Rough notes and links from Day #2 of Gnomedex 2010

    Saturday August 21

    Bill Schrier

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    @billschrier – CTO City of Seattle. Grew up on a farm in Iowa – John Deere. "Steve Ballmer has come to Gnomedex!" The Chief Geek of the City of Seattle. City is a hotbed of innovation. Dam powered electricity. Boeing. Starbucks. Microsoft. Amazon. Startup community. Government has not gone untouched.

    Data.gov, Data.seattle.gov – published government data. Future: crime, police 911; already have fire dept 911 dispatches. It’s data – it’s not information. Someone has to turn that into something useful for citizens. Open Government hack-a-thon – Tropo & Socratta.

    Perspective: lot more interesting stuff comes when private companies / people do it.

    Amy Karlson

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    Amy Karlson is a researcher in the Computational User Experiences (CUE) subgroup of the Visualization and Interaction for Business and Entertainment (VIBE) research area at Microsoft Research, focusing on HCI and user experiences within mobile and multi-device environments.

    She received a B.A. and M.S. in Computer Science from Johns Hopkins University. She received her Ph.D. from University of Maryland, College Park in Computer Science, where she specialized in HCI and one-handed interaction with touchscreen-based mobile devices, and for which she was awarded a Microsoft LiveLabs Fellowship. Prior to earning her Ph.D., Ms. Karlson worked for several years as a research scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.

    Looking at improving work-flow. Visualization & Interaction Group. Review of all the devices touched during the day – the transition from one device to another is an opportunity. Can you improve these transitions. Each device is still sort of isolated. How do you, for instance, make the relationship between phone, laptop, and desktop better. Logged usage for two weeks.

    Different across people but internally consistent to an individual.

    "How many times have you read an email on your phone and then forgot to respond when you get back to your desktop?" 75% of the audience. Come back to your inbox and those emails are undistinguishable from all the emails you’ve already read @ the desktop.

    "Mark as Unread" is something very common that we do. Amy: once the user has to do something like that then the system has failed to bridge the worlds between devices.

    Slide Overview of disruptions uses devices: Network | Output | Input | Missing Function | Environment | Cost/Benefit

    Cloud as part of solution: push back. Email is the cloud. Still have to step in regarding actions between devices.

    Shauna Causey & Melody Biringer

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    Tech Mavens: Women in top technology positions are scarce — but they’re out there. They just need a safe space to rock out, rally the troops, and share success stories. The vision for Tech Mavens is to create a crashpad. A launchpad. An inspiration station, advice center, event hub and force for social change.

    Shauna Causey – Co-Creator of Tech Mavens and Digital Evangelist for Ant’s Eye View. Her pervious roster includes the Comcast, FOX, Fox Sports Net and the Seattle Mariners Baseball Team.

    She is the creator behind Voluntweetup, she leads Twestival Seattle, speaks around the country helping non-profits with social media and serves as the Vice President for the Social Media Club Seattle board of directors. In the last year, Shauna has been featured in TechFlash as one of the 100 Top Women in Tech, as well as in The Los Angeles Times and The Huffington Post.

    Melody Biringer – Co-Creator of Tech Mavens From strawberry shortcake to home furnishings to a fitness business, she has trotted down virtually every entrepreneurial trail in existence. With 23 business ventures under her belt — a few of them even successful! — you might call her a lifelong “start-up junkie.”

    She’s the founder of the CRAVEcompany, which connects savvy business owners with stylish consumers through networking events, symposiums and a series of smash-hit city guides. Melody was recently featured on PDXfm.com and on the cover article of Seattle Woman Magazine.

    @TechMavens – "How many people have had an idea to help the community" Entrepreneur Girl meets Corporate Girl. Biringer’s Farm. Schlepping around strawberry short-cake – took into wholesale cookies @ QFC. Latest with Crave. Support small women business – in 20 cities. Bring small-biz like-minded women together and talk about why to be, say, on twitter.

    Start-up Weekend: http://startupweekend.org/ – whole bunch of programmers need markets etc. Both went. 20 women out of 100. Friday: do a big pitch, get into teams of 10 each and then by Sunday night launch it live on stage. Won @ Digree -> Crowd Hop. Talking with Monica Guzman – writing a book, Monica is on board of directors.

    http://www.techmavens.com/ – http://twitter.com/techmavens – create as non-profit. Created mindmap. Slide: Gender & The Internet – women are ruling a number of online experiences. "There aren’t enough woemen entrepreneurs because they don’t see enough woemen extrepreneurs ahead of them that are successful." – The need for role models. (Video)

    Betsy. Carol Tran – Chic Meets Geek – science geek. Kathy. Robin. Shauna: "Not a dating site."

    Website launched – looking for mentors, speakers, and nominate profiles for women in tech.

    Larry Wu

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    Larry Wu brings over 27 years of brand and business development experience to the SmartCup Board of Directors. He is currently the VP of Product Development for SK Food Group in Seattle, and most recently served as COO for Bossa Nova Beverages.

    Larry joined Bossa Nova from Iconoculture, Inc., where he served as VP, Consumer Strategist. There he led food and beverage consumer consulting projects for key Fortune 500 clients in the Consumer Packaged and Restaurant industries. Mr. Wu also spent two years leading research and development at CH Guenther and Son, Inc. where his team was responsible for the development, production and launch of key foodservice products such as the McGriddle.

    Consumer-Based Innovation – Chris introduction: discussing the Smart-Cup mini-French-press disposable coffee experience. One of Larry’s billion inventions. Food geek – 27 years. Starting work w/ Safeway to build-up store eateries.

    Products: please go to http://www.iconoculture.com/Index.aspx for more slide background. Metatrends < macrotrends < trends < observations. Been working for the man, now on own. Watch things happen in the worlds and put 2 & 2 together and get 5. When you can link threads / trends together it becomes macrotrends – and when they collide that’s the end of the world. Trending-watching framework: time vs. stability. Observations from the world are coming in and being tagged.

    Creature Kingdom: 50 years in the making. Pet cemeteries / urns. K-8 Water / Pet Urns / Doggie Daycare. Trend: Humanization of Pets. Healthcare for pets, travel, etc –> Creature Kingdom: pets controlling human behavior. Next? Eateries for pets. Social networking for pets (Facebark).

    Macrotrends:

    • Artisan: return to handcrafted one-of-a-kind objects etc.
    • Cultural Fusion: experience cultural hybrids – people want to experience more than just their own culture (easiest: food + music). Trying to figure out the growth of different ethnic food love in USA. Historically is post-war and soldiers wanting to re-enjoy food they had experience. Now? Internet: can read about food from all over.
    • Fingerprinting: personalization – why Starbucks works. Psion: you can build your car online.
    • Health Monitor: light / low-cal / high fiber / anti-oxidant. Self treatment.
    • Hyperlife: multitasking barrage.
    • Memory Marketing: history as an active resource to take a nostalgic trip through time.
    • Merit Badges: people are collecting experiences – mission trips.
    • Read, Set, Go! Innovation + convenience.

    Celebri-Me: four years ago. Look at me, listen to me, but don’t get too close. Consumers creating their own 15 min of fame. Consumers who don’t want to wait for fame to find them. How do you market to that?

    Food truck trend. Mexican + Korean. http://kogibbq.com/ – and there’s a line etiquette and the crowd will boo you if you break etiquette.

    Scott Draves

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    Scott Draves a.k.a. Spot is a visual and software artist living in New York City. Draves is best known as the creator of the Electric Sheep, a continually evolving abstract animation with over 60,000 daily participants. Draves’ award-winning work is permanently hosted on MoMA.org, and has appeared in Wired and Discover magazines, and even as an official skin for Google Chrome.

    When not working as a full-time artist, Draves has worked for a series of technology start-ups. Draves is now an engineer in the mapping division at Google Inc. Spot started VJing at underground parties in the early 90s and still performs live.

    Screensavers – Electric Sheep. Requires network connection. Started programming in 78. Working on computer graphics. 1991: Fuse – takes some images as input & creates images as output. Creates tiled mosaic. Tries to make overlap between tiles match – visual associative memory search. Could also take a gold image to reconstruct an image out of other images. Now a plug-in to GIMP – "Patch-based Texture Synthesis." http://draves.og/fuse – galleries there, too.

    Flame: open source visual language – 1991 – organic + fluid. Expressive. Working in Tokyo at the time and had a supercomputer to self. Play video – The Open Source Culture of the Flame Algorithm.

    Bomb: interactive visual musical instrument. VJ performance tool.

    Youtube user: spotworks. http://www.youtube.com/user/spotworks

    Electric Sheep: http://scottdraves.com/sheep.html – distributed supercomputer. 1999. Based on Flame Algorithm. Voting into genetic algorithm. AI learning to satisfy human desire. Editor for editing existing sheep.

    Play Generation 243 – commissioned by CMU. Problem: flashy, trashy sheep got the most votes (Las Vegas effect). "Dreams in High Fidelity" – go through 1,000s of sheep and pick out the few he think is beautiful – send out to network for re-render in high-def.

    (Compare to neon @ http://www.llamasoft.co.uk/lightsynths.php )

    Interference patterns: Geometric resonances between planes.

    Would love to get an installation / show in Seattle (gallery, museum).

    Scott Mueller and Alex Mueller

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    Scott Mueller is a quirky-smart thinker with leadership experience ranging from start-ups to Fortune 500 companies. He’s passionate about helping people see their true potential and getting them to places they never thought possible.

    Scott and his wife, Alex, started an experiment in life and living, called Moosicorn Ranch, east of Spokane, WA. Through the help of friends and colleagues, they hope to make Moosicorn Ranch a sustainable home and farm. But there are even bigger dreams in the works including providing a place for workshops, seminars, and even a place for artists to live, learn and create.

    iPhone toting homesteaders. Can’t make phonecalls, but that’s not the iPhone’s strong-suit anyways. Going to build own cottages, including one for artist (free room & board). For advice, called out to twitter & ning. iPhone just as handy in a rural environment. Animal tracks / birds / recognizing wildlife. Makes experience more educational – become a better steward of the property.

    In phase micro-converter. Vs 20-30K mega-inverter investment. W/ this you can order one panel. Under $1K you have all the equipment you need. You can then organically grow your solar panel investment. Next device: can monitor power production & report it. Next: remote control switches for managing power in house… remotely.

    Tied to people w/ social media outright. Food movement: watch Food Inc.

    Things people can do: (1) throw a solar panel on your roof. (2) backyard gardens – start with the food. (3) home automation stuff – green things to your home. Smart Labs Inc. (4) CFLs / lights.

    (Great flickr photos – http://www.flickr.com/photos/moosicorn )

    Melissa Pierce

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    Melissa Pierce is the producer of the interview documentary, Life In Perpetual Beta. Every day, she asks people questions to help them discover who they are and what they are passionate about doing, and then help them do just that, because that’s what she’s passionate about.

    Life In Perpetual Beta is about listening to your authentic self, unleashing your creativity, and living in the moment, every moment. It’s a documentary told by everyday people, about how technology has changed the way we think about ourselves and enabled our lives to be more spontaneous and less planned.

    (Another Prezi presentation – text 5 x 11). Text becomes context. We’re kind of in a revolution of somesort – a Contextual Revolution. Revolution review. You don’t realize you’re in the middle of it when it’s happening.

    Conclusion: revolution is about access – not just to information but to other people. "Every click is an act of co-creation. Every click reveals something about yourself."

    Previously a life coach. Game: what’s your preference. Decide between two things. Every preference matters. Interviews: got recommendations and asked to interview. And show up. No vetting. People flew me all over the world – get $30 at a time help from people passionate about what the project was. "Life begins when you get out of your comfort zone." – Neil Donald Walsh.

    "We really like your rough-cut and want to talk to you about a deal." "Rough cut? It’s fucking done, dude!"

    Violet Blue

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    Violet Blue is a Forbes “Web Celeb”, a high-profile tech personality and one of Wired’s “Faces of Innovation.” She is regarded as the foremost expert in the field of sex and technology, a sex-positive pundit in mainstream media (MacLife, The Oprah Winfrey Show, others) and is regularly interviewed, quoted and featured prominently by major media outlets.

    Violet has many award-winning, best selling books; her books are featured on Oprah’s website. She was the notorious sex columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. The London Times named Blue one of the 40 bloggers who really count (2010).

    "What about if they’re bi?" tinynibbles.com (nsfw). Problems. Noticed in over 10 years – unable to make stable social media structures. (background – author, crisis help line, frontlines of sex education). Google tech talk on abstinence education. Kids are going to Google for sex education. Saw two perspectives on sex: (1) it’s a bad and scary thing, or (2) it doesn’t exist at all. Goal: sex positive message.

    Social media: best way to distribute message vs. via locked down traditional media. Had handcrafted blog. 2005: ended up in a bet w/ Adam Curry – ended up being the first female podcaster. Very popular. Reaction was strong. Podcast: @ this point, 8,000,000 strong. History: tribe.net – social media hang-out: Smart Girls Porn Club. Tribe.net changed direction & became more conservative & the club was yanked. Fragile. To check the fragility of a facility: make a subject area about sex.

    Facebook is WalMart for your communities. Just had a page taken down on Facebook. Wrote a book: Smart Girls Guide to Porn (chapter three on Oprah’s site). Made page on FB – flagged by conservatives & gone. What happened to us that we’ve handed over the decision making to these gatekeepers? "All I get is Terms of Service."

    Harm reduction approach to Social Media – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harm_reduction – letting groups decide what’s harmful & not vs. the gatekeepers.

    Jason Barger

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    Jason Barger is the author of the book Step Back from the Baggage Claim: Change the World, Start at the Airport – featured in the NY Times, ABC News.com, National Geographic Traveler, and many other wonderful spots.

    Before taking off to sleep in airports and observe human behavior, Barger led over 1,700 people to construct 125 houses internationally for families living in poverty. He also implemented the Streets Mission Project to serve the homeless on the streets of Columbus, Ohio. In 2004, he was one of five people in Columbus, Ohio, to receive a Jefferson Award, a national award given to “ordinary people doing extraordinary things.”

    Baggage claim: travelers form a human wall of entitlement. It’s in the small actions that we solve the biggest problems in the world. Changing the world one small thoughtful act at a time. Pass out books and ask people to pass it on to others.

    Travel gracefully. http://www.stepbackfromthebaggageclaim.com/default.aspx

    Story: family with two smart carts that made a fortress right infront of the carousel. Frantically tried to keep people out of their zone while people were trying to get their bags. Observed behavior in seven cities in seven days. What does this reveal about us as people? "What we put out into the world changes the world."

    Study: 90% of our interactions with people are negative: we spend time & energy complaining about something. 80% of our self talk is negative. What would that mean to reframe the things we’re thinking about. Why do we do what we do and what is it we want to put out into the world?

    Plato: what is honored will be cultivated.

    Ideas can spread, but relationships is what flourishes.

    Spending time w/ lost boys of Sudan in Ohio: "I believe technology is going to save Sudan: a) more people are going to hear about what happened, and b) more people will help."

    "This isn’t the easiest thing to do in heels!" – travelling gracefully.

    Steve Fisher and Michael Dougherty

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    Steve Fisher is co-creator and producer of Browncoats: Redemption and can’t believe he is actually making a film this awesome. During the day, Steve is Managing Director of AppSolve, a software application and online media development firm. He is a serial entrepreneur and has previous experience launching successful web and new media properties.

    Steve is an author of the upcoming book Rules for Entrepreneurs and writes about innovation and entrepreneurship at RulesForBusiness.com, Outright.com, GrowSmartBusiness.com, SolutionsArePower.com and on his blog StevenFisher.TV. He currently resides in Herndon, VA and you can also find him on twitter @stevenfisher.

    Michael Dougherty is co-creator and producer of Browncoats: Redemption as well as the writer and director of the film. He spends most of his free time dedicated to this project. During the day, Michael currently is Emerging Media Manager of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, a non-profit focused on promoting the Chesapeake Bay.

    Michael has background as an entrepreneur working in the interactive media and entertainment industry for the last 10 years.

    He has worked on many film and stage productions and this is first feature film. He currently resides in Baltimore, MD. You can find him on twitter @wickedjava or managing the Browncoats: Redemption twitter account @browncoatsmovie.

    Browncoats Redemption – http://browncoatsmovie.com/ . How we crowd-sourced our way to a feature film for charity! (movie preview trailer – new crew for a Firefly class ship.) Got community buy-in, now we need permission. Like our day jobs & not getting sued. Not going to use anything from the series at all other than a continuation. Studio: fine. Joss: call Fox to speak Joss Whedon – goes through 7 levels – "Natalie in Joss’ office – can I help you?" – send me a detailed outline about what you want to do. Give her two year plan, 45 days later got Joss’ blessing. Got Joss to sign @ comic-con.

    (memo: imdb Michael Dougherty)

    Chose charities relevant to the original Firefly cast/crew. 501 3c. Facebook group script review / table read. Production crew was 100% crowd sourced. 162 people showed-up. Got three weeks in frontier town.

    Opened selves up to what volunteers would bring. Leveraged social media to get Red-1 replacement camera. Jones Soda on bottle – Adam Baldwin with t-shirt & Jones Soda. "Gonna open a big old can of whoop-ass at Gnomedex." Fundraising without shame. Getting t-shirt out and pictures taken with former cast / crew. View video mash-up "I am a browncoat"

    DVD has gone to press. 9/4/2010 premier. "And what you can do…" get off your ass.

    This is more than a bunch of guys running around with lightsabers at the state park.

    Tim Hwang

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    Tim Hwang is the founder and current director of the Web Ecology Project, a research community dedicated to building an applied science around measuring and influencing the systemwide flows of culture and patterns of community formation online. He is also currently working on Robot, Robot, and Hwang — a legal startup that seeks to bring quantitative analysis and geek methods to the practice of law.

    On the side, he is the creator of ROFLCon, a series of conferences celebrating and examining internet culture and celebrity. He Twitters @timhwang, and blogs regularly at BrosephStalin.com. He likes Choco Tacos.

    Chris: ROFLCon. Tim is an evil genius. Gathers together anyone momentarily famous on the internet. Founder of "The Awesome Foundation" – institute on higher awesome studies. Lasers & dinosaurs & such. http://awesomefoundation.org/

    Playing Databall: Online Influence and the Future of Social Hacking.

    Book: Moneyball – Oakland A’s: Bay Area b-ball. How do you become a winning team w/ a small amount of money? Vague: rules of baseball success. Subjective: to assess value – scouts would scour the country looking for new members – visual assessing of people.

    Social Wargaming: can you do it? Nice: graphing the distortion of social space connection caused by attempted influence. Identify promising clusters of people.

    Social as Data: underlying feature is a huge amount of data about people. Rise of the Quants. Start having both influencers and people that prevent influence. Implications?

    Brosephstalin.com – http://brosephstalin.com/

    Webecologyproject.org – http://www.webecologyproject.org/

    Robotandhwang.com – http://www.robotandhwang.com/

    Bots using Amazon Turk to get twitter messages – e.g., bot gives the context for the tweet and passes it on.

    Q: Looking for personal analytics.

    Matt Inman

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    Using a combo of keen business sense and real-world comic familiarity, the man behind The Oatmeal— 27 year old Matt Inman — draws, sketches and codes his way to a successful business making people laugh.

    His site, receiving more than four million unique hits per month, was recently named in Time Magazine’s Top Blogs of 2010.

    Behind his wit and unassuming presence, Matt has a powerful story about his journey and how social media played a role in his success. His experience includes co-founder of SEOmoz,and founder and creator of an online dating website which he later sold, Mingle2 (the entire site from concept to launch was built in only 66.5 hours). He now focuses his energies full time on The Oatmeal.

    http://theoatmeal.com/ – @oatmeal – comedy website. Doing well – talk about maybe why. Started mingle2 on the side and got acquired. How did I do this & get attention? 100,000 users to 1,000,000. Started engaging polls / blogs: "How dating my ex was like playing Doom II on nightmare mode."

    "How Geek Are You?" – two minute quiz. Give you a badge for your site. "How Many Cannibals could my body feed?" The link in the html badge back to site caused high google results of "Free Online Dating". "How much is my dead body worth?"

    Started making comics – types of crappy kissers. "10 reasons it would rule to date a unicorn" Fake dating site: Zombie Harmony.

    "Is your cat plotting to kill you?"

    "8 ways to prepare your pets for WAR." "How to use a semicolon" "5 reasons bacon is better than true love."

    Tricks (to getting some viral love):

    1. Find a common gripe. "How to suck at facebook"
    2. Pick things everyone can relate to.
    3. Create easily digestible content.
    4. Create an infographic.
    5. Talk about memes and current events.
    6. Incite an emotion.

    Q: artful google bombing. How long did that last? Got #1 in "Cash Advance" in 6 weeks. Pisses Google off. Would not at this point recommend quizzes.

    Barbara Evans

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    Seven months ago, Barbara Evans started tweeting about the wines she loves to drink and the people who make them. She had no intentions of marketing anything, and claims to not know what the heck she’s doing. However, in a very short period of time, she has become known as a “marketing guru” of sorts.

    She’s been interviewed on nationally syndicated radio shows and newspaper columns. She has been pegged to speak and appear at may local events. She is truly a success story of a self-made self-branded online marketing campaign. It doesn’t hurt that the woman loves a good glass of wine! You can connect with her @SeattleWineGal on Twitter and at www.SeattleWineGal.com

    How to enjoy wine. @SparkmanCellars and more. Borat: "How Not to Wine Taste" The 3 Components of Wine Tasting:

    1. Look – Tilt your glass and check for color and clarity.
    2. Smell – stick that Shnoz right into your glass baby.
    3. Taste

    How to Look Pretentious –

    1. Take a medium sized sip of wine.
    2. Hold it in your mouth
    3. Purse lip & suck a little air in.
    4. Swish the wine around your mouth.
    5. Swallow.
    6. Think about the finish of the wine.

    Tasting room etiquette

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