Tag Archives: Gnomedex

Nokia Tracfone

Posted on by
2

Nokia100
I like paper plates (the good ones, not the cheap ones) and have the decency to feel guilty about using them. I’ve worn a plastic Casio wrist watch for years (less than $20). And tonight bought a year’s worth of minutes for my little Nokia Tracfone.

I paid $19.95 for the unit at Wal-Mart and have been buying additional minutes for the last 18 months. The Tracfone was made for people like me (and Avon Barksdale). No synching with Outlook. No texting. No camera. No nothing.

Yes, I do keep the Casio Exilim and the MacBook by my side, but the Tracfone and the camera fit nicely in the MacBook case. Weight is not an issue, given my limited travel.

I’ll bet I saw 50 iPhones at Gnomedex and everyone else had state-of-the-art hardware. When I pulled out the Tracfone at lunch, the guy across the table asked, "What’s that?"

"North Korean. I’m not supposed to have this out in public. Sorry." …as I jammed it back in my pocket.

So I’ve got all the minutes I need for the next year, for about $11 a month. What is that, 35 cents a day?

Gnomedex: Day One

Posted on by
Reply

Gnomedex has to be one of the best covered events in that everyone in the audience is blogging, twittering, videoing and flickr’ing.

Photo: Scott Beale / Laughing Squid” laughingsquid.com

300+ intense, passionate, creative people who all happen to be interested in media, communication and –to some greater or lesser degree– changing the world. Every one a blogger and many podcasters to boot.

Many have been blogging long enough –and hard enough– to have become bored or exhausted (or both) by its demands.

Web 2.0 is familiar and comfortable to these people. Passe for some. But these are the early adopters, the adept. The advance guard of the blogosphere.

Gnomedex 2007

Posted on by

This year’s Gnomedex is billed as "The Blogosphere’s Conference." Speakers include: Guy Kawasaki, Cali Lewis, one of the JibJab guys, Justin Kan (Justin.tv), Jason Calcanis, and others. If you don’t recognize these names, it’s unlikely you’d enjoy the conference. But I look forward to it all year. This is my Indy 500/Super Bowl/World Series, minus the crowds (It’s a small conference, limited to about 300 attendees.)

For the first four or five years of the conference, I took vacation and paid my own expenses. But the Enlightened Management of Learfield now sees the value of this conference, so it’s work related and reimbursed.

Oooh, look! Goosebumps!

Six degrees of Robert Scoble

Posted on by
2

I think I knew that Robert Scoble once worked with/for Dave Winer at Userland Software, but completely forgot writing this “thank you” to Chris Pirillo, waaaay back in 2002:

“We’re always quick to talk about poor service or support, so I’d like to be equally quick to report a wonderful experience. Based on your recommendation, I purchased a copy of Radio from Userland Software. Total impulse buy. I’d been playing with Blogger and when I saw that you liked Radio, I bought it.

Fact is, I really didn’t need the program and had a little problem getting going and wound up emailing the company for some help. Which I quickly got. In my first email to the company I mentioned that mine was a poorly thought out impulse buy and it would be great if I could “back up” on the purchase, never expecting the company to go along.

Today I got a very nice email from Robert Scoble, refunding my purchase. I immediately sent along my thanks and –in his reply– got an invite to Gnomedex 02! Just a nice way to end the day. You can’t go wrong dealing with the Lockergnome community.”

Small world.

Voice-to-text-to-blog?

Posted on by
Reply

Planet Nelson points to Jott: “…is a free service (to the extent that your cell can call anywhere in North America for free) that allows you to dictate a 30-second message into your phone and then have it sent as a text email to a friend/colleague/self/offending politician/anyone whose email address is in your Jott address book.”

From Jott.com: “Using Jott, yoau can either Jott your blog directly or just jott yourself and post later. Better yet, your readers can listen to you too — a great way to connect?”

Blog with Jott

If I understand this correctly… a news reporter could be posting audio and text reports directly from their mobile phone to their blog. And given the evolving definition of “reporter,” this tool could be used by anyone, whether they went to J-School or not.

Update: Jamie at Planet Nelson Jott’ed back on this post. The voice-to-text was close. “Blogroll” became “blog rule” and “Gnomedex” showed up as “noon desk.” But pretty slick all the same.

“Edwards turns to non-tradtional campaign model”

Posted on by

So reads the headline at WashingtonPost.com. I mention it here because Edwards was one of the keynote speakers (video) last July at Gnomedex, a tech conference held the last couple of years in Seattle. Politicians don’t usually court such a geeky audience. Looks like he might be the first major candidate (since Howard Dean?) to take a serious stab at harnessing some of the new media elements for his campaign.

When it came up in his Gnomedex appearance that he didn’t actually write his blog, the crowd jumped on him. Be interesting to see what he does with his official website.

Update: Just popped over for a look at his blog where the latest news was their ranking (#4) on YouTube. I sampled a few minutes of video from last night’s town hall meeting in Des Moines and realized that he (and other candidates) no longer have to rely on MSM to show a few seconds of an appearance in a newscast. They just post everything. At least, everything positive.

Of course, someone will ask, “But who’s watching YouTube?” And the answer is not “everybody,” but “anybody.”

Do you think there is any chance in hell that Edwards will pull a bone-head stunt like “macaca?”

If not apparant, I should emphasize that my interest here is media, not politics. I’m eager to see what role bloggers and podcasters and YouTube and other forms of social media play in the 2008 (and all future) election.

Five minutes ahead, five years behind

Posted on by
1

Every year I come back from Gnomedex with a sense of perspective. A better understanding of where I am on the technology continuum (for lack of a better term).

Future: That space way out on the edge of what we already know about and what the smart kids at Google and Amazon and eBay et al. are dreaming up.

Present: This is what I think of as “state of the art.” People and companies in this Present have a good grasp of all the current technologies and tools and are using them every day. Everybody fully in the Present has a clue and is standing on tiptoe, peering into the mists of the Future.

Past: Where we’ve been. Valuable only in terms of how it helps us understand our place in the Present and the Future.

There were some very bright people at this year’s Gnomedex (and a few of us got in because we had $500) and as I listened to the discussions, I began seeing the image above in my head.

Learfield –the company I work for– is very successful. We are primarily a marketing and sales company with strong ties to what is frequently referrred to these days as “old media” (Radio and TV). Like all companies, we use the Internet extensively and we’re searching for ways to use it more effectively. But we’re not in the Present I described above. How far back up the road are we? I’m not sure. Perhaps we’re like those NASCAR drivers that get in behind the leaders and draft along until we see an opening.

And I’m only about five minutes ahead because this is all I think and read about. And even that small gap is narrowing.

Attending Gnomedex is like cresting a hill and –for just a few minutes– I can see some of the smart kids way off on the horizon, running toward the future. I won’t catch them, but it’s nice to get a glimpse every now and then.

Gnomedex: Day Two

Posted on by
Reply

Heading out for Day Two of the annual geek-fest. Roger is on his way back to JC. Wish you could have been with us last night when he got his first explanation of Second Life (“They’re not talking about real islands, are they?”). If you’re remotely interested in following Gnomedex, there is no shortage of blog posts and this guy has a nice flickr set. And here’s a good piece on John Edwards’ keynote, which was mostly Q&A. I was skeptical about having a pol speaking but I kind of enjoyed the session.

Vacation

Posted on by
Reply

Three or four days at Gnomedex plus two weeks of vacation adds up to the longest time I’ve taken from work in…forever? Vacations have always been something of a “forced interlude.” You get it out of the way and then get back to what you do. This one feels different. On the other hand, I’m certain to spend a good chunk of time online every day so the lines between work and non-work grow ever more blurred.

But I need change my physical space, if not my virtual space and hopping back a few times zones (Seattle) will be a good start. And I’ll be with 300 people who eat, sleep and breath blogging, podcasting and all things digital. I’m looking forward to being the dumbest guy in the room. (Insert joke here)