What’s been going on in my life? November 8, 2009
Posted by Ryan in : Local, Podcast, Press, Tech, Amazon, Beer, cats, community, Design, Drupal, floridacreatives, house, Liberatr, photos, training, Travel, Web Services ; comments closed
Um… where has the time gone? So many things have been happening lately, I feel like if I were to tell them all here, I’d pass another 2 weeks just re-counting all of them.
After the New Media Think and Drink, (go listen to the audio, and the audio of the 2nd half), I was excited about Community Building and Social Media Consulting even more than I have been in a long time. Also, the Digital Media Banner Center asked me to contribute to their New and Emerging Industries Task Force, which is basically trying to find jobs for journalists who have been laid off recently. I was very excited and honored to be a part of something constructive and forward-thinking. Needless to say, they were able to (once again) gather a group of smart, talented and well-experienced people and get them to talk about changing the world. I love that kind of stuff.
We have been doing lots of awesome DrupalEasy stuff lately – we have great podcasts with book authors and our patented “bookaway” contests, where you get Drupal books just for listening and commenting. I also got the chance to FLY up do to some Drupal Training in North Carolina. It was the first time that someone (specifically, Tomas and Jerry) actually FLEW to come hear me speak. I was proud.
I had a great time and got to try some wonderful craft beers at the Flying Saucer in Raleigh. I also learned that Raleigh has a Drupal User Group, but a bit too late. They actually had their meeting the same night I was headed home. Maybe next time!
The new house is treating me very well, the cats, Mariah and I are all settling in just fine, but Fozzie (my cat) has to stay in his cage, because he’s still trying to heal his leg, and he gets in too many fights with Litmus and Loki (Mariah’s cats), who are much older and set in their ways. He really likes chasing them around the house and is constantly getting hit in the face while trying to mount the large cat tree in the living room.
It’s also really nice working here. I have been “working from home” for most of the past 6 years, but only in this house have I ever had a dedicated room as an office, and an atmosphere that was so conducive to working and collaborating with others. I think getting this house will be one of the things I look back on as being very good for my work and creative lives, in addition to the benefits everyone else gets from owning a house. We already had one big party here, back on Talk Like a Pirate Day, and a few weeks ago, we tested out the Party Patio, the BBQ grill, and the fire pit.
A large part of my last few months was actually dedicated to working with a friend of mine, Kyle, on teaching him Drupal, and updating the website for his podcast, the Student of the Game. That site and Florida Creatives are two of the ideas that have really stuck back from the days when I was doing Liberatr more full-time. Kyle was laid off, and I was trying to introduce him to web site building and freelancing. We got pretty far with the whole idea, but it’s not like you can just flip a switch and change someone’s life, so he’s taken a contract with some place crunching database rows and generating reports. We’ll keep working on it, just a bit slower. That’s fine, because I need to work too.
Speaking of Florida Creatives, we are inching up on the start of the 4th year of Orlando Happy Hours for creative people. Our regular meetup will take place on the 16th at Crooked Bayou, just like it always does. I’ve also been trying to delegate some of the responsibility, like website design. Erik Baldwin is a fantastic designer and a good friend, and he’s been coming up with some designs based on my rudimentary wireframes, and I’ve also been adding new features to the site, like the Communties and Meetups page. I’m not sure how this feature will ultimately present itself, but it’s already better than a flat wiki page with just text and links. There’s nothing stopping anyone from adding new ones, but we’re not exactly advertising the feature just yet.
Also this week, I have been having some problems with an old server I keep around for hosting personal sites and sites for friends, so I started the very large task of moving several gigabytes of files over to Amazon S3. Namely, all the podcasts I recorded a few years back, and everything Kyle produced for the Student of the game in the past 4 seasons of football. As far as I can tell, everything is happily hosted by “the cloud” now, and the end users don’t know the difference.
One more geeky update, and I’ll be through. It’s about Twitter, so feel free to tune out now.
Twitter finally added a feature… something useful, and something that would be hard for a 3rd party to add. It’s called Lists, and I started making some. They’re useful for me, as I’m following 1700 people and my attempts to make the list shorter are really just making me find more people I want to follow, but for a multitude of subjects. One is just plain old technology, which is what my RSS reader used to be for. The next is a collection of the other Twitter accounts I own or manage, and hopefully one day twitter will let me say WHY I made each list one day. The last and most complete right now is my list of Drupal people. I think I’m also going to start one for coworking, but I haven’t really done much with it yet.
I’m sure I’m leaving stuff out, but I feel pretty well vented right now. I really need to get to this blogging thing more often…
Photowalking, Anyone? September 15, 2009
Posted by Ryan in : Local, Events, floridacreatives, Orlando, photos ; comments closedThe last photowalk (at least that I know of) was back on April 10th. Anyone up for another? Perhaps through College Park? Perhaps October 1st? October 6th? Just asking…
EDIT: I went ahead and picked a time and place:
Photos from Paris September 14, 2009
Posted by Ryan in : Tech, photos, Travel ; comments closedEarlier this month, I tooled around Paris with Mike, Marc, Erik, John and about 800 other guys and gals for a big hippie free-software love fest. It was tons of fun, and I fully intend to keep bumping into these kids as often as possible.
Here is some proof:
Blunder Bungle Photos May 8, 2009
Posted by Ryan in : Local, Press, art, Events, photos, Puppets ; comments closedI had a great time doing a real art show last night… some great people came by, and even one real puppeteer got a chance to try out with my creation!
There were several photographers there, some from Metromix, and 2 representatives of The Daily City.
Daily City Photoset of Blunder Bungle by Mark Baratelli
Daily City Photoset of Blunder Bungle by Tisse Mallon
Metromix Photoset of Blunder Bungle by Miriam Lorenzi
photo my Miriam Lorenzi
el Presidente
A New Identity Costs $20 (at iStockPhoto, at least) November 2, 2008
Posted by Ryan in : Tech, Career, photos, Web Sites ; comments closedGiven my new employment situation, I need to have a new identity. After a couple of hours of cruising a stock illustration library, a couple of clicks in an open-source image editor, and an edit from a friend, we have a product:
I may yet try to work in the statement “Drupal? Easy.”, but this was the version I saved out for the web. I’m sure you’ll all get to see the paper copy one of these days.
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.
Video Uploads to Flickr April 9, 2008
Posted by Ryan in : Tech, Video, BarCamp, Events, Facebook, Film, Flickr, MySpace, Orlando, photos, Podcasts, Reviews, Storytelling, Trends, Viddler, Video, Web Services ; comments closed
My First Video on Flickr fit the new requirements perfectly: less than 90 seconds, and less than 150MB. That’s fantastic, and the streaming in good, embed codes, tagging, fits right into my flickr photo/video stream, awesome.
The videos on Flickr are going to make YouTube obsolete, or rather, the MySpace to Flickr’s metaphorical Facebook. The content in each place is different. I don’t go to MySpace or YouTube expecting quality, art, or intellectual content of the least kind. However, I know some real life people on Facebook, and some really serious photographers on Flickr.
By creating a constraint like this, the “90-second short film” will gain a place on the internet. I wouldn’t doubt if the next set of consumer-level cameras have an option to limit video clips to 90 seconds to allow for easy Flickr uploading.
…and it is SO easy. The same exact experience as working with a photo – I haven’t tried geotagging, but I bet it works. Now if they can get Viddler-style deep tagging working just like Notes on photos, I’ll be a very happy man.
David is a total goofball, now you can see it at 30FPS. Thanks Flickr!
BarCampOrlando IZEA Geekout Party April 7, 2008
Posted by Ryan in : Tech, BarCamp, Beer, Contributors, Entrepreneurship, Events, floridacreatives, Links, Orlando, OrlandoScene, photos, Podcasts, Social Media Events, Video ; comments closed
This was how I spend 90% of the time at the IZEA GeekOut Party – talking to Tara Lamberson and Dan Kinchen about a Central Florida Tech Association, or something like it.
Thanks to Ted Murphy for throwing the party – we hope to see you on the 21st for Florida Creatives. Also thanks to Adam Teece for hosting the podcasts.
Also appearing in this video: Ted Murphy, Gregg Pollack and a widdle baby
See more videos by Adam at the GeekOut
Coworking Tuesdays Photoset March 19, 2008
Posted by Ryan in : Tech, Coworking, Events, floridacreatives, Links, Orlando, photos, Trends ; comments closedI went on my lunch break today, and those 30 minutes were actually quite fantastic.
Not only Coworking Tuesdays at Stardust, but also Cup-O-Code, the Orlando Coworking article from the Sentinel (about), and Alex on Cow-orking at BarCamp Orlando 2007. End very short slideshow.
There is a reason the slideshow is so short. Outside of Likemind (which has tons of coworking connotations in this town), there haven’t really been many documented coworking sessions here. That’s what Coworking Tuesdays are all about – adding folks to the mailing list, taking pictures, recording podcasts, making videos, setting up a web site and keeping the wiki up-to-date… and more.
There’s lots of almost-happening coworking stuff in downtown Orlando, check out the mailing list for updates about that. This is going to happen before Memorial Day at the current rate, and I’m likely jinxing it by saying anything, but we want interested parties!
Would you pay for some space at a table if someone had their name(s) on the lease and other folks were paying for some desk space too?
Richard Dawkins – oh snap! January 24, 2008
Posted by Ryan in : Video, photos, Video ; comments closedRichard Dawkins writes books about evolution and gods and stuff. This particular day, Mr. Dawkins was giving a talk at a women’s college in America. Watch the events unfold…
Did she just get told or what? I have prepared a handy diagram to help us decide:
Oh, snap!
P.S. I know a poem about Mr. Dawkins by Richard Tyrone Jones – it’s the second half of “The Promise / Richard Dawkins”. Go have a listen.
