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Orlando Arts Scene: Trolling on Yelp June 12, 2010

Posted by Ryan in : Local, , , ; add a comment

I’ve been spending the morning setting up my new EVO and checking out the Android Market applications. However, this post is not a review of my new HTC phone. While I was adding the Yelp app I decided to head over to Yelp.com and look at what’s been going on. I saw this discussion headline:

Orlando Art Scene 1 hour ago

…and I just had to read it and leave my two cents.

There was a comment by Colleen B, the local community manager for Yelp. Then there was a comment by Neon F, whom I know to be Neon Forest, a new art gallery opening up down the street from me next week.

At the end of Neon’s post, there was this line:

Orlando Art Fair 2011, who’s on board? I’ll help get it organized…let’s see who’s really motivated

Ouch. One of my pet peeves is people who say “hey, let’s start something huge and complicated!” It’s one reason why I tread lightly before agreeing to work with a startup company, and why many of the emails I’m sent about building some crazy website go into the Archive bin pretty quickly.

Then I started Trolling. I probably was too extreme in my commenting, but I tried to add some positive stuff in there too:

Please don’t start any more big festival events, Dustin. ( I assume you’re Dustin, anyway )

I think there are enough nascent efforts that just need some support and people to shout about them in bullhorns.

Before I go on, I want to say I’m very glad you’re opening a gallery in this neighborhood. The Orange/Michigan/SoDo/Conway area really needs some more culture and nightlife.

I think one problem our scene has is that people decide to start something new without really taking the time to become involved with all the other events that are out there.

The problem with starting YET ANOTHER new thing is that in order for these large events to be successful, they require more than one person to be involved. A micro-scene. At this point, so many people have started their own scenes, they are all spread too thin.

The only way to make sure people aren’t spread too thin, without any of these events dying off, is to add new people into the system. One great way to get new people involved is by having events that are so large and well-established that the word of mouth brings in all kinds of new people, particularly the haters and out-of-towners Colleen mentioned in her original post.

::phew:: Sorry about that. I think you hit on a sore spot.

I’m really looking forward to coming to your gallery. I’ll be out of town for the opening, but I’m not far away. I am pretty close by.

Too harsh?

I would just really like if there were fewer people saying “I’m starting” or “I just started” or “can you help me with”; I’d rather hear “we’ve been doing” or “can you give us some help with?”.

It’s not to say I’ve never wanted to start something new, or big, or complicated, or naive, but I just hope my comments can make more than a few people pause and think about exactly what it is they’re committing to.

New Media Orlando Meetup May 12, 2010

Posted by Ryan in : Local, Podcast, , , , , , ; add a comment

Had a great meetup last night. I’ve left some audio notes here.

Download New Media Producers Meetup
 
Length: 3:13

The original meetup post and facebook event are around, but I took some great notes during the New Media Producers meetup using iEtherPad.

Also, I planned to show a YouTube video I recorded with a public media veteran and documentary filmmaker from St. Paul, MN, Barry Madore. However, it was way too noisy in Stardust. I like the idea of priming people’s brains with a short talk or story, but you’ll just have to check it out here:

Barry on the Tube

Community Media works when you get involved January 4, 2010

Posted by Ryan in : Local, Podcast, Press, , ; comments closed

We had our first official Producers meeting about the new Orlando Scene TV (background) this week. Michael showed us all a trailer based on footage he and I had put together, and something funny happened inside me:

I was overjoyed that this crappy video I shot was getting used in something so professional and awesome.

Then I realised that we can bring that feeling to dozens and dozens of people every time we release a half-hour show, and a whole bunch of pieces clicked together in my head.

In order to really have the community feel like they own this thing, we have to make a pointed effort to include their contributions in every single episode, and make a call for entries loud and clear.

This isn’t about UGC. This is about something more real than that. Each community member has an equal chance of creating something that makes the final product better.

Then, they will want to call their mom and their friends and tell them “turn on channel 1, watch my video on this show!”

If I can call my mom, then we have succeeded.

When there are moms calling other moms, we have reached the tipping point.

If all those moms and their kids give us a few bucks, we can quit our jobs and make this full-time. We can rent a coworking space, train new filmmakers, buy them equipment, build a network and live the dream.

Bootstrapping a Videoblogging Army November 16, 2009

Posted by Ryan in : Local, Podcast, Press, Video, , ; comments closed

Every time I happen to catch a few minutes of the nightly news, I kind of want to vomit. The scare tactics, the way they talk down to the audience, the insanely short clips, and the tons of other tricks that mainstream media uses to bolster ratings and viewership really grind my grindable parts.

Then we have the exact polar opposites, like Orlando Event TV – Orlando Event TV this and several other shows produced locally are really trying to show everyone what it really means to be a citizen of this community, and they are all about the transparency. When you watch this video of Mark Baratelli in Winter Park, for example, the voice is completely different than the nightly news. He is much more watchable than a talking head in a TV studio.

I had a similar dream not too long ago, and that manifested itself as Orlando Scene TV and a bunch of other sites, like Orlando Video. The honest truth here is that I was not able to keep the momentum going for long periods of time. Producing video and being an unstoppable advocate for your product take a lot of time, energy, and the cooperation of a passionate community. Then there’s a question of money – how can I pay my rent, etc. if all I’m ever doing is recording people’s rock shows and theatre performances. It just never added up for me.

Then a little while ago I realized that the only way to really get a local indie TV project off the ground would be to distribute the workload as much as possible.

What does this look like? Well, now that I have the idea from The Art of Community to come up with a list of teams and their responsibilities, I see the teams as follows:
Internet TV and Local Events Community
Let me be clear about a few things:

Audience

The role of the audience here is to let us know that we are giving them something they want, and to give us some ideas to keep moving this machine forward. Kickstarter (or something like it) could be a powerful force here: we can hold certain great ideas for ransom unless there is a certain amount of community support. The audience laid out here is really a fraction of the audience, the most passionate 2%. I also think this group will be web-savvy enough to have their own web sites or popular facebook profiles (hundreds of friends), and they will want to use these channels to help us promote our cause.

Tech Leads

Aside from pushing buttons, I also put these people in the role of “product designers”. If Jony Ive has a lot to do with the success of Apple products, then we should be able to assign a few people in our community a similar amount of responsibility. These people are very highly skilled, and may only contribute once every few years, when we redesign the title graphics and the website, or they may help us create fliers, blog badges an mini-sites on a more frequent basis. These are also the User Experience designers – in charge of the overall way in which people interact with the product.

Producers

Here, a producer is anyone who makes something. That means hosts, script or show notes writers, video editors, etc. A production team could be all of one person, or it could be as large as 5 or 6. It really depends on the skills of everyone involved and the scope of the particular project. A large goal here would be to make sure that anyone who counts as a producer could technically do everything by him- or herself if needed, but it’s really a question of time. Like I said before, this is the repetitive and time-hogging part, even if we can streamline the whole process.

The other key is to make sure that everyone owns his or her work, not only from an intellectual property perspective, but in a support fashion as well – if someone has a question about the restaurant you reviewed, you should be the one to get the notification and reply. In this way, people may start to develop a “beat” or even “channels” of information, and it could make sense to give certain producers their own sites. Pulling a line from The Starfish and the Spider, the producers give little more than spiritual guidance to the community. He can suggest large projects or hair-brained schemes, but he will be on his own unless they get a decent number of other community members to support and participate. These ideas can even come from the Audience, but as they don’t often produce content, an audience member will have to find a champion for her great idea.

The last piece of this puzzle for me is the equipment. We only need a few REALLY expensive tools – many people already own a computer, and video editing tools are freely available. Coming by decent video cameras is what used to be difficult, until recently. If you really want to spend some green, go ahead and get a Flip or a Kodak – even most consumer still cameras have pretty nice video capabilities. However, this still costs anywhere from $100 – $350, and that is a large financial barrier right now.

What if we could make the cost of entry $30?
That’s such a small amount, we could probably raise a few hundred dollars from our community and outfit an entire army with these cheap video tools in no time at all!

I heard about the Coby CAM3000 Mini Digital Camcorder on a podcast I regularly listen to, The Daily Giz Wiz. As far as I know, this is the absolutely least expensive (yet decent) tool for capturing video made by a well-known manufacturer. I plan on picking one up just to field test it – it’s so affordable, why not?

The other part of my plan here is to get some training and best practices in the heads of these videobloggers before they get out in the wild. We already have some community spaces and LOTS of events happening, so the material is always out there. We could pair up one new guy with an experienced producer and mentor them in the basics. Make sure they know not to film in too much or too little light, how to get some decent sound, introduce them to some basic video editing, and how to post videos. This might take one long day or a few evenings out, but there will be a certain point when a new producer will just have to get out on her own and start learning by doing.

We won’t just “give” out these cameras – they will have to be earned. If we apply some sort of a value to the camera – say, 10 points, and videos another – say 1 point for a video shorter than 3 minutes, 2 points for a video 4 minutes or longer of a reasonable quality – later when we can offer better equipment – the Kodak Zi8, or the Flip Mino HD, or perhaps even other stuff to barter for. I also have this thought right now that if we have any advertising revenue to share, it will be based on your continued contribution of at least X points in a 1-3 month period – we would probably need a way to make sure that we always have fresh content coming in, so we need to assign deadlines to keep people from getting lazy. As soon as this machine loses a certain amount of momentum, it might as well not be running at all.

That’s as far as I’m going to wander into this thought experiment for now. I don’t have a great picture of how other organizations do it, and this is just something I’ve been stewing on for a few months when I really get the chance to think about it, which is not very often at all. I’d love to take a look at how NowPublic and a whole bunch of other public media entities handle this. There are lots of questions unanswered here, but I’ve been struggling to really write down and communicate this idea to a large group for a while now.

If you’d like to talk more, I think we should wake up the PodCamp Orlando mailing list. I’m going to send this same text out there to see if we get any bites. Please blog about this, tweet it, point to the list page, get everyone who might be interested involved in the discussion.

Tonight is a Florida Creatives Happy Hour, and Friday is MOOM. We should be having a Likemind on December 4th, and another Happy Hour on December 21st. If you’d like to talk in person, these days are really good ones to engage me and others who are interested in making Orlando more awesome.

Update: We now have a project planning site – if you want to get an invite, leave a comment below, and make sure you fill in the email field.

Letting go the Strings of Servitude October 23, 2008

Posted by Ryan in : Coworking, Tech, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ; comments closed

Pandos

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:

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, , , , , , , ; comments closed

the 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

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, , , , , , , ; comments closed
Create Chaos 08 at Marriott World Center
8701 World Center Dr, Grand Ballroom 7B
Orlando, FL, 32821

See map: Google Maps

Register at the BarCamp Wiki

The best conversations happen in the hallway

BarCamp Chaos 08

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:
Bar Camp Chaos 08

Tons of Notes, BlogOrlando Aftermath 3 October 1, 2008

Posted by Ryan in : Coworking, Tech, , , , , , , , , , , , ; comments closed


Party, originally uploaded by funkeemunkeeland.

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:

  1. Podcast Feed (original)
  2. Site-Wide Feed (includes groups, events, blogs, forums)
  3. Event Feed (mashed up from all over town)
  4. 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.

Orlando Theatre Pot-Luck July 14, 2008

Posted by Ryan in : Local, , , , , , ; comments closed

Back in April, a bunch of local theatre folks got together to have dinner and meet up. Tonight was the second installment in what seems to be a 3-or-4-times-a-year event, held in local theatre spaces. The April 6th pot-luck was hosted by Mad Cow Theatre downtown, and today’s was held in the lobby of the Orlando REP.

From the Wikipedia page on Potluck:

Folk etymology has derived the term “potluck” from the Native American custom of potlatch; the word “potluck”, however, is actually of English origin. It is a portmanteau word formed from (cooking) pot and lucke. The earliest written citation is from 1592: “That that pure sanguine complexion of yours may never be famisht with pot lucke,” Thomas Nashe. As this shows, the original meaning was “food given away to guests”, probably derived from “whatever food one is lucky enough to find in the pot”, i.e. whatever food happens to be available, especially when offered to a guest. By extension, a more general meaning is “whatever is available in a particular circumstance or at a particular time.”

Potlatch is actually a good custom from which to derive this kind of dinner – the potlatch is often celebrated at special events, like births, celebrations of the harvest, and weddings. It is a show of wealth and prosperity, where the person holding the potlatch holds a feast, and trades some prized commodity for things they might need.

The tech community’s BarCamp and the PR and Media community’s BlogOrlando could be seen as a kind of potlatch – we’re trading ideas and experience.

The idea for the Theatre Pot-Luck was originally spawned by local actor John Baker via Elizabeth Maupin’s Orlando Sentinel theatre blog, which is also the best place see announcements for other upcoming events. The Orlando Arts Blog is another good place to check. Apparently, the Orlando Shakes has volunteered to hold the next one in a few months. Right now there is no organizer, it just sort of happens as someone steps up to offer space – which is, in my opinion, as it should be.

With Florida Creatives and BarCamp, the geeks are really fixated on a single person having all the ideas, and I think this is stifling the creativity and experimentation that could be happening if the organizations were more headless. One way we can do that with Florida Creatives is having chapters in other cities, which we are getting going in Melbourne/Brevard now, and hopefully more successfully in Jacksonville some day – the only stopping other cities is an initial organizer.

Yes, someone does have to take the reins, but only until it gains critical mass. Even when I tried to move the Happy Hour to the Fringe Beer tent some of the downtown folks still went to Crooked Bayou looking for their regular 3rd Monday beer-and-tots… funny.

I really meant to take some pictures, but when I was there, I just didn’t see an opportunity.

What goes on at a theatre potluck? Well I talked to Arwen Lowbridge from Fractured Atlas in New York – she’s down here visiting so she could check out Beth Marshall and Tod Kimbro’s My Illustrious Wasteland – they were both also there, along with Betsy Maupin, of course – I ate dinner with them and (for a few minutes) John DiDonna, but he had to run.

Arwen and I waxed delicious about non-GMO, CSA farms, picking your own fruit, and having fresh food delivered to your house. I also had my first face-to-face meeting with Maupin, who said something to the effect of “You look bigger than on the Internet”.

I later moved over to a table with David Almeida , Marcie and Stephen J Miller from Here Be Dragons. There were some interesting threads there too, like one about experimenting with different roles while you’re in school, because once you’re out, you get cast as yourself for the rest of your life. The other hot topic was nudity, since David had done a play at Fringe with an extended nude scene.

I also got to hear about the history of this event, which is really important to me. The more I get into this, I see myself leaning more towards the role of documentarian and historian. I’m actually thinking about shooting a 20-25 minute documentary in a few weeks if I get the logistics figured out – I also hope that I will be able to get the help with editing that I’m hoping for… more on this later.

Looking forward expectantly to the next Pot-Luck – next time I promise to bring something. Betsy’s chicken and David’s brownies were great, and I heard good things about some lo mein and Stephen’s apple pie too.

BlogOrlando, Pleasure Island’s Last Hurrah July 9, 2008

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The dates for BlogOrlando have been announced. Held at Rollins College from Sept 25-27th, with the main event being held on Saturday the 27th (not Friday like previous years). If you haven’t been to BlogOrlando yet, it’s a really fantastic introduction to the world of blogging, and there should be lots of fun surprises this year. Last year there were some great discussions, and a few keynote presentations by folks like Shel Israel and Chris Huer (google their names).

Josh Hallet, the man behind the unconference, says registration should be open soon. You should be able to take care of that at BlogOrlando.com

If you didn’t notice it yet, the very last weekend Pleasure Island will exist is the same weekend as BlogOrlando – as of Sept 27th (I’m assuming it will be open that day) the attractions will all be closed in favor of something more “family friendly”. Considering the number of cameras and recording devices that seem to follow BlogOrlando participants wherever we go, wouldn’t it be nice to have a big blogger party out there at the Island?

Save the Adventurer’s Club! Kungaloosh!