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…

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

Click To Play

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.

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.

Checkin’ in quickly from Torino, Italy. I’m here with Robert Scales from Raincity Studios and Boris Mann from Bryght. We’re jet lagged, hungry, internet deprived and struggling to learn Italian… but having a blast so far in our delirious state.

The syposium I’m co-chairing with Andy Miah, “The Olympics and Web 2.0“, is on Friday and we’re going to be spending most of the week prepping for that as well as meeting with the media and some businesses who are also in town for the games.

We’re also ‘Street Reporters’ for ComVu’s Streets of Torino website. That is just a comp and I’ll get you a link to the live site as soon as it’s up.

I’ve also made about a dozen video blogs posts that I can’t get online yet because I can hardly maintain a connection to the internet. Stay tuned and once I get a fat pipe I’ll get that stuff up ASAP.

Also, the new Canon 5d is fun, but I’m definately not as comfortable with it yet as I am with my old Canon 20d that Scales is carrying around these days. Trial by fire I guess… by the time I get home I hope to have bonded with her and become one with her. I guess a good start would be to give her a proper name… any ideas guys?

Or a vlogger or whatever.

I’m testing out this new site called YouTube.com that is talkin about bein the ‘Flickr of video’. *cough*

Anyway, this is what I came up with today.

The first one…

Testing… 1 2

and the second one…

Smoke Break

UPDATED: I did another one today and added it here. This is kinda fun if not a bit pointless.

Meet the Peeps

a) i never do pysch/personality tests like this.
b) when i do do them, i never put any credence in the results
c) i never share the results with other humans who can potentially laugh at me

All that being said…

Main Type	Overall Self

Take Free Enneagram Personality Test

Ok, now it’s your turn… take the test please and let us all know what you are.

My friend Ian King called me up this week and asked if I could drop everything and come take a photo of someone he was interviewing for the Terminal City News. Turns out the interview was with Sam Sullivan who is running for mayor in Vancouver. I took my Canon 20d but forgot my memory card so I decided to shoot expired slide film instead and to cross-process it. It actually made me happy that I forgot the flash card so that I had a good excuse to go analog and shoot something that I feel like is a little more distinctively my style right now. A couple of the shots turned out and it Ian ended up using this one for the cover. I think it would be fun to do more quick lil projects like this.

The Terminal City cover.

Last week Roland and I drove down to Portland for the Podcast Hotel. The event was for musicians, record labels and other people interested in podcasting, the web and audio recording technology. Thanks to Alex Williams for everything you did to pull together a great first event… it was great to see Eric, JD, Matt as well as meet lots of great people like my new best friend Schlomo Rabinowitz.

I presented on Friday about Web 2.0 and how bands and artists can take advantage of open-source and free web based tools to grow their audience, create new revenue streams, and connect with fans. The presentation is available here for download in PDF format.

Here’s some of my photos from the event and here’s a link to rest of my photoset on Flickr. Here’s Roland’s photos and all the photos tagged with ‘podcast hotel’ on Flickr.

There is talk of a west coast Podcast Hotel (SEA >> PDX >> SFO >> LAX) tour later this year. Good luck Alex and sign me up!

The Future of Publishing Conference

Stop advertising, start doing!

The move from branding to blogging may be daunting for traditional advertisers, but it creates a myriad of exciting opportunities for forward-thinking business leaders, publishers, and people with a story to tell.

For decades, traditional mass media has been the best mechanism for connecting companies with consumers. However, as new media usurps mass media, traditional approaches to publishing and storytelling are no longer the only solution.

As publishing moves to new media platforms such as the Web and mobile phones, the ways that we connect with customers, colleagues, readers, and each other will continue to change. Tomorrow’s book publishers may choose to help students study for tests by sending sample test questions to their mobile phones and enabling virtual study groups, while at the same time those students are using the Web to publish their own study guides.

This shifting media landscape means that today’s leaders, educators, and communicators must re-examine their ability to connect with consumers, and look for new ways to reach people in an environment characterized by personal media platforms and one-to-one communication.

Here’s some awesome tips on web writing and site content from DKR.

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’s an awesome report from Poynter Online and Steve Outing about the emerging trend of citizen journalism. He provides a great overview and links to almost all the important players in the space. It would have been cool to see Roland, UrbanVancouver, Drupal or Bryght mentioned also… especially since it’s still a small and emerging space and they’ve been in it since the beginning. I dropped Steve a line and hope to hook him up with Roland later today.

Here’s his list of the 11 steps to help media publishers go from dipping a toe into the waters of participatory journalism to fully embracing citizen reporting and putting the organizations resources behind it.

1. The first step: Opening up to public comment
2. Second step: The citizen add-on reporter
3. Now we’re getting serious: Open-source reporting
4. The citizen bloghouse
5. Newsroom citizen ‘transparency’ blogs
6. The stand-alone citizen-journalism site: Edited version
7. The stand-alone citizen-journalism site: Unedited version
8. Add a print edition
9. The hybrid: Pro + citizen journalism
10. Integrating citizen and pro journalism under one roof
11. Wiki journalism: Where the readers are editors

“Citizen journalism.” It’s one of the hottest buzzwords in the news business these days. Many news executives are probably thinking about implementing some sort of citizen-journalism initiative; a small but growing number have already done so.

In my conversations and communications with editors, I sense plenty of confusion about the concept. There’s enthusiasm about experimenting in some quarters — about harnessing the power of an audience permitted for the first time to truly participate in the news media. But mostly I hear concern and healthy skepticism.

This article is designed to help publishers and editors understand citizen journalism and how it might be incorporated into their Web sites and legacy media. We’ll look at how news organizations can employ the citizen-journalism concept, and we’ll approach it by looking at the different levels or layers available. Citizen journalism isn’t one simple concept that can be applied universally by all news organizations. It’s much more complex, with many potential variations

Thx to my crazy Swedish friends for the link…

Haha.. a great new post from Alex Samuel called 10 steps to RSStocracy. If you’re not reading people blogs via RSS you really should read through this aritcle and the one called What is RSS? in my lefthand navbar.

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.

Cute post the other day from MinJungKim on the lifecycle of bloggers. Ha, there are some scarily true tidbits in here.

Having blogged in one form or fashion for the last 6 years or so (not including personal journals that I’ve written in, on paper even, with crayon even, since I was six years old), allow me to personally provide you with a rundown on the lifecycle that I’ve observed from personal bloggers.

Here’s a summarized version.. check her site out for all the funny details.

#1. Start reading blogs.
#2. You start a blog.
#3. You become a stats whore.
#4. You become really personal on your site as the online and real-life worlds start confusing you.
#5. You faux “retire” from blogging.
#6. You cave back into blogging in less than 72 hours.
#7. You decide to “get serious” about blogging.
#8. You have a pseudo flirty im/blogging/flickr flirting relationship with another blogger whom you have never met
#9. You decide that you must meet other bloggers.
#10. You take a step back and metablog about blogging and what blogging has done about your blogging.
#11. See step 5. Shampoo, rinse, repeat.
#12. You decide that as a result of step 10 and having repeated step 5 more than 3 times in the course of your lifecycle as a blogger, that you need to sanitize or reinvent your blog.
#13. You either lose your job because of blogging, are afraid of losing your job for blogging, or join a company that builds blogging tools.
#14. You decide to start an anonymous livejournal blog.

This looks pretty interesting, going to play with it later today and will let you know how it goes. Thx for the link Alex

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).

I’m transitioning to my a new phone number now that I’m back and firmly rooted here in Vancouver. The new number is:

778. 898. 3076

If I haven’t talked to you in a while, now would be a great time to call me and say hello and make sure you have my number input into your phone.

Jame Healy stopped by today to tell me about how he’s trying to sell his employees on the idea of ‘personal brand development’. Essentially he’s trying to convince them to start making a name for themeselves by writing publically about their work and ideas and collaborating and hooking up with other people who are interested in the same topics.

Good stuff Jame. Sounds kinda like blogging to me. I think you’re totally onto something. I haven’t heard the term ‘personal brand development’ before and kinda like it.

Make the jump… shut the old-school knowledge base down and get those guys writing externally. Whaddya think?

UPDATED: Jame started a blog!

From Pirate Dwarves to Ninja Elves… (plasticbag.org)

I have always considered the profound distinction between ninjas and pirates to be an absolute one. One was either ninja or pirate - there were no inbetweens.

Citizen Photojournalism Competition

“NowPublic wants to display the best photographic work from citizen journalists and photobloggers like you and we invite you to submit your newsworthy* images to our first Citizen Photojournalism Awards.”

So we’ve had 3 new newspapers launch in the past couple months here in Vancouver. There is a serious battle waging for the mindshare of the average Vancouverite. Brooks Duncan is getting feedback on whats working and whats not at Ask Locally Vancouver. Here’s his 2 pennies…

Metro: Front page is a full page story about the debate, along with a followup on the inside about DR-BC’s protest over not being included. 3 pages of local coverage on a decent range of topics, a full page of Canada coverage, only a half page of Business coverage. Big Entertainment section and one page for Sports. Definitely the most “newspapery” of the 3 with I think the most local coverage.

Dose: Definitely the slickest of the 3 with the most attractive covers. Front page is a mention of the (possible) Federal election in the summer. Very brief mention of the Provincial debate in a sidebar on page 9 (nice). Big news section but almost zero Vancouver coverage which to be honest has always been my deal-breaker for the paper. The last straw for me was when they had a story about how Toronto has a new police chief. Why would I care about that in a Vancouver daily? Good entertainment section.

24 Hours: Front page is two stylish looking BC Lions in their new uniforms. The debate is covered on page 3. 24 Hours always starts weakly with their pink Entertainment section on the first page, with its always-brutal Laugh of the Day and hard-hitting coverage about how Tom Cruise is enamoured with Katie Holmes. I have nothing against celebrity news but the stories they pick for this section are bad even for my low standards. The rest of the paper is good though, I have enjoyed their election coverage and they always have a decent amount of Vancouver news. They could make the Business section longer, but I guess that’s not really their target market.

I’ve been running a little poll over at UrbanVancouver.com to try and gauge the communities reaction. So far, the result are really lopsided. What do you think? Do you read any of them?