Fringe Fringe Fringe Fringe Fringe Fringe Fringe May 18, 2009
Posted by Ryan in : Local, bloggingfringe, Events, Fringe, marketing, Orlando, whuffie ; add a commentYes, it’s true. I can never shut up about the Orlando Fringe. Fringe is what BarCamp will be in 50 years, becuase they have the same humble beginnings. Actually, if you take Internet Years into account, we are more like 3 or 5 years away from having unconferences that last 2 weeks and appeal to a wide audience. (I know because I want to create one)
photo from orlandosentinel.com
Of the 67 shows at this year’s Orlando festival, a majority are from out-of-town (USA or International), OR have never appeared at the Fringe before. The festival is spread across 8 venues in Loch Haven Park, so everything is within walking distance. The proximity of the venues, along with the staggering quality of all the shows, makes this one of the premier unjuried theatre festivals in the world.
Half of Orlando has no idea this is happening. It’s even worse for tourists.
Fringe has been going on for 18 years, longer than any other US fringe, longer than the crappy Music Festival, and just as long as the Film Fest.
On top of all these things, 100% of ticket sales go directly in the artists’ pockets. No exeptions, substitutions or refunds. The only things the festival makes money on is the Button (everyone must buy one, $8), merchandise, Beer and Wine, and Donations. A huge part of their budget comes from Grants and Donations. They have several full-time and part-time staff. (donate something, yo)
Happy Hour Monday
If you’ve EVER read this blog before you’ll know I wrangle the herd of cats known as Florida Creatives. Well, once a year I try to inspire this group (you can’t tell these kids what to do, just suggest) to make the pilgrimage to Loch Haven Park with me and drink beer 3 miles from their normal gathering place. Last year, we enjoyed some marginal success, and one guy actually came to see a show with me! I know a few other folks came out on the weekends, brought their kids. Good thing too. Fringe has a great family atmosphere if you’re looking for it.
Blogging Fringe
I love this festival so much, I go there every day for 2 weeks, and I started an entire project (I don’t think of it as just a website any more) where I blog about Fringe, take photos, make videos, and try to inspire people to do the same.
The big change this year is I’m not really trying to aggregate anything, just evangelize. The most I’ve really done to that end is to try and filter twitter posts about Orlando Fringe, which grows in complexity (and annoyingness) all the time. The coolest thing about the recipe I’ve built is that it works with the global twitter community, which is still fairly easy to navigate. I can’t say the same of the blogosphere, especially since so many people are posting to private Facebook and MySpace accounts. The openness of twitter (which almost sounds like a joke) is a strength I am exploiting, and I’m trying to wield in a meaningful and usable way. Not everyone uses Twitter Search or TweetDeck, so I made one for them.
Herding theatre patrons
This year marks the 4th festival since I started doing Blogging Fringe, and I don’t feel as though I’ve gotten very far in getting other people to blog on my site. So this year I wanted to let them create content where they are most comfortable, and have them act as advocates for something bigger than Blogging Fringe or even a single instance of the Orlando festival.
We’re talking about the community.
Just as with my love for Drupal, your reasons for staying at Fringe are not always the same ones that made you come in the first place.
Normally, a friend will drag you to some show or other, or perhaps you know someone in a show, or a second- or third-degree friend is in that situation. At Fringe, the Kevin Bacon game is too easy. The circle is much smaller and the bonds are often stronger. There are plenty of people I only know during Fringe, because they live in Seattle, Canada, or the UK. I have actually taken one of these Fringe Friendships to the next level, by visiting some actor friends up in New York a few years ago.
Just like making friends online, sometimes Fringe Friends can become your friends in Real Life. This is sometimes true of locals, but not often.
Another crazy thing is that this village only comes together for two weeks. I’ve heard similar things about Burning Man. Another characteristic they share is a Gift Economy.
Whuffie at the Fringe
Orlando Fringe has an invention they call “Fringe Bucks”, which is a social currency you can touch. When you volunteer for Fringe, you get 1 Fringe Buck per hour. 4 Fringe Bucks gets you into a show, for free. Your used Fringe Bucks then go to artists, who in turn use their Fringe Bucks to get into other shows. Artists also often “comp” their friends and other artists. Up to 10% of any show is filled with people who didn’t pay money to be there.
Fringe Bucks
Volunteers also get a free Button, so if you are willing to spend time at Fringe (which is natural for many people), you can get into all the shows you want, for free, within reason.
I was reminded of Fringe Bucks when I read Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
Printing Money, Whuffie Style
Other than volunteering, several other ways exist to earn social capitol at Fringe. “Hug a volunteer”, is a mantra that’s heard and acted on often. Billeting artists (giving them a place to sleep) actually earns you a SuperPass, which gets you in to any show for free. Buying someone a beverage at the Beer Tent is often proffered as a reward for a favor, a free ticket to a show, or just as an excuse to get some face-time with your favorite artist.
My mission this year was to try and capture some of that implicit social capitol and have everyone make the festival better by participating in a game. I often describe it as a scavenger hunt, but it’s not really correct to call it that.
I was inspired by Akoha, which is a game where you are given a physical card with a unique “Mission ID” or a deck of missions, and the whole thing is tracked online. The idea is to “play it forward”. One card will pass from person to person, as you perform small kindnesses to other people, making the world a better place.
Akoha at TED
The Game Itself
Each participant gets a small booklet containing a piece of paper with several “challenges”. Some of these are easier than others, but initially they were designed to be things you could do for free, and especially to generate a story you could then tell to others. The best one so far was a bizarre hula-hooping mishap… involving a girl wearing a skirt.
The Game, Manifested
Each mission is worth 10 points, with modifiers for fun reasons.
- Drink a beer with a Canadian (drink a beer with a Floridian, -5 points)
- Donate to the Fringe (1 point per $1 donated)
… and so on.
In order to get players engaged right away, I invented the idea of your first mission being something you’d have to carry out right away, with two added bonuses:
- The First Mission always involves a 3rd party, who has not yet started playing the game.
- You must convince said 3rd party to complete your mission without speaking to them.
This makes the first challenge, well, challenging, and gets you from zero to one as a player right away. Now, you also have to explain to your friend what the heck you just did when the mission is over, thereby spreading the game virally.
Choose Your Own Adventure
I had originally wanted to do this game more like Akoha, with an online registration for missions, players and points. Anyone could create a mission, assign a mission to someone, or gift points in recognition of “going above and beyond”. It would turn everyone into a facilitator of the game, and in a perfect world, it would have been great.
In the end, I chose to use paper and online photos as the medium, because it’s more accessible and there’s a lot less overhead (this is a free time project).
Any player is still invited to invent their own challenges, either by having me write them down, or by printing out their own sheets. You just need a 4 1/4″ square piece of paper, and you can write anything on it.
Artists often use printed fliers to promote their shows, so I thought this would be a good chance to make the fliers useful beyond just saying the show times. Now every flier you hand out is interactive and viral, and it inspires your patrons to share something related to your show.
We have designed a platform.
Measuring Success
As players are encouraged to use whatever platform is most comfortable for them (Flickr, Facebook, MySpace, etc.), measuring will be just as difficult as with most social media campaigns. My Blogging Fringe twitter bot helps a bit, and Google Alerts help a bit more, but the only (simple) way to be able to see all these posts will be to have all these people add me as a friend on the relevant network and look at their Activity Streams.
This is where open standards would really help. They could make aggregating this content easy, but Facebook and MySpace are inherently closed to the average Joe, and that’s me.
Luckily I know most of these people, or I’m getting to be Fringe Friends with them. In the future, scaling this game will be hard without a centralized web site to collect all the data, but for this year’s experiment, what we’ve got isn’t bad for the amount of time and money I put in to it.
The Goal
In coming up with my presentation for BarCamp, I stumbled across the mission for Blogging Fringe. Even though I had done it for 3 years prior, I couldn’t verbalize fully and succinctly why I was doing it. I came up with the following:
To inspire entertaining and unexpected interaction between patrons of the arts, artists and arts organizations.
Everything I generate now for this project and future iterations of Blogging Fringe will take this statement into account, and give me the razor-edged accuracy I need to make this free time project greater than the sum of its parts.
There’s a lot I haven’t covered here, but that’s the way with this project, it really is quite deep and nebulous. It took me more than 3 years to understand it, and I feel like I’m learning and re-learning new things all the time.
I’d love your feedback, or stories about similar campaigns. This will definitely come up in a future podcast, BlogOrlando, BarCamp or other session. I’d love to know what others can learn from my experimentation, and how I can make this project even better.
Your Tech Doesn’t Matter, n00b – How to Kick Ass at Your Job April 25, 2009
Posted by Ryan in : HowTo, Podcast, Press, Tech, BarCamp, floridacreatives, Orlando, presentations, Storytelling ; add a commentMy BarCamp Presentation actually hit the home page of SlideShare the other day. I gave this at the very end of the day, so if you missed it, check it out in 35 McCluhan-inspired text-happy slides.
Training: Zero To Drupal, Orlando – May 15, 2009 April 24, 2009
Posted by Ryan in : HowTo, Local, Tech, Drupal, Events, Orlando, training ; 1 comment so farMy company, DrupalEasy, is holding our second monthly training course in Orlando. Our March event gave us some great feedback, and we’re excited to bring some Drupal love to Orlando.
Friday, May 15, 2009 9:00am – 5:00pm
Training Course(s): Zero To Drupal
Leu Gardens
1920 North Forest Avenue
Orlando, FL, 32803
See map: Google Maps
Join us for a full day beginner workshop at scenic Leu Gardens in Orlando to learn all you need to know about Drupal as an economical content management platform. If you manage, need, develop or design sites that require information posting and collection including blogs, forums, videos, photos, or other data, sign up now at our hometown rate of $175. Seats are limited.
Drupal offers time and cost savings without sacrificing amazing functionality because it allows for quick development turn-around, easy internal updates and virtually no limit to the number of users. Zero to Drupal includes an information-rich, no-frills session perfect for designers, website developers/administrators, and even marketing professionals looking into Drupal to keep quality while cutting costs.
We’ll provide coffee and carbs to start the venture into the who, what, why, and hows of Drupal, including how you can access the plethora of free resources available through this open-source software and its devoted developer community. You’ll learn about the building blocks, installation, updates and security, modules and themes, as well as get some hands on editing exercises to get you comfortable.
The workshop runs from 9 to 5, with a break midday so you can grab a quick bite at one of several nearby lunch spots, or take in the scenic grounds of Leu Gardens. Registration is limited, so sign up now.
BarCamp people can Learn from Dead Chickens April 13, 2009
Posted by Ryan in : Local, Video, BarCamp, floridacreatives, Ignite, Orlando, Pecha Kucha, presentations ; 1 comment so farWhile I was at DrupalCon DC I went to a session about how to give a presentation. Emma Jane Hogbin had a slide where she was talking about different presentation styles, and she brought up “Selena talks dead chickens“. With some creative googling, I discovered that the presentation was from Ignite Portland, and that someone had videotaped it.
This is why you have to love events like Pecha Kucha Night and Ignite – people will present on any subject, as long as it fits the time limit. At the same time, they are almost always very personal and gripping.
We have a BarCamp coming up in Orlando this weekend, and I’m really looking forward to what everyone comes up with this year. While I will really enjoy yet another OAuth session, I’m wondering who will be the “dead chickens” of #barcamporlando.
Doterati Doesn’t Get It October 24, 2008
Posted by Ryan in : Tech, Doterati, Orlando ; comments closedDoterati is holding elections for their advisory board. The current leadership has decided that they will not be allowed to govern next year, in an attempt at humility, or checks and balances. In theory, this is a good idea.
However, what if the best people to steer the organization are already in the right place?
Edit: Only one member of the current board is allowed to sit on the elections committee. They are looking for some volunteers to round out the electorate.
However, and this is the big one for me, in order to nominate anyone, you must be a paying ($150) member.
This community is synthetic – if one really wants to support all of Central Florida, why not invite all of Central Florida to participate?
Take down the pay wall. I won’t vote if voting comes with a price tag.
Letting go the Strings of Servitude October 23, 2008
Posted by Ryan in : Tech, BarCamp, Blogging, bloggingfringe, Career, CoLab, Coworking, Drupal, floridacreatives, Liberatr, Orlando, OrlandoScene, PopSci, Site News, Social Media Events, Teaching, Trends, Video ; comments closed
That’s right, folks, I quit my job at Bonnier. No more PopSci, no more corporate life.
Somehow I thought our friend Jonathan (above) working his VCRs and television sets helped get that message across. As Pandos, instead of fighting against modern technology, just letting a couple of simple magnetic tapes play serves as a more entertaining picture than a single curated stream.
My life working at Bonnier had become a lifestyle – long days (and nights), spending all day in the same place doing the same thing. I couldn’t even take 7 months of that.
So now what?
I’ve got a couple of freelance things lined up that should bring in the next month’s income alright, but I don’t want another hourly job. Here are some ways I plan on keeping myself distracted:
- Drupal Easy – this is the home for some (free) Drupal advice, and hopefully some (paid) screencasts, eBooks and tutorials. I will be doing a Drupal conference circuit in the next few months to connect with folks who are looking for training more than straight-up work. I hope I am a good provider.
- Orlando Scene TV – I still have yet to see a project emerge that achieves the goals of this videoblog. The more I think about it, the more it needs to be a one-on-one account of some fun stuff. We were trying to bring more of a TV correspondent feel to the show, but that takes work, and this is supposed to be about fun! Maintaining this channel gives a place for the Blogging Fringe videos and Orlando Puppet Festival content to go, and video is so engaging, measurable and portable — I really love doing this.
- Florida Creatives Podcast – I have been meeting some great people who need to get pulled in to this community, and one of the best ways to get them to care about you is by doing the completely selfless thing and asking them about themselves for half an hour, and sharing the conversation with the world on a well-trafficked web site. The happy hours will certainly continue.
- Florida Creative Summit – the idea here is to do something like BarCamp, but that covers more than just geekery – I am talking to some folks about how to pull this off right now, most of that goes down at Florida Creatives Happy Hour. This is the whole point of Florida Creatives coming to be in the first place.
- Coworking Orlando and our first coworking space in Orlando, CoLab – Coworking Teusdays are still going strong after some 8 months — also, I have already paid my $49 for use of a desk at CoLab in November — I’m not sure whether I will be full-time or part-time there in the future, but I know I want to be present for the birth of the formal coworking movement in Orlando. This is something I’ve been talking about for years, and now it’s downtown and affordable. Couple that with all the communities looking for useful consistent space, and the need for something like this is even greater. This probably deserves a separate blog post…
- Oh so many more things… like getting other Florida Creatives chapters going in other cities, like Brevard, Jacksonville, Lakeland, Tampa, South Florida — helping Petentials get to a happy place — doing a joint event with Doterati — creating a DIY community, a graphics hackers community, a podcasting community, a blogging community, an independent microblogging site, and lots of things I can’t think of just now.
To all my Bonnier peoples, I will keep in touch. Let’s do lunch! Blackwater BBQ?
To everyone else, it’s good to be back!
BarCamp Tampa and BarCamp Chaos 08 October 14, 2008
Posted by Ryan in : Tech, BarCamp, Events, floridacreatives, Orlando, OrlandoScene, Social Media Events, Tampa ; comments closedthe first BarCamp Tampa was lots of fun – there are some posts and freshly edited wiki pages over at the Tampa group on Florida Creatives.
We had a great event last night. Some fun talks and some serendipitous moments. We even had one guy from Orlando, never heard of BarCamp, came up and started talking to us and then did his own talk.
Presentations
- Welcome/Meet & Greet
- What is BarCamp?
- Job Market in a Down Economy – James Hawley
- Portable Image Editing (GIMP) – Chris Jones
- Life Hackery: Getting Things Done with Room for More – Eric Marden
- Digigen, Abstract Code Generated Art – Jeremy Carrus
- Facebook App Development / Running Expo – Seth Cardoza
- Useful iPhone Apps – Bensan George
- Anatomy of a Drupal Theme – Mike Anello
- Building a Portfolio with Drupal – Ryan Price
- The Technology of Sound (Podcasting) – Gregg Pollack
- Firefox Extensions – Tim Rosenblatt
- Keeping up with the Joneses – HYDRA
- Making Money on the Internet – Dan Kinchen
Mike Anello has a recap of all the sessions on his blog.
I am hoping to have some slides from my Drupal Portfolio talk, but that should come later. It will likely show up over at Drupal Easy.
BarCamp Chaos 08: Monday October 7, 2008
Posted by Ryan in : Tech, BarCamp, Events, Orlando, OrlandoScene, Programming, Social Media Events, Teaching ; comments closed8701 World Center Dr, Grand Ballroom 7B
Orlando, FL, 32821
See map: Google Maps
The best conversations happen in the hallway
On Oct 13, 2008 members of the BarCampOrlando community will be organizing an ad-hoc BarCamp session as a part of the Create Chaos conference. Create Chaos 2008 is a five-day creative industry destination event produced to inform, inspire, educate, and connect creative professionals across industries through an all-inclusive event. This ad-hoc session invites participants to control the programming by preparing a 20 minute talk on any creative topic and presenting it to other conference attendees (so, bring your laptop). The fun starts at 6pm.
BarCamp Chaos is free to attend, of course, and all registered Campers will receive free access to the Create Chaos Expo Hall on Oct 13, 2008. You can use the discount code: BARCAMP to get $200 off your tickets, if you’re interested in attending the whole conference.
More about Create Chaos
Create Chaos features several unique industry conferences under one roof, at one time, and takes place Oct 13-17, 2008 at the Orlando World Center Marriott Resort in Orlando, FL. Create Chaos serves as a spark to ignite a new renaissance by bringing together creative professionals across industry boundaries including: graphic design, advertising, film and video production, animation, photography, printing, Web, and publishing professionals. Produced by Brahn Awards & Events and partners, the Create Chaos experience features the following conferences and events: The Creative Suite Conference, Printing+Paper+Packaging Design Conference, The Vector Conference, Stash Theatre, CreativeHeads Job Fair, The Web Design Conference, MGFest, The Pixel Conference, and more.
Grab and print (or link to) a BarCamp Chaos 08 Flyer
Blog Badge:
Tons of Notes, BlogOrlando Aftermath 3 October 1, 2008
Posted by Ryan in : Tech, BarCamp, BlogOrlando, Coworking, Doterati, floridacreatives, Orlando, OrlandoScene, photos, Programming, Social Media Events, Tampa, Trends, Twitter ; comments closed
Folks, I’ve got things to tell you, and things I want your input on. First of all, huge thanks to Tim Welch for his excellent BlogOrlando3 “Best of” post.
Next, I want you to stop reading this post. STOP! Go to the Florida Creatives forum and contribute to this discussion, or start a new discussion about something for which you are passionate.
If you’re still reading, I’ll remind you we have TWO BarCamps coming up. Count them.
BarCamp Tampa Bay is going down in less than two weeks. If you were at the Orlando BarCamp in April, this will seem familiar to you – Tech Day, Media Day. Held at USF’s Business school, Saturday and Sunday, October 11th and 12th. I believe there is a party-bus or a caravan of some kind headed down that way. Check the Twittersphere (92 followers, natch!) or Doterati? for more details.
BarCampChaos held on Monday October 13th, the first night of CreateChaos08 at the Mariott down by Disney World. It’s 10 conferences in one, and one unconference, and bunches of parties, like a certain Internet Marketing and Tech association I know of, and an Advertising and Design Alliance I know of, and a Create Awards, and a Job Fair, and an Expo, and lots more, including $200 off registration if you register for BarCampChaos.
The Florida Creatives website now has 4 feeds for you to pay attention to:
- Podcast Feed (original)
- Site-Wide Feed (includes groups, events, blogs, forums)
- Event Feed (mashed up from all over town)
- Comments Feed (in case you don’t prefer emails)
Those of you already subscribed in iTunes will continue to receive podcasts.
Those of you who used feedburner email subscription should keep getting your emails (of the site-wide feed).
The events feed is pulled from the Florida Creatives group on Upcoming.Y!, the Calendar feeds of The Daily City blog, Doterati and the newly-formed Advertising and Design Alliance (I don’t even know where to link for it yet).
The old Florida Creatives Google Groups is going away. I have already closed out new people from joining. With a forum, email subscriptions for feeds and all the other stuff, it should be easy to stay informed.
If you haven’t checked out the Florida Drupal Group yet, please do. Classes are third Saturdays at 1PM in Maitland, and completely worth it. We are talking about putting together a DrupalCamp early next year, so get involved now.
Did you realize that Café Scientifique was today? I sure didn’t, but I’ve been an extremely busy man of late. Chad is organizing some awesome talks down at Stardust, these are not to be missed.
The 2nd Annual ELLA Music Fest is this weekend. Crazy that a year has gone by already. Orlando Scene TV has some vids from last year if you want to know what you’re missing out on.
Likemind.orl September 17, 2008
Posted by Ryan in : Tech, Coffee, floridacreatives, Likemind.orl, Orlando ; comments closed
This Friday, 8AM, Panera Bread @ Lk Eola
Likemind.us started over 2 years ago in New York when two guys decided having a good conversation over coffee and talking to a likeminded person would be better than doing it virtually. Now they are in 50+ cities on 6 continents, including: Ankara (Turkey), Shanghai, Bucharest and Frankfurt. On the same day, people in these cities and 40 other places around the globe, other likeminded individuals will be getting together for some good coffee and conversation.
Coffee sponsorship ($25 is plenty) could be kindly paid for by your employer.
If you love Orlando and you want to find other people of a like mind, you’ve come to the right place. Chris and Ryan and some friends get together once a month before work to have a good conversation. Come talk about anything, exchange emails, share stories and walk away with a smile on your face ready to face the last day of the week knowing you have made some new friends this week.
Panera is at the corner of Robinson St and Eola Drive on the North East corner of the lake.
