Faces of This Year's AlwaysOn Stanford Summit

Below are some shots taken at this year's AlwaysOn Conference at Stanford University, most notably the main night's reception in Dohrmann Grove. I also uploaded all photos to the AlwaysOn 2008 photo album if you want a sampling of more random shots and portraits. (Note the lighting, which made for tough shooting).

Aage Reeslev, CEO of Squace

Tony Perkins

Frog's Mark Rolston

Dave Matthews of Boxee TV

Stephanie Agresta, Renee Blodgett, Nicole Kenyon

Chase Norlin, CEO of Pixsy Corporation

Phil Jeudy

Daniel Kellmereit

Daniel Essindi, CEO of Tripjane

Leigh Ann Varney, Aage Reerslev, Greg Spector

Oliver Starr

IBM's Neil Gerber

Nicole Kenyon

KG Charles-Harson and Tan Nguyen

Janet Rae du-pree

Random Shots

Opening Up Mobile

Yesterday at this year's AlwaysOn conference at Stanford, the day ended with an Open Mobile discussion.

If anyone can connect any device to open wireless networks using any OS—just like any user can connect via any application to the Internet—what’s to keep this from being a chaotic, fragmented, non-interoperable mess?

Moderating the discussion was former Yankee Group analyst Adam Zawel who is now Chief Collaboration Officer at INmobile.org. On the panel was Anthony Lewis, VP Open Development for Verizon Wireless, Google's Rich Miner, Matt Murphy from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Frog Design's Mark Rolston and Nokia's VP of Strategy and Business Development David Rivas.

Retrevo Chosen as AlwaysOn 2008 Global 250 Winner

Client Retrevo has been chosen by AlwaysOn as one of the AO Global 250 Winners.

Inclusion in the AO Global 250 signifies major developments in the creation of new business opportunities in the global technology industries. Retrevo was specially selected by the AlwaysOn editorial team and other industry experts spanning the globe, based on a set of five criteria: innovation, market potential, commercialization, stakeholder value, and media buzz.

Retrevo's Show Your eStuff Contest

Client Retrevo is currently running a "Show Your eStuff" contest where users who submit photos or videos have an opportunity to win a Flip Video.

This is a place to share photos and videos of your favorite gadgets or other consumer electronics products, tell people what you like to do with your gadgets and why you can't live without them.

There are four categories where people can express themselves and where we think others would be interested in viewing and voting.

* Bling, Bling Cell Phone or MP3 player - show your style!
* Electronics on the road – car, truck, big rig, cool audio, video and GPS
* Soldier Gadgets - What's cool with our troops
* Exotic Places or Interesting Vacation Photos - What was cool you saw on vacation.

You can of course share any gadget or your favorite uses but these four are the ones that will be reviewed for the contest. Here are the rules.

The Conversation Launches in October

A new conference called The Conversation is coming to the Bay Area in October, focusing on the convergence of film, games, visual effects, CG animation, and Internet video. What new creative and business opportunities are emerging as these fields start to overlap and interact?

On October 17 and 18th at Berkeley's Pacific Film Archive, people will gather from the worlds of TV, film, online video, and games to talk about the convergence taking place. You'll hear about new distribution channels, new tools, and the future of visual storytelling. Topics in great detail will be posted as we get closer to the event.

* Workshop on digital cameras, digital cinematography strategies for independent filmmakers

* Set-top box systems... How do you get your content on them? (TiVo, Vudu, Roku, etc.)

* Window conflict - how will films be released in the future?

* Video Puppetry: A Performative Interface for Cutout Animation [ Maneesh Agrawala, UC Berkeley ]

* Eliot Mack: Demonstration of Lightcraft Technology green screen system

* Gail De Kosnik: How Piracy Offers a New Model for Video Archives

* Video on mobile phones: How you you get there, and are there ways to earn money?

Speakers include leading entrepreneurs from NetFlix, DreamWorks, Tippett Studio, YouTube, Heretic Films, CreateSpace, Virgin Animation, Vudu, Entertainment Technology Center, San Francisco School of Digital Filmmaking, JibJab Media, and Pixel Corps, as well as a handful of independent film producers.

Heather & Stephanie on Video

As a follow on to my blog post from this year's BlogHer recapping an on-stage discussion with bloggers Stephanie Klein and Heather Armstrong, below is a short video clip I shot on-site (the quality isn't great but the audio is good enough to follow....)

Bloomberg Radio on Car Repair

Client RepairPal on Bloomberg Radio with Fred Fishkin.

SF Chronicle Travel Site Round-Up

Client PlanetEye gets some love in today's travel round-up by Verne Kopytoff at the San Francisco Chronicle.

Armstrong & Klein Talk About Their 'Blogging Lives'

BlogHer's Elisa Camahort Page moderated the last panel at BlogHer yesterday. It was essentially a fireside chat with Stephanie Klein and Heather Armstrong. Elisa asks them what their lives were like 'before blogging.'

They largely talked about how their blogs impact their lives today as a way to demonstrate the difference. Blogging (and writing in Stephanie's case, who is also an author and journalist), is clearly a substantial part of their lives.

Heather says, "if i stopped my website, I'd probably sleep for three weeks. There's a lot of stress that goes into maintaining a website every day. If I miss a day of blogging, people email me or post comments as if 'how dare you for missing a day.' Sometimes it makes me think 'walk away woman, walk away."

For Stephanie, its also a personal outlet. She says, "I write for TV, have written memories and books, but its not the same feedback as getting feedback right away from your community. I need to get it out there, particularly to people who don't know you personally. It's great to get feedback from people other than your close friends or your husband."

Heather talks about the impact on her husband, particularly when she writes about an experience they both shared. Its from her perspective, so often, he may not know how she really felt about it until he reads it on her blog.

Stephanie talks about life before blogging. Back then, she was married to a doctor and lived in New York. She went through a divorce. Now, she lives in Texas and has two children. At the time, she wrote about sex, break-ups, her divorce, her son's operation -- sharing her most personal details with the world. More recently, she was on the front page of the style section of the New York Times. Having known others in a similar place, that kind of media exposure changes everything.

Someone from the audience asks, "why leave negative comments up there. "Its not your audience," she says. "Why not delete comments that are hateful? Most of them are made up and not true. Why give them that kind of power?"

Says Heather, "people want to report me to child services because I did x or y with my daughter...this is what goes on behind the scenes. Everyone thinks its glamorous. They think, 'oh, she gets up, blogs every day in her pajamas and gets to stay at home with her husband.' Behind the scenes, people are threatening to take my child away, they're threatening bodily harm to me, I have to deal with hate mail and hate comments."

Stephanie doesn't stand for really negative crap that comes in, particularly stuff that isn't true. She says, "I do have the power, I just delete it or if I think a comment could bring about an interesting discussion, I'll leave it up."

Someone else asks, "how often is there a correlation between when you express yourself really well and negative comments? Are you surprised which posts generate more commentary?" Heather says that she was surprised that people were so upset about a recent diet she did. It's amazing what people care about and devote their attention and time to.....

Stephanie pipes in, "don't give too much authority to the amount of comments on your blog. You never know how one thing you write will affect a person. You shouldn't let one or two negative comments impact you one way or the other. Some people don't comment at all and email you instead or simply don't engage."

A female attendee asks, "what makes people go back to your blog again and again? Your interests?" Stephanie responds,"I'm into technology, Photoshop and scrapbooking," but it sounds like she has multiple interests.....she adds, "what I write about depends on what I'm interested in on a particular day."

Says Heather, "when I go back to a TV show or blog, its about the characters. I go back again if there's a tug at me around a particular character I read about or see."

Another attendee adds a thought for the entire room to think about: "when you write about women and care about women, it can be threatening to our culture. We're pushing the envelope and as a result, we're going to get hate mail, death threats, etc. so we really need to support each other."

Stephanie says, "blogging gives us a voice and sometimes its a voice we don't particularly don't want to hear. If someone is writing about a child and making money off writing about her child, she'll likely get hate mail and make people upset. If someone is doing the same thing on a TV show, book, etc. you're not going to hear as much backlash about it there as you would on a blog. Blogging is more accessible and available to people." And it's obviously more immediate.

Adds Heather, "commenting and engaging also feeds people's ego." Yup, even if they're doing it anonymously which a lot of people do, those who have a grudge, feel insecure or are jealous and just want to see a successful person fall.

Favorite Sessions from BlogHer '08

Favorite sessions from BlogHer this year included the photography session led by Me Ra Koh, the women without children and the blogosphere session with Laurie White, Teri Tith, Suebob Davis and Laurie Scott. Being childless in your thirties, forties and fifties is a 'life' issue, not a blogging one, however women with blogs, have an open and very public venue to express their feelings about it.

Some chose not to vocalize their feelings publicly on their blogs but one thing was clear - everyone wanted to talk about how they felt about it. They varied......women who had fertility treatments but never got pregnant, hated the notion of being fat and going through the birthing process, never having the maternal instinct to reproduce, forgetting until it was too late, being too busy with career and academia and then realizing it was too late, disliking children altogether (that was a rare sentiment), loving their free lifestyle too much and general fear.

There was also the beautiful readings on the first night of several bloggers chosen by the BlogHer community.

A few I missed I would have loved to catch were the ones on the political landscape. They had separate sessions as well as a combined one - two liberals, one conservative. Progressives engage outside the political blogosphere in political discourse.....and action with Erin Kotecki-Vest, Joanne Bamberger and Diane MacEachern.

The BlogHer 08 photo album has been uploaded but sadly unlike previous years, the lighting was much tougher to work, I didn't bring my external flash and no F stop or ISO change seemed to make a difference. Hence, the collection is grainy, dark and on the small side.