Contributing To Banff: Be A Part Of The Online Channel
Thousands of people are getting set to descend upon Banff over the coming week for nextMEDIA and the Banff TV Festival . There is a small team of us that will be covering both conferences online in such a way that has never quite been tackled before for this infamous week. We’ll be posting content on both festival sites with hopes to bring a little more digital media awareness and coverage to the people in attendance and also to provide somewhat of a highlight reel for those unable to be there. This online channel will include highlights from the sessions, written articles, the hottest pics and interviews with participants and delegates. A lot of what we’re doing involves user participation and will be that much more successful if more people contribute to the content.
Our lovely team consists of Erica Hargreave , Kris Krug , McLean MG , Kevin Fraser , Mark Greenspan and myself . Plus a few roaming photo reporters and a pro video team Status Firm . We’ll be hunting you all down and grabbing interviews wherever we can!
We’ve been planning this trek for a few months now and most of the pieces are in place, but we need you to participate to make this all happen beautifully. All content can be easily tagged so that it gets aggregated into the Festival Online Stream – calling all bloggers, photographers, delegates, Banff participants, hey, even producers and broadcasters: we know most of you are not likely twittering these days, but why not try it out?
Here’s how you can include your own content and whereabouts online on the Banff Channel:
BY MOBILE: Anyone with a Blackberry or laptop or other mobile device can submit photos and videos attachments – or just plain text posts too – *without* creating an account – just by emailing either of the following:
nextMEDIA: nm08 AT sifttool DOT com
Banff TV Fest: bwtf08 AT sifttool DOT com
A NOTE ON TAGGING: All content tagged with "nm08" and "bwtv08" will get aggregated to the respective nextMEDIA and Banff sites. (Also tag your material with "nextmedia" and "banfftvfest".)
TWITTERING: Using the "#" (hash mark) and the appropriate tag to the event to feed all tweets into twemes , like so: "#nm08" or "#bwtf08"
FLICKR: Join the festivals’ Flickr groups and tag all of your photos with the festival tags "nm08" and "bwtf08" – nextMEDIA Flickr Group | Banff TV Fest Flickr Group
BLOGS: If you’re writing content on your own blog about the festival, send us your link to the category, like so: "http://megancole.org/category/nm08" OR "http://megancole.org/category/bwtf08" – send those links to nm08 AT sifttool DOT com and to bwtf08 AT sifttool DOT com, respectively.
YOUTUBES: Same goes for your own YouTube Channel – just send the category link for Banff content of your YouTube Channel to nm08 AT sifttool DOT com or bwtf08 AT sifttool DOT com, and you’ll be added into the channel that way as well.
Watch the front pages of both festival sites for updated content and the continuous stream of your content and ours!
VIDFEST Back On Granville Island
Not to knock any of the content, speakers, sessions, people I met, old friends I enjoyed seeing again, but I just have to say: thank-you VIDFEST for coming back to Granville Island this year. It’s one of the reasons why I think this conference is *extra* special. That, and the lack of the ocean of glowing blue bodies in the crowd from laptop monitor blasts and yes, more WOMEN! Fellas, wasn’t that nice? Lots of lovely ladies at VIDFEST. It’s a nice switch from the usual 10 to 20 per cent of the crowd that’s wearing a bra (or so I assume).
Best quote: “There are more people online than there are people in the world.” Grant McCracken (excellent name, btw)
Most shocking note: OMG – Impact Research spent what?! $150 THOUSAND dollars on a Facebook application campaign and got a mere 7,000 installs. Did I hear that right? Ouch.
Most enjoyable: The locale, the sun and the zu crew, what little there was for visiting hours.
Best new experience: Listening to Chris Anderson while watching him move around the stage in that slick, black suit.
I do have to duck out of VIDFEST early this year – the festival is still happening as I write. But I have a Slumber Queen to catch and a 3-day music festival that is rivaled by very little. Sorry VIDFEST, Michael Stipe and The Cure win this time around.
Follow the rounds of the festival over the last few days on twemes to get a snippet of all that shook down.
VIDFEST: 2008 Coverage
I am quite certain there will be a decent amount of coverage on this year’s VIDFEST across the various channels.
Starting with the mobile, check out cellmap for mapping out your whereabouts and getting VIDFEST right onto your cell.
Moving into the internets (slash mobile to some extent), you can keep up with various bloggers and writers on the VIDFEST blog, or you’ll likely find VIDFEST coverage here here here here and here here here, and no doubt many others.
If you’re Twittering, don’t forget the tweme hash mark like so “#vidfest” for your fellow tweeters tweeting to follow and, uhm, tweet back? (what exactly is the correct cyber name for these bloody things? I stopped paying attention to all of the cute online naming conventions.)
I think you can still register… perhaps – even if it is just for one day or feature.
Enjoy the show!
Up For A Yoga Challenge, Or Rather, Adding Some Structure?
I decided to do this Yoga Challenge thing. I bought a pass at Semperviva last fall for 3 months and really enjoyed my (mostly) daily practice (Cameron rocks). I signed up to be on their mailing list. I don’t particularly like mailing lists and avoid them at all costs, but I figured getting a peaceful reminder of what yoga has to offer me this month is a lovely item to have in my inbox every so often. I got one of their notes last week about a 40-day yoga challenge and I thought I could use a bit of that. I’m on day six and so far, so good. My body hasn’t magically transformed, not even a pinch, but I feel absolutely fantastic.
I enjoy Yoga. I used to do more of it and have found myself wishing as of late that I did more of it – isn’t that always the way with the practices and exercises we all know will make us feel better in the end? That’s one reason for starting this Challenge thing: I want to do more. Or is it: I need more structure?
I lived in LA 10 years ago for just shy of a year and practiced yoga almost every day (you kind of have to in order to survive that town). That was when I realized that taking an hour out each day is a really good thing. Then running became my daily meditation, and still is on some days. I am one of those people who loves running. The amazing shot of endorphins is one reason, getting in great shape is another, setting a goal and reaching it to run a marathon is another. But more than anything I think it is the structure I crave. It definitely feels good to have a daily physical regime. I think it’s important to take time out, even though I don’t do it nearly enough and I am guessing not a lot of people do. If you all do, please tell me your rhyme or reason in how you do it and how you keep up! It’s not enough for me to just say, “I’m going to exercise every day this week”. I need a goal and I need some form of routine and structure to get me there.
Hence the 40 days I suppose. It kind of feels strangely religious, the whole 40 day thing. I guess that’s not a bad thing considering Yoga comes from a very spiritual place on the Globe and “place” in general and it’s the most spiritual practice I’ve experienced. (Sorry mum, those Sundays in a church pew for my entire youth just didn’t cut it.)
Best part about this challenge: it’s ONLINE! These beautifully-sculpted lovely ladies give you a zen hour online – from grassy meadows, flowing rivers and mountain vistas in Wyoming. I enjoy yoga studios like the next gal, but I am really enjoying the online yoga at home. It equals structure for me and I guess that’s part of it too.
So now that I am challenging myself (as are two of my pals: Go Kel! Go Glen!), the challenge is out there to anyone and everyone. One hour a day, at your pace, in your own time, online, all for you.
VIDFEST 08: For The Artistic Geek And The Geeky Artist In All Of Us
Most conferences I attend or participate in, or co-produce for that matter, tend to lean a tad more toward the “geeky” type of affairs as opposed to the more creative. Working in social media and technology for the past several years, this fact is just par for the course and happens to be the kind of event I enjoy, much to my own surprise and even though some of the time those uber geeky topics and conversations are over my head. It is these conferences that have helped in convincing the rest of the world that being geeky is in style and they have assisted in bringing the affectionate term “cool geek” into the mainstream.
I definitely don’t rank in the cool geek stardom status. I can write *some* code and I built an entire Flash website from scratch, once. I was the art student who wished her ways of straight-A’s in math didn’t up and vanish from the left brain after Math 12. I love technology and everything fabulously geeky about it. I dream about better applications and how I could implement them, but I can’t build them. I think what I love most about technology is how creative it can be. I think that’s why I’m still here. What does any of this mean and where might you fall? Are you a geeky artist? Or an artsy geek?
VIDFEST is the perfect answer for the creative geek and techy artist in you. This year will be my third consecutive year at VIDFEST and it’s one of my favourite conferences for this reason. It tends not to focus so much on the business of technology or creative content, but more on creative content and contribution itself – how creativity advances technology and how technology inspires us all to think creatively. It fuels my definition of inspiring. It’s the perfect equation, if you will, of techy and creative, where geek meets artist.
If you’re visiting the VIDFEST site in these last few days and hours before things kick off, wondering if you should attend, you should, no matter what side of the brain is urging you to. The official program alone is reason enough. But if it’s not, speaking from an artsy-geekish perspective: You will meet great people, you will have memorable connections, you will have fun, you will be inspired.
Photo Credits: kk+ and Mark Busse
xposted from VIDFEST Blog
Blog Talk Radio: Kinzin Is The Better Choice For Privately Sharing Photos
Last week Blog Talk Radio featured an episode about photography and kids with “Taking Better Pictures of Your Kids”. The show featured Tracey Clark and Kate Inglis from the newly launched site Shutter Sisters, a photo blog full of passion and beauty in imagery and words, giving away their tips and tricks in photography. Inevitably, a question from a listener came up about online privacy and the security of posting pictures of your children online. The show’s host, Kristen Chase, refers to Kinzin as a great choice if you’re looking for a private, niche network, to securely post photos of your kids, saying:
“… there are a bunch of really great private websites out there… called Kinzin.com and they are invitation-only access”.
Kate goes on to mention some of Michael Fergusson’s thoughts on online safety in photography: to say the internet is inherently bad is the same to say that kissing is inherently bad because it can spread disease. True enough. You can listen to the show on Blog Talk Radio in its entirety. (The Kinzin mention comes at about the 22:00 minute mark of the show.)
It’s a pretty good show and has a lot of useful content to share from both the experts in the community, the host and from participating listeners around the Internet.
Websites like Shutter Sisters and Kinzin are those special, niche networks that people are gravitating toward more and more. I’m not tired of Flickr (far from it) or Facebook (god forbid) but quality on the Internet has become more and more apparent and absolutely essential, and these specific spaces online thankfully provide me with a rich user experience.
(xposted from Kinzin Blog, with some add-ons)
Private Family Photo Sharing: Connecting All Your Generations With A New, Refreshing Feel
Mail my online social network to my non-computer dad? Every month? For 3 bucks?? Sign me up!
Kinzin is transforming how families share the most important little people in their lives with the latest launch of Kinzin.com.
Privacy and security online is important to many of us, especially to parents. Kinzin understands this better than anyone and has created an online space for you to share your kids’ photos safely and as private as you deem: you control who gets to see your content. Inviting people to your social network, or rather, subscribing any of your friends or family members into your space, is one of the features that puts Kinzin ahead of other photo-sharing networks.
There is another quality that is probably the most exciting new feature in this launch: social networks in the mail! For Grandma, who doesn’t have a computer or doesn’t know the first thing about social networks or “online communities”, is now able to be a part of your life online. In just a few clicks (and a truly unbelievable low cost), your family members can receive prints of your top 10 images each month, chosen by you, VIA THE MAIL! All of those headaches or concerns over certain family member’s dial-up, download times and those phone calls we all inevitably receive, “How do I login again?” are out the window. There’s something to be said about “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks”. Kinzin has created a really easy way for anyone you choose to receive the cutest, up-to-date images of your kids through the postal service. I’ve given up trying to teach some of the folks in my parent’s generation (and up) how to enter a URL or surf and search. Sign me up for monthly prints!!
There are some other really neat features that help to create that perfect snapshot in time of your kids. You can add status messages, photo titles and descriptions and the family can comment on photos as well. All of these features are available for each and every image so that every memory can easily be captured and each moment can be put into precise context, not just uploaded as part of an album in a bank of photos.
We all need special tools to be able to share the kinds of private information and experiences about our kids – Kinzin provides this for you in the most perfect package – whether you use Facebook, Flickr, or like Grandma, good ol’ fashioned mail! And let it be known: I ain’t got no kids yet, but I’ve already signed up that non-computer dad of mine to receive my hottest 10 shots every month of my dog – he’ll LOVE it!
Check out Kinzin.com
mostly xposted from the Kinzin blog