- Tiny cheap computers (Raspberry Pi), 3d printing (MakerBot), practically free sensors & low power connectivity (Fitbit) are an amazing marriage that will create a future I can’t predict (but it’s happening now). The Raspberry Pi is about the size of Altoids tin, how small can this go? What other applications can a connected, low powered sensor drive? I think the key to this future is thinking about what we can (or should) do with all this power. No one wants SkyNet, but I think there are other more pleasant possible outcomes.

- Peter Thiel has a depressing outlook on the United States, but in some ways, it’s hard not to agree with him. I guess I should move to China if I want happy times?

- John Biehler reminded me that hobbies can lead to interesting new things to work on. Everything I’ve been successful in life doing has started off as a hobby.

- Most product people wrestle not having enough capacity to do all the things they want to do. Capacity to build still outweighs deciding what to build.

- Canadians are awesome.

- Creating a social/mobile/local marketplace is super difficult, but if you nail it, you can own it. The trick is identifying the market and starting VERY specifically (a neighborhood or a demographic in a city). Some examples include Zaarly & Lyft.

- There are lots of hosting companies that offer hosting for free for a limited amount of time. Img.ur used 3 providers before moving into AWS. Bootstrapping means a level of frugality that might be tough for people who are accustomed to having the “best” or “easiest”

- Having a team of crack networkers working together and understanding each other’s agenda’s is a great way to divide and conquer (even if we were the “Grumpy Old Men” of the Internet).

- Brisket at Stubb’s is really, really good.

I took roughly ~15,000 steps or put another way, walked about 7 miles a day, including two travel days, which reduce the averages a bit. While there are lots of ways to get around without walking (cabs, petticabs, HootSuite buses), walking is usually your fastest way to get short distances. ProTip: always bring 2 pairs of shoes.

A little less measurable was the undesired side effect of talking loudly at parties as my voice is still a little scratchy. RAWR.

Huge thanks to conference organizers, The Parnassus Group (and my pal, Jason Preston) for putting this fantastic conference together.

Photos from 140tc

Needless to say, I snapped a few pix that I’ve posted below. Naturally, there are more on Flickr.

Biz Stone of Twitter

Tony Robbins

Veronica Belmont

The Iron Sheik

Guy Kawasaki

At the last Ignite event, I took 1600 photos and posted 46 of them (just about 3%). Not all of the unposted photos were duds, but they weren’t as good as the photos that I did post. While I want to thoroughly cover an event, I try to post only the best photos of the night.

Portraits in a Dark Theater

Taking pictures at many events (especially Ignite) are challenging due to unique and difficult lighting situations. Couple that with people who are moving around a lot and talking about something that they are passionate about, capturing a passable photo, let alone a good one can be hard.

I aspire to always 1. make the person look as good as possible and 2. capture the essence of the speaker and their material. Occasionally, I succeed.

Looking over my shoulder

Here’s a quick, three minute video (really a super-fast slideshow) that shows you the photos I posted among all the pictures that I took. Hopefully it conveys the pruning and curating process I go through before I post a photo set.

You can watch the HD version on YouTube and the final photo set from Ignite Seattle 7 is here.

Gnomedex 2009 marked my 4th Gnomedex and it seems that they get better every year. Gnomedex has always made me think in ways I hadn’t thought, meet people I had not met and do things I wouldn’t otherwise do. I view going to Gnomedex as a kind of engineered randomness with known constraints.

Gnomedex is also a place for me make new friends and to catch up with friends that I don’t get to see all that often. This year was no different (although I did miss one person in particular). Drop me a line if I haven’t said hi after this year’s Gnomedex.

Words, rather than photos

If you’re looking for a wrap up or summary of Gnomedex 2009 in words, rather than pictures, here are few of best that I’ve read.

• Derek Miller (penmachine) has summaries of both day’s talks
  (Day 1, Day 2)
• Kris Krug wraps his prose in between his photos in his Gnomedex 9 Human Circuitry
• While not strictly about Gnomedex, Betsy Aoki crosses over into my other love, Ignite with her post on “Giving an Ignite Presentation – What I learned at Gnomedex 2009.”

Gnomedex 2009 Pix

Here are my favorite pictures from this year’s Gnomedex (some of which have been posted over on my photoblog).

Frank Eliason – ComcastCares

Betsy Aoki

Printed head from Bre’s Maker Bot 3d printer.

Lee LeFever and Kris Krug

Danielle Sipple (@fiercekitty) and Buzz Bruggeman

Mark Horvath

Amber Case

Beth Goza

Thanks

Big thanks to Chris Pirillo and all the folks that put on Gnomedex every year. Their tireless hard work that makes Gnomedex very special to me every year is very much appreciated.

More photos from my Gnomedex 2009 photoset

I’ve done karaoke (badly) and I’ve taken photos at parties before, but this party was special as they had fantastic lighting and super campy performances.

Here are some of my favorites:

Tara Hunt channels Styx.

Haveboard’s Humpty Dance

Feel the Power of Schlomo Rabinowitz

David Armano lays down some Skynyrd.

Sarah Harrison had a story to tell about her little cat.

Happy Coggers Rob Weychart and Kevin Hoffman gave us the time of our lives.

Lauren Isaacson‘s spot on Winehouse brought the house down.

Aaron Brazell represents. ‘Nuff said.

Thanks Happy Cog for a great party. Let’s do it again next year, shall we?

More Happy Cogaoke pictures here.

But one thing missing from all of this is a good way to look at the folks who are on a given panel. I made a little spreadsheet that has the panels broken out by the people giving them, it’s derived from the official list here, but sortable so you can find the folks you might want to see and the panel they are on.

Unfortunately, I didn’t incorporate the times they are happening, but this is a good way to insure you don’t miss the people you truly want to see.

See the whole list over at Google Docs

Here are some of my favorites from Northern Voice 2009:

Nora Young

Eagranie Yuh

Kris Krug

Dave Olson

Roland Tanglao

Chris Heuer and Kim Cathers (not technically @Northern Voice)

Robert Scales

More Northern Voice 2009 Pictures on Flickrh5

I went to my first Northern Voice 2 years ago after meeting up with some of the organizers at the previous year’s Gnomedex and thinking, “hey, these guys are all right.” Northern Voice is one of my favorite conferences to go to because despite it’s small size, it attracts a wealth of interesting, insightful people who want to share their experiences.

This year I got a chance to catch up with old friends and make a bunch of new ones.

A few thank you’s.

Jim DeLaHunt took me up on my ride share offer and I ended up invited to his lovely downtown apartment to for dinner with his wife, Ducky and friend. Thanks for the great company, conversation and for lovely time (and letting me photograph your spectacular view).

Jeremy Latham is my new best friend. Not only did we share several interests (well, besides the normal nerdy conference stuff), he fixed a CSS problem on my blog that I had puzzled over off and on for 6 months. Thanks to him, I’ll actually have a home on my blog for my photos soon!

Thanks to the organizers, volunteers and sponsors of Northern Voice. Every year seems to be better and better. Darren Barefoot put it best,

It’s a sausage party no longer. I have no proof of this, but it also feels more diverse in terms of the age and ethnicity of attendees.

I couldn’t agree more.

Some Northern Voice Highlights

Rob Cottingham seriously killed on stage with his send up of the blogging world. Particularly funny was his proposed meme of “3 people you’ve cheated on your spouse with.” I’ve got some video lying around somewhere that I’ll post soon.

PhotoCamp with Tim Bray as emcee was a departure from the past with less “prepared” material and more discussion. I actually felt like I had something to contribute this year and was a lot of fun.

Dave Olson‘s interview with Kris Krug and Bev Davies about rock and roll photography was fantastic. I had met Bev the day before after an intro by Peter Andersen and I had a lovely conversation, but had no idea she was so punk rock. Her pictures speak volumes.

There is too much to mention about what I liked about Northern Voice this year, so I’ll leave it at that. Can’t wait until next’s conference.

Check out my pictures of Northern Voice on Flickr.

Actually, other than being tired from having a four week old child at home and shooting 1000 pictures (thankfully, I didn’t post all of them), this year’s Gnomedex was distinctively lacking in an aftermath.

No controversy (I think) and lots of great speakers, ideas and attendees wrapped this year’s meetup into the best Gnomedex yet. I met a lot of really nice folks who wanted to share their ideas, projects, tattoos and good will.

My top moments at Gnomedex this year

• Scott Maxwell – Mars Rover Driver
• Beth Kanter raising $3700 in aid for Cambodian kids
• The Hallway Conversations – always the best reason to go to Gnomedex, the people.

What happened at Gnomedex?

There are lots of great summaries of the show out there, so I won’t give you mine. Here are some of the best.

• CenterNetworks – Great overview and highlights from Rick Turoczy, whom I wish I met.
• Derek Miller – Gives his Twitters a full grown blog post
• Beth Kanter – The Value of Attending Gnomedex: Priceless
• Chris Brogan

Thank you

A huge thanks to Chris, Ponzi and the Gnomedex crew for all their hard work again this year. You guys put on the best show and attract the best folks time and time again. I’ve mentioned before that despite all my years in the Internet biz, Gnomedex 2006 was my first “Internet” conference. It’s now the only one I can’t miss every year.

Finally, Beth Kanter via Dave Delaney summed up Gnomedex 2008 in eleven words:

Use technology for good and it will make you feel good.

Had a great time at this year’s Wordcamp in San Francisco. I met a lot of great people and had a lot of great conversations and I think, got some pretty decent photographs of the event.

I did have some mixed feelings about the event, but I recognize that creating a low cost, high quality confernce a is a series of trade-offs and I think the Wordcamp organizers made a lot of good decisions.

• Two tracks, one for users and one for devs.
  This was smart as it got everyone together in the same facility on the same day, and I’m not a dev, so there were no decisions to make :-).
• The UCSF facility is awesome.
  Plenty of space to run the two track event and let people spread out, take notes, Twitter, blog, process photos etc. The only problem with this place is, it’s out in the middle of nowhere. I suspect those that drove were pretty happy with parking.
• The WiFi was great!
  (But I still used my EVDO card to let other folks use the bandwidth). This is a pretty common complaint at events and the UCSF folks clearly had some bandwidth and a well managed network.
• It felt big.
  This is both a point for and against the conference. I miss the intimacy of the Swedish American Hall, but I’m excited for WordPress’ explosive growth. I didn’t get to talk to everyone I wanted to, but there is always the Internets.

I didn’t take many notes, but I did take a lot of pictures. Here are some links to folks who did blog.

• Top 10 WordPress plugins
• All day coverage – The Web Life
• All Things D
• Lorelle on WordPress
• Ma.tt’s list of photographs

Finally, a huge thanks to Matt and all the folks who helped with the conference.

Here are a couple of events you can spot me at in the next couple of weeks.

Wordcamp 2008

While I haven’t blogged as much in the last year as I would have like to, the crowd that Wordcamp attracts is a great one. Great presentations of the past have included Jeremy Wright, Rashmi Sinha, Om Malik and John C. Dvorak.

This year’s lineup looks to be just as promising.

Wordcamp SF 2008 takes place this Saturday, August 16, 2008 at the Mission Bay Conference Center in in San Francisco, CA.

Here are some of my pictures from last year’s Wordcamp.

Gnomedex 2008

It’s kind of funny, for all the years I’ve spent in tech, Gnomedex 2006 was really my first tech conference. Chris Pirillo’s Gnomedex conference always has good presentations up front and even better conversations in the hallway.

Hell, if nothing else, I like going to see who is going to get obliterated by Dave Winer (last year was Jason Calacanis).

Gnomedex 2008 takes place August 21st through 23rd, 2008 at Bell Harbor Conference Center here in Seattle, WA.

Here are some pictures I took at Gnomedex 2007.

Meet up?

Drop me a line if you’re planning on attending and would like to meet up.

I’ve been taking pictures of events for almost a year now and SXSWi was clearly the biggest event that I had undertaken. South by Southwest is both rewarding and grueling in the sense that meeting great folks, learning new things, trying to upload photos in somewhat real time while trying to get sleep is pretty difficult. You can sleep when you’re dead…

I’m not taking pictures for anything other than fun and personal enrichment (and to give something back to the folks who give so much of themselves to putting on these events). I really enjoy the work that Kris Krug [kk+] and Scott Beale [Laughing Squid] have been doing for years and hope to be as good as they are some day. I’m really thankful for all the tips and tricks that they have shared with me in the last year.

Not all the photos are gems, but I cut this group of pictures down from 700 pictures that I took down to about 160. If you want to see with folks on Flickr like best, go here for my 12 most “interesting” photos from South by Southwest Interactive 2008.

FYI – I’m shooting on a Canon Rebel XTi with mainly a Canon 50mm f/1.4 lens.

You can view the rest of my Flickr stream here.

At last year’s SXSWi in Austin, TX, Twitter broke for the first time, err, um, was a break through product that helped people quickly figure out where the cool parties were and helped them track down their friends without calling them.

Since then, Twitter has been quickly adopted (and broken) by at least some of the masses (myself included).

I didn’t really get Twitter at first and I thought that it represented all the worst things about blogging (navel gazing, echo chamber). Here is a link to the day I spent talking about my cat in protest of Twitter. I even annoyed myself.

Eventually, I came around…

So, what the heck is Twitter? If you follow me on Facebook, you’ve probably seen my rapidly changing status. That’s coming from Twitter. And while I do kid about the Twitter uptime, by and large, they’ve created an incredible service based on something very simple.

Here’s CommonCraft on Twitter in Plain English.

I’m excited to be heading down to Austin once again for the yearly SXSWi Festival in Austin, Texas from Friday March 7th until Tuesday March 11. That little “i” next to SXSW means I’m not going to the film thing or the the music thing, I’m going to the nerd thing.

From last year’s SXSWi, here’s Ze Frank explaining SXSWi.

[thanks for the pointer/embed code, Scott Beale]

One day, when the kids are older, I’ll drag my wife out to Austin and we’ll do both Music and Interactive. Music, in particular, looks to be amazing.

Anyhow, if you are heading down and want to say hi, you can get in touch with me on my phone (if you have it), email me at randy@boxbe.com, direct message me on Twitter or turn up near me at one of the panels or parties I’m planning on attending.

Hope to see you there.

Start your browsers and whip out your credit card, our kind neighbors to the north have activated registration.

To quote the website –

Northern Voice is a two-day, non-profit personal blogging and social media conference that’s being held at the Forestry Sciences Centre, 2424 Main Mall, UBC main campus, Vancouver, Canada on February 22-23, 2008. This is the 4th annual incarnation of this event, see the 2005, 2006 and 2007 websites for previous information.

The thing that makes Northern Voice great is the people. Last year, both the speakers and the attendees were incredible and I can’t wait to catch up with some of those folks again this year. I learned a lot, shared a lot and made some new friends and acquaintances.

Hope to see you there.

Here is a slideshow of my Flickr pictures from Gnomedex 2007.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

I had a great time at the conference and met a lot of great people. Now, to go get some social network fatigue…

A larger image is on Flickr. Please share.