Our 2008 session at the Allied Media Conference with Dean Jansen last month covered the use of open source tools to create professional-level multimedia content. We explored the benefits of shooting in the RAW file format if you're printing a 'zine, used Audacity to create an audio podcast, put together a stop-motion slideshow from photos taken at the conference using command-line tools, and created some video to share on the AMC site. Then, Dean showcased Miro and explored different ways to distribute your content.
Most importantly, though, we all got to know each other. Depending on the audience, I like to pass my camcorder around during my sessions so that the audience can interview each other (the AMC audience is fully and completely awesome, as always). Here is the video that we all created so that you can get to know us too. Spread the word!
Here is a short slideshow from the 2008 Allied Media Conference.
Music: Flobots - We Are Winning
Hi everyone, meet Stoly. He's a humanoid biped carnivore who likes to dance:
Embed:
He was created using the free Spore Creature Creator Trial, for Windows and Mac.
Spore is one of those upcoming games that I'm a little conflicted about. On the one hand it was developed by Will Wright at Maxis, one of my all-time favorite gaming shops. On the other hand, Maxis is now owned by EA / the Walmart of game publishers. I won't go into the reason why Electronic Arts sucks - all you need to know is that together with Ubisoft, they are the worst thing to happen to digital entertainment innovation since someone gave Hideo Kojima a computer.
Anyhow, in the vein of games like Black and White, SimCity and, well, pretty much every other other Maxis game, what's unique about Spore is that it will give you near-complete control over the game experience, and lets you design your own race of super- (or sub-) creatures, all the way from being a single-cell organism to establishing an interstellar civilization. In that sense, it's as much a toy as a game (the creature creator being a good example of this), and one of the few games out there that I would encourage young kids to play.
If you're on Windows or Mac you can download the trial and start making your own creatures. Even cooler, you can create videos (duh) and photos of your creations and share them with the Spore community market base. There's also tight integration to directly upload your videos to Youtube, though that's useless to me since I don't have a Youtube account.
I'm split between pre-ordering what could be a very inspiring game, and refusing to give monopolistic companies more of my hard-earned cash.
For now, though, you can enjoy my video of Stoly - and I swear promise assure you that he wasn't named after a favorite brand of Vodka... 
Vanessa Miller has posted a great set of pics from the Allied Media Conference over on Metromix Detroit - they really capture the spirit of the conference. Click the pic to see the rest.
Pictured here is the amazing Grace Lee Boggs.
WAYS (the World Association of Young Scientists) and PYRN (the Permafrost Young Researchers Network) are two projects among many other science-focused social networking initiatives I work on. They are featured in this video (German only) on wisskomm.tv. On one hand it's great to see our networks start to gain some critical mass and exposure, and on the other it's mostly just fun for me to hear my buddy Hugues speaking German...
Today, I eased my way back into my regular diet after spending 3 weeks in the U.S. eating, well, well... Ethiopian in Washington DC (obviously), and Mexifornian in SF. Not to mention all the munchies you get when, you know, you're in California.
Dude, did you know that Mike and Ikes cost, like less than a buck a box over there? They're like $3+ here! They are the food of the Gods, who must be benevolent, all-knowing, gentle Gods if they share their Mike and Ike - Bursting with Fruit Juice Flavor® - with us.
There were other memorable moments, like when I had a craving for In-N-Out Burger, Carl's Jr and Jack-In-The-Box - all at the same time, which was fortunate since they are all on the same street corner down from my cousin's house. In between that and my family's incomparable Iraqi food, I got a little sluggish.
May 21st is UNESCO World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development.
Wednesday night Tonight! in the Viger Atrium of the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec - one of the nicest lecture rooms I've seen so far in the city - I'll be giving a short lecture on the use of technology in the context of culture, knowledge and dialog.
I'll demo three videos as well, two of which are mine and another from the participants of Convergentes.
My talk runs from about 7:15pm until 8:00pm, though I'm also participating in a round table about "Issues of Identity" and "Cultural diversity and building bridges between cultures" from 6:00pm to 7:00pm.
Then from 8:00pm until 8:45pm we'll be treated to a sure-to-be-awesome multilingual spoken word performance hosted by my good friend Elizabeth Robert featuring Endre Farkas, Pauline Michel, Judith Munira Avinger, Alejandro Saravia and Dwayne Morgan.
BAnQ Auditorium
Centre d’Archives de Montréal
535 Viger Street East, Montréal
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Photographs are funny things. They tell us things that videos can't. I like the theory that at any single moment, there are an infinite number of possible next moments - the one that we move into is dependent on a multitude of factors, the most important of which is (I'm hoping) our own decision-making process, and that of all living things around us. It's the Butterfly Effect on steroids - the ultimate existentialist question for me.
Are there really an infinite number of realities, every moment multiplied by another infinite number of choices?
Doing some cleanup on one of my servers earlier today, I came across this photo; which was my 'corporate photo' for most of the time I ran The Strict Machine Foundation, which I had established over 5 years ago:
My hair was a longer, my glasses were hipsterer, my body frame was narrower, my swagger was haughtier and my sweaters were turtlenecker. In other words, I was your typical Mac user. 
Other than that, I don't really look all that different today.
