Once again it’s that time when all the SXSW folks start pitching to anyone with a pulse their panel ideas for voting. I’m no different although I try to keep it to a minimum.
Lately SXSW has been awash is social media and marketing sessions (even my session with Chris Heuer earlier this year fell into that category). This time around, I’ve proposed a solo session on something a little different, something that I’m very passionate about and hope that it will inspire attendees like I was inspired in my first years attending SXSW when there were a lot more creative sessions that had less to do with the web, but rather helped inspire you to make the web better.
So what is it? Well, it’s a session about creating timelapse movies, which are basically still frames shown in sequence. Here’s a couple of samples:
While not directly related to the ‘interactive’ side of SXSW, they have been trying to overlap & commingle the film audience the last few years. I considered submitting this to the Film program but figure the filmmakers would already know how to make these. I’ve given a version of this presentation at Northern Voice during PhotoCamp and plan to expand it and include some new content, especially given the larger time slot. Based on the feedback I received from Northern Voice attendees, my hope is that this session will help inspire people that haven’t considered making these kinds of movies because either they didn’t know how to or didn’t think they had the right gear – both points (and more) will be covered off (short answer is that it’s easy and you can make these with just about any camera, you don’t really need special, expensive gear to do it).
Whether you’re planning on attending or not, please considering giving me a thumbs up vote for my submission, called Create Timelapse movies without a Flux Capacitor – it only takes a minute to signup if you don’t already have an account. Although it only counts for 30% of the total score as to whether it will be accepted, it’s still an important component of getting in.
Thanks and I look forward to seeing you in Austin next year!
Earlier this month, over a hundred WordPress enthusiasts headed down to the Museum of Vancouver on one of the first summer days of the season to spend the day learning about WordPress. I was one of the organizers and we were all amazed at how smoothly everything went.
I gave a talk about using MAMP/WAMP for offline WordPress development. My slide deck was pretty short due to the live demo nature of the topic but you can view the PDF if you’re so inclined.
Justin Carlson recorded the sessions for us (head over to his site for the rest of them – some of them may even appear on WordPress.tv soon) so if you want to watch me get nerdy for about 1/2 an hour, hit play:
One of my tasks as a WordCamp organizer was to sort out internet access for the attendees. Thanks to Miranda & Melanie at Rogers Communications, I was able to borrow a few of their Rocket Internet Hubs which Dale Mugford & I setup in the various rooms at the MOV.
I’m still surprised how well these units performed considering the number of users sharing them (some of whom were streaming World Cup games). Dale connected them to a couple Airport Extremes along with some Airport Express extenders so that we could have one big wifi net and I didn’t hear anyone have issues with the internet so I’m grateful for Roger’s helping us out in a big way….having solid internet is a common issue at many conferences that we didn’t have.
As with all the previous WordCamps I’ve attended, I had a great time and met a bunch of new people that seemed to enjoy our little conference. Next year when talk starts up again, I’ll remember those folks I met and not think about all the effort that goes into pulling off a conference like this which usually seems too daunting.
Thanks to all our sponsors that helped make the event affordable and the speakers that volunteered their time to make it the success that it was.
Special thanks to my pal, Dave Olson, who not only brought down the house at the end of WordCamp, also put me up the night before and made sure I got back from our speakers dinner, um, safely. It seems that whenever we get together, we have some amazing adventures.
This past weekend was the 5th year of the Northern Voice conference out at UBC…and my 3rd year attending.
Thanks to a recent car accident, I didn’t take many photos but instead spent a couple of days in sessions, visiting with old friends and, as usually happens at Northern Voice, met a bunch of new ones. Strangely, the conference has gotten so big that I actually saw some friends across the room but never had a chance to say hi since the room was so freaking big.
Like previous years, there was a PhotoCamp session and I gave a presentation covering how I make timelapse videos with a still camera. My presentation was loosely based on a post I did a little while ago and was frankly surprised at the positive reception the presentation got. The post covers off, in greater detail, the steps to combine still photos into an image sequence so I won’t bother posting my slides. I showed a number of videos to help illustrate the result including this one made from over 2200 still photos as kind of an end run around the fact that I wasn’t accredited to shoot video, just stills at the Paralympic Games:
On the second day of the conference, I was part of the panel talking about Our Olympic Experience which covered the social media outcomes from the games. Also on the panel was Andrew Lavigne talking about With Glowing Hearts, the feature length documentary he’s working on about the impacts the olympic games have on the local community. He shot a ton of footage before, during and after the games…including a few bits with me. Andrew talked about the film and showed the latest cut of the demo reel for it. They are currently looking for distribution options to help complete the editing of the film.
Once again I had a great time…even if I was heavily medicated during most of it thanks to my back injury. I was also able to give both presentations via my iPad and the VGA cable which worked great.
All the sessions were videotaped so once they are packaged up, I’ll update this post with any relevant links or embeds.
Update: Stephen Hui has some photos up on the Georgia Straight’s site that he took at the conference. I finally got to meet Stephen in person and he also spoke about his Olympic experiences alongside Andrew, kk, Scales and myself.
Tonight, Chris Heuer and I recorded a brief podcast as part of the lead up to our SXSWi Core Conversation, called “Do cool kids leave when the suits arrive?”. It’s intended to give attendees a little insight into the session we’ll be having on Friday, March 12, 2010.
You can read my original submission (from back in July). Unfortunately, our session won’t be a full panel with all the speakers I had originally proposed, but a few of them are hoping to still come out and be a part of the conversation. If you’re going to be in Austin, we’d love to have you come out at 3:30pm and join us. Have a listen:
Today, Duane helped get the ball rolling with the announcement that WordCamp Vancouver 2010 planning had begun with June 12th, 2010 the current tentative date.
I’ve attended a lot of WordCamps over the years…in a lot of different places. I’ve even had the honour to speak at a few of them too. This time around, I’m on the organizing committee…it remains to be seen if I’ll be speaking as it’s early days so we’ll see how things play out.
WordCamp has been a pretty fantastic place to meet some pretty awesome people, share information about the WordPress platform and have a great time. I learn something new every time I attend one.
If you’re interested in anything to do with blogging or WordPress, I encourage you to sign up for the email updates and/or follow us on Twitter. We’ll share more information as soon as we have more details!
