Check out the new ION Magazine blog - featuring Daily(ish) Reviews, behind-the-scenes peeks at fashion and music shoots, and access to guest list and insider info on the by-now-legendary ION parties. They assure me that 08 is going to be next-level, and Static Photography and Kris Krug will be a part of it all! Good work Fiona, Vanessa, and Michael.

PS. We’ve also recently created a ION Magazine Flickr group. Submit your photos there and have them included in the magazine and the blog. Here’s some more info…

For the past 2 semesters I've been teaching at VFS in the Entertainment Business Management faculty. I teach 'Internet Technologies 101' and 'Internet Technologies 202'.

As a part of our final project for 'Internet Technologies 202' each of the students has been creating and maintaining their own Wordpress.com blog. With Matt coming into town, and so many awesome social media types on hand for Nothern Voice I decided what better way to toss them all into the deep end, than requiring that they all come to Northern Voice to pass my class. *evil grin*

This weekend is BarCamp Vancouver and I’ll be heading up a PhotoWalk on Friday night and a PhotoCamp on Saturday.

Here’s some shots from last years late night photowalk at BarCamp.

If you’re interested in photography, cameras, or just want to talk a cool walk through East Van… it would be great to see lots of you out there. Here’s the details. Get in touch with me if you have any questions.

PhotoWalk
- signup on FaceBook
- meet at WorkSpace
- 11pm, Friday August 17th

PhotoCamp
- signup on the Wiki
- @ Workspace during BarCamp Vancouver
- TBD, Sunday August 18th

BarCamp Vancouver is this Friday and Saturday. I’m one of the organizers and will be hosting my 5th PhotoCamp. If you live near Vancouver and use the internet you should come to this event. It will be fun. You will learn a lot. You will mean a lot of awesome people. You unfortunately will not get laid.

Here’s all the details and informations about the event… get in where you fit in.

Check out this awesome video that explains how Wiki’s work by social designer Lee Lefever.

Click To Play

(Cross-posted from my fashion photography blog over at www.staticphotography.com)

This is a very exciting week for me as I prep with the rest of the organizing team for Northern Voice 2007 and MooseCamp.. I'm going to be leading a PhotoCamp as a part of the event and am wondering who else will be there?

Didja catch all that? I know it's a lot… here's a couple quick descriptions.

Northern Voice - Vancouver's 3rd annual personal publishing conference held out at UBC. Saturday, February 24th @ UBC.

MooseCamp - the first day of Northern Voice is a self-organizing 'unconference in the style of BarCamp. Friday, February 23rd @ UBC.

PhotoCamp - the session at MooseCamp that I am pulling together focused on photography and collaboratively presented by the many talented photographers attending Northern Voice.

So far I know that Matt Trentacoste, Warwick Patterson, Bre Pettis and Evan Lesson plan on giving workshops at Photocamp… and that good buddies Robert Scoble and Scott Beale will be on hand for the event… but I'd love to know who else is coming and if you have something you'd like to talk about? Drop me an email or post to your blog and I'll get you on the agenda.

I’ve noticed an interesting trend in online communities and social software. It seems that quality of design and usability of a site is inversly proportional to the number of people who use it.

That is, in a situation where more than one tool/site exists to serve a similar market… the ugliest, most unusable one will ultimately attract the more users than the aesthically beautiful, super intuituve ones. Think MySpace versus Facebook. Delicious versus Magnolia. ModelMayhem versus ModelLaunch. Flickr versus Photobucket/TextAmerica are the only notable exceptions. Whaddya think?

Hey there guys. We’ve been scrambling to pull together the plans for our 3rd Northern Voice personal publishing conference here in Vancouver. There are a couple important announcements from the past few days that I wanted to pass along.

The deadline for prentations, panels, and speakers has been extended to December 1st.

You don’t have to be famous or a professional conference presenter: we’re looking for both fresh and experienced voices who wish to present or chair a panel on topics related to personal publishing, the internet, gaming, interactive, entertainment, blogs, videoblogging, podcasting, virtual worlds like Second life and that all fun geekery. It’s all about the abstract. If it’s well written and topical, your chances will be much higher.

Submit a speaker application form.

Registration is open now!

The last 2 years this has been a hugely popular event… we’ve sold out both times months in advance of the event and needed to run a waiting list. Don’t wait… it’s not expensive.

Pre-register and save $10. It’s only $30 for a single day and $50 for both days as opposed to $40 for one day and $60 for both days at the door. I bet we’ll sell out like last year so pre-registration is recommended.

Register online now!

Also… I’m going to be pulling together another lil Photocamp at the Moosecamp part of the event. If you want to be a part of presenting or sharing please drop me a line and lets figure something out.

UPDATED: Darren just uploaded and posted some groovy new graphics and badges to help promote the event. Please check them out and consider sticking one on your site or in a post and linking to the site. This conference is promoted purely by word of mouth and we could use your mouth!

Due to the overwhelmingly positive feedback from attendees to Northern Voice 2006 and Northern Voice 2005 we’ve decided to bring it back again for 2007.

For those of you who are unfamiliar (gasp!) Northen Voice is an independant and grassroots personal publishing conference based here in Vancouver. Think internet, photography, audio, video, blogs, games, mobile. Think passion, creativity, geekery and community.

Planning has been underway for months and we’ve just opened speaker submissions for Northern Voice 2007. Here’s what Boris has to say about all that:

Right now, the speaker submission page is open. One thing to note….write a good abstract, and take filling that speaker submission form out seriously. We got lots of entries from great folks who just didn’t bother telling us what they would talk about, or make a case for why they should have a session (or un-session, as the case may be). Colin Brumelle (and yes, he works with me at Bryght), was the only abstract submission that was unanimously voted in on the first pass.

What kind of submissions do we want to see? Well, let me tell you what I would love to see…

I sat down with Robert Scoble at Gnomedex, asking him what he would like to see at next year’s Northern Voice (he mentioned it briefly talking about Kris’ part in a MediaShift article). We talked about two things: Geolocation and virtual worlds.

Abstracting this a little, to me it means the intersection of the physical world with online. Blogging has always done this — with people bring pieces of their offline lives online, or helping to make real life connections through communicating online.

I talked about our mandate — appealing to a wide range of people. Geolocation and virtual worlds are still new. But, not too new that people can’t start experimenting if someone gives them a few pointers. Flickr now has integrated geotagging, and Second Life continues to explode. Your barber is not unlikely to play World of Warcraft, and the Nokia N95 has GPS and photo sharing built in.

Much thanks to my fellow organizers Darren, Brian, Cyprien, Lauren, Boris and Roland as well as the many friends of Northern Voice and volenteers that help to make this thing so fun and a big success.

Barcamp Vancouver is THIS FRIDAY. We’re all very psyched to be part of the first BarCamp Vancouver, and hope you are too. Read on for all the deets…

If You Can’t Come, Please Remove Your Name From the List

There are currently about 15 people on the waitlist. If you can’t make it, please visit http://barcamp.org/BarCampVancouverRegistry and take yourself off the list. A waitlisted person will be very appreciative.

BarCamp Costs and T-Shirts

Technically speaking, BarCamp Vancouver is free. However, we’ve got plenty of costs to cover (see our budget), so we’re requesting a donation of $20. Everybody who makes such a donation gets a groovy BarCamp Vancouver t-shirt (you can view a PDF of the design here).

We’ve only got 120 t-shirts, so if you’re picky about size, register promptly on Friday night.

Schedule

The schedule, such as it is, looks like this:

Friday Night, 6:00pm - Registration and Rooftop Barbeque at the Bryght
offices
Friday Night, Later - Camping out, crashing out or geeking out.
Saturday, 9:00am - Scheduling the day’s sessions
Saturday, 10:00am - Sessions begin
Saturday, 6:00pm - Partay @ Workspace?

A note on scheduling: We’ve done the math, and we’re pretty sure that all 120 of us won’t be able to present in 8 hours. So, if you’re not so keen on presenting, don’t feel obligated to do so. Try to pitch in in other ways: contribute to discussions, help clean up, ask an organizer if there’s an errand that needs running, and so forth. If you’re sort of keen on presenting, check the list to see if there’s somebody you can co-present with.

If you’re really keen on presenting, be sure to be there at 9:00am to battle for a spot on the schedule.

Locations

The main venue for BarCamp has been generously donated by WorkSpace. That’s suite 400 - 21 Water Street in the heart of Vancouver’s Gastown. Here’s a map.

The Friday night BBQ will be at Bryght’s offices, which are literally a half-block away at suite 400 - 1 Alexander St. You actually enter around the side of the building off Carall St. Here’s a map.

Special thanks to all the sponsors. They’ve been extremely generous with their time and donations and have helped lay the foundation for a very successful event. Three cheers for….

Uniserve
Business Objects
Belkin
Nitobi
Elastic Path Software
Bryght
Raincity Studios
EQO Communications
WorkSpace
Capulet Communications
Midnight Kitchen
AdHack
Sxip
Jones Sodas
T-shirt.ca

Last week the Bryght guys went down to Seattle for our second Gnomedex in Seattle put on by friends Chris and Ponzi. We saw lots of our geek peeps and a great time was had by all. The event was keynoted by John Edwards who was there to make connections with the blogging community and hear and learn about technology (I got my pic taken with him by Ted Leung backstage… w00t!).

My favorite talks were by Ethan Kaplan and Philip Kaplan (not related). Ethan works at Warner Brothers Records and talked about the future of music and the sales/marketing/distribution machine that propels it. Phillip runs AdBright and started FuckedCompany and gave an engaging chat about promotions and building buzz.

Media was created, products and companies were launched, and connections were made. Check out my photoset on Flickr as well as the Gnomedex tag. Boris and I got interviewed by the Lipgloss and Laptops girls and the episode turned out pretty funny… Boris going on about his hair and me getting nailed with questions about my China exploits and personal grooming habits. *blush*

Thanks to Chris and Ponzi for an awesome event and all their hospitality. I love it that you guys liked last years photos enough to use them so prominently and hopefully you'll find some more this time around. And thx so much for the awesome Robosapien… my daughter Sierra loves him!

It was so fun to see great old peeps like Eric, Chris, Tara, Will, Marc, Alex, Bre, Matt, Captain AJAX, Dave-O, Jay, Derek and Air, Ted and Julie as well as meet new ones like Corey, PUD, Ben, John, and Kosso.

(cross-posted from my Bryght blog)

Last night, Megan Cole of Raincity Studios and I went to check out a fashion show called ‘The Glad Rags’ party put on by Fashion High and sponsored by The Tyee as a part of their Guilt-Free Hedonism series. It was a night focused on wearing localy sourced and manufactured designs and supporting sustainability and community in the fashion world.

After the show I had a chance to catch-up with Glencora Twigg of Twigg & Hottie and do a lil video blog with her about the show, her store, and the fashion scene here in Vancouver. She was friendly and beautiful and awesome and it was great to meet her. Thx for the interview Glen.

Check out Megan’s blog post over at The Standard: Dressing Locally at Glad Rags and her video blog over at YouTube.com.

I also took some photos which should be up on Flickr shortly.

Wassup internets. Here’s a couple more YouTube.com videos of Megan Cole and I wandering around Vancouver and carrying on. Check it out.

kk+ and MC wander around downtown Vancouver a bit and talk about the Vancouver sunshine and some of the cool *work* parties we have lined up over the next few days. BONUS: One free awesome bachelor home economics tip at the end of this meandering 5 min stream of consciousness. Probably worth it.

kk+ and MC checkin’ in from the Vancouver Sun Run. The background music is loud so the audio kinda sux, but I think we both look good at least… especially for 8am in the fuckin’ morning.

Yes, she’s cute. No, we’re not dating. Thanks for coming out.

Roland and I will be presenting with Darren Barefoot and Tod Maffin at an upcoming event here in Vancouver called “What Citizen Journalism Means to Corporate Communications” put on by the Canadian PR Society. Details are below… please come out and join us if you can.

What Citizen Journalism Means to Corporate Communications
A joint event presented by the HTCE and the Canadian PR Society.
Sponsored by Fido

What is citizen journalism? How is it changing the mainstream media and the average consumer? Where will we get our news in twenty years? And what does all this mean to corporate communications? Darren Barefoot, one of Canada’s most popular and most prolific bloggers, moderates a panel with CBC journalist and podcasting advocate Tod Maffin, technology advocate Roland Tanglao and online marketer, Kris Krug. (Bios are below)

Don’t miss this opportunity to gain some insight into the new tools that are changing the way we communicate. As this session is meant to be interactive, please come prepared with questions.

Here’s a bit of background on our subject-matter experts:

Tod Maffin hosts a national technology column on CBC Radio, a technology series on CBC Television’s Canada Now, and is a producer for several radio programs
including the country’s guide to modern culture, Definitely Not the Opera.
He has been a host of several national CBC Radio programs including Real
Life Chronicles and todradio.com. Tod Maffin is “one of Canada’s most
influential futurists” according to The Globe and Mail.

Roland Tanglao is a passionate advocate of blogs, RSS and social software as a means for online expression for people, organizations and businesses. He truly believes in ‘creating compelling content constantly’ as his over 15000 photos on flickr and the many blogs he updates regularly attest. Roland is one of the founders of Bryght and as Bryght’s Chief Blogging Officer, he reads hundreds of blogs daily through his RSS reader and participates in many online communities. He is an expert community manager, with UrbanVancouver.com and his personal restaurant review site, VanEats.com, being the two best examples.

Kris Krug has been publishing online since 1998 and has spent his professional career working in marketing and creative departments for technology companies. He recently moved back to Vancouver after spending the past several years in San Francisco, California where he helped lead marketing departments for 2 large companies that went on to be acquired. Kris is an online expert, having built and operated dozens of websites. He has the unique ability to balance communication objectives and aesthetic delight. The only time you won’t find him plugged into the interweb is when he is out roaming with his camera. Kris is an aspiring photographer and has carved out a niche doing event blogging at conferences and special events. Other places to find Kris online are KrisKrug.com, Daily Vancouver 2010, Urban Vancouver and PhotographyHack.com.

Darren Barefoot is one of Canada’s most popular and prolific bloggers. His
personal blog (www.darrenbarefoot.com) is read daily by thousands of
visitors. While Darren’s undergraduate degree is in Writing and Theatre, he
has always had a deep love of computers. Ever since his parents brought home
their first dual disc drive IBM PC, he was smitten. Darren’s life-long
passion for technology provides rich material for writing about the affects
of technology on modern-day society. Darren has spent the last decade working for software companies in Canada and Europe. Darren is co-founder of Capulet Communications, a PR and marketing company based in Vancouver, BC that specializes in marketing high-tech companies. He has written articles for a variety of publications including Intercom Magazine, the Vancouver View and Professional Marketing Magazine.

May 15, 2006

YWCA Hotel
733 Beatty Street
Vancouver, BC
Registration, networking, refreshments: 6:00 pm – 6:30 pm
Program: 6:30 pm to 8:15 pm

RSVP to Jennifer Lee at: pasbcinfo@bccampus.ca by May 12.
Cost is $15.00/person.
Cash or cheques only. No shows will be subject to charge.

Apparently if I don’t post my YouTube video blogs to this site, people try to claim they don’t exist. Ok ok, you shouldn’t have to follow my online stuff at like 150 different places, but YouTube really could make it easier to integrate it all together. Anway…. come chill at 525 Seymour street in Vancouver w/ me and the Raincity crew before we did the Friday Social Software Geekout Lunch.

(cross-posted from Bryght.com)

After NTC and Penguin Day in Seattle, I drove East accross Washington to Spokane and then north back into Canada to keynote at a cool new tech conference called Switch On put on by a non-profit called TechVillage. TechVillage is funded by Western Economic Diversification Canada and the Kooteney Association for Science and Technology with a mission to "flourish as an enterprising non-profit that strives to be nimble and responsive to the needs of digital media, software and IT members in this region by providing professional development, consulting, networking, and project opportunities to members."

My presentation was titled "The Evolution of The Internet: Web 2.0" and was a primer on new and emerging tools and trends online. I talked about markets as conversations, RSS, social software, free and open source tools, and building communities and connecting with your customers and constituents online. There were tons of questions and in the end they had to cut me off (after giving me a small time extension already). There were about 75 local business owners here consisting primarily of software developers and web designers and there is a ton of interest in these topics. I saw a couple people shooting video so hopefully the footage of the session should be up eventually… I'll link to it from here when it comes out.

We also held a great OS CMS tools discussion and gave an overview of the best solutions out there including Drupal and Wordpress as well as several other. There were lots of local shops in the audience who had rolled their own CMS and were looking to figure out how to make the jump to open source. It was a great discussion and lots of people spoke up and got involved.

Thanks so much to co-organizers Jill Boland of TechVillage and Jason Mogus of Communicopia for inviting me to speak. I value every opportunity I get to share my passion for the internet, technology and open source tools and am very thankful for this chance to come out to the Koots and talk about Bryght and Web 2.0.

I’m way behind here on posting media from the past couple weeks and SXSW. It was awesome and I have a ton of photos and a couple videos to share and need to do a couple wrap-up blog posts over at Bryght and Backstage. But there is only so much I can do while doing 12 hours of business a day and catching 5 live bands a night. *sigh* Anyway, below are a few YouTube videos from our trip to SXSW last week. More stuff forthcoming… definately don’t miss the photos over at Flickr including an awesome Flaming Lips show.

Cougar Attack on Our Way to SXSW

Bryght and Raincity hanging at SeaTac on our way to SXSW.

On Our Way to SXSW

NASCAR 101

We ran into some NASCAR fans in the Seattle airport and got the skinny on NASCAR racing.

I’m just getting back into the Vancouver flow after my trip to Italy and now it’s time to hit the road again. On Thursday I leave for SXSW in Austin, Texas for 2 days. If you’ve never heard of it or been, here’s a few stats that should give you an idea what I’m in for.

Music
• Showcasing Acts: 1331
• Music Venues Participating: 58
• Music Conference Participants: 8,604 (with band registrations 9,692)
• Approximate Number of Music Media in Attendance: 1,866
• Approximate Number of Music Trade Show Attendees: 11,000
• Number of Music Trade Show Exhibitors: 191

Film/Interactive
• Number of Films Screened: 180
• Film Conference Participants: 3,807
• Approximate Number of Film Media in Attendance: 459
• Interactive Conference Participants: 3,343
• Approximate Number of Interactive Media in Attendance: 424
• Approximate Number of Film/Interactive Trade Show Attendees: 8,000
• Number of Film/Interactive Trade Show Exhibitors: 125

There are going to be so many awesome bands there… I’m very excited. I pulled together a quick list of the ones I plan to catch while I’m there. I know there are a bunch of others too but they didn’t seem to be listed on the official venue and band page on the SXSW website. If anyone knows of any other ‘do not miss’ shows, please let me know.

• You Say Party! We Say Die!
• Mogwai
• The New Pornographers
• Belle & Sebastian
• The Trews
• Cut Chemist
• Kiss Me Deadly
• Ox
• Beth Orton
• k-os
• The Secret Machines

I figure I slept about 30′ish hours my whole 12 days in Torino and between us at Bryght launching Backstage at SXSW, and having a booth in the tradeshow, and throwing a big party with some friends, it’s not looking like I’m gonna get much more than that in Texas either. Bring it on!

Oh yeah, I got picked by the SXSW crew to be one of their 6 videobloggers for the show. I guess I get a fancy Euro cell phone from them and a backstage, all-access, I’m a rockstar pass and my name on a bunch of guest lists. Woo hoo! kk+ over and out.

Quickie video blog checking in just before the start of Techvibes Massive 2006.

Thanks for the photo Scales.

Hey there internet. Just a quickie from somewhere above Greenland. I’m headed home from Italy. It was an amazing trip. Great contacts and meetings, lots of new friends and connections, and *so* much fun. That being said, I need home for a rest. I think I bagged about 30 hours sleep total in the 12 days I was here. Anyway, the real reason for this blog post is… my Lufthansa flight has wifi. Unbelieveable really, 40,000 feet up, 600 miles an hour, and connected to the internet. It’s a whole new world. Bring it.

Photo by Pietroizzo.