Penmachine

Today was the 2010 Vancouver Camera Show, held by the Western Canada Photographic Historical Association at the Cameron Rec Centre in Burnaby, near Lougheed Mall. I wasn't planning to go, but it turned out that my daughter Marina's new lenses for her glasses, which we got yesterday, were flawed, and needed to be replaced by the optician at that mall, so the two of us were in the area and had some time to kill.

Marina was enthusiastic—she was interested in looking at old Polaroid cameras and to see what the event was like. We walked from the mall, and I paid my $5 admission. (Marina was free.) And wow, it's a heck of an event.

The rec centre gym was filled with dozens of tables with thousands of items of photographic and movie equipment, most of it of some vintage, like the Nikon FE I bought the other day (or a bit newer, or a lot older). Cameras, lenses, flashes, tripods, bellows, enlargers, filters, parts—a photo geek's dream.

It was still very busy, even though we were there barely an hour before closing time. The crowd skews heavily male, and older, but Marina and I had fun poking around at the various obscurities, most in black and chrome, or maybe even leather. I didn't bring much money, nor did we buy anything, yet we hardly noticed the time pass before her glasses were ready and we had to leave. I didn't even take any pictures!

I'll plan to attend again next year, if I'm healthy, and to go earlier. Both Marina and her sister might like to come along, if their photographic interest persists until 2011. Honestly, if I'd gone myself, I probably could have browsed all day. But like a gambler, I'd have to bring cash in advance and set myself a hard limit.

Labels: conferences, family, geekery, meetup, photography, vancouver

I made three short videos a little while ago, but forgot to link them up here. Silly me. Here they are:

All three were taken with my Nikon D90 SLR, which has a video mode.

Labels: animals, conferences, gnomedex, meetup, nikon, seattle, transportation, video, whistler

Gnomedex 9 ended several days ago, but I needed to think about it a bit before writing my overall impressions. Each year (I've been part of five Gnomedexes now) has a different vibe, and this one was a bit hard to pin down.

It was certainly less confrontational. For whatever reason, none of the previous web-heavy-hitter attendees—Dave Winer, Steve Gillmor, Sarah Lacy, Jason Calacanis, Mark Canter, Doug Kaye, Adam Curry, et. al.—was there this time, which made for less high-level arguing (or grandstanding). And while many of the sessions were fascinating, I didn't get my mind blown the way some of last year's talks did to me.

I think, perhaps, it was not quite as inspiring, but more fun. Notes and quotes:

• "Anybody still use Second Life? One person? How's it workin' for you?" - Chris Pirillo (At Gnomedex 6.0 in 2006, Second Life was the Current Big Thing. Not anymore.)
• "Sock Summit is Gnomedex for sock knitters. Thousands of women—and one guy —descended on Portland." - Beth Goza (Something I didn't know about knitters: they go on "yarn diets" to stop spending money on new yarn, i.e. fight the addiction.)
• "If anyone here is a mathematician, I made this up!" - Micah Baldwin
• "We're not geeks, but we're really really trying hard to be." - Leah Nelson
• In a brief appearance onstage, I mentioned a photo of the planet Mercury my dad took in 2006, and an Astronomy Picture of the Day of the International Space Station taken in a similar way.
• Mark Horvath said that, "The average homeless person is America is nine years old." But it didn't take long to find out that's not true. Regardless, the story of James (who isn't nine, and who came onstage too) was compelling, and we raised some money for him.
• The un-seeable space of the Internet makes us all astronaut-style cyborgs in its space, according to Amber Case. And these days, you break your cellphone and you say, "Crap, now I can't hear all the way to Egypt at the touch of a button anymore." Also, "People have enough trouble with driver's ed right now, so, uh, jetpacks?"

I was also glad to have a hug with Drew Olanoff, who was diagnosed with cancer only three months ago and has turned it into a worldwide fundraising effort already. I Blame Drew's Cancer that I didn't manage that when I found out about my cancer in 2007.

On our last night in Seattle, Air and I spent the dinner hour pounding open steamed crab legs with little wooden hammers, then had a drink and watched the Moon set behind a sailboat at our hotel. The next morning as we left the hotel driveway, we saw this:

I'd say it was worth going.

Labels: cancer, conferences, friends, geekery, gnomedex, seattle

My wife Air live blogged the first day's talks here at the 9th annual Gnomedex conference, and you can also watch the live video stream on the website. I posted a bunch of photos. Here are my written impressions.

Something feels a little looser, and perhaps a bit more relaxed, about this year's meeting. There's a big turnover in attendees: more new people than usual, more women, and a lot more locals from the Seattle area. More Windows laptops than before, interestingly, and more Nikon cameras with fewer Canons. A sign of tech gadget trends generally? I'm not sure.

As always, the individual presentations roamed all over the map, and some were better than others. For example, Bad Astronomer Dr. Phil Plait's talk about skepticism was fun, but also not anything new for those of us who read his blog. However, it was also great as a perfect precursor to Christine Peterson, who invented the term open source some years ago, but is now focused on life extension, i.e. using various dietary, technological, and other methods to improve health and significantly extend the human lifespan.

• Some stuff Dr. Plait said: "Skepticism is not cynicism." "You ask for the evidence [...] and make sure it's good." "Be willing to drop an idea if it's wrong. Yeah, that's tough." "Scientists screw it up as well." "It sucks to be fooled. You can lose your money. You can lose your life."
• Christine Peterson: "Moving is how you tell your body, I'm not dead yet!" "You see people hitting soccer balls with their heads. Would you do that with your laptop? And that's backed up!" (You might like my friend Bill's reaction on my Facebook page.)

As Lee LeFever quipped on Twitter, "The life extension talk is a great followup to the skepticism talk because it provides so many ideas of which to be skeptical." My thought was, her talk seemed like hard reductionist nerdery focused somewhere it may not apply very well. My perspective may be different because I have cancer; for me, life extension is just living, you know? But I also feel that not everything is an engineering problem.

There were a number of those dichotomies through the day. Some other notes I took today:

• Bre Pettis passed out 3D models "printouts" created with the MakerBot he helped design. "Bonus points for being able to print out your... uh... body... parts." "Oh my god, you should put this brain inside Walt Disney's head!" "What's black ABS plastic good for?" "Printing evil stuff."
• One of the most joyous things you'll ever see is a keen scientist really going off on his or her topic of specialty. Firas Khatib on FoldIt protein folding was one of those. For a given sequence of amino acids, the 3D protein structure with lowest free energy is likely to be its useful shape in biology—and his team made a video game to help people figure out optimum shapes, which in the long run can help cure diseases.
• Todd Friesen is a former search engine and website spammer. He had lots of interesting things today. In the world of white and black search engine optimization (SEO), SPAM = "Sites Positioned Above Mine." For spammers, RSS = "Really Simple Stealing" and thus spam blogs. Major techniques for web spammers: hacking pages, bribing people for access, forum posts and user profiles, comment spam. Pay Per Click = PPC = "Pills, Porn, and Casinos."
• I liked these from the Ignite super-fast presentations: "There are more social media non-gurus than social media gurus. Which means we can take them." On annual reports: "Imagine waiting A YEAR to find out what a company is doing."

We had a great trip down to Seattle via Chuckanut Drive with kk+ and Fierce Kitty. Tonight Air and I are sleeping in the Edgewater Hotel on Seattle's Pier 67, next to the conference venue, and tonight is also the 45th anniversary of the day the Beatles stayed in this same hotel and fished out the window.

Labels: anniversary, band, biology, conferences, geekery, gnomedex, history, music, science, travel

We're off to Gnomedex, the fifth year Air and I will be participating. It has to be one of the densest collections of nerds around (as my panorama from last year shows)—sort of a web society annual family reunion. Including some of the emotional blow-ups that entails.

Watch for lots of photos from me and others, as well as some posts here.

Labels: conferences, friends, geekery, gnomedex, seattle, web

More photos in my Flickr set and from others.

Labels: blog, conferences, friends, geekery, northernvoice, photography, podcast, vancouver, web

More photos in my Flickr set and from others.

Labels: blog, conferences, friends, geekery, northernvoice, photography, podcast, vancouver, web

I love the Northern Voice conference. I've been part of it every year since it started in 2005. But while my wife Air and I were among the first to register for the conference itself this year, and while she put together one of the panels, neither of us will be attending the February 19 opening-night dinner (tickets for that go on sale tomorrow) because it's sponsored by the BC Liberal Party.

UPDATE: This has turned into an interesting discussion in the comments below, at the blogs of Jen Watkiss, Duane Storey, and Tris Hussey, and on Facebook and Twitter.

The sponsorship makes us uncomfortable. I'd like to think that we'd feel this way if it were any political party, but it's hard to know. That it is the BC Liberals, for whom neither of us has never voted, and that there is an election coming right up this spring, both add to our discomfort. When my wife mentioned the sponsorship to me, my immediate verbal reaction was a simple, "Ew."

I know almost everyone on the Northern Voice organizing committee, and I think they do a great job, but I also think that accepting this sponsorship was a poor choice, regardless of whether (or maybe especially because of) the current economic circumstances, which make sponsorships hard to find right now. And had it been a provincial or federal government ministry, or the City of Vancouver, the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Committee, or some other government organization rather than a political party, I think I would have been fine with it.

Sponsors are supposed to promote themselves, but a political party sponsorship in advance of an election feels like an attempt to buy my vote, and seems cynical, especially from a party that hasn't been at the vanguard of blogging and podcasting up to now. So Air and I will be at UBC for the main conference, but we'll skip the dinner. If there are others who feel similarly, as I expect there are, maybe some of us will go out for beer elsewhere that night.

Labels: conferences, controversy, money, northernvoice, politics

Chris Pirillo, who organized the Gnomedex conference last week, posted a fun video compiling a bunch of photos from the event. As far as I can tell, most of the photos are from my Flickr set, which is cool:

He calls it "The Beginning of Human Circuitry." The groovy technobleep soundtrack is "Icarus" from Trash80.net, and the video was assembled using Animoto.

Labels: animation, conferences, gnomedex, kriskrug, photography, pirillo, video

Photos like this one are the reason I've been using black-and-white film to take some of my pictures recently:

Labels: conferences, family, friends, gnomedex, meetup, photography

Last year there were worries that the annual Gnomedex conference in Seattle might have lost some of its mojo. This year Gnomedex got its mojo back. Several 2008 sessions, for instance, blew away my bedridden 2007 remote-video appearance, which I'd heard some people had then considered a highlight. (Yikes.)

Rather than write out a big summary (you can read what others had to say), here's what I was chatting about on Twitter before, during, and after Gnomedex 8.0 with various people. The @ links are Twitter's way of letting you target your messages to other Twitter usernames. The #Gnomedex tags are there so that search sites know that various Twitter messages ("tweets") are about Gnomedex. You can probably ignore both and still get the point:

Wednesday

• Took a pill that can upset my stomach, didn't eat soon enough, threw up in the sink with almost no warning a few minutes later. Better now. 09:50 AM August 20, 2008
• Packing, last minute, before leaving for #Gnomedex today. 10:49 AM August 20, 2008
• jjtoothman @penmachine its awesome that you are going to gnomedex. words don't describe how good it is to read that. 11:05 AM August 20, 2008
• Just ate @ Shari's in Bellingham 03:19 PM August 20, 2008
• brooksduncan @penmachine What is Shari's like? I always see them but I have never dared enter. 03:25 PM August 20, 2008
• @brooksduncan it was tasty! 03:42 PM August 20, 2008
• bajema @penmachine What brings you south of the border? 03:28 PM August 20, 2008
• @bajema gnomedex.com in Seattle 03:42 PM August 20, 2008
• Derek will have dinner in Lynwood, then on to Seattle. This weather could easily be February here in the Pacific Northwest. 05:41 PM August 20, 2008
• geoffduncan @penmachine In February, there are fewer daylight hours and everything is grey and brown, not grey and green. :) 05:59 PM August 20, 2008
• Derek is in Seattle early for #Gnomedex, uploading photos to http://flickr.com/photos/penmachine -- and will spend tomorrow with his lovely wife. 12:06 AM August 21, 2008

Thursday

• Derek had a great sleep-in in Seattle. 11:26 AM August 21, 2008
• The Red Lion Fifth Avenue in Seattle makes a pretty mean clubhouse sandwich. And the sun is out! 01:24 PM August 21, 2008
• Derek is off to #Gnomedex start party in 90 mins or so. 05:31 PM August 21, 2008
• inkbase @penmachine I'm watching you live at pirillo.com - freaky. 10:27 PM August 21, 2008
• Derek plans to be up in less than six hours. 01:34 AM August 22, 2008

Friday

• caseorganic @penmachine hello to you! #Gnomedex 08:39 AM August 22, 2008
• Derek is at #Gnomedex, seated next to @kk who is first to present. 08:50 AM August 22, 2008
• Thanks for the name-check, @chrispirillo -- @kk now onstage 09:27 AM August 22, 2008
• #Gnomedex audience photo panorama http://snipurl.com/gdex8pano 10:09 AM August 22, 2008
• netchick @penmachine - retweet: #Gnomedex audience photo panorama http://snipurl.com/gdex8pano (great job, D!) 10:12 AM August 22, 2008
• jabancroft @penmachine just asked "what the heck does ma.gnolia DO?" Sad it got to the end of the preso before that tidbit was mentioned. 10:19 AM August 22, 2008
• #Gnomedex is now the top search term on Twitter 10:28 AM August 22, 2008
• Don't forget the #Gnomedex photo pool at Flickr: http://snipurl.com/gdex8 and the FB group: http://snipurl.com/gdex8fb 10:41 AM August 22, 2008
• Ben Huh from #icanhascheezburger is a great speaker here at #Gnomedex 11:07 AM August 22, 2008
• uncleweed @penmachine added both links and your panorama to raincitystudios post - thanks! 11:29 AM August 22, 2008
• @dannysullivan @ #Gnomedex: "Haven't talked to my kids yet, because you don't want to freak them out..but you do want to freak them out." 12:06 PM August 22, 2008
• Derek is getting ready for #Gnomedex lunch. Danny Sullivan is also passionate and interesting. 12:14 PM August 22, 2008
• glaciermedia @penmachine most definitely 12:43 PM August 22, 2008
• uncleweed @penmachine i got an XL here for you and (disclaimer) this parody derivative artwork is not licensed and not to be confused with Star Wars 01:54 PM August 22, 2008
• mndoci @penmachine Thanks for clarifying. IMO they are important through your life, :). Agree that business skills should be taught as well 02:07 PM August 22, 2008
• buzzbishop @penmachine very sage advice, my friend. 01:17 PM August 22, 2008
• buzzbishop @penmachine then, of course, there's scoble http://twitter.com/Scobleizer 01:18 PM August 22, 2008
• @markbao Most attractive #Gnomedex slides so far. 01:41 PM August 22, 2008
• @jackbrewster I agree about @markbao - there have always been supersmart kids who don't need school. Most kids aren't that #Gnomedex 01:54 PM August 22, 2008
• @uncleweed Darth Drupal! Want. I'm sure it's totally legitimately licensed from Lucasfilm as well. 01:51 PM August 22, 2008
• @mndoci I think @markbao was saying that History & English *are* important in school, but not enough about making a business etc. 02:02 PM August 22, 2008
• #Gnomedex My advice on information overload: learn to love ignoring things. 02:14 PM August 22, 2008
• @hardaway at #Gnomedex: We have to redefine "experience," bc we have to unlearn as much as we learn. See, there is such a thing as wisdom. 02:17 PM August 22, 2008
• Derek is charging his Nikon DSLR battery, which is a remarkably rare event. Mid-#Gnomedex, alas. 02:25 PM August 22, 2008
• trishussey @penmachine I have a spare and charged EN-EL3e if that works in your Nikon 02:32 PM August 22, 2008
• uncleweed @penmachine where are you sitting? i'll deliver your shirt next break before it is snagged 02:36 PM August 22, 2008
• @uncleweed Row 2 middle aisle with hat and tripod, next to @kk 02:39 PM August 22, 2008
• @TylerGraffam Sad to say, but #Gnomedex $600 is pretty inexpensive for a tech conference. But look into #BarCamp and #NorthernVoice though. 02:51 PM August 22, 2008
• Agh, I feel like a heel by phrasing my question to @kanter at #Gnomedex badly. 03:08 PM August 22, 2008
• uncleweed @penmachine nah, made sense and she gave a useful answer i thought 03:08 PM August 22, 2008
• Suggestion: a #Gnomedex that raises $2500 to send a Cambodian girl to college is better than one where Winer/Calacanis argue about Mahalo. 03:36 PM August 22, 2008
• davedelaney @penmachine You have that right brother! 05:38 PM August 22, 2008
• betsyweber @penmachine - I second that! 06:38 PM August 22, 2008
• @kk Archives need to live forever. I still get people hitting things I uploaded in 1997. 03:41 PM August 22, 2008
• kk @penmachine the domain expired last week. oopsie. i'll fix it momentarily. :P 03:44 PM August 22, 2008
• The most inspiring speakers at #Gnomedex have a phrase in common: "...so I tried an experiment." 03:48 PM August 22, 2008
• trishussey @penmachine exactly. Now imagine if we all just took the leap to just experiment. What could we accomplish? What problems could we solve? 03:50 PM August 22, 2008
• caseorganic @penmachine Experimenting is how amazing things happen! hooray! 02:50 PM August 22, 2008
• dbrazeal @penmachine Great point.... and we need to experiment even if we have to do it on our own time, without the backing of the institution 05:53 PM August 22, 2008
• @kanter #Gnomedex Sorry to phrase my question poorly to you re: other charities. Sounded more negative than I meant. Great answer, BTW. 03:58 PM August 22, 2008
• Okay, this #Gnomedex cyborg talk is hard-hard-hardcore geekery. 04:33 PM August 22, 2008
• @penmachine understatement. But again follows "so I did this experiment..." 04:35 PM August 22, 2008
• #Gnomedex Medical imaging » hi-end 3D graphics » mech eng » machine tooling - where will this end up? 04:36 PM August 22, 2008
• uncleweed @penmachine hard freakin core man ... but i am now a flickr picnik premium member 04:35 PM August 22, 2008
• #Gnomedex Ah, of course, it's an art installation with an interactive lighting installation. I am not worthy. 04:39 PM August 22, 2008
• @uncleweed http://flickr.com/photos/lockergnome/2782985591/ 04:46 PM August 22, 2008
• Derek is too tired to finish processing #Gnomedex photos for upload for day 1. More tomorrow. Now bed. 01:07 AM August 23, 2008
• My favourite photo I took at #Gnomedex so far: http://shrinkster.com/11hj 01:30 AM August 23, 2008

Saturday

• Derek is heading back to #Gnomedex. 08:39 AM August 23, 2008
• OK fine fun conversation. This conversation is precisely what #Gnomedex managed to avoid yesterday -- and what made yesterday awesome. 10:16 AM August 23, 2008
• jackbrewster @penmachine Amen. 10:17 AM August 23, 2008
• Yes @kk -- here is info on @uncleweed's "f*ck stats make art" http://shrinkster.com/11hr - http://shrinkster.com/11hs -- he should speak here. 10:21 AM August 23, 2008
• #Gnomedex Blogs don't have to have comments. http://daringfireball.net, http://kottke.org etc. - almost more valuable because they don't. 10:27 AM August 23, 2008
• I feel like this is #Gnomedex 5 -- but I enjoyed Gnomedex 5. 10:30 AM August 23, 2008
• I wonder how much of the tension in that @sarahcuda #Gnomedex session was slopover from the whole SXSW thing & how much was the actual topic 10:36 AM August 23, 2008
• My photos of #Gnomedex day 0/day 1: http://shrinkster.com/11ht 10:40 AM August 23, 2008
• dbrazeal @penmachine I think it was 90% SxSW hangover. Gotta give @sarahcuda credit for guts to show up and do it that way. 12:48 PM August 23, 2008
• davidrisley @penmachine It was the actual topic. I don't think any of that was because of SXSW. 01:54 PM August 23, 2008
• uncleweed @penmachine thanks for the plug amigo - here's audio and notes on f@cking stats and making art http://is.gd/1Rf9 sign me up for next year! 10:57 AM August 23, 2008
• #Gnomedex Okay, Adeona looks extremely cool and useful, and these are the right people to do it: http://tinyurl.com/6jfgdd 11:49 AM August 23, 2008
• @leelefever #Gnomedex Removing bullet points is easy - use no text on your slides at all. 12:28 PM August 23, 2008
• uncleweed @penmachine yes! use photos for visual accompaniment and then talk the things on the list rather than listing them 12:29 PM August 23, 2008
• Today's #Gnomedex - so far not as inspiring as yesterday, but cooler geekiness. A good mix overall. 12:32 PM August 23, 2008
• @kegill Here are my photo tips @kk mentioned http://snipurl.com/cameraworks (reverse chronological order) 01:48 PM August 23, 2008
• kegill @penmachine Thank you!! 02:41 PM August 23, 2008
• #Gnomedex Scott Maxwell brought a tear to my eye, and got a standing ovation too. 03:51 PM August 23, 2008
• @jabancroft If you don't already have one, get a 50mm/1.8. Or save up for the 85/1.8, lovely lens. 03:34 PM August 23, 2008
• jabancroft @penmachine I have a 50mm/1.8, but it doesn't autofocus on my D40 (which I knew when I bought it). I thought I'd use it more than I do. 03:35 PM August 23, 2008
• @jabancroft There's a new autofocusing Sigma 50/1.4, but it's pricey. The Sigma 30/1.4 DX is nice too. http://shrinkster.com/11hy 03:42 PM August 23, 2008
• theMetz @penmachine Jeez, did I Robot get you torn up too? 03:53 PM August 23, 2008
• jabancroft @penmachine I teared up a little, too, at those photos. Amazing stuff. 03:54 PM August 23, 2008
• An extremely impressive #Gnomedex this year, a definite recharge. Thank you @ponzi @chrispirillo and everyone else. 05:36 PM August 23, 2008
• kegill @penmachine Derek ... these are *great*! Takes me back to photoJrl class as an undergrad. :-) Love the sketches -- for the "touch" and info. 08:45 PM August 23, 2008
• Derek is back at the Red Lion Seattle. Getting last #Gnomedex photos ready to uploade. 10:04 PM August 23, 2008
• Uploading final batch of #Gnomedex photos to Flickr. Find 'em 2 places: http://snipurl.com/gdex8 and http://shrinkster.com/11i6 10:38 PM August 23, 2008

Sunday

• Derek is pretty much all done in Seattle after #Gnomedex -- the sunny hotel buffet patio is going to turn to rain soon, so we'll head out. 12:30 PM August 24, 2008
• Derek is at Shari's in Bellingham again. Food is decent, but it's the free Wi-Fi that brings us back. 04:40 PM August 24, 2008
• Derek is home and unpacked. Time to pick up the kids. 08:02 PM August 24, 2008
• It wouldn't have been a trip to Seattle without mysterious traffic slowdowns on the I-5 near Everett. 09:00 PM August 24, 2008

Gnomedex 2008 was a remarkable and refreshing forum of ideas, which is the best anyone could ask for. I also won a cool prize thanks to Eye-Fi and Chris and Ponzi Pirillo, and they played my Gnomedex song at the end. Yay!

P.S. You know who'd be cool to have speak next year? One of the MythBusters crew.

Labels: conferences, gnomedex, meetup, mythbusters, pirillo, seattle, travel

A fun way to spend our anniversary week is for my wife Air and me to come down to Seattle, hit the parties for Gnomedex together, and then have me attend the conference while she goes on the town.

The kids are with my parents back in Vancouver, and it sounds like they're having a good time too.

Labels: conferences, gnomedex, meetup, pirillo, seattle, travel

Today, via Twitter:

• Home, Burnaby, B.C., 10 a.m.: Took a pill that can upset my stomach, didn't eat soon enough, threw up in the sink with almost no warning a few minutes later. Better now.
• Home, 11 a.m.: Packing, last minute, before leaving for Gnomedex today.
• Near Bellis Fair, Bellingham, Wash., 3 p.m.: Just ate @ Shari's in Bellingham.
• Alderwood Mall, Lynnwood, Wash., 5:30 p.m.: Will have dinner in Lynnwood, then on to Seattle. This weather could easily be February here in the Pacific Northwest.
• Red Lion Hotel Fifth Avenue, Seattle, midnight: In Seattle early for Gnomedex, uploading photos to Flickr—and will spend tomorrow with my lovely wife.

Labels: conferences, gnomedex, meetup, pirillo, seattle, travel

Every year since 2001, Chris Pirillo (and now his wife Ponzi too) has put together a strange little tech conference called Gnomedex. I've participated since Gnomedex 5.0 in 2005, although last year I had to do it by video.

What I heard afterwards is that overall, the 2007 Gnomedex 7.0 seemed to have lost a bit of its geeky focus, so Chris and Ponzi look to be working hard to regain it this year. There are sessions on photography, search engines, Mars landers, managing online relationships, and so on. Nerdy stuff, which is at it should be.

What makes Gnomedex unusual is that it's small (only a few hundred people) and runs as a single track schedule, rather than multiple simultaneous sessions, so you don't miss anything. The food and free Wi-Fi and power are as top-notch as the Pirillos can make them. The parties are good. And it attracts some of the top tech people in North America, as well as a good contingent of normal nerds like me (and our laptops).

I'm looking forward to seeing a bunch of people face-to-face for the first time in awhile—I haven't seen Chris and Ponzi in person since my wife Air, our friend KA, and I went to their wedding in late 2006, for instance. It's also my first trip out of Canada since my cancer surgery last summer. I'm glad I'm feeling well enough to go.

Now, Air and I need to get that hotel booked. The last-minute deals aren't as fantastic as I was hoping...

P.S. I also created a photo group at Flickr for those who'd like to add their pictures of the event.

Labels: conferences, geekery, gnomedex, pirillo, seattle, travel

It looks like Chris Pirillo's Gnomedex conference will take place at the end of August in Seattle again this year (the best time of year in this part of the world). I hope to be able to go—I participated but could not attend in 2007. Chris makes an interesting point in his post about how:

Positive or negative, Twitter fuels groupthink. [...] Handling 350+ special interest groups simultaneously when they have a direct line to the rest of the world is a completely new challenge.

Gnomedex is an unusual tech conference. It's smaller and less expensive than most, more broad-ranging, yet it attracts a more hard-core techie crowd than, say, Northern Voice here in Vancouver. Gnomedex has a different vibe every year, driven by whatever currents are pushing the web community at the time. Despite my absence last summer, I felt something a little off in 2007 from reports—perhaps in part because of a disconnect between that Twitter groupthink and the structure of the meeting.

Chris, Ponzi, Stuart, and crew are surely thinking of new ways to run the show in 2008. We'll see what that brings.

Labels: conferences, gnomedex, meetup, northernvoice, seattle

Here's the last batch of my photos from the Northern Voice conference:

Labels: blog, conferences, geekery, meetup, northernvoice, podcast, web