It’s been a few weeks since I got back from Texas and I’ve finally had a chance to put into words my experiences at this year’s annual ‘geek summer camp’.
This time around, unlike previous years that I’ve attended SXSWi, I had no plans beyond my own panel which fortunately was on the first day of the conference. Being my first large scale talk, and at SXSW of all places, I was anxious about it right until I met up with my co-panelist, Chris Heuer, in the green room before the session.
Chris, being a veteran SXSW speaker, put me at ease immediately…he’s awesome like that.
It was also exciting to find out as we made our way to our panel room that it was full and people were actually sitting on the floor. I had no idea what to expect for our little panel topic so to hear that many people were interested in what we had to say was incredibly encouraging.
It was even cooler to discover that the signboard out in front of our session had been ‘defaced’ in a positive way:
The session went very well…we were very fortunate that many of the folks that turned up were very vocal about the issues and once Chris and I got the ball rolling, the room took over. Someone joked that it turned into the Phil Donahue show as we had a queue of people that wanted to either voice their opinion, respond to someone else’s or ask a question to us and the room. There was some people that left and reading some of the comments/tweets after the fact it was mostly due to the fact that we were all over the place as far as cool kids vs suit issues. I concede that was a problem and we tried to steer things back on track but it was also interesting to see the room discuss things organically so it was hard to want to stifle the open dialogue.
It was very gratifying to me to have people come up to me in the halls of the convention centre later on (and even days later) and thank me for giving this topic a spot to be explored. Even folks that weren’t in town yet when the session was on, but knew about it and recognized me from the session description and wanted to talk about it further. This was a very new experience for me and I was thrilled that the little idea that kept me up at night last summer had grown to be this thing that people wanted to talk about. We even got interviewed by the Austin Chronicle about our session as one of the trending topics at SXSW this year.
I haven’t talked to Chris about it yet but it seems obvious to me that we should submit a followup to the session as there are plenty of things we didn’t have time to get to that we wanted to explore…not to mention the feedback we’ve gotten from people in person and online. So that’s got me excited to go back to Austin in 2011 even more now.
The rest of my time in Austin was a blur…five more days of amazing times with amazing friends…including a special trip to the Salt Lick BBQ in Drifwood, Texas:
where I got so see my pal Josh propose to his longtime girlfriend Traci:
While this SXSW didn’t see me have the photographic output I usually create (my DSLR was still in the shop post-Olympics), there was no shortage of other types of content creation while in Austin. Dave Olson and I recorded a marketing-themed podcast while on the Social Media Clubhouse bus about our experiences at SXSW and along with Kris Krug, also shot some footage out at the Clubhouse about our recent Olympic experiences which might end up in the With Glowing Hearts documentary.
It was a very special SXSW experience for me this year…in many ways surreal. Big thanks to all my friends (new and old) that helped to make it so memorable with an extra special thanks to Chris and his lovely wife Kristie who were amazingly generous to me. I’m looking forward to seeing them again soon at Northern Voice.
A little while ago, I did a photoshoot with my good friends, Ianiv & Arieanna, who were expecting their first child imminently. I offered to take the photos for them because I’d never shot these kinds of photos before and figured it would be fun to try…especially with friends. Here’s a few of my favorite shots from the day:
A little behind the scenes shot:
I think the shots turned out pretty well…Arieanna had a few ideas of what kinds of shots she wanted and I had a couple of ideas and we managed to have a fun afternoon moving furniture around their place and going out to the park to shoot. Arieanna was pretty close to being due and was quite the trooper spending hours up and about during the shoot.
I’m happy to report that on October 24th, Arieanna gave birth to a healthy baby boy they’ve named Aiden…I’m looking forward to taking some photos of him now that he’s on the ‘outside’. Congratulations to the whole family!
View the rest of my photoset from the shoot on Flickr. Ianiv & Arieanna also posted a bunch more shots from the shoot on their Flickr stream.
Last summer, during the photoshoot at the morgue, I came up with the idea of doing another shoot with Charles & Barbara on the beach. They had mentioned while we were shooting that they spun fire and I thought that would be a pretty cool project for us to work on.
So after a few months of trying to get things to come together, the scheduling/location and weather gods smiled on us and we were able to get together this weekend at Ambleside Park for the shoot.
While we were waiting for just the right light, we also were able to shoot some portrait shots:
Here’s a short video of Barbara spinning:
I love the sound the fire makes as it spins around. It was quite a challenge to capture things just right with so many variables including the spinning fire, the darkness making it difficult to set focus, the incoming tide, and the cold & wind you get for being on the beach in October – once the sun went down, Barbara was wearing two coats between shots.
Thanks to Charles and Barbara for being such great sports, braving the cold to do this shoot and doing amazing stuff with fire. Also thanks to Matthew Schubert for doing hair for the shoot and being on location with us. You can view my full set of photos on Flickr…I’m still going through the shots so more should pop up soon.
Update: The shots that Scott and Peter took are all up on Flickr now too. I’ve also added about 30 more shots to my set as well:
There is only a handful of days left to vote for the panels that *could* end up being presented at SXSWi next March. I’ve already outlined the panel I put together in a previous post but wanted to explain a little bit about why it’s important for your votes…even if you’re not planning on attending SXSWi, although I hope you will. I also wanted to highlight a few other people’s panels that I’m interested in attending and are just a small sampling of some of the amazing sessions and people that make SXSW as much fun and amazing as it is.
First of all, for the first time that I can remember, there is a now a Hot Ideas index of the popularly voted sessions. These are the sessions that appear to be the most popular although it’s unofficial. There are some pretty big names in that list all with very interesting topics, or at least internet famous panelists that will help ensure a great turnout to their panel.
Some friends that are putting together some compelling panel programming this year include:
Josh Babetski, an evangelist for Mapquest (whom I met a couple years ago at SXSWi) has pulled together what looks like a stellar lineup of folks to talk about the future of mobile experiences now that many devices we use are all location & socially aware.
Rob Cottingham has proposed to bring Teh Funny to Austin…I had the pleasure of seeing this earlier this year at Northern Voice and can only imagine how Rob will bring the audience to tears (of joy) if he gets a chance. Get a peak at his presentation from NV here
Dave Olson who’s proposing a panel about Hitchhiking to the Boardroom which is the continuation of awesome that Dave brings to many events, including SXSW of which I’ve attended with him for the past couple of years. Dave also has posted an awesome roundup of panels you might be interested in voting for
Joining Dave on another panel submission is my SXSW jedi master, Kris Krug (whom I actually met in Austin four years ago, not in Vancouver if you can believe it) along with the amazing Bev Davies to talk about Rock’n'Roll Photography.
Like Kris, I also met Robert Scales in Austin during my first trip to SXSW and this year he’s proposed a fascinating panel discussing Social Media and the Olympics which I got a preview of at Northern Voice.
My pals over at Sixty4Media aren’t proposing a panel, but have a great list of Vancouver folks proposing panels – hopefully they will make their way to Austin next year too
As you can see from this list, l know a lot of great people that have amazing panel ideas and submissions…one thing that really makes SXSW so special is that there are literally thousands of other people you and I don’t know attending that have equally amazing ideas about stuff that interests you. You can’t walk around the conference and not meet new people or experience new ideas…some would suggest that just walking around the conference is better than actually attending the panels. I wouldn’t disagree.
Voting closes on September 4th so if you haven’t already, please vote for my panel….I know that kind of sounds like that video professor guy on tv…but time is running out and I promise not to teach you how to use Excel.
What do you get when two photographers look for a way to play around with all their camera gear? They plan a photoshoot of course! One knows someone with a great location to shoot in, the other knows some great models.
So after a couple of weeks of planning & coordinating schedules, we spent a few hours this past weekend in the morgue of the Vancouver Police Museum and these are some of my shots that I thought turned out pretty good:
This type of shoot is the most fun since there is no pressure, just having fun shooting and playing with lots of camera gear…and weapons. I can’t wait to do more of this.
Thanks to Chuck & Barbara for being so great to work with and to Chris for lettings us run around inside the Police Museum once again.
