I’m sitting here in the ‘Crowd Sourcing’ panel at VIDFEST 2008. Derek, Jasmine and Matt are doing an awesome job talking about the wisdom of crowds and community participation on the internet. It got me thinking… I’m working on an Artist Statement for an upcoming photography show and thought I’d share it and get some feedback. I’ve never written anything like this before and am quite nervous to share it so widely, but I figure my friends know me best and can probably help out. What do you think of this draft? What about the tone? Too informal? What is your reaction? HELP!!!

I’ve always been drawn to the creative and visual arts, but I never developed a talent for drawing or painting (despite years of trying). In photography, I found an outlet for my yearning for creative expression. Suddenly I could capture and share some of what was going on inside my head.

I’ve had no formal education in photography, but I’ve got tremendous passion for it. I simply fell in love with it, and after a while I started to think I could do it. It took me several years and several thousand pictures before I felt comfortable calling myself a photographer. I’m still struggling with the idea of calling myself an artist, and I’m both humbled and honored to be included in such an incredible and creative group.

I’ve developed as a photographer from learning by doing – finding out what works and what doesn’t (especially what doesn’t). I find inspiration in everything and everyone around me. I’m curious by nature, but I’ve also been lucky to have been helped along the way by so many who’ve been willing to show me the ropes, answer my questions, and keep me going the right way. Many thanks to all.

I use photography to capture a tiny glimpse of what’s going on in the world as I see it. Mostly I do this for myself, but I am always pleased when something I’ve shot resonates with others. For a moment, we’re all in the same place.

Special thx to my buddy Alan for some help pulling this together!

(cross-posted from my blog over at Raincity)

Checking in from the basement of CBC’s Vancouver headquarters as we kick off an event which is bound to be quite remarkable - the CBC Digital Development Labs.

This morning was introductions by the entrepreneurial-minded attendees chosen to display and refine their ideas for possible development by CBC. I’m participating as a mentor (along with others) here to advise, gut-check, collaborate with (and learn from) the emerging visionaries.

Our secret lair (which is very cool by the way - set up with a variety of workspaces, conversation breakout areas, Mac labs, gamer stations - feels like jPod) is also loaded with industry types acting more as observers to see how projects come together in the new media paradigm.

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*

Here’s a Google Video of me talking about Facebook Apps on TV on the Lab with Leo show. I really like doing these kind of ‘expert’ segments. It’s fun and I meet a lot of awesome people. I think I’m going to pull a page together on this site that makes it easy for people looking for guests and experts to familiarize themselves with the types of things I can talk about and demonstrate. Today, Lab with Leo… tomorrow ???

Show description “(President, Bryght): Kris shows off some Facebook applications. Talks about opening up their API to third party developers, allowing them to launch their tools.”

Here’s a recent segment of the The Lab with Leo show of me talking about Bryght. We cover Drupal, open source software, and our recently launched work on the Grateful Dead’s online community website. I’ve done 3 other segmants that haven’t aired yet and am scheduled to be in the studio to film 2 more this week including on our our new FreeTheNet.ca project.

Back in Vancouver for a week after a few days in Seattle at Gnomedex. Gnomedex is a secret club of uber geeks that gets together once a year to hang, chill, chat, chest beat, network, share, and collaborate. Or something. It’s put on by friends Chris and Ponzi and draws a great group of nerds, dorks, and geeks from around the globe. I got the chance to hang with lots of old friends like Ethan, Lee, Mark, Dave, Darren, Scott, Schlomo, and Jay and met lots of new ones like Guy, Cali, Jacob, Molly, and others.

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.

About a month ago I went on the Leo Laporte show to discuss Creative Commons. Below is the video (holy crap it’s already been watched online 1,600+ times!) . Since then I’ve also recorded sessions on Bryght and Facebook Apps but they haven’t aired yet. I’ll post them here when they do. Tomorrow I’m going back on the show (twice) to talk about 1) Social Software and Online Communities and 2) Protecting Your Privacy Online.

Posting this is a couple weeks overdue but I’m trying to play catchup and get my digital houses in order before embarking on Bryght World Tour 2007.

Also (Mom) here’s a couple pics of me on the Lab with Leo set.

My buddies over at Burnkit, the hottest web design and creative services firm in Vancouver, launched their new website today… and it’s smokin’. They are a part of a bunch of boutique design agencies that are participating in a web redesign contest called May 1st ReBoot.

The site features video embedded in Flash and lots of awesome photos of the Burnkit team and their stunning new offices in Railtown. I was honored to find upon clicking through the super creative ‘Team’ section of the site that a couple of my photos had been used on Jeremy Crowle’s profile. Swedish! I should probably also mention, that like any uber-hip new media outfit… they have their own Facebook group.

Solid work guys. Can’t wait to see what you come up with next.

With Northern Voice behind me it’s time to finalize preperations for my trip to Austin Texas for SXSW (thats South by Southwest for the uninitiated) 2007.

Last year SXSW was huge for us at Bryght. We had a booth, thew a great party with Raincity, Blue Flavor and NewsVine, and drummed up a bunch of great Drupal development and consulting gigs. Since last year we’ve worked on lots of online community projects including the one for Warner Brothers Records and are excited to mix it up again with music industry moguls down in Texas.

This year will be more of the same with the exception that I’ll be speaking on panel this year. The first panel of the whole conference in fact! Alex Williams, Corey Dennis and I are working together to present the talk “Snakes on A Mother Fuckin Plane“. Raincity will have a booth this year and Bryght will have a presence in it. Come find me in booth J5 during exhibition hours.

I’m trying to keep track of all the extracurricular activities that I’ll be participating in over at Upcoming.org. Of particular interest is this years South by Northwest party throw by Byght, RCS, and Blue Flavor as well as the Yahoo BarTab party featuring Flickr, MyBlogLog, Upcoming, Bix, Pipes, etc etc..

I took a bunch of pics last year including some great ones of the Flaming Lips. I’m super excited to get out and about with my cameras again this year and see what I can capture.

I’m super excited and have lots to do before I leave next Friday. If you’re gonna be there and wanna hang out make sure you drop me a line and let’s plan to meetup!

(photo by Trevor Brady)

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?

I’ve been overdue in posting about the upcoming Web Directions North coming to Vancouver February 6-10th, but 2007 is upon us and it’s just around the corner and I’m getting really excited. The combination of amazing speakers, fantastic location, and after-hours events will make Web Directions North about as good as a conference can be. But the connections and friendships that you build there are what will make it even better. Here’s the deal…

* WDN is a tier-1 web design and development conference that is going to be here in Van and attract the who’s who of the UI, UX, and design worlds. It’s gonna be all our peeps who usually we only get to see at SXSW (i.e. ‘internet spring break‘) but here in Vancouver.

* Topics include Ajax and Javascript, CSS, Microformats, mashups, standards based web design and development, accessibility, web app development, XHTML and HTML and more.

* WDN is put on by Dave Shea, Derek Featherstone, Maxine Sherrin and John Allsopp. These guys are awesome collegues, mentors, and friends.

* People like Cameron Moll, George Oates, Kelly Goto, Andy Clarke, Adrian Holovaty, Douglas Bowman, Dan Cederholm, Joe Clark, Molly Holzschlag, Derek Featherstone, Veerle Pieters, Jeremy Keith will be in town presenting and training.

* There are 2 days of skiing and snowboarding up at Whistler planned for the event. That’s what I’m talking about. Everyone is gonna wanna move here after their visit!

I’ll be there for the event and the snowboarding and hopefully I’ll lots of you there as well.

A few weeks ago I blogged about submitting a few of my photos to JPG photography magazine for inclusion in their upcoming issue. Well, submission are now closed and 3 of my pics are being considered for publication. Please head on over there and take a look at them and vote for these 3 pics of mine.

“Free Radical” to Embrace the Blur

“The Streets of Italy” to Tourist

“Shower” To Intimate

I’m in it for the free subscription. Here’s the deets in case you are interested in submitting for the next issue.

Street photography is about getting out there, observing the public, overcoming your shyness, and documenting the world around you. It shows the world as it is, like holding up a mirror to society, capturing a moment in time.

So let’s see your best street photo! Remember: Photos in this theme must have been taken on a public street. And we’re not looking for photos of streets, we’re looking for photos taken on streets.

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!

I joined the new community website over at JPG Magazine. JPG Magazine was started by friends Derek Powazek and Heather Champ and has had close ties with Flickr since the beginning. They’re launched a cool new site with community features and I think it’s going to be a hit.

I submitted a couple photos for the upcoming issue.. please go check them out and voice for them. The website seems to be the first project of newly founded company 8020 publishing who is looking to ‘revamp the way magazines are published’. From their website:

The online world has created a culture of creation among ordinary people. Meanwhile, magazines are still partying like it’s 1899. Writers write, readers read, and never the twain shall meet.

Simply put, this can’t last.

Magazines need to open their doors to their readers. Instead of thinking of writers and readers as two separate communities, magazines need to realize that they really only have one community: the people who give a shit about their magazine.

Good stuff guys.

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

I was humbled tonight to get a beautiful testimonial on my Flickr profile page tonight from Mommy Peace… someone I know online but have never met.

“A search for “Flaming Lips” brought me to KK +, his friends and one of the best ever photos of the band.

KK’s photos have also acted as the portal for my children and my studies on degrees of seperation, community and its evolution. KK+ is also an execellent example of the importance of ones name.

Continue to live big Kris…the next generation is watching.”

Wow. That’s like the sweetest thing ever Danie. Thx.

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)