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:

Some people who seem frustrated to have placed below me on the list have questioned my position considering I haven’t posted on this blog since August. True guys. I haven’t. But the list wasn’t called ‘Highest Traffic Blogs’ it was called ‘Most Web Visible’. News flash: We’re moving from a web of pages, to a web of streams. Buy me a beer and I’ll tell explain what that means. In the mean time you may want to check out some of the places I’m visible on the web that aren’t this blog.

• Twitter – my daily microblog updates from my mobile phone. My Facebook status messages also get updated automagically via Twitter.
• Flickr – 20,000 Creative Commons licensed photos and growing.
• YouTube – I love Videoblogging and have posted about 200 episodes. Wish I had more time and better gear!
• LinkedIn – I currate my CV here. 114 endorsements and recommendations from customers and partners and employees and 1000+ professional contacts.
• Dopplr – I’ve been travelling a ton and use Dopplr to publicize my comings and goings and see who will be at the same place at the same time. It’s rad. Check it!
• FriendFeed – Next level geek shit. The way to follow the web of streams.
• Delicious – I still post interesting links and pointers here though I have gotten a bit lazy and sometimes just ‘Share of Facebook’.
• Facebook – A good catchall for my less media savvy friends and family. I point all my streams there. Ends up looking like I spend a lot more time on Facebook than I actually do.

I’m equally delinquent in updating these sites as well but I also blog at Static Photography and Raincity Studios among other places. Anyway, congrats to all the other geeks and nerds who made this list. Don’t listen to the haters and trolls. Much love!

• 1 Darren Barefoot
• 2 Tim Bray
• 3 Boris Mann
• 4 Kris Krug
• 5 Roland Tanglao
• 6 Tom Williams
• 7 Megan Cole
• 8 Rebecca Bolwitt
• 9 Arianna Schweber
• 10 Tod Maffin
• 11 Dick Hardt
• 12 Tris Hussey
• 13 Alfred Hermida
• 14 Matthew Good
• 15 Ian Andrew Bell
• 16 Travis Smith
• 17 Danny Robinson
• 18 Paul Sullivan
• 19 David Beers
• 20 David Eby

Tags: \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

From JJ’s blog…

“Fashion photographer Kris Krug, just back from China Fashion Week, took the time to give some pointers on how to make your snapshots works of art… Follow these tips and you’ll have holiday photographs worth posting!”

Listen to the segment here…

Thanks JJ and happy holidays!

PS. Thx to Vancouver photographer Fiona Garden for the hookup. *squish*

Here’s a video of me talking about photography at Northern Voice earlier this year. It was taken by Robert Scoble of PodTech and has been posted all over the web including over at Digital Photography School where there is an interesting pissing match going on between people who think my video is a good informal intro to photography and the people who think I’m lame because I don’t know where in Germany the glass in my lenses is ground. *smirk*

“there are few exceptionals for sure. but my “personal” experience are here:

dont go to the expensive photography college,they are a ripoff for the posh kids. the most important thing i ve ever learned in college was the zone system, u can learn it in one week for under 20£. i spend hours and days in the darkroom. u can build a make shift darkroom for less than 300£. it cost me 6000£ in the end and delivering pizza with my lomo.

dont assist (specially those famous one)photographer or you will be shooting like him, only if u like to be copycat , or a short cut to the dosh, but believe me u will never be happy( maybe assist several diferent photographes, but then when are you going to do your own stuff??).

to learn how to light things up, just spend time dazing under the sun, you get a good idea about lighting for sure. the rest you will find a way to get it. i build a £50 kino flood or get a flood 500w tungsten light from a construction site, legally.

dont buy any fancy equipments, my £10 seagull twin lens works great with landscape. digital camera and computer are terrible inventions if you dont have the discipline to use it. shoot film first, black and white film and make some mistakes. absolutely no retouching, buy a computer later when u have a client.

have a very very good relationship with as many model agencies as you can…..be nice to your crews and let them create something for you as well. you should have a good feeling in the beginning who you are working with. feed them even just an apple and a banana. charismatic personality get you very far.

dont copy trends or up and coming stuffs or u will always be the one catching up with everybody else. find inspiration in some unlikely resources. if i dont have to, i prefer not to use models, instead my fav. are dancers, actors…..but some great models just had it all…

dont give a damn on what everybody said, photorgaphy comes first, fashion second then the model to fit in the shot, NOT vice verse, maybe equally important sometime but not more important than photography******(only if you want to create a picture with an unique signature of yourself and create a niche of fans and clients, then follow this path)

these are everything i did for the last 8years, and i realized its a long(*)road( not so hard and painful if you are passionate about photography and have some nice pictures sometime) .

make sure you have enough to pay your rent and food, or get your frineds and families to pay for it …. just for a while and dont piss them off, they are a life saver…

and keep on shooting and no retirement plans. ”

Original post by takkytak
Photo by Megan Cole

I'm sure every working photographer probably has their own list. What's on yours?

1. Make sure you get a good night's sleep prior to the shoot. This will help prevent the un-wantedbags under the eyes as well as help give you the patience and stamina that is needed during a shoot. After all, we all look and feel better after a good nights sleep!

2. Your normal diet should include the daily recommended consumption of water. This alone will add greatly to the look and healthiness of your skin.
3. Striking different poses with the same facial expression does little to enhance your portfolio. Spend some time in front of a mirror learning and developing a variety of expressions. You may want to consider studying the expressions and body language of the top models in your field for examples and ideas. If you are just starting out your photographer will be able to share ideas with you.
4. I can appreciate those models, dancers and people in the talent industry that prefer to wear as little make up as possible. However, I prefer to have a make up artist and even possibly a hair stylist on set whenever I am shooting, although this is not always possible due to the pricing package the model has chosen. I am going to include a few make up tips for if a make up artist is not present for your photo shoot.

   If you leave all your other make up at home never go to a photo shoot without your facial powder. The freshly scrubbed face will undoubtedly present undesirable highlights in the nose and forehead. If you are intent on the natural look you can find a translucent powder that will tone down the highlights (consult a make up artist for recommendations). There is only so much your photographer can do with high key lighting and you certainly do not want your images to project a shinny or oily looking skin.

   A matte look can make a big difference in the quality of your headshots. By using a solid foundation evenly blended well into the neck and upper chest area we are able to avoid changes in colors.

   Your eye shadow should be a lighter shade to avoid the "raccoon look". A lighter shade gives a flattering appearance of bringing the eyes forward rather than the unflattering deep set appearance from a darker shade.

   Be sure to carry your hair brush, hair spray, and/or gel to the shoot. Keep hair and jewelry accessories small. Hair styles can make a drastic difference in a model's look.

5. Try to avoid sun tanning just before your shoot. Start tanning weeks before to avoid sun burn and tan lines on the day of your shoot.

Cross posted from my Static Photography blog: Photoshoot Tips for Models.

The real purpose of white balance adjustment is to compensate for the color temperature of the prevailing light source so that your image will show accurate color. Whether you do so by making adjustments on your camera before you shoot or on your computer after you shoot, the objective is supposed to be the same. But rather than stopping there, let’s look at some other, more creative uses for white balance adjustment.

What Usable Content Is

* Usable content is clear and easy to understand.
* Usable content can bridge gaps—things like language barriers, disability and cultural differences.
* Usable content is meaningful.
* Usable content makes the reader feel smart.
* Usable content is goal and audience appropriate.
* It’s thought-out, planned and constantly maintained.
* It’s fresh, light and lively.
* It’s content that is organized in a way that people understand and can get their mind around.
* It’s designed to be accessible.
* It’s reusable and shareable, readily available and easy to locate.
* It’s straightforward, open and honest and to the point.
* It encourages feedback and is engineered for conversation.
* It’s hard work, but worthy of the job.

What Usable Content Is Not

* Usable content is not clever, obtuse or misleading.
* It’s not marketing drivel, or bland branding messages.
* It’s not longwinded.
* It’s not written at the highest possible reading level.
* It’s doesn’t use “big words” unless they are needed.
* It’s not legalese.
* It’s not double talk.
* It’s not an afterthought.
* It’s not a mission statement.
* It’s not an org chart.
* It’s not self-centered.

Here are the 10 simple, painless steps to becoming an RSS user:

1. Go to Bloglines.com, which is the site I use to read news feeds. (This is where other people will object that I should be steering you towards Newsgator or Pluck or some other newsreader but let them write their own damn guides to getting XMLiterate. But if you don’t trust me, you can check out CNet’s review of some of the leading RSS readers, which covers both web-based options and readers that you download and install on your own computer.)

2. In the upper-right of the Bloglines main page, click on Register (or you can cheat and click here to go directly to Bloglines’ registration page.)

3. Complete the very short registration form.

4. Check your e-mail for an e-mail from Bloglines. Click on the validation link in that e-mail message.

5. Clicking the link will take you to a Bloglines page that says “account validation complete”, and lists a bunch of optional ways to use Bloglines. Scroll down to the paragraph titled “Finding and Subscribing to Blogs” and click on “easy subscribe bookmarklet”. (If you’ve gotten distracted en route, you can click here to go directly to the Bloglines easy subscribe bookmarklet page).

6. The bookmarklet page gives you a little bit of code that you stick in your browser’s bookmarks bar (the line just under the back and forward buttons) to make a “Subscribe to Bloglines” button. Follow the Bloglines bookmarklet page instructions for your web browser, and add the “Sub with bloglines” button to your bookmarks bar.

7. Now you’re ready to subscribe to some news feeds. Go to some of your favourite blogs and news sites (maybe the ones you have saved in your browser’s “favourites” bar) and subscribe to their feeds. (See below for details) OR

8. Use my list of feeds to get started:
* While logged into Bloglines under your own username, go to my public list of Bloglines subscriptions; click on folder titles that interest you to see which feeds I subscribe to.
* In the left-hand sidebar, click on a particular folder or feed title to preview the latest news items it contains. If you find a feed that interests you, click “subscribe” in blue button bar on the upper-right-hand side of the page.

9. Once you’ve got some subscriptions set up, go to your Bloglines feeds page to read the news as it comes in.

10. Make sure that you check your feeds regularly so you stay up-to-date. Your best bet is to add a bookmark for your Bloglines feeds page to your browser’s bookmark bar, or (my approach) make your Bloglines feeds page your web browser’s home page by entering this URL: http://www.bloglines.com/myblogs as your home page in your browser’s preferences.

David Lachapelle
James Nachway
Tim Petersen
Celesta Danger
Lorraine Daley

… I’m new to this so I reserve the right to hate them all next week, but for now these guys have opened my eyes and I’m feeling their work.

Who are your favorites? Who else should I be checking out? How do you expose yourself to new photography?

UPDATED: Ok… a couple months later I have a few more people to add to the list. Flickr people… Brian Milo and Kevin Meredith.

Pantone’s Forecast: Saturated color has made a splashy comeback, but to stay ahead of trends for everything from sofas to soup plates, you need to follow fashion. Turns out home furnishings and housewares take their cues from the garment industry in deciding on their palettes. We’ll help you get a jump with the top 10 new hues, according to the Pantone Color Institute. Gloxinia? Glazed ginger? You can’t make this stuff up.

(via 37Signals)

Torrentocracy (pronounced like the word democracy) is the combination of RSS, bit torrent, your television and your remote control. In effect, it is what gives any properly motivated person or entity the ability to have their own TV station. By running torrentocracy on a computer connected to your television, you not only become a viewer of any available content from the internet, but you also become a part of a vast grass roots media distribution network.

This is not about the illegal distribution of media, but rather it’s about enabling an entirely new way to receive the video which you watch on your TV. If you ever wondered how and when your computer, the internet and your television would merge into one seemless device with access to anything and everything, then at this very moment the theme song from 2001: A Space Odyssey (“Also Sprach Zarathustra”) should be resounding through your head..

The geekier part (this is where you find out that this software runs only on Linux and is not really intended for use by normal humans )…

So, not only is torrentocracy a way of rethinking how you get your media, but it’s also an actual (free) software product by the same name. It is written to be integrated within MythTV, the Linux based home media server project (think Tivo on steroids). It allows you to join bit torrent (p2p) sessions linked to from RSS feeds so that any person running a capable blog can automatically have many people sharing the media they are trying to distribute. It is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL).

Found 12 ways to describe what Kris krug is.
Kris krug is onto something here with eventblogging.
Kris krug is a writer and designer who calls Vancouver home.
Kris krug is a true energy bomb.
Kris krug is holding a BeerCast this Wednesday at 6pm.
Kris krug is producing some incredibly brilliant photos from Gnomedex.
Kris krug is already starting the Olympic fervor over at Daily Vancouver 2010 Olympics.
Kris krug is currently wrapping up.
Kris krug is producing some incredibly brilliant photos from Gnomedex.
Kris krug is offering a unique service – live blogging at events.
Kris krug is a writer and designer who calls Vancouver home.
Kris krug is at it again.
Kris krug is producing some incredibly brilliant photos from Gnomedex.

“Computer document company Adobe Systems said on Monday it agreed to buy multimedia software firm Macromedia for about $3.4 billion in stock, a move designed to extend its lead in the market for creating and distributing digital documents.”

3 cheers for the Macromedia team. You sure gave them a run for their money for a while. Thx for the link Sxates.

So this leaves us with one company owning A BUNCH of overlapping design tools. Which product should they keep and which one should the ditch?

Illustrator or Freehand?
GoLive or Dreamweaver?
ImageReady or Fireworks?
LiveMotion or Flash?

Personally, I’ll take the new Adobe MX CS featuring Illustrator, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Flash, Photoshop, and InDesign.

Here is Adobe’s press release: Adobe and Macromedia
Here is Macromedia’s press release: Combined Company to Deliver Industry-Defining Technology Platform for Rich, Interactive Content

For the more technical folks in the crowd you can slice and dice the whole database of links via tags and keywords, pull data from the site via a web-based API, and aggregate content other places on the web using RSS generated by Del.icio.us.

This morning I stumbled onto a great collection of tools over at pchere.blogspot.com for working with Del.icio.us and looking at the trends that emerge when the whole online world is bookmarking interesting and popular websites.

• New Search Tools for Del.icio.us – offers multiple ways to search tags and bookmarks of yours and other users.
• Trendalicious – is a near real-time view of website popularity trends as reflected by the del.icio.us social bookmarking service.
• Delicious Linkbacks – Add the bookmarklet to your browser, then you can get a look at what del.icio.us users are saying about (or at least how they are tagging) nearly any web page with one click.
• del.icio.us most popular treemap – a treemap of the most popular. [size = popularity, brightness = average age]
• MySQLicious is a tool for mirroring del.icio.us bookmarks into a MySQL database.
• del.icio.us loader – loads your Firefox bookmarks directly into your del.icio.us account.
• introsp.icio.us – The Ruby script analyzes your del.icio.us links to generate a list of your favourite interests.
• Delibar – it will be store all your bookmarks in the system bar so you can easily access at it by select the tag and the link.
• WordPre.cio.us – imports del.icio.us bookmarks into your WordPress blog.
• Search plugin for Mozilla browsers – is a search plugin for del.icio.us that allows you to search your bookmarks.
• HuntAndGather – is a firefox extension meant to provide for some nice functionality. It opens tabs corresponding to the latest URLs stored on del.icio.us given the desired tag with several search functions.
• del.icio.us import script – a perl script which will import Netscape bookmarks file into del.icio.us
• delicious-java – is a Java API for interacting with the del.icio.us social bookmarks service.
• The Easiest Way to Publish del.icio.us Links on Your Site – how you can publish your links on your site.
• delicious-discuss – is an all-purpose mailing list for chatting with other users.
• Automatic filing with del.icio.us – file the current web page in the read_later category in one click.
• Wetaste – A WYSIWYG digest tool for Del.icio.us. You may want more than just bookmarking on del.icio.us, not just the url and simple description, but the important part of the content you ever read (including pictures and it’s visual effect).
• sid.vicio.us – creates ontologies for tags on del.icio.us
• Backing up del.icio.us – A tool fro backing up your bookmarks. It helps to preserve your bookmarks for the ultimate day when del.icio.us suddenly dissapears and so do all your bookmarks and favourite urls collected over years.
• del.icio.us tag search – look up del.icio.us links that are tagged with one or more subjects.
• foxylicious - a Mozilla Firefox extension that syncs your del.icio.us bookmarks into your browser bookmarks.
• loqu.acio.us – is a bookmarklet you can use it from anywhere to add your comments to your del.icio.us account. Once you’ve filled out the prompt, you’ll see your comment in a standard del.icio.us posting form: you can edit it if you like, or just press “save” to post it as is and be returned to the page you were originally on. You need to be logged in to your account before you can post. The default tag is “loquacious”.
• extispicious - generates randomly juxtaposed tags, allowing you to draw your own meanings and revelations from the overlapping entrails.
• taga.licio.us – is tag filter for del.icio.us. it produces a page with links from selected tags, allows to integrate del.icio.us links for one or more tags into an existing page, limited to a specified “freshness”, and comes with hundreds of options. If you are a Wordpress user, it is also able to directly post into your database to, say, run the script daily at fixed hour and print links on a given subject right into your blog.
• avar.icio.us – is yet another del.icio.us posting interface with a dash of Javascript. It looks like the normal posting form, but has a couple of special feature like auto-completion in the tag box and suggestions of related tags you’ve used before.
• nutr.itio.us – is a bookmarklet that allows selection of the text for the description of the link to add to your delicious links
• Firefox plugin – integrates del.icio.us with Firefox.
• Durl- is an RSS feed for del.icio.us URL queries. Enter a url to retrieve information about people who delicious’ed it. del.icio.us already provides this service, Durl completes that with an RSS feed containing those results and trend history graphs. You can also see a list of popular trends graphs.
• gre.gario.us – is a tool to find people who have bookmarked the same links you have on del.icio.us. The purpose is to attempt to find people who may have similar interests as you do in a more direct way than using tags.
• del.icio.us + Gmail – A script which runs once a day, crawls each link and sends an email to a gmail account with the ‘From’ field being the page url, the ‘Subject’ being the tags, and the body being a copy of the page.It helps to keep a cache of every page you bookmark just in case the page disappears. In addition to searching the page text, I can filter by tags by using an advanced search.
• del.icio.us Tag Stemmer – Uses Porter stemming to show where you’ve made different del.icio.us tags with the same English word stem. You can use it to help clean up your personal fauxonomy.
• delicious2safari – imports your del.icio.us bookmarks into Safari.
• cocoalicious – A cocoa del.icio.us client for Mac OS X.
• Sorting del.icio.us/popular – a bookmarklet that will sort del.icio.us/popular not just by total number of posts, but by the ratio of recent to total posts.
• Pasta - is a plain text pasting service for del.icio.us
• Experimental del.icio.us Posting Interface Thing Generator – a new posting interface for del.icio.us. The new interface provides your tag list, a list of popular tags for the page you’re bookmarking, your full tag list, and some popular tags in general.
• Mapping del.icio.us with Anthracite and OmniGraffle – a tutorial for creating visual exploration of del.icio.us tags, but not inclined to write custom Perl code to do so.
• delicious.py allows you to access the web service of del.icio.us via it’s API through python. This library uses only the standard python library.
• Extended del.icio.us bookmarklets – to extend del.icio.us functionality.
• Skinning del.icio.us – tips to apply skins to del.icio.us interface.
• Delicious Link Checker is a perl script which will retrieve all of the users links and check them, reporting if they are still accessible, or the error code (and slightly more helpful message) if not.
• Make your own Multipost Bookmarket Tool – Bookmarklet maker to allow one click submit to send sites to places like Furl or del.icio.us at the same time.
• foaflicious – is an application for generating a FOAF file from your del.icio.us inbox.
• del.icio.us Illogical Interface – different tag interface, for sorting larger collections of links (Still figuring its full use)
• Backup Del.icio.us with Excel – helps to backup your bookmarks in Excel 2003.
• Delicious Mind Map Maker – this program will make a Clustered Mind Map out of your delicious entries and add the map to the list.
• Oishii - is kind of a del.icio.us mini-zeitgeist. It polls the del.icio.us front page every 5 minutes, and returns all sites bookmarked by at least 30 people.
• BookmarksToDelicious – is a standalone Python client for posting bookmarks from a file to the delicious
• Bunnyhug Updater del.icio.us – an application that lets you download all of your del.icio.us bookmarks and save them on your local machine.
• Del.icio.us popular sites – displays the most popular new sites in last 24 / 48 hours and of all time.
• del.icio.us Smart Tagging Plugin for WordPress – to add this capability to your WordPress blog.
• spid.ero.us – helps to find fresh bookmarks from various social bookmark managers like del.icio.us, spurl, and furl.
• fac.etio.us – faceted navigation of del.icio.us feeds.
• Related del.icio.us Links in Your Sidebar – using RSS, PHP and Magpie.
• Integrating Bloglines and del.icio.us – to easily post things you read in Bloglines to del.icio.us
• Gnomolicious is an GNOME applet that help you post links on the del.icio.us site simply by drag’n'dropping them.
• Services Delicious is a client for the REST-based web service of del.icio.us. It allows you to select, add and delete your bookmarks from any PHP script. You do not need to worry about the XML that is sent or how to build the REST urls.
• Graph del.icio.us subscriptions network – browse the network of del.icio.us users as defined by their inbox subscription lists.
• Graph del.icio.us related tags – graphically browse related del.icio.us tags.
• off.icio.us lists popular sites and stats, most of them pretty random.

“Podcasting” is a web-based broadcast medium. Audio files (most commonly in MP3 format) are made available online in a way that allows software to automatically detect the availability of new files (generally via RSS), and download the files for listening

If you are new to BitTorrent, this site should help clear up a lot of commonly asked questions.

Bram Cohen (1975 – ) is a computer programmer, best known as the author of BitTorrent. He is also the co-founder of CodeCon, organizer of the Bay Area p2p-hackers meeting and the author of Codeville.

Even though many P2P file-sharing systems have been proposed and implemented, only very few have stood the test of intensive daily use by a very large user community. The BitTorrent file-sharing system is one of these systems.