What do I do with all those photos? This is a question that I frequently get asked from folks at events I photograph.

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.

Filed under: better late than never.

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

Here are my favorite pix from Ignite Seattle 7. See more about Ignite Seattle here.

Seattle PI’s Big Blogger, Mónica Guzmán implores us to put down the iPhone

Todd Sawicki talks about the beauty of ballet

Jessica Hagy on Lies to Ignore

Mehal Shah tells us how to Fight Dirty in Scrabble

Scissors beats paper

More pictures after the jump.

Here are some of the pictures that I took and notable quotes from The Naked Truth event in Seattle on July 9, 2009. The event was held by Redfin, Madrona, Fenwick & West and Square 1 Bank.

Fred Wilson

“what’s the worst kind of failure? one that takes a long time and costs alot of money” (via jtgameover)

“the idea that you cannot build an important tech company outside of Silicon Valley is a crock of shit.” (via Fred Wilson)

Mike Arrington

forget the money, just sell yourself like YouTube did before you ever make any money. Twitter is going to sell for $2 billion to Microsoft or Google by the end of the year, and they’re going to have absolutely no revenue whatsoever.

(via Techflash)

The Crowd at the Naked Truth

Greg Gottesman, VC plays Emcee

There’s a lot more commentary out there (mainly Twitter) and video of the event will be posted on Seattle 2.0 later.

More photos

Had a great time at last week’s Social Media Club Seattle meetup. Met lots of interesting folks and took a number of photos.

Little known fact – I was the first to give it a go as a Social Media Club organizer here in Seattle, but life got in the way of me doing it as well as I could. Glad to see so many good folks taking the ball and running with it.

Chris Pirillo

Kevin Urie

Vanessa Fox – "Oh, really, Chris?"

Showing Jeremiah the love

More pictures after the jump

Here are some of my favorite pix from last night’s npost event. Thanks Nathan for organizing gathering of so many good startups.

More pictures are in my npost Flickr set.

TA McCann points to the future

The Crowd

Jeff Lawson

David Jennings

Amplitude measures the response

More pictures are in my npost Flickr set.

Here are some of my favorite pix from the Seattle 2.0 Awards on May 7, 2009.

Jonathan Sposato

Glenn Kelman

Danielle Morrill

John Cook

Greg Huang

Here are my favorite pix from April 29th’s Ignite Seattle 6 event.

How and Why to Give an Ignite Talk – Scott Berkun

Intangible Method – Scotto Moore

The Psychology of Incompetence – Ron Burk

Geek Girl: A life Story – Maya Bisineer

Decoding Sticks and Waves – Ken Beegle

The Sanity Hacks of a Stay At Home Mom – Jen Zug

Public Library Hacking – Dawn Rutherford

Click below for all of my Ignite Seattle 6 pictures.

After it’s globe stomping success, Ignite Seattle returns to Seattle on April 29, 2009. From its humble beginnings here in Seattle, Brady and Bre’s 5 minute talks, with auto-advancing slides (aka a night out at the bar with geeks) has expanded to a world wide phenomenon (and a show from O’Reilly).

There have been Ignite events held in Baltimore, Sydney, New York, Paris, Des Moines, Leeds, Denver, Cardiff, Anchorage, Budapest, San Francisco and in three separate locations in Oregon (damn, you guys have a lot of geeks).

If Ignite hasn’t (ahem) caught fire in your town, you can set one up. Brady Forrest has provided a plethora of helpful hints here.

Editor’s Note: Not all Ignite Talks have naked Hasselhoff pictures

April 29th’s event promises to be a good one (a partial schedule has already been posted) and with a new venue to boot:

After a long search Ignite will be at the King Cat Theatre in Downtown Seattle. It’s a great space that has a bar, 700+ theatre-style seats and a great stage. This venue will allow everyone to have a seat and should provide us a good home for some time.

Here’s a little video to tide you over until then.

Ok, technically, this was Ignite Portland, but Jason did do a version of this in Seattle.

Here are my pix from various Ignite events.

Ignite Seattle

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.

About to get on a plane and head down to the San Francisco Bay Area for the annual Maker Faire this weekend.

This is the first Maker Faire I’ve attended and I’ll be bringing Heather and Olivia in tow for the event. We’re all pretty excited for some hard core nerdery this weekend.

What is the Maker Faire?

From the site:

Maker Faire is a two-day, family-friendly event that celebrates the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) mindset. It’s for creative, resourceful people of all ages and backgrounds who like to tinker and love to make things.

The event takes place Saturday and Sunday at the San Mateo Fairgrounds.

If you are unfamiliar with the Maker Faire, here’s a little video.

If you’re going and want to meet up, call me at 415.297.4215. Alternatively, I’ll be on Twitter with status updates all weekend, so follow me here. Hope to see you there.

I’m doing a talk tonight at the Seattle Social Media Club Meeting tonight about using Twitter for business purposes.

Here’s the skinny:

Seattle Social Media Club
A Published Stream of Consciousness: Do Business and Micro-blogging Mix?
Thursday, May 1, 6:30 – 8 p.m.
Text 100 Office

Micro-blogging services such as Twitter are continually growing in popularity, but many business people are asking how this fits into their professional life. Announcing to friends that you’re “exhausted from a late Saturday night” or “going to buy tickets to the TP concert…anyone interested?” seems far removed from anything co-workers (much less your boss!) wants to know.

While Twitter is great for personal use, many companies are using micro-blogging to enhance their business communications as well.

Join the Seattle Social Media Club to discover how you can use micro-blogging services to enhance your personal brand, grow and strengthen your business network, notify customers, promote your blog and more.

Randy Stewart, social media strategist and Senior Product Manager of Boxbe will be presenting short introduction to Twitter and microblogging followed by an interactive forum designed to help you get the most out of your micro-blogging feed

Let us know you are coming by signing up here.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

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.

I’ve posted my pix from last night’s Ignite Seattle event.

Ignite Seattle is a tech geek meetup held semi-irregularly that brings out some of the best and brightest in the Puget Sound region.

Had a great time and hope the next one isn’t so far off in the future. Wish my pix were better, but I’m still new at this whole photography thing.

Here is a link to my photos on Flickr – http://www.flickr.com/photos/stewtopia/

Feel free to use my photos in blog posts and what not, just link back here for attribution.

Ok, so it was a smidge warm inside. Why I thought wearing a long sleaved shirt was a good idea, I’ll never know.

I try very hard to not be one of those people who incessantly compare this to that, saying it was better when blah blah blah. I remember lamenting at Ignite 3 that the draconian format had lost it’s edge as people got more accustomed to doing 5 minute presentations with auto advancing slides.

Last night, I got over it.

Wow… what a great event last night. So many good speakers, so many good ideas. Thanks again Brady (and Bre, wherever you may be) for a great night out.

I took a lot of photos last night but didn’t take many notes. I’ll collect what I’ve found below.

• Fluvial has a behind the scenes video
• Great summaries of the talks from Brett Nordquist here.
• Nanotech speaker Deepak Singh offers his comments

Video from Bryan Zug and PowerPoints of the talks will be up on the Ignite Blog soon.

Oh ya, and Noonhat still scares the shit out of me.

See… I’m back on the bike. Really, I blog regularly… really.

Tonight in Seattle for one night only, Ignite! If you are a geek in Seattle and haven’t made it out to an Ignite Seattle event, you are truly missing out.

Bre Pettis and Brady Forrest from O’Reilly are brilliant hosts for what has been great fun. If you are a Maker, you’ll want to join in on the Paper Airplane Challenge at 6:30.

If you are in the social media scene, Chris Heuer will be on hand leading a meeting of the Social Media Club. He’s in town tonight to meet up with Seattle’s movers and shakers in the social media scene.

In either case, if you are perpetually late like me, don’t be late for the Ask Me Later presentations, which are guaranteed to be good, well, at least if they’re not, they only last 2 minutes. Being a little ADD addled, 2 minutes for an idea, a pitch, or a cause is a great way to get creativity flowing.

I’m pretty excited about going tonight as the first one was so much fun and I regretfully missed the second one, which was even bigger than the first.

Details from the site:

6:00 – Doors Open
6:30 – Paper Airplane Challenge Begins
8:00 – Break
8:30 – Ask Later Talks: Round 1 begins (full schedule)
9:15 – Break
9:45 – Ask Later Talks: Round 2 begins
10:30 – End of Ignite

Hope to see you there.