Um… where has the time gone? So many things have been happening lately, I feel like if I were to tell them all here, I’d pass another 2 weeks just re-counting all of them.

After the New Media Think and Drink, (go listen to the audio, and the audio of the 2nd half), I was excited about Community Building and Social Media Consulting even more than I have been in a long time. Also, the Digital Media Banner Center asked me to contribute to their New and Emerging Industries Task Force, which is basically trying to find jobs for journalists who have been laid off recently. I was very excited and honored to be a part of something constructive and forward-thinking. Needless to say, they were able to (once again) gather a group of smart, talented and well-experienced people and get them to talk about changing the world. I love that kind of stuff.

We have been doing lots of awesome DrupalEasy stuff lately – we have great podcasts with book authors and our patented “bookaway” contests, where you get Drupal books just for listening and commenting. I also got the chance to FLY up do to some Drupal Training in North Carolina. It was the first time that someone (specifically, Tomas and Jerry) actually FLEW to come hear me speak. I was proud.

I had a great time and got to try some wonderful craft beers at the Flying Saucer in Raleigh. I also learned that Raleigh has a Drupal User Group, but a bit too late. They actually had their meeting the same night I was headed home. Maybe next time!

The new house is treating me very well, the cats, Mariah and I are all settling in just fine, but Fozzie (my cat) has to stay in his cage, because he’s still trying to heal his leg, and he gets in too many fights with Litmus and Loki (Mariah’s cats), who are much older and set in their ways. He really likes chasing them around the house and is constantly getting hit in the face while trying to mount the large cat tree in the living room.

It’s also really nice working here. I have been “working from home” for most of the past 6 years, but only in this house have I ever had a dedicated room as an office, and an atmosphere that was so conducive to working and collaborating with others. I think getting this house will be one of the things I look back on as being very good for my work and creative lives, in addition to the benefits everyone else gets from owning a house. We already had one big party here, back on Talk Like a Pirate Day, and a few weeks ago, we tested out the Party Patio, the BBQ grill, and the fire pit.

A large part of my last few months was actually dedicated to working with a friend of mine, Kyle, on teaching him Drupal, and updating the website for his podcast, the Student of the Game. That site and Florida Creatives are two of the ideas that have really stuck back from the days when I was doing Liberatr more full-time. Kyle was laid off, and I was trying to introduce him to web site building and freelancing. We got pretty far with the whole idea, but it’s not like you can just flip a switch and change someone’s life, so he’s taken a contract with some place crunching database rows and generating reports. We’ll keep working on it, just a bit slower. That’s fine, because I need to work too.

Speaking of Florida Creatives, we are inching up on the start of the 4th year of Orlando Happy Hours for creative people. Our regular meetup will take place on the 16th at Crooked Bayou, just like it always does. I’ve also been trying to delegate some of the responsibility, like website design. Erik Baldwin is a fantastic designer and a good friend, and he’s been coming up with some designs based on my rudimentary wireframes, and I’ve also been adding new features to the site, like the Communties and Meetups page. I’m not sure how this feature will ultimately present itself, but it’s already better than a flat wiki page with just text and links. There’s nothing stopping anyone from adding new ones, but we’re not exactly advertising the feature just yet.

Also this week, I have been having some problems with an old server I keep around for hosting personal sites and sites for friends, so I started the very large task of moving several gigabytes of files over to Amazon S3. Namely, all the podcasts I recorded a few years back, and everything Kyle produced for the Student of the game in the past 4 seasons of football. As far as I can tell, everything is happily hosted by “the cloud” now, and the end users don’t know the difference.

One more geeky update, and I’ll be through. It’s about Twitter, so feel free to tune out now.

Twitter finally added a feature… something useful, and something that would be hard for a 3rd party to add. It’s called Lists, and I started making some. They’re useful for me, as I’m following 1700 people and my attempts to make the list shorter are really just making me find more people I want to follow, but for a multitude of subjects. One is just plain old technology, which is what my RSS reader used to be for. The next is a collection of the other Twitter accounts I own or manage, and hopefully one day twitter will let me say WHY I made each list one day. The last and most complete right now is my list of Drupal people. I think I’m also going to start one for coworking, but I haven’t really done much with it yet.

I’m sure I’m leaving stuff out, but I feel pretty well vented right now. I really need to get to this blogging thing more often…

Still, you have to write what you know, so Jono’s 4 big examples so far are the Jokosher sound editor, Linux user groups, the LUG Radio Podcast, and the Ubuntu project, of course.

He has a big emphasis on writing things down, which I have to say I haven’t always been the best at in the past – I like to get my hands dirty. However, when the mission, goals, and a plan are written down and shared with everyone, more doors can be opened than if you keep everything in your head.

What do you mean by “making it suck”?

One of the coolest examples from the Art of Community is when Jono is discussing methods for brainstorming. One of the ways he suggests to get people talking and break down mental barriers is by asking them to design an end product with the opposite goals in mind.

From The Art of Community, Chapter 2, p. 55:

The idea is simple: reverse the aims of what you want to achieve.

As an example, imagine you wanted to design a cell phone. Traditionally, you would brainstorm the attributes of a great cell phone. Instead, turn everything on its head. What would make the worst possible cell phone? Maybe it ignores all calls? Or maybe it only accepts calls from telemarketing companies? Maybe the buttons are too small? How about really short battery life?

Awesome idea. I’m stealing that one.

So, what’s something I love, and how can I make it suck? I think Florida Creatives would be a great thought experiment:

• Membership is invite-only. Each event has a $50 entry fee, and you are not allowed to bring anyone new – ever.
• Meetings are now held at a private office with 3 keycards and 2 security checkpoints. meetings are announced one hour ahead of time; If you miss 2 meetings in a row, you are banned for life
• You can contact other members, but only through the web site, and only if you have paid for the last 3 meetings – your website account is locked out otherwise
• All events begin and end by passing a stack of business cards around the room – nobody is allowed to introduce him or herself, and no discussion is allowed to deviate from a pre-selected agenda
• The agenda for each meeting will be determined by a monthly sponsor. Sponsors must take the president of the group out to dinner first and only companies with 1,000 or more employees should apply
• a member should only ever mention his or her day job. Any “moonlighting” or “fun” projects are taboo, and anyone working for a startup will be banned
• 30 minutes at the beginning of each meeting will be dedicated to talking about how bloggers are destroying the news industry, and why every blogger should go to jail for being un-American. Also, anyone caught mentioning open source software, let alone using any free software, will be banned for life.
• the leader of a given group will be considered “dictator for life”, and he will be able to kick people out for dressing the wrong way or bringing up the wrong subject, or making a suggestion of any kind that relates to the group. most of all, anyone offering to give his or her time for free will be banned and will be told he or she will “never work in this town again”. The dictator will distribute all monies as he sees fit, especially if that means buying a new sports car to drive to meetings

Um, you get the idea… Now how would you make your favorite thing suck? The idea here is not to complain about an existing problem or bring up negative points. This is to be the “minus” side of the battery (+|-) or the “south” side of the magnet (N|S). What is so far opposite from the ideal, that any change whatsoever will be a step in the right direction?

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

First of all, I must preface that the Drupal Community is without a doubt one of the best open source communities. (meaning: most open, most likely to share code, experience and best practices, most innovative, most forward-thinking, least likely to “chase the bunny”, most likely to be the bunny, and most likely to create tons of venture-backed companies in the next few years)

I mean, the people involved are just amazing. The two DrupalCons I’ve attended were just amazing, and our local Florida DrupalCamp and Florida Drupal user groups are a big part of why I have not jumped ship to Python, Ruby, or other even other PHP-based platforms, and why I have no plans to any time soon.

We had a demo of the penumbrant Drupal 7 at our recent monthly Drupal user group. I am convinced it is THE CMS with more power under the hood (built-in, for free) than anything else… ever. The whole Job Queue API by itself is a reason to build web apps on top of this, and stop thinking of Drupal as a CMS – if you’ve got tons of processing that needs to happen, such as processing thousands of RSS feeds, or creating something very processing-intensive like Feedburner or Flickr, you will need to use multiple servers – a simple Cron job isn’t enough any more.

Then there is the database layer – not that it was the worst before, but there were certain kinds of configurations which used to require hacking core. Now, because of some pretty OOP (yes, Drupal has objects now!), you can override the database layer, and it uses PDO.

One huge change is the addition of a Fields API (AKA adding CCK to core, but it’s more than that). This means that instead of storing simple rows in a database, Drupal 7 exposes data storage to developers and end-users. At the most basic level, fields are used to store the title and body of nodes, categories/tags, images, dates, links, numbers or references to internal objects like nodes and users. This allows you to add extra fields to comments, user accounts and taxonomy terms as well.

Next, we’d have to talk about user interface and workflow improvements. The entire administrative interface now has a default skin – and there is now a compact administrative toolbar at the top of each page, plus a customizable bookmarks area and a configurable dashboard (unlike Wordpress, where you get to read Matt’s blog). The interface is a great sensible default, which is a bit of a departure from where Drupal has been in the last few years.

You’ll actually notice that there will now be a choice when you install Drupal – to use a “Basic” install, or strip everything down to the bare metal. In fact, you don’t even have to turn on node module any more – really. This is part of some hard work by folks who would like to use Drupal’s core as a PHP framework for building entirely custom apps (instead of smelly Zend Framework or the other unmentioned PHP tools that exist). If you look around for #smallcore, you’ll see what I mean.

There is so much more to say… In fact, this presentation by Steve Karsch says more. If you’re a big podcast listener, I’d highly recommend listening to Lullabot’s Drupal Voices. I’ll leave you with this, Drupal Planet and Google to find more.

Download Eco Footprint Special: 350.org
 
Length: 3:04

Gabe LeBlanc of EcoFactory left me this message about the event being held on 10/24/09 to raise awareness about the level of Carbon in the air. More info can be found at http://350.org and http://ecofactory.com

Gabe is offering free beer to the first 350 people to arrive at Orlando Brewing at 3:50 PM on October 24th. Gabe is doing awesome stuff in our community, and I recommend everyone go and support him, or find a similar event in your area.

Please bring $5 cash per person – each paid admission also gets a free drink coupon for a drink at the bar (non-alcoholic options are also available). If you don’t want to pay cash, we can hook you up on the internet, but the EventBrite service slaps us with an extra $1 service charge.
http://thinkanddrink.eventbrite.com/

We will be keeping the venue open as late as everyone wants to stay, so call the babysitter, put out the cat, and tell the wife (or husband) not to wait up for you! The conversation can continue until the wee hours of the morning! The Cameo will keep the bar open as long as we need it.

Who will be there?

Gwendolyn Anello is a co-owner of Anello Consulting out of Merritt Island. She consults several organizations in the areas of communications, market development, community and public affairs, and fundraising.

Chris Blanc is the Marketing Director for the Enzian Theatre and the Florida Film Festival. As if that wasn’t enough, he’s involved in several other local communities, and had a hand in creating the Dandelion Cafe.

Darren McDaniel is the creator of a feature film (The Essence of Irwin), the founder of a local internet startup (Petentials), former programming director at the Downtown Media Arts Center, and has done PhD-level research Sociology at Vanderbilt.

Julie Norris is the owner of Dandelion CommuniTEA Cafe and the host of Front Porch Radio on WPRK 91.5FM every Wednesday. She’s also a new mommy! Congrats!

John Rife was a media missionary in S. Pacific / Asia, a founding member of Interactive Expeditions (IntXinc.com), is an independent documentary filmmaker, a video blogger and is currently pursuing an MFA in Digital Media at UCF.

Lance Turner is the founder of the Ourlando movement and the owner of AEonBlue in Winter Park. You’ll see Lance at tons of local events snapping pictures or signing up small businesses to bring the local color.

The Cameo Theatre
1013 E Colonial Dr (corner of Mills & Colonial)
Orlando, FL, 32803
Map Link: http://bit.ly/2gK2BC

About Florida Creatives

Ryan Price and John Rife hatched the idea for Florida Creatives Happy Hours in Ryan’s kitchen 3 years ago, and the event is now a fixture in the Orlando community. FLCreatives has expanded to Jacksonville, Brevard County and South Florida. The first New Media Think and Drink was held in January 2008 at Redlight Redlight in Winter Park. John and Ryan are planning to hold Think and Drink several times a year. Get more info at www.FLCreatives.com or follow @flcreatives on Twitter.

Long story short, we didn’t have enough time to pull off BATT. Time to take baby steps. At the same time, we still have a venue reserved, so it’s time to pull other ideas from my back pocket.

In the last 3 years, Florida Creatives has had an important role to play in helping the community grow, but we can take it farther. Our network (and network of networks) is capable of reaching all kinds of people around so many subjects.

I started a wiki page on the FLCreatives site to outline and suggest a format and possible topics for FLCreatives discussions. My main concern right now is the discussion we will hold on October 16th in the evening. Here’s my first draft:

The Role of Media in a Community

A collected panel of community leaders with a successful track record will be given the stage and a chance to share their thoughts and stories using media to communicate with:

* Their community members
* Traditional media
* Other organizations
* Their volunteers and employees

New forms of media seem to appear every day, and what used to work in a print, TV and radio world may not fly in the world of social networking and YouTube. Some more established community leaders will have had to adapt, and those with newer missions will have had to make it up as they go along. We can hear from both sides in a panel like this.

EDIT: New Media Think and Drink Event RSVP

We have already confirmed 2 panelists:

• EDIT: New discussion leaders!
• John Rife
• Darren McDaniel
• Julie Norris, Dandelion CommuniTEA
• Chris Blanc, Enzian/FL Film Festival
• Lance Turner, OurLando
• Gwendolyn Anello, PR & Marketing Consultant

Why do this event?

BarCamps and large events are great, but they only happen once a year in a given city – it would be hard to organize them too often. Happy Hours and Likemind are fun, but we try to keep the agenda out of those events. Ignite is great as a showcase of local talent, but there is no real theme to the event. The idea here is to pick one subject and pick it apart from several view points.

I always like following up a great discussion with some brainstorming, time to make plans and get things done, so my ideal would be to follow a great discussion with a “think tank” the following day – this is what the unconference format is great for – have an empty schedule and fill it with all of the things in your head after you get energized and inspired, then have a room full of people who are willing to talk about anything.

The discussion series should be followed by a BarCamp-like event to let people workshop on the discussion’s topic from the previous evening. It’s great to have time to “sleep on it”, go and reflect, then get back together and get stuff done.

We’ve got the venue for Saturday the 17th as well, and they’ll be happy to leave the chairs and equipment set up for us to hold a ‘Camp style event on day 2 if we want.

EDIT: I went ahead and picked a time and place:

Here is some proof:

(pass around a shortened URL to this slideshare with http://bit.ly/sAF6i)

I spent years making static pages and hand-coding stuff before I came to Drupal, and I feel as though I was able to reach the brains of some librarians today with a few of these links. It was good fun when I was showing off the article about Sprites. One guy said “…really small, fly around sprinkling magic dust”. Indeed.

Also, a quick reminder that we have a DrupalEasy CCK and Views Workshop coming up on July 23rd at Leu Gardens in Orlando. Use the coupon code “FLORIDA” to get $25 off registration.

40twits takes a look at the stats for the shortened URLs you post to twitter and decides which ones are most popular, then displays them in order. Dave’s current top link as about Wikipedia and Michael Jackson.

I don’t know if it counts the link being retweeted, but I’m going to guess yes.

This got me thinking about one of the original features of twitter – the favorite. I remember using favorites a lot before I started following 1000+ people. Now I just sort of let the wave go by. Also, not every desktop tool has an easy/visible favorite button.

I put out a call to my twitter group: “when was the last time you favorited a tweet?” and got a big response. (displayed in reverse order)

Thanks @gilcreque, @modulist, @karschp, @thandelike, @ericschechter, @domhay, @staticnrg, @tiburon, @doreeno, @incanus77, and @mrscrumley for replying. Of everyone who participated, it seems like Eric Schechter and myself are the only two people who don’t use it very often, or at all.

Looks like I’m not the only person thinking about the utility of Twitter Favorites. This post by Christopher Lynn is about the same subject.

TweetDeck has a view to let you look at your favorites, but I didn’t see a place to add a favorite very easily – it’s hiding under “other actions”, which you see when you hover over the user’s icon. Tweetie (desktop) requires a right-click, or you can press the “F” key, then a little star appears next to the tweet.

I currently pipe my blog feed to twitter, and I don’t hear a lot of complaints about that. I’m thinking about piping my Delicious bookmarks to twitter as well. Do any of you folks pipe your bookmarks in? Would you like to see more useful links on twitter?

Presented at IgniteOrlando just moments ago.

BlogOrlando 2009 from Josh Hallet’s blog:

After a great deal of consideration I have decided not to host a big, public BlogOrlando this year.
…
It is the complete end? No. I may still hold a small private event this year, or may think about hosting an event in 2010. We’ll see.

2 years ago, I talked about doing PodCampOrlando, but the farthest we got was a happy hour and photowalk (lately I’ve been using the site to teach people how to do stuff in Drupal). Honestly, the social media wave tends to hit Orlando a year or two after the West Coast, so while a small and intimate PodCamp would have been fun, it was hard to get the podcasters, videobloggers, and especially the news media to sign on for something like that.

BlogOrlando was serving many of those folks very well, but now there may be some room in the Orlando calendar to explode what was BlogOrlando into a WordCamp, PodCamp, PR-unconference, SocialMediaClub, etc.

There are a lot more podcasts being produced in Central Florida than there were in 2006, and the ones that are still around from those days aren’t going anywhere.

Would you come to a PodCamp? What presentation would you give, or what discussion would you like to have? Do you understand what a PodCamp is?

It might look something like this

A few months ago, I attended my first DrupalCon, and what an explosion of open source community awesomeness it was. As Mike and I are running a fledging Drupal shop, I was subconsciously looking for a shop I could use as a signpost, a group whose values and practices were in line with where I would like to be in a few years. I met the fine guys and gal from Advantage Labs in Minneapolis/St Paul, and was introduced to some of the awesome stuff they do.

One really great thing they offer in addition to web hosting, consulting and training is what they call Lab Hours. Twice a week, anyone experiencing a hang-up in their site, or just folks who are interested in helping, come by their offices for some roundtable support time. A goal is set to accomplish a certain task at the end of 2 hours, everyone pairs off and work commences.

There is no “expert” in the room doing all of the work. It’s roundtable style, and that’s how it should be.

This is pretty much a direct physical manifestation of the kind of help you get in #drupal-support in IRC. I have helped out there a bunch, and then having heard about this concept, I decided Orlando could use some community helpdesk time as well.

Starting with the first Friday of the month, I’ll start hosting Lab Hours of my own here in Orlando. If you’ve attended DrupalCamp Florida or a Drupal Meetup, if you’ve attended one of our DrupalEasy training days or webinars, or if you’re just curious about learning how to use this open source content management system, you’re welcome to come by and share.

If nobody shows up, I’m going to open up IRC and help people in other parts of the world. I also intend to show everyone where they can go and get more help outside of helpdesk time.

CoLab is Orlando’s first and only coworking space, on the 6th floor of the Angebuilt building, 37 N. Orange Ave. It’s right at the corner of Wall St and Orange Ave, above Subway. It’s the perfect place to host an event of this kind.

Xavier Vespa from Hyve Up has done an easy to follow, step-by-step version of a retweeting recipe based on the content of my original tutorial.

From: HU Twitter: How-to Retweet Automatically – Video Demo

Mozilla Labs Jetpack – Intro & Tutorial from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.

In the video, the developer mentioned two other Mozilla Labs projects, the first of which I hadn’t seen before. It’s called Bespin, and it’s a cloud-based code editor. Right now, they are hosting the app for open source developers, but I’d love to be able to host an instance on my own server in the future.

Introducing Bespin from Dion Almaer on Vimeo.

Last but not least is what’s basically an implementation of QuickSilver (the application launcher) in your Firefox browser, but instead of launching desktop apps, you’re accessing web services, search and browser actions. The project is called Ubiquity, and it’s cool (for people who like using the keyboard).

Ubiquity for Firefox from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.

Then they just get downright insane…

Aurora (Part 1) from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.

This video really takes the idea of web browsing away from just a bunch of flashing data and gives some good context. I can’t say I would like to use that exact interface, but extra points for effort.

Or if you’d rather see something that’s not so far in the future, this MIT student builds on some ideas that are already out there and improves them. It still has some of the “spatial history” ideas, and takes the idea of “pages” out of the browser, but if you ask me, it doesn’t go far enough.

Firefox Concept Video from liyan chang on Vimeo.

photo from orlandosentinel.com

Of the 67 shows at this year’s Orlando festival, a majority are from out-of-town (USA or International), OR have never appeared at the Fringe before. The festival is spread across 8 venues in Loch Haven Park, so everything is within walking distance. The proximity of the venues, along with the staggering quality of all the shows, makes this one of the premier unjuried theatre festivals in the world.

Half of Orlando has no idea this is happening. It’s even worse for tourists.

Fringe has been going on for 18 years, longer than any other US fringe, longer than the crappy Music Festival, and just as long as the Film Fest.

On top of all these things, 100% of ticket sales go directly in the artists’ pockets. No exeptions, substitutions or refunds. The only things the festival makes money on is the Button (everyone must buy one, $8), merchandise, Beer and Wine, and Donations. A huge part of their budget comes from Grants and Donations. They have several full-time and part-time staff. (donate something, yo)

Happy Hour Monday

If you’ve EVER read this blog before you’ll know I wrangle the herd of cats known as Florida Creatives. Well, once a year I try to inspire this group (you can’t tell these kids what to do, just suggest) to make the pilgrimage to Loch Haven Park with me and drink beer 3 miles from their normal gathering place. Last year, we enjoyed some marginal success, and one guy actually came to see a show with me! I know a few other folks came out on the weekends, brought their kids. Good thing too. Fringe has a great family atmosphere if you’re looking for it.

Blogging Fringe

I love this festival so much, I go there every day for 2 weeks, and I started an entire project (I don’t think of it as just a website any more) where I blog about Fringe, take photos, make videos, and try to inspire people to do the same.

The big change this year is I’m not really trying to aggregate anything, just evangelize. The most I’ve really done to that end is to try and filter twitter posts about Orlando Fringe, which grows in complexity (and annoyingness) all the time. The coolest thing about the recipe I’ve built is that it works with the global twitter community, which is still fairly easy to navigate. I can’t say the same of the blogosphere, especially since so many people are posting to private Facebook and MySpace accounts. The openness of twitter (which almost sounds like a joke) is a strength I am exploiting, and I’m trying to wield in a meaningful and usable way. Not everyone uses Twitter Search or TweetDeck, so I made one for them.

Herding theatre patrons

This year marks the 4th festival since I started doing Blogging Fringe, and I don’t feel as though I’ve gotten very far in getting other people to blog on my site. So this year I wanted to let them create content where they are most comfortable, and have them act as advocates for something bigger than Blogging Fringe or even a single instance of the Orlando festival.

We’re talking about the community.

Just as with my love for Drupal, your reasons for staying at Fringe are not always the same ones that made you come in the first place.

Normally, a friend will drag you to some show or other, or perhaps you know someone in a show, or a second- or third-degree friend is in that situation. At Fringe, the Kevin Bacon game is too easy. The circle is much smaller and the bonds are often stronger. There are plenty of people I only know during Fringe, because they live in Seattle, Canada, or the UK. I have actually taken one of these Fringe Friendships to the next level, by visiting some actor friends up in New York a few years ago.

Just like making friends online, sometimes Fringe Friends can become your friends in Real Life. This is sometimes true of locals, but not often.

Another crazy thing is that this village only comes together for two weeks. I’ve heard similar things about Burning Man. Another characteristic they share is a Gift Economy.

Whuffie at the Fringe

Orlando Fringe has an invention they call “Fringe Bucks”, which is a social currency you can touch. When you volunteer for Fringe, you get 1 Fringe Buck per hour. 4 Fringe Bucks gets you into a show, for free. Your used Fringe Bucks then go to artists, who in turn use their Fringe Bucks to get into other shows. Artists also often “comp” their friends and other artists. Up to 10% of any show is filled with people who didn’t pay money to be there.

Fringe Bucks

Volunteers also get a free Button, so if you are willing to spend time at Fringe (which is natural for many people), you can get into all the shows you want, for free, within reason.

I was reminded of Fringe Bucks when I read Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, and learned Cory Doctorow’s wild theory that someday money will be based on meritocracy. He called this new Social Capitol “Whuffie”, coining a term that has started a movement in social media marketing. Tara Hunt has even gone so far as to write a book about Whuffie. It’s called The Whuffie Factor: Using the Power of Social Networks to Build Your Business, and I can’t wait to read it.

Printing Money, Whuffie Style

Other than volunteering, several other ways exist to earn social capitol at Fringe. “Hug a volunteer”, is a mantra that’s heard and acted on often. Billeting artists (giving them a place to sleep) actually earns you a SuperPass, which gets you in to any show for free. Buying someone a beverage at the Beer Tent is often proffered as a reward for a favor, a free ticket to a show, or just as an excuse to get some face-time with your favorite artist.

My mission this year was to try and capture some of that implicit social capitol and have everyone make the festival better by participating in a game. I often describe it as a scavenger hunt, but it’s not really correct to call it that.

I was inspired by Akoha, which is a game where you are given a physical card with a unique “Mission ID” or a deck of missions, and the whole thing is tracked online. The idea is to “play it forward”. One card will pass from person to person, as you perform small kindnesses to other people, making the world a better place.

Akoha at TED

The Game Itself

Each participant gets a small booklet containing a piece of paper with several “challenges”. Some of these are easier than others, but initially they were designed to be things you could do for free, and especially to generate a story you could then tell to others. The best one so far was a bizarre hula-hooping mishap… involving a girl wearing a skirt.

The Game, Manifested

Each mission is worth 10 points, with modifiers for fun reasons.

• Drink a beer with a Canadian (drink a beer with a Floridian, -5 points)
• Donate to the Fringe (1 point per $1 donated)

… and so on.

In order to get players engaged right away, I invented the idea of your first mission being something you’d have to carry out right away, with two added bonuses:

1. The First Mission always involves a 3rd party, who has not yet started playing the game.
2. You must convince said 3rd party to complete your mission without speaking to them.

This makes the first challenge, well, challenging, and gets you from zero to one as a player right away. Now, you also have to explain to your friend what the heck you just did when the mission is over, thereby spreading the game virally.

Choose Your Own Adventure

I had originally wanted to do this game more like Akoha, with an online registration for missions, players and points. Anyone could create a mission, assign a mission to someone, or gift points in recognition of “going above and beyond”. It would turn everyone into a facilitator of the game, and in a perfect world, it would have been great.

In the end, I chose to use paper and online photos as the medium, because it’s more accessible and there’s a lot less overhead (this is a free time project).

Any player is still invited to invent their own challenges, either by having me write them down, or by printing out their own sheets. You just need a 4 1/4″ square piece of paper, and you can write anything on it.

Artists often use printed fliers to promote their shows, so I thought this would be a good chance to make the fliers useful beyond just saying the show times. Now every flier you hand out is interactive and viral, and it inspires your patrons to share something related to your show.

We have designed a platform.

Measuring Success

As players are encouraged to use whatever platform is most comfortable for them (Flickr, Facebook, MySpace, etc.), measuring will be just as difficult as with most social media campaigns. My Blogging Fringe twitter bot helps a bit, and Google Alerts help a bit more, but the only (simple) way to be able to see all these posts will be to have all these people add me as a friend on the relevant network and look at their Activity Streams.

This is where open standards would really help. They could make aggregating this content easy, but Facebook and MySpace are inherently closed to the average Joe, and that’s me.

Luckily I know most of these people, or I’m getting to be Fringe Friends with them. In the future, scaling this game will be hard without a centralized web site to collect all the data, but for this year’s experiment, what we’ve got isn’t bad for the amount of time and money I put in to it.

The Goal

In coming up with my presentation for BarCamp, I stumbled across the mission for Blogging Fringe. Even though I had done it for 3 years prior, I couldn’t verbalize fully and succinctly why I was doing it. I came up with the following:

To inspire entertaining and unexpected interaction between patrons of the arts, artists and arts organizations.

Everything I generate now for this project and future iterations of Blogging Fringe will take this statement into account, and give me the razor-edged accuracy I need to make this free time project greater than the sum of its parts.

There’s a lot I haven’t covered here, but that’s the way with this project, it really is quite deep and nebulous. It took me more than 3 years to understand it, and I feel like I’m learning and re-learning new things all the time.

I’d love your feedback, or stories about similar campaigns. This will definitely come up in a future podcast, BlogOrlando, BarCamp or other session. I’d love to know what others can learn from my experimentation, and how I can make this project even better.

There were several photographers there, some from Metromix, and 2 representatives of The Daily City.

Daily City Photoset of Blunder Bungle by Mark Baratelli

Daily City Photoset of Blunder Bungle by Tisse Mallon

Metromix Photoset of Blunder Bungle by Miriam Lorenzi

photo my Miriam Lorenzi

el Presidente

In light of a recent missed deadline, we are creating an art show to prove that royally messing up, is not in fact the end of the world.

Artists participating include:

Doreen Barber | James Caruso | Patricia Coyle

Jessica Earley | Trevor Garrett | Jennifer Foust

Greg Leibowitz | Molly Livingston | Hannah Miller

Sergio Mora | Eric Jedraszczak | Rachael Page

Brian Phillips | Doug Rhodehamel | Maria Heidi Sanchez

Matthew Simantov | Blair Sligar | Beau Thomas

Jessalyn Wakefield | Katie Windish

With Performances by:

Omar Delarosa | Brian Feldman | Jack Fields | Ryan Price | Erika Wilhite

Organized by Jessica Earley, incarnated by you.

When: Wednesday May 6th, 2009 from 6:00 PM – 9:00 PM

Where: Museum of My Neighbor’s Backyard (MoMNB) – 940 Bradshaw Terrace Orlando, FL 32806 (S. of Gore St. / E. of Delaney Ave.) http://tr.im/MoMNBmap

Admission: Free

Websites:

http://tr.im/blunderBungle (Blunder Bungle : Facebook Event)

http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=d2w5n2p_4cv873dfc (Blunder Bungle : Google Docs)

When referencing on Twitter, please use hashtags:

#thisthejam #BlunderBungle #MoMNB

Public Transportation / Parking:

LYNX: Take Link 7 or Link 11 on Orange Ave. The bus stop is in front of Lucerne Medical Center. Walk one block south to Gore St. Turn Left at Gore St. and right onto Bradshaw Terrace. / Street Parking is available along Bradshaw Terrace and in the empty lot across the street.

Brian Feldman's Miniature, this Saturday, May 9th

I’m playing the very first game, which is midnight Friday. Come check it out:

In honor of National Miniature Golf Day (Yes, it’s real!), performance artist Brian Feldman (Leap Year Day, sleepwalk, txt) will attempt to play an unprecedented 72 games of miniature golf in a single day (24 consecutive hours).

The public is invited to challenge Brian, for free, during lightning fast 20 minute games of miniature golf, by calling (407) 792-9421, emailing projects@brianfeldman.com or @BrianFeldman to reserve one of 72 tee times. http://tr.im/miniteetimes Any open times will be available day of event on a space available basis.

When: Saturday 9 May 2009 from 12:00 AM – 11:59 PM (24 hours)

Where: Hawaiian Rumble Adventure Golf @ 8969 International Drive Orlando FL 32819 (Next to WonderWorks) http://tr.im/minimap

Cost: Free (Reservations Requested Please)

Websites:
http://brianfeldman.com (Brian Feldman)
http://tr.im/minifb (Miniature : Facebook Event)
http://tr.im/minirelease (Miniature : Google Docs)
When referencing on Twitter, please use hashtag: #miniature

Stuart Brown’s research shows play is not just joyful and energizing — it’s deeply involved with human development and intelligence. Through the National Institute for Play, he’s working to better understand its significance.

Dr. Stuart Brown came to research play through research on murderers — unlikely as that seems — after he found a stunning common thread in killers’ stories: lack of play in childhood. Since then, he’s interviewed thousands of people to catalog their relationships with play, noting a strong correlation between success and playful activity.

One thing you see and hear often is about the “creative types” who work at ad agencies is that they know how to have fun at work. Take MindComet, for example – the building is built with all these crooked lines and rounded corners, to encourage the fun and playful culture they have cultivated – they even have Tequila Fridays, Cakeplow parties, and dress-up days.

Not all creatives work in ad agencies, but when you put them all in one room like that, they can often come up with some great and innovative stuff. Take this video, for example:

Lip Dub – Flagpole Sitta by Harvey Danger from amandalynferri on Vimeo.

’nuff said.

Have you incorporated play in your work and home life? I want some of those “wearable meetings”.

Don’t agree? Concur? Tell me why.

Friday, May 15, 2009 9:00am – 5:00pm

Training Course(s): Zero To Drupal

Leu Gardens
1920 North Forest Avenue
Orlando, FL, 32803
See map: Google Maps

Join us for a full day beginner workshop at scenic Leu Gardens in Orlando to learn all you need to know about Drupal as an economical content management platform. If you manage, need, develop or design sites that require information posting and collection including blogs, forums, videos, photos, or other data, sign up now at our hometown rate of $175. Seats are limited.

Drupal offers time and cost savings without sacrificing amazing functionality because it allows for quick development turn-around, easy internal updates and virtually no limit to the number of users. Zero to Drupal includes an information-rich, no-frills session perfect for designers, website developers/administrators, and even marketing professionals looking into Drupal to keep quality while cutting costs.

We’ll provide coffee and carbs to start the venture into the who, what, why, and hows of Drupal, including how you can access the plethora of free resources available through this open-source software and its devoted developer community. You’ll learn about the building blocks, installation, updates and security, modules and themes, as well as get some hands on editing exercises to get you comfortable.

The workshop runs from 9 to 5, with a break midday so you can grab a quick bite at one of several nearby lunch spots, or take in the scenic grounds of Leu Gardens. Registration is limited, so sign up now.

I had been having a stellar year in the frozen midwest, and Detroit’s creative community was very welcoming and bustling. I loved Ann Arbor and was making good connections, but I didn’t see the benefits of that locality over… any other.

So I came back, and, after a fashion, kicked a few tires on the local community, deemed it non-existent, and went about trying to find the likeminded, self-starting folks we would need to build Orlando into something unbelievably awesome.

Getting started was slow, but I didn’t give up, and I soon realized there were dozens of independent, autonomous, “scenes”, but very little to join them outside of a few key Connectors and the local Weekly paper.

I decided to emulate one of the most successful and engaging events I had seen – but wait, I had nothing, knew nobody, and had no reputation. No success to measure against. How does one go about causing an explosion with sparks alone?

One stick of dynamite at a time. You’re going to drop a few on the way to the mine shaft (did I mention you have to dig the mineshaft too, and you can’t be in two places at once, and you have to teach yourself everything, and try to maintain your regular work, family and social lives the entire time?

We’ve now had our third (fourth) BarCamp in Orlando, and it’s clear that our tech/creative scene has matured. No hand-holding, no rule-setting, just a well-oiled machine rolling down the tracks we’ve laid over the last 3 years. It’s a great feeling. It doesn’t happen without lots of hard work and effort, but when we get rolling, it feels pretty darn good.

What’s the next step? If you ask me, it will be connecting our autonomous scene with all the others – locally, state-wide, and internationally. Some inroads have been made, but more formal connections can be built, and those can only be solidified with collaboration (in my mind).

We’ve all got wonderful communities (where we belong, and people listen to us). Let’s bring them in, and tell them how much we admire them, because they’re good at what they do. Then let’s create something together – a film, an event, a manifesto, or let’s share our knowledge. We’re comfortable doing this among our own kind. It’s time to leave the nest.

We have a happy hour coming up tonight. Let’s make some plans.

Click To Play

This is why you have to love events like Pecha Kucha Night and Ignite – people will present on any subject, as long as it fits the time limit. At the same time, they are almost always very personal and gripping.

We have a BarCamp coming up in Orlando this weekend, and I’m really looking forward to what everyone comes up with this year. While I will really enjoy yet another OAuth session, I’m wondering who will be the “dead chickens” of #barcamporlando.

EDIT: I’m not sure exactly how I’d categorize the next live video I encountered today, but probably still more interesting than television… Love ya, Randall!
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Yes, it’s that time again! (for the first time?) Meet a Geek, Florida Creatives Spotlight, Local Heroes, Real Men of Genius, or just plain old Blog Tag! Today’s Culprit is Mount Dora’s own Joshua Blount, or @stickwithjosh.

I first met Josh on the interwebs – probably the BarCamp Orlando mailing list, or Coworking Orlando, or one of those. He’s generally involved in lots of local stuff, and we have only seen the beginning, I’m sure.

On Josh’s blog, you can find some useful writing about design, usability, Mac stuff, and a few posts related to Josh’s job at Canonical, Inc, the guys who bring you such awesome tools as the Ubuntu flavor of Linux. I also found this post about the Bazaar (bzr) version control system helpful.

Josh is just one of the Canonical Software guys in Central Florida, don’t ya know? We’ve also got Elliot Murphy and Phil Fibiger (congrats on the new job, Phil!) who represent the Ubuntu/Launchpad/etc/awesomeness, and for all I know, they’re just the beginning.

Josh is also active with (organizes?) the Orlando Python User Group, or @opug. Among the exploits of OPUG are the pending wiki-fication of the BarCamp Orlando website, completion date TBD.

Josh, consider yourself tagged. Go and spread the good word of a creative peer who inspires you, and hopefully one who is from Florida. This message will self-destruct in 36 hours. Go.