VIDFEST Back On Granville Island

Not to knock any of the content, speakers, sessions, people I met, old friends I enjoyed seeing again, but I just have to say: thank-you VIDFEST for coming back to Granville Island this year. It’s one of the reasons why I think this conference is *extra* special. That, and the lack of the ocean of glowing blue bodies in the crowd from laptop monitor blasts and yes, more WOMEN! Fellas, wasn’t that nice? Lots of lovely ladies at VIDFEST. It’s a nice switch from the usual 10 to 20 per cent of the crowd that’s wearing a bra (or so I assume).

Best quote: “There are more people online than there are people in the world.” Grant McCracken (excellent name, btw)
Most shocking note: OMG – Impact Research spent what?! $150 THOUSAND dollars on a Facebook application campaign and got a mere 7,000 installs. Did I hear that right? Ouch.
Most enjoyable: The locale, the sun and the zu crew, what little there was for visiting hours.
Best new experience: Listening to Chris Anderson while watching him move around the stage in that slick, black suit.

I do have to duck out of VIDFEST early this year – the festival is still happening as I write. But I have a Slumber Queen to catch and a 3-day music festival that is rivaled by very little. Sorry VIDFEST, Michael Stipe and The Cure win this time around.

Follow the rounds of the festival over the last few days on twemes to get a snippet of all that shook down.

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VIDFEST: 2008 Coverage

I am quite certain there will be a decent amount of coverage on this year’s VIDFEST across the various channels.

Starting with the mobile, check out cellmap for mapping out your whereabouts and getting VIDFEST right onto your cell.

Moving into the internets (slash mobile to some extent), you can keep up with various bloggers and writers on the VIDFEST blog, or you’ll likely find VIDFEST coverage here here here here and here here here, and no doubt many others.

If you’re Twittering, don’t forget the tweme hash mark like so “#vidfest” for your fellow tweeters tweeting to follow and, uhm, tweet back? (what exactly is the correct cyber name for these bloody things? I stopped paying attention to all of the cute online naming conventions.)

I think you can still register… perhaps – even if it is just for one day or feature.

Enjoy the show!

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Blog Talk Radio: Kinzin Is The Better Choice For Privately Sharing Photos

Last week Blog Talk Radio featured an episode about photography and kids with “Taking Better Pictures of Your Kids”. The show featured Tracey Clark and Kate Inglis from the newly launched site Shutter Sisters, a photo blog full of passion and beauty in imagery and words, giving away their tips and tricks in photography. Inevitably, a question from a listener came up about online privacy and the security of posting pictures of your children online. The show’s host, Kristen Chase, refers to Kinzin as a great choice if you’re looking for a private, niche network, to securely post photos of your kids, saying:

“… there are a bunch of really great private websites out there… called Kinzin.com and they are invitation-only access”.

Kate goes on to mention some of Michael Fergusson’s thoughts on online safety in photography: to say the internet is inherently bad is the same to say that kissing is inherently bad because it can spread disease. True enough. You can listen to the show on Blog Talk Radio in its entirety. (The Kinzin mention comes at about the 22:00 minute mark of the show.)

It’s a pretty good show and has a lot of useful content to share from both the experts in the community, the host and from participating listeners around the Internet.

Websites like Shutter Sisters and Kinzin are those special, niche networks that people are gravitating toward more and more. I’m not tired of Flickr (far from it) or Facebook (god forbid) but quality on the Internet has become more and more apparent and absolutely essential, and these specific spaces online thankfully provide me with a rich user experience.
(xposted from Kinzin Blog, with some add-ons)

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Bridging Media: Miss 604 & Robert Ouimet Capture It All

xposted from Bridging Media

It’s the day after Bridging Media both Erica and I are thrilled how it all came together and that the day was received so well. About 150 people turned out, a mix of digital media professionals, Producers, Broadcasters and a few newbies as well. While my photos are coming soon (Flickr Tag “bridgingmedia” please), and more posts to be written on the summary and the all important future growth this beast, you can listen to all of the sessions, courtesy of Robert Ouimet, and can read the Live Blog of all four sessions from Rebecca Bollwitt – thank you for putting in the time, energy and efforts capturing the day. (And thanks to John as well, for snapping some pics!)

There were a LOT of people who helped out to pull this off. Sponsors, organizers, speakers, participants, attendees, all of those people that just randomly stepped in to help out where needs: Thanks to ALL of you!

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Bridging Media: Where Broadcasting and Digital Media Converge

“Help me help you.”

Bridging Media is a new event that Erica Hargreave and I are organizing for March 29th, 2008.

To register, please visit the Bridging Media event page – we have a limited space for numbers, so head on over there and stick your name up.

What is Bridging Media?

In a nutshell, over the past 6 months, Erica and I, along with Kris Krug and Boris Mann, have had numerous conversations and brainstorming sessions around the continuing disconnect and gap between the broadcast and digital media worlds. This is an area in which Achilles Media has been involved for a number of years, as nextMEDIA has had huge success in Banff and is the sister conference to the Banff TV Festival. So we reached out to Mark Greenspan at Achilles and he was more than happy to get behind this event here in Vancouver as a “friend of the event”. Mark also suggested we use this event as a platform to help shape ideas and Banff’s pitching competitions – he’s absolutely right.

The Centre For Digital Media has also come on board as a major sponsor as the host of the event. They have graciously offered their amazing space “The Hanger” to house our inaugural event.

We’ve just begun the plight to take this idea and make it into a bit of a beast (we hope). So far we have had a pretty tremendous and supportive response. We are on the hunt for sponsorships, will be shaping and finalizing the speakers list over the coming weeks – and we always welcome more people-power – Gregg Scott just stepped up to create our logo – thank-you Greg!

Sign up for Bridging Media now!

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From “Launch” to “Garage”, techy event speaking.

The Kinzin team spent the better part of their Friday evening at Launch Party Vancouver 03, showing off the application These Are My Kids. If you haven’t read or heard what this latest app is all about, please read more here.

It was a fantastic evening, to say the least. Michael, Frank, Julie and Paul held court all night to the many new fans wanting to find out more, take a look at the interface and have a spin for themselves. We are extremely grateful for the interest and enthusiasm for These Are My Kids from those of you who attended, and we very much appreciate the time that each person gave to learn more about it. It is an incredibly rewarding feeling to have such a great tech community come to such an event and to support the work that is being produced. It was inspiring and exciting.

A quick, but very necessary thank-you to the organizers of LPV: Maura, Danny, Dimitri; and to the sponsors as well: Sun Microsystems, Strutta, Techvibes, Layer7, QC Docs and Growthworks. This event is a treat. Looking forward to the next.

And onto the next…

Monday night, Michael Fergusson will be at the Vancouver Facebook Garage Event at the Vancouver Film School. There may just be a little room left on the event page, so add your name and come check out Vancouver’s newest and hottest Facebook applications. There are amazing things happening in this city, and this event shows off the best of what’s being developed for Facebook, and beyond…

And if you can’t make it out, just follow along on Miss 604’s live blogging rendition, and watch the night unfold before your very own monitor-watching, live-streaming eyes. 🙂

xposted from blog.kinzin.com

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All You Parents Out There! Check Out Kinzin’s Latest Application: “These Are My Kids”

Kinzin’s newest application, “These Are My Kids”, is ready. Almost. The latest app from Kinzin is currently in the Beta phase, soon to make the leap to full launch. The app is quite stunning as-is in every way, in design and technology – it’s easy, efficient, creative, useful, private and fun – but we’d like to perfect it, so we need your help and your feedback.

A Little Bit About The Application “These Are My Kids”:

In a few points, or less, here’s what the app is all about:

• Resolves all of your photo headaches and problems of multiple publishing networks and accounts – it’s an all-in-one!
• Easy access to your personal photos by invite only – no sign-ups, no accounts, no hassle for the end user (your defined friends)
• It’s Private – Only those friends explicitly invited to view your photo books will be able to see your content
• You’re creating beautiful photographic books of your children’s lives to keep forever (soon to be available to print as well!)
• Photos and Comments are delivered to all of your loved ones with the greatest ease, inside of outside of Facebook, and even in the mail (coming soon!)

Add “These Are My Kids” here and let us know what you think! You can comment within the application (there is a prompt along the top of the app), or join the Beta Testers Group for the app and comment in the Discussion Board.

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Raincity Lads Give Props to Vancouver Lassies

Coming out of the holiday season, the women in the Vancouver Tech world were welcomed into 2008 by a gracious (and overdue) blog post, written by Krug, and compiled and inspired as a collective effort with Dave O..

While the TechVibes digi people to watch list was accurate and nice to see written, there was a big miss, in my humble opinion. It was quickly spotted and noted by the Raincity Dudes (and Romina!), hence, their follow-up list of Tech Women To Watch – thanks guys for jumping all over this! Note To Photo: Lipgloss and Laptops Lady Tech Gurus Kerry Anne and Airdrie

Speaking of “Women Who Tech”: this is a TeleSummit event happening at the end of March that I think could be interesting for all you women out there. Currently, it is only available to US residents, but the organizers have ensured me they are working on having Canadians enabled to participate as well. You can make a panel suggestion for the event here.

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The Three Week Summary Of Missed Blog Posts

Wow, has it really been over three weeks? Have I lost the luster? Has life really gotten that complicated that I don’t even (gasp) blog on my own space any more?

Yes, life can sometimes get a little complicated, or, like some people in my world right now it seems, a lot complicated. And blogging about pretty much anything kind of becomes unimportant and can seem trivial to a point, unless of course you turn to the blog to unload some of what’s happening in life around you. Not my first choice. And let’s not dismiss the fact that lately my snippets of info and connecting come mostly in the form of FB updates…

It’s now T-Minus 8 days, and for the first time in over a year, I am going unplugged, unreachable, unplug-in-able, off the map, dedicating a whole week to sun, yoga and mint in my drinks.

But before that, here’s a whole slew of stuff that’s been going on that I’ve had every intention to write about:

• Keeping it all in perspective: The most refreshing thing in my last few months has been having a sister in Africa, doing what I wish we all could. Reading her tales and living her experience through her photography has been nothing short of inspiring.
• Last night was the second Launch Party, this time at Republic. The list of sponsors was quite long, which is excellent. Unfortunately, I was there briefly, but happy to sneak in a catch-up with Michael, say a quick hello to Rebecca, Dwayne and John (wish we chatted more actually), yakked with Dave a bit, strutted with the Strutta gang, hung with pal Cinci, caught a brief glimpse of Boris in the corner (sorry I didn’t get over there, but you were hiding!), and cruised by James while making my exit. My favourite part was having Weston FINALLY reveal his top secret Something Simpler project, Pul.se: it’ll be your new best, best friend on Facebook, currently still in alpha/beta tester mode. Who’ll need *actual* friends or google when you’ll have your Pulse tell you all need to know about your favourite music? and films and…. more on that later. (Here’s where I need Pulse to help me link to the future blog post.)
• Michael and Paul were on The Lab! – airing in January.
• DemoCampVan 04 was a few weeks back now, but was a goody. I think almost 100 people rolled in, we did get a healthy stint of demos, Battledecks was back in full force and seemed to be a hit, and the DEMOBEER at Flux went off pretty well! Who’s steppin’ up for the next one to buy a round for the gang???
• Why do the women in East Vancouver like to ride their Sunday bikes with no helmet and zero lighting at night? They are crazy and could suffer life-long brain injuries. What gives ladies?
• Kinzin: 2007 Facebook Rockstars. Check the blog for all the news. AYN is about to hit (read this next part with your pinky finger at the corner of your mouth) ONE MILLION users. muhahha-muhaha.
• KINZIN BUILDERS NEED APPLICATION TESTERS – yes, more apps to come… testers please – WE WILL GIVE YOU GIFTS FOR YOUR TIME!!
• I spent an afternoon with the Digital Media Masters program students, talking about social media, tools, old and new media, networks, the boomerang… but that deserves its own blog post, cause they are doing great things over there and I’d like to talk more about that.
• The new Daft Punk Live is purely spectacular.
• Check out the Twigg&Hottie Christmas hot sheet and pop by Vancouver’s hottest fashion boutique to pick out your *hot* seasonal outfit!
• My bro finally gets back tomorrow and I am super stoked.
• The wonderful man in my life gave me an early Christmas gift a few days ago, cause he thought I’d like to use it right away. He was right. It was a handy, green iPod Shuffle. It made it all the way to Day 3 before getting a good washing, still attached to my running shirt. I deserve coal.

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DemoCamp 04 Next Week

Get your tickets now!
That is, sign your name to the wiki and/or the Facebook group.

When: Thu Nov 22 5:30 – 7:30pm (drinks provided after)
Where: Workspace – 21 Water Street, Suite 400, Gastown – Map
Special Event: DEMOBEER! Communicate.com, Peer 1 and Techvibes have all chipped in to provide appies and drinks after the main event. Brian at Gastown’s newest digs, Flux Bistro, is graciously shutting down his joint to host the slew of Demo Campers. So arrive thirsty!

DemoCampVan 04 has a healthy slate of folks ready to demo, and we’re bringin’ back the Battledecks! Tod Maffin has pieced together a deck and a “mystery deck creator” (!?) is coming to the table with the other….

See you there!

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