarCamp in China with Robert Scales and others in 2006 and advise and consult to a variety of other events from the Canadian New Media Awards to South By Southwest in Austin, TX.

Before that I when I was working deeper in the corporate world as a Marketing Director for several software companies event managment and tradeshows also fell under my area of responsiblity. I’ve been planning and managing events large and small for over 10 years now.

Here’s my current list of tools I use to help pull together meetings, events, and conferences cheaply, quickly, and effectively….

– EventBrite – manage registration (smaller: Evite & Mobaganda & Meetup)
– PB Wiki – free hosted wiki that let’s attendees connect and organize talks, rides, couch surfing, etc
– BaseCamp – project management for event team, vendors, advisors
– WordPress – free open-source content-management system to power the event website
– Ning – Create a social network for your event
– Flickr – collect photos of event via tags & groups
– Twitter – connect with attendees, sponsors, & the media. monitor mentions of your event
– Doodle – takes the pain out of scheduling meetings with busy people
– Google Apps – docs, alerts, groups, calendars, etc
– Upcoming.org – great place to list events (also ZVents & Eventful)
– Slideshare – give the presentations from your event life and value after the speaker has stopped talking
– NetVibes – create a dashboard from the RSS feeds generated by all of the above

Also check out this great 48-slide presentation shared on SlideShare by Katie Laird:

Thx to friend and collegue Ryan Holmes for wrapping up my tenure as President of Raincity Studios so eloquently.

“Kris is a dynamic figure, often seen scaling walls and crushing ice. He has been known to remodel train stations on his lunch breaks, making them more efficient in the areas of heat retention. He translates ethnic slurs for Cuban refugees, Occasionally, he treads water for three days in a row.

He woos women with his sensuous and god like photography, can pilot bicycles up severe inclines with unflagging speed, and can cook Thirty-Minute Brownies in twenty minutes. He is an expert in stucco, a veteran in love, and an outlaw in Peru.

Using only a large glass of water, he once single-handedly defended a small village in the Amazon Basin from a horde of ferocious army ants. He is the subject of numerous documentaries, when he’s bored, he builds large suspension bridges in his yard. He enjoy urban hang gliding. On his spare time he tirelessly volunteers to help create a better world.
He is an abstract artist, a concrete analyst, and a voracious socialite. Critics worldwide swoon over his prolific flickr account. He is a private citizen, yet he recieves fan mail. He bats 400 and he’s internet famous.

His deft floral arrangements have earned him fame in international botany circles. Children trust him.

He can hurl tennis rackets at small moving objects with deadly accuracy. He once read Paradise Lost, Moby Dick, and David Copperfield in one day and still had time to refurbish an entire dining room that evening. He knows the exact location of every food item in the supermarket. He has performed several covert operations with the CIA. He sleeps once a week; when he does sleep, he sleeps in a chair. While on vacation in Austin, he successfully negotiated with a group of terrorists who had seized a small bakery. The laws of physics do not apply to him.

I shamelessly paraphrased this from someone more clever than myself, but honestly think that 50% of this applies to Kris.”

He posted this to my LinkedIn profile where I’m currently working on updating my resume, CV, and portfolio in preparation for some grants I’m applying for.

photo by gone but not forgotten photographer friend Fiona Garden.

Here’s a rough transcript of the interview:

1. Q: What do you know about photographing people that wish you’d known when you started out?
A: I have shot literally hundreds of people’s portraits, in all types of spaces and environments. Portraits of all different types of people, from various angles. All different kinds. The one thing I have learned from all of this is that you can make a single face look a hundred different ways. There is no “one” way to shoot a person’s portrait. When I started out I was under the impression that there was “one” way to capture people, from “one” specific angle or with “one” particular light source. Granted I am still learning within this particular process because everyone’s face, their everything can be so different from the next that you can’t rely on the same things working from person to person. The beauty of all of this is that you can make a face look inspired or approachable or even prestigious, just from how you capture it. We all don’t have “one” true face but a face that is made up of different parts. I am learning on how to invoke those different parts, specifically focus on them and bring out their attributes and qualities.

2. Q: What mistake do you see beginner photographers making most when it comes to portraits? How could they overcome them?
A: I like to get really close to people when I am taking their photograph. The most common mistake I see is that photographers tend to be too far away when taking portraits. Sometimes you can overcome that by zooming in real close but the better way is to physically get closer to the person you are shooting. It is only when you are physically close, that you can properly interact with with them and then that spark can carry over to the camera.

That’s probably the biggest mistake. But I also see photographers making smaller mistakes. Some portraits are good or fine but could ten times better if the photographer had just taken a second to look around and work with their environment. Whether it is moving the subject into a light or moving something in your background or changing the angle of the shot, those simple things can make a portrait so much better. Just taking a few seconds before you take the photo, that’s all.

3. Q: What advice would you give someone starting out when it comes to interacting with and posing a subject/model?
A: Spending time with the person before the shoot. Like have coffee with them or flip through some magazines to grab a sense of what they are interested for the photos. Getting your photo taken can be very intimidating so it is nice to buffer the shoot with some sort of activity to get to know the person before you dive into taking their photo. You want to get a know a part of them and get acquainted with them like have them tell stories about themselves and show their personality. Some of my best photos of people have been with people that I have gotten to know before the shoot or are at least acquainted with somehow.

4. Q: Can you share one of your favorite portraits with us and how you achieved it?
A: I have three favorites actually:

Malloreigh: During this photo shoot Mallory had brought over a bunch of fun stuff to work with and my studio tends to be a museum/art gallery/flea market so we had a bunch of stuff available. We were just listening to music and having fun really. I helped her pick out a bunch of outfits. During the shoot we became comfortable with each other and just started playing with different props. She picked up their weird old boxing gloves I had and it just worked. All the elements were really strong: her sexy, playful personality, the strength in the boxing gloves mixed with feminine nature of her outfit. Plus the light is great in the shot and it reflect off of her lipstick perfectly. We were just hanging out and experimenting really.

Kim Cathers: Kind like how Chace Jarvis says that the best camera is the one that you have with you, the same goes for the best model you have is the one you are always with. Kim and I had lived together for awhile and we were always carrying our cameras around and taking photos of each other. This particular photo, we had been sitting around, drinking wine, discussing life, love, media and whatnot. It was super spur of the moment but the moment was very comfortable, so I didn’t shy away. It turned out to be a great portrait.

Pete Doherty: I ran into Pete on the streets of London and I didn’t recognize him initially as the musician/rockstar. I just noticed him because of his style really. So I ran across the street and asked him if I could take his photo. The first shot I got I was too far away and it didn’t work. So I just gave him a bit of direction, to move closer and lean in a bit and then the shot turned out amazing. It was really just serendipitous. It was seeing something I liked and then going after it. The round trip literally lasted about ten seconds. I was super happy about the image and immediately stuck it up on my Flickr. I still didn’t know it was Pete Dougherty at this point. The internet quickly let me know who he was though!

5. Q: Could you leave our readers with one last practical piece of advice on shooting portraits that stand out from the rest?
A: In a time where everyone has a fancy DSLR camera and a laptop with the newest version of Photoshop on it, you really have to make an effort to differiante your photos from the next. You literally have to make them special or have them have your own personal fingerprint or signature on them. You can achieve that in many different ways. For me I carry a reflector around with me so that I am able to reflect or manipulate my light in my photographs.

I also have several low end film cameras that are super easy to carry around. I change up my film so that I can cross-process to change the variance in color or make my photos look more grainy, depending on the approach. Sometimes for light sources, I use desk lamps, overhead lighting, lighters, matches, candles, just so I can change the lighting up a bit and possibly redirect it where I want it go. Depending on your camera techniques, whether you use your IPhone, a Holga, or digital and then how you use your available light sources will really make your photos stand out from the rest of them.