Yay Boston! January 22, 2010
Posted by Ryan in : Video, Arts, Drupal, Travel ; comments closedIt was prohibited to use a camera inside the museum, so I recorded this one in the parking lot.
I had a great time conducting training in Boston and met some great Drupal folks – @starshaped, @finkatronic, @himerus, and @susanmacphee. We hung out and had some good times, and I got a tour of the MIT Media Lab, which is on my short list of places to go if I ever feel insane enough to attempt graduate school. At the very least, that building houses some of the coolest projects that mankind has created in recent years. I’d like to go back, and I may get a shot when the next Desgin4Drupal event comes up.
While I was at the museum I also purchased a Diana F+ Camera by Lomography
I am finally getting to hang out at Proctors after having built them a new site last spring. It’s cool to actually see this space “IRL”.
Now I should get back to work fixing their Drupal TV displays. I only have a few minutes before I go meet everyone from the theatre.
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…
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:
DrupalCon DC, DrupalEasy Podcast February 21, 2009
Posted by Ryan in : Tech, Drupal, Podcasts, Travel ; comments closedIn less than two weeks, I and a few of my geeky Drupal friends will be jetting up to DC for a massive gathering of Drupallers larger than the world has ever seen.
With well over 1,200 tickets sold, this will be almost one-half larger than any previous Drupal convention. I’m hoping to see some folks I met in New Orleans and make some new friends.
Mike, Andrew and I will be there promoting our Drupal Easy Training, one of the ventures of our new project. To date, we have released a bunch of blog posts and one podcast.
The podcast has already been mentioned in a poll about future DrupalCons and on Dries’ twitter.
Listen to DrupalEasy 01: “Dries for President”:
You can subscribe to it in iTunes (search for DrupalEasy) or you can get the latest episodes from the DrupalEasy website.
Also, if your going to be at DrupalCon DC and you want to be a guest on the podcast please contact Andrew so he can set up a time. I will have the N96, and Mike will have a Flip camera, so we’ll probably be doing some conference videos as well.
P.S. I’m still looking for a room in DC – if you know of anything, I’m game!
Chilling in New Orleans (literally) December 12, 2008
Posted by Ryan in : Tech, Drupal, qik, Travel ; comments closedIn NOLA for Do it with Drupal this week and having a great time.
It’s so cold here that it snowed!
What every small town local bookstore should do April 1, 2008
Posted by Ryan in : HowTo, Books, Branding, Contributors, Film, Love, Markteting, open source, OrlandoScene, Shopping, Storytelling, Teaching, Travel, Trends, Video ; comments closed I just finished reading Rent Girl
However Michelle Tea and this book are not the subject of this blog. At least, not directly.
I picked up this indy book at an indy book shop – I was on vacation, visiting Tempe, Arizona, walking to Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods, hiking the Grand Canyon, getting yummy sandwiches from the co-op and drinking local beer. And next to the Trader Joe’s in the adobe-colored shopping center (really, they all were) was this little book store, Changing Hands.
Changing Hands Bookstore, Tempe Arizona, corner of McClintock and Guadalupe. There was a cafe, I think, and there was a section up front with fun games – the kinds of stuff you’d see on the bookshelves of Barnes and Noble next year once they hit critical mass. Like all indy book shops, there was a table near the customer service desk with eye-catching books, new arrivals, and the ever-present signed-or-to-be-signed books. And here was Rent Girl
I only read a few pages on the plane, it was too naughty. I actually couldn’t wrap my head around this book until recently, somehow I feel that by absorbing some women’s media I can try to understand the industry a bit better – things aimed at guys are too easy to understand, low hanging fruit – women’s music, film and books are another beast.
But I digress. I want to plant a seed at Changing Hands in Tempe and Urban Think in Orlando and the Bookmine in Jacksonville, and all the other places where you feel proud buying a naughty graphic novel. This advice isn’t exactly ground-shaking, but I think it makes sense:
Every small town book shop should:
- Print their own books.
- Teach classes about how to print your own books.
- Sell said hand-made and self-published books.
- Sell books by local authors on the internet.
- Show and sell art on the walls.
- Have free and open wi-fi.
- Record video/audio podcasts with visiting authors.
- Have a space in-store and online for customers to have a conversation, either about books or what happened on last night’s LOST.
- Be a place where you want to come to read a book.
- Be a place where you would hang out with your friends.
- Be the first place you want to visit when you get off of work.
- Have space for local groups to hold meetings.
In London I saw a store that only sells Chess and Bridge supplies. They’ve got the largest selection of that stuff you’ve ever seen – no big box store could compete. And on the same block is a store that only sells Flutes. I’m told there’s a store on the other side of the river that only sells French Horns. Granted, in a big city there is a need for places that specialized, but I think even a small town book store can take some tips from these places.
I saw another place that was a grocery, bookstore, gift shop and restaurant all in one. They wouldn’t let me take pictures in there, it was so unique. They press their own olive oil.
In a certain way, Stardust Video & Coffee here in Orlando has achieved so much of what’s on my list, but the utility of the store, renting movies, was not lucrative enough for them, so they opened up to being more cafe-and-performance-space than video rental space. They’ve recently added a second stage with a strict “no dry-humping” policy, and they also sell hard liquor in addition to their amazing selection of beers, decent wine, tea, coffee, baked goods and original food.
I suppose if there was a local printer, they could achieve something similar without needing to do the actual printing themselves, but I guess that’s part of the point of the bookstore, yes?
As a “video and coffee” establishment, I don’t see where Stardust is the last word on video other than the selection, but I always felt like I wasn’t smart enough to rent there, that the right to rent a film was reserved for someone with a more cultured taste than I. However, the Thursday night Broken Speech Poetry Slam or the local rock shows they have are completely accessible, and I’ve played drums on stage at Stardust many times. Maybe that’s just partly attributed to my training as a musician, but why do I feel I’m below the film?
I guess I’m trying to encourage these book shops to become the Third Place that we are all craving here in Orlando right now. In the land of corporate coffee, the local coffee shop has evolved, mostly in order to survive. I think the local bookstore has a few more steps to take before they’re all grown up.
Which bookstores have you noticed fitting into their niche?
…continued…
This is an old meme I found via Tara Hunt and Pinko Marketing. I’ve been trying to describe local media (or at least the goals of the media I’ve been trying to produce) and what’s supposed to be for sale at Petentials and similar sites. The point isn’t to sell 24,000 of an item priced $1 but 1,000 of an item priced $24, let’s say.
Boutique (from my mac dictionary): French, literally ‘small shop,’ via Latin from Greek apothēkē ‘storehouse.’ Compare with bodega .
Some people are getting my reference to boutique mixed up with luxury brands. Personally, I wouldn’t be caught dead with Louis Vuitton bag and I’m sure most Boutiquers wouldn’t be either. The difference, as the diagram suggests (and there are many more differences than I quickly plotted in this image) is the motivations for buying. I said, “Bought for connection†because, as Sanford commented in the previous posts comment section:
“People go out of their way to purchase certain goods – like moleskine notebooks – or buy cheese from specific vendors because it broadcasts something about who they are. This statement can be personal/internal, shared with a small audience…â€
The “small shop” concept is the feeling I got at Villandry in London – it was right in the heart of downtown, near the international embassy district, but instead of being generic, they were hyper-specialized. It was the kind of place you’d bring your aunts and uncles who were visiting town, to show off the awesome places that can grown up in your backyard, and they’d sit back and go “I would never buy anything in here, but I’m in awe of the place.” That’s how I feel at Stardust, that’s likely how some folks feel in the front room at Dandelion Communitea, or the co-op area at Infusion Tea in College Park. What does it all mean? How did these people come to create this art, or this custom stationery, or eco-friendly teacups, or press their own olive oil? Why are there hundreds of movies I’ve never heard of, and how in the hell can they organize them by country and director instead of genre? Who does that?
Boutiques do that. The perfect local bookstore would do that.
Take a look at people who use open source software, you’ll find the same aesthetic. Hand-made, personalized, specific, and powerful in the hands of a well-informed user, but you don’t need to be the guy who wrote it to use it or change it. You think there should be a French translation? That’s up to you. A sixth checkbox? Hack it in, contribute it to the repository. Make this the best tool for you, and therefore the best tool for folks who know where to look.
I could go on all night. Maybe I’ll go on this weekend at BarCamp. But I don’t title it “indy bookstore”. What is it?
Interesting Brits and Aussies (and Floridians, Michiganders) February 2, 2008
Posted by Ryan in : Tech, Events, floridacreatives, Likemind.orl, Links, London, Orlando, Quotes, Travel, Trends ; comments closedI’ve certainly noticed the work of Russell Davies before, but somehow I thought he just blogged about food, because he’s written a book about 50 great cafés around the UK called Egg, Bacon, Chips & Beans with an accompanying café blog, as well as one called a good place for a cup of tea and a think.
Then I was talking to Chris Wojda (woidah) from Jacksonville Likemind today about Pecha Kucha Night (more on that later, I promise), and we talked a bit about Florida Creatives and Likemind and a few other fun things. Then I told him I was going out of town, and it came out that I am going to England tomorrow. He absolutely insisted that I email Russell and go have a chat with him while I’m in London, so I started looking into it a bit.
Looks like Russell is an advertising guy, and my friend Chris knew him/ learned about him via Portland, OR. Now Russell writes about all kinds of stuff and has a consultancy with offices in 4 different parts of the world, Sydney, Amsterdam, London and New York. Wow.
Why did Chris think I needed to talk to Russell? Because we have similar goals? Social change? bringing people together? building communities? exploring technology and the future? Yeah, I guess so, but Russell also organizes this event called Interesting. Here’s a great idea. It’s simple. It scratches an itch.
The TED conference has just finished in Monterery. Sounds like a fantastic lot of speakers. I was lucky enough to go last year and I’d put aside the money to go again this year. But, a while ago, it occurred to me that I could take that money and we could maybe organise a conference of our own here in the UK, which might be even more interesting. Or at least easier to get to.
So this is the plan:
We’ve booked the Conway Hall for the 16th of June. Which is a Saturday. It’ll be about £20 to get in. I want to make it something almost anyone can afford.
The plan is to have all sorts of speakers speak about all sorts of stuff. Not brands, advertising, blogging and twitter but interesting, unexpected, original things. I’m hoping to find fascinating people and to just ask them to speak about something they care about. I want to replicate the experience of clicking from one really good blog to another, ranging across sciences, arts, musics, jokes and whatever. There will be 20 minute slots and 3 minute slots. Some people will play music or sing. And some people who can’t be there will be asked to send three minute videos. Perhaps. I reckon we can squeeze a lot of interestingness into a day. And then have a party afterwards.
But it’ll all be down to the goodwill and enthusiasm of the speakers anyway, because I won’t be able to pay any of them.
There’s been the problem with most of my ideas to date, or the execution of group ideas: too much thinking, too many discussions, too much of everything. This event gets down to the core. No sponsors, nothing frivolous. Just interesting people talking.
Maybe that’s why Florida Creatives works so well. I used to go to these great events in Detroit, but the whole lecture and the product demos and the committee meetings and the agendas were so complex, people would sit at most of the events and then go home right after, but they were missing more than half of the experience by not socializing at the bar across the street.
At my first SEMAFX event, I was begged to come hang out at the bar, but I hadn’t made plans to, and to be honest, the talk was not that interesting. We all tried to get people interested about going to a conference we had all just returned from, but the next event was a year away. I met some cool people and I wanted to network and hang out, but they were asking me to go somewhere else with a group of strangers where I was an outsider, and I didn’t get it.
The next month I went to both parts – the lecture and the socializing at the bar – what a huge difference! There was time for talkback with the presenters, meeting the important people who ran the organization, drinking beer, eating exotic foods, it was great!
In Orlando, the local SIGGRAPH chapter holds 3-4 events a year. At least one of them involves people who work at huge public companies like Pixar, LucasFilm, Electronic Arts or NASA. Before the events they have an hour of socializing, but it feels more like a minature expo, because companies buy tables and there are soft drinks for a dollar and a nice college student smiles and reaches into the ice to grab you a Sprite or a Diet Coke, and people wear nametags and give powerpoint slideshows or bring demonstration hardware for their video compressor/decompressor. Then when the lecture is over, everyone drives home, a bit more educated, but none the more stimulated.
In late 2006 when I was talking to John about doing an important cultural event in Orlando, we soon realized that we had neither the time, the influence or the healthy community to pull off such a grand event, so I tried thinking smaller. What got me motivated about the events at SEMAFX and the local SIGGRAPH? Why had I joined 2 community service organizations at school? I wanted to socialize, I needed a safe haven to be surrounded by likeminded people and think things out, and I’m sure loads of other people had the same desire.
So Florida Creatives became an event where we didn’t care about whether you were a hacker or a filmmaker or a blogger or a photographer or an improviser or a poet or an advertiser or a designer or whether you didn’t professionally, or if you were just getting started, or… anything. Come as you are. Don’t wear a nametag. Join the gang. Feel the embrace of the community. Cory writes about it a lot, and I really appreciate that outspokenness.
Chris (remember, from Jacksonville) started talking about doing a Florida Creatives up there, so it’s been on my brain. I’ve spoken to a few other people about doing an event where they are, but I think in order to be qualified, you need to be missing the community you once had in another town or at another school, or even at a bigger company. Maybe that’s the only qualification: to have an empty place that only your peers, superiors and protégés can fill.
I’ve been noticing particularly this week that a good idea must get harder and stronger and bigger simply by sharing it with people: the idea of having to sell someone on a thought you had in a dream and the subsequent brainstorm becomes difficult if they are critical, or if they play Devil’s Advocate. I’ve always known Florida Creatives should go to other places, but I guess I haven’t had to sell too many people on starting their own, and particularly people that fill the only qualification.
Russell, Chris, John, Cory, Alex, Jake, Scott, Randy, Brad, Jason, Charlie and oh so many others, thanks for getting me here.
Watch A Local Folkus, Learn About Central Florida’s Local Food Movement December 20, 2007
Posted by Ryan in : Video, Earth, floridacreatives, Friends, Links, Orlando, OrlandoScene, Podcasts, Restaurants, Storytelling, Travel, Trends, TV, Viddler, Video, Web Sites ; comments closedI finally got to watch John Rife’s awesome locavore video, and I now feel very educated and inspired to explore and sample some of the places and foods he intoduces us to in his first installment of A Local Folkus.
It’s also nice seeing this project happen, because John is renting space on our server, and I helped him set up the Wordpress (a bit).
I’d like to post a lot of relevant links to go with this video, but that will take a little while. Check back soon for some more info.
Photos from London November 18, 2007
Posted by Ryan in : Uncategorized, flash, London, photos, Site News, Travel ; comments closed
It was awesome. I’m going back at least twice next year. I have lots to catch up on, but it doesn’t feel like a chore. I’m getting some nice solidification of some of my crazy ideas, and some perspective on some of my old ones. 2008 will be the best year ever, and I have Kait and London to thank for it in part.
I have a few more photos to edit/upload yet, but that will be reflected in this slieshow when they’re ready. This player also has pics from my last trip to London in April as well. Cheers!
OSTV ELLA Music Fest Teaser
Posted by Ryan in : Video, Arts, Contributors, Events, Liberatr, Music, OrlandoScene, Podcasts, Travel, Video ; comments closedThe first ever ELLA Music Festival took place at the Rogers Building in downtown Orlando in October 2007. The festival was a celebration of female singer/songwriters and female fronted bands.
In this video, one of the performers, Rachel Goodrich, turns the tables and interviews our host Becky for a change! We also get a sample of Rachel’s musical stylings in the background, recorded upstairs just minutes earlier.
This is just a tiny sample of what happened at the ELLA Fest. Subscribe to OrlandoScene.TV to get updated when new videos are posted.
More videos coming out every week on Miro and iTunes. If you’d like to get involved by suggesting an event or venue for us to highlight, get in touch with us at OrlandoScene.TV – thanks for watching.
