Saturday, September 30, 2006

BARCAMPNYC2 et al...

Good Lovely Day Cyberscensters!

Here are a few upcoming events that I think are worth attending!  Perhaps I'll see you at one of them. 

BARCAMPNYC2
BarCampNYC2 is on track for this weekend (Sept 30th to Oct 1st) and
it's going to rock.   Of course, we're still looking for awesome people and companies to chip in to help feed and cloth the attendees.  If you or your mad cool company wants to score goodwill from BarCampNYC, a donation of anywhere from $100 to $500 or in-kind donations of food or snacks are much appreciated.  This way we get to keep the participant cost to zero, in the spirit of BarCamps.  Please send your donations to my paypal address (no, really, it's legit!) at: courtney at pulitzer dot com. 

We're also looking for bits of equipment. Let us know if you can bring in power strips, extension cords, VGA/DVI adapters, etc.:
http://barcamp.org/BarCampNYC2PlanningEquipment

To attend BarCampNYC2, you must register or we won't be able to get you
into our venue.  It's going to be at Microsoft's offices and if you or your friends haven't signed up yet, be sure to do so ASAP: http://barcamp.org/BarCampNYC2Attendees

Check out the site for all the groovy info: http://barcamp.org/BarCampNYC2

*  In the Company of Women presents: "Does your MIND create your BODY?"  A moderated conversation with Patricia Moreno of IntenSati Life.
Does your mind create your body? Is your body an outward expression of your Self?  Could your thoughts about yourself manifest in your experience of your body?  If we are able to choose our thoughts, can we choose our bodies?  Bring your thoughts on this topic and join the In the Company of Women group for this unique evening of evocative conversation. Thursday, September 28, 7PM. Seamen's Church Institute; 241 Water Street. Tickets: $30/advance, $40/door. To register or for more information about the event, please visit: www.itcowomen.com or call 212-604-4705.


* Congratulations to Hartnick Consulting president Kate Hartnick Elliott for adding nonprofit and media executive search to her firm's suite of services.  This was a natural extension of the marketing strategy, communications and event management solutions the firm has offered to nonprofits since its founding in 2001.  They are also well positioned to conduct media executive searches they regularly speak and work with media executives, and have decades of experience working inside media companies.  You may remember Kate from her earlier days as VP of advertising and bizdev at online cultural magazine, FEED; the first director of corporate sales at Jupiter Communications and a marketing executive at the New York Daily News.

* James Sosnicky is a renaissance man.  He writes, he brings people together, he helps people, he works hard, he serves our country.  He's just returned from duty in Iraq and like him, there are other well-written men and women who have been chronically their experiences overseas.  On September 12th, 2006, Random House released the book "Operation Homecoming," containing stories written by veterans of the Iraq and Afghan wars.  The reviews have all been 5-stars and Captain Jim has two stories in the book!  So if you remember him from his parties in New York, or his stories during studying at Oxford U, then support him by buying the book! http://www.amazon.com/Operation-Homecoming-Afghanistan-Troops-Families/dp/1400065623/sr=8-1/qid=1158852756/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-4705544-7143106?ie=UTF8&s=books
Here are his other sites with stories: http://www.iraqorsomething.com/,
http://www.oxfordjames.com/stories/oj1.htm, http://broadwayjim.com/

Wednesday, September 27, 2006

NYCwireless September Meeting


I first met Molly Steenson at South by Southwest in 2000 when she was promoting her award-winning webzine Maxi and worked at Scient and then Razorfish.  Today she's
researching historical precedents for mobile, social interactions in architecture at Yale and spoke at the NYCWireless group's meeting held at NYU's ITP on September 27th on her ethnographic research in Bangalore, India, on mobile phone sharing between the classes. While at Microsoft Research India and discovered that, regardless of class,  mobile phones are shared in a variety of ways. With the diverse background and interests, it's no wonder she's a girlwonder.com!

* Happy Birthday Fotki!
Wednesday, September 27 was Fotki's Birthday!!!!!!!!  They're 8-years old! Perhaps you're wondering just what is this "fotki" all about?  Fotki is a familiar little term for "photos" in Russian.  The first version was released as a personal site by current president, Dmitri Don, together with Katrin Lilleoks in their New York City apartment.  It was a hobby and a place for them, their friends and relatives living in different countries to share their photos.  It was also the initial and current home for all Cyber Scene photos! 

From 1999 when friends got the Fotki community snowballing to 5,000 members in 2000.  Just a year later there were 10,000 members and premium membership and online photo printing were introduced. In 2002 when other companies were closing, Fotki was hiring more full-time employees and offered phone customer service.  Yes indeed, someone actually answered the phone to help with any questions!  With over 100,000 members and 15,000,000 photos in 2003, Fotki we moved their servers to a new data center with 24/7 monitoring.  Premium members also got the ability to keep online journals and an option to sell photo prints.  New uploading tools and slideshows made photo sharing more pleasant and Fotki ran its first photo contest!  Continuing its exponential growth, in 2004 they had 400,000 members and 30,000,000 photos hosted and in 2005with 650,000 members and 50,000,000 photos online, users enjoy convenient social bookmarking, RSS feeds, photo tagging, upload by email features, and geotagging. Now, between offices in Europe and the heart of NYC (Times Square), they're poised to take over the space, literally!  Today they have over 1,000,000 members from more than 200 countries and over 100,000,000 photos shared in 12 languages.  Fotki truly is a tremendous international family whose members love their digital photo-home.  They are connecting users the world over and I predict another amazing 8 years (and more)!

More at: http://journals.fotki.com/fotkicom/fotkiblog/

What's the Big Idea?

Find out at Wired's magazine's NextFest!  Wired hosted a host of events in the present for its multiple day event on the future.  Starting with a private reception, on Wednesday, September 27, to celebrate the opening of the future (and conference) at the Javits Center, Chris Anderson welcomed guests to imbibe and chat while viewing the amazing new machines that will help our lives personally and professionally.  The next night, at the New York Public Library, Chris conversed with Stanford Law School professor and Wired columnist (among other things) Lawrence Lessig.  They mused over what will happen to our culture and economy as we shift from mass-everything to massive niche things and what stands in the way of truly having unlimited choices.  Do we really want that though?  I get overwhelmed just visiting Wholefoods, let alone a universe of choices!  I am all for innovation and advancement in terms of security and gadgets to make life easier.  And yet, once again, it seems we need gadgets to manage our gadgets!  Tonight there's a special concert at Irving Plaza with Peeping Tom and DJ Diplo; a benefit for Creative Commons, which truly is a sign of our most recent (and future) times.  It's still going on at the Javits till September 30—as is BarCampNYC2!

Friday, September 22, 2006

The Cyber Scene ~ September 22, 2006

Happy OneWebDay everyone!

In honor of OneWebDay (http://www.onewebday.org), I am seeking donations for a new laptop. Yes, I know. Hard to believe I am the needy one here, but both my desktop and laptop have no access to the very Internet of which I write! After I downloaded and installed McAfee's download manager and latest Internet Security Center my machine began having errors and then McAfee blocked all LSPs and Winsock. Help! I have no Winsock! And winter's a-coming! After four days of going online with tech support at my office and then going home to try the recommended "fixes" I finally gave up and requested a full refund. (I think I'll post all the chat sessions online. Stay tuned.)

OneWebDay is a great community-building concept. In the spirit of community, DailyEats.com is baking a cake (cause baking and eating are all about community) and launching a video/photos/podcast about it on Daily Eats and a few other places.

And in the spirit of food...here is a review of a fascinating panel on design and dining (private and public spaces where food is created and consumed)... [http://www.pulitzer.com/thecyberscene/2006/07/design-for-dining.html]

Things are heating up in the meatspace with events that kept me running all week--just like the old days! Monday, September 18 was Howard Greenstein and Chris Heuer's Social Media Club's (http://www.socialmediaclub.org) first NY networking night. Held at the BusinessWire offices, seasoned professionals like Jason Chervokas showed up to weigh in (although he looked like he lost weight!) on social media and how to grow this group organically. "Newer" folks, like Nate Westheimer (developer) and David Bradfield from Fleishman-Hillard asked questions and were helpful in the idea of a new new-media-standard press release. Howard, ever the "coach" did an energy check and made sure each person had a chance to share their viewpoint. More comments are here: http://www.socialmediaclub.org/2006/09/19/social-media-club-ny-wrapup/ and here: http://navigatecommunications.com/

Mercredi, J'ai commencer m'études en le Francais. Je rapporterai ici sur la progress... Maintenant, Je peut dire "bonjour madame, quelle heure est-t-il, s'il vous plait?, le train est en retard, bonsoir a tous, et plus!" Yeah, yeah, I know. I have a long way to go!

Interactive Resources' multi-tasking and multi-entrepreneurial Christine Harmel flew into town on Thursday, September 21. Just in time for a full round of events. We met for a light beverage at The Modern and then headed over to spacious conference rooms at Brown Raysman Millstein Felder & Steiner, LLP on Third Ave. and 54th for the WWWAC Old-Timers Meeting (wwwac.org). Center Hill Services president Martin Focazio did an excellent job of hosting (extra points for homemade cookies by his wife) and moderating despite sub-par software.

The panelists were WWWAC co-founder Kyle Shannon (also urbandesires.com; agency.com and The Darwin Marketing Group); The Geek Factory founder Peter Shankman; Dotglu executive producer Ari Feldman (part of Kirschenbaum + Bond & Partners; also product manager at Oddcast.com & exec. producer at Heavy.com); Trigger Media prez Mike Dizon and the sharp and adorable Amelia (14-year old daughter of Martin's neighbor).

As Martin intended, it was "designed to bring the weary 40 and 50 somethings of the interactive development world up-to-date on the universe that these creatures called the "13-24 set" inhabit. We talked about MySpace, privacy (does it matter to them), design issues, purchasing software/media and how do they handle porn spam (they just delete it, "no big deal.")

The ongoing online chat and video conferencing were reminiscent of NYU's ITP's Yorb show with EchoNYC. There even was a powerpoint presentation!
(http://www.centerhillservices.com/events/events-old/events-old-files/index.html) It was a great time. Martin was fantastic managing all those elements! I was impressed and it added a delightful level of hilarity watching him master (manage?) (attempt to manage?) all the hardware and software issues. He handled it with aplomb. Also--the panelists proved witty, as well, in their humor and wisdom on the hot topics of the online bullying aspects of social networking and the (apparent) non-issue of how kids handle porn online. It was great to catch up with Joshua Freeman (eFashionSolutions.com), Peter Shankman, WWWAC president Scott Bowling, WWWAC inter-organizational liason Bob Frankel, Hens Breet, and JV Van Raalte afterwards. I'm definitely looking forward to the next one!

Also occurring this week was the Wired "Design Like You Give A Damn" panel (http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,64409-0.html) with Cameron Sinclair, Kate Stohr, Cynthia Barton and (Wired's) John Hockenberry at the NY Public Library on September 20. Next week they've got some concerts going on too. Let's see if I can break away from my busy schedule to get there. The Art Directors Club got into the event action with its debate (moderated by Brian Collins) over advertising and design as instruments for social and political change at their gallery on West 29th Street on Thursday, September 21.

C'est tres bonne semaine!

Thursday, September 14, 2006

The Next Big Idea east 2006


2006. What will be next? That's the big question at events like the VNU Media properties' The Next Big Idea east 2006 (www.thenextbigidea.com) conference. Held at the Millennium Broadway Hotel on Thursday, September 14th the conference posited questions about how to target consumers in this increasingly crowded advertising world. Companies who advertise on our dry cleaning bags, coffee cups, pizza boxes (Encompass Outdoor) proclaim to match media with lifestyles. Yahoo! Media Group head of marketing Karin Timpone opened the conference with some of her solutions on how to reach consumers in the increasing fragmented new media world today.

Clio Awards executive director Ami Brophy announced the Clio Content & Contact winners. In 2003 they added this category to address the dynamic methods with which companies can reach consumers these days.

Lunchtime featured the Buzz Awards. Other panels were on how viral, mobile and online user-generated content is shaping the future of advertising. Renegade Marketing Group CEO Drew Neisser sat on a panel discussing recent guerrilla marketing tactics involving dirty clothes, tiny bubbles and other on and offline effortsand what worked and what didn't.

Ji Lee made a social commentary via guerrilla marketing tactics with his Bubble Project. If you ever wanted to graffiti but were afraid of getting in trouble, then this project is for you! http://www.thebubbleproject.com/ You'll also enjoy PLEASEENJOY http://pleaseenjoy.com -- I did!

Of course the lawyers had to have their .02 with the fine print in their panel on legal challenges for these exploding media formats and channels.