Kitten Fluff

“We are the media,” says Adam Curry, wearing a suit and tie. “We want to take back the media and hold it in our hands.”

The music industry is one of the first parts of the media that people will be taking back in their hands because the tools used to produce this stuff are the same for all.

He is right, of course. He is also right to say that the big nobs – the Microsofts and the Apples of the world – need to give people the fuel to do it because the people will sell the gear for them by creating the media they have in their hands.

I think it is hilarious Adam is in a suit and tie (pink, of course) presenting his keynote here at Gnomedex.* Has been wheeling and dealing or does he want to get away from the leather jacketed 80s VJ look ? ;0p

If you want the full shebang, he did the keynote as his 200th Daily Source Code.

Oh, and he thanked Dave Winer for all his work. And he loves him.

*Btw – Just before he started, he played a mash-up for a few minutes and everyone clamored with their cameras to take photos and videos of The Curry and The Scoblelizer who had bounced up to the red couch on stage to jig along. Geek Celebdom. Bizarre.

One person we have met at Gnomedex – among many others – is Bre who is a middle school teacher here in Seattle.

He blogs, he video blogs, he likes aliens, his parents were hippies whose guru gave him his name, and is responsible for the very cute Pink Bunny is Love.

We will Skype him when we return to our spaceship.

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sharon’s-lip-gloss,
originally uploaded by sharonspotbottom.

My Lipgloss as Flypaper hell has inspired yet another masterpiece from Sharonspotbottom. Fantastic!

Three really good examples of citizen media efforts today at Gnomedex. Some are working within traditional media frameworks, but doing really innovative stuff, such as WKRN News 2, others doing it outside of the traditional media space, such as Our Media.

JD from Our Media took us through some examples of DIY content, while Terry Heaton showed us how he has helped the TV folk understand what citizen media is about. The blogosphere has trebled in Nashville since they began at the start of the year. Their plan is to get the bloggers they have helped get started, on air and “reporting” what matters to them. Cory Bergman showed us Lost Remote TV blog which I have to check out. I was too busy checking out the Our Media stuff to listen properly to him. Sorry.

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Phil Torrone’s phone,
originally uploaded by The Kitten’s Toe.

So it is the final day of Gnomedex, and we have had a lot of fun talking to all sorts of passionate people. After struggling with the wifi bottleneck, I have finally posted some pictures on Flickr. Everyone’s Gnomedex pictures can be found here.

Very moving and insightful talk from Julie Leung who talked about blogging her family life. She talked about the decision she made to protect the identity of her children online by never showing their faces in her photos.

Although she felt restricted at first, she negotiated it and found what she posted was a lot more creative in many other ways. Sometimes we all too easily think we should do things the way we are used to and forget that often the best of what humans produce can come from struggle, or difference.

She also talked about the shifting and blurring boundaries between public and private space and the way being online opens up different sides to your “self” – and narrating those different sides.

These sides are often dormant deep within us until a channel opens up that lets them breathe. We are not linear beings with one side to us.

Humans are constantly playing out different personlities depending on what space – virtual and physical – they inhabit at any particular time.

That’s why I will always be online. I was pleased to hear Julie’s voice because it echoed what I tried to bang on about in my PhD way back when.

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its all gone a bit jules verne,
originally uploaded by twhume.

After bemoaning the fact that we actively chose to come to a geek conference half way round the world instead of going to Glastonbury – which would have been Blugg’s 13th and my 5th – we are so fucking glad we didn’t. No, it would not have been fun at all.

Just look at the flooding.
Thank god the geeks saved us. Went for a drink tonight with Dave Winer,
Steve Gillmor, Nick Bradbury – of Feedreader fame – er Bloglines guy (whose name I can’t remember – Robert Scoble and his lovely wife Maryam, and Buzz Lightyear.

At least, his name was Buzz something.*

We also met a funny guy who offered to take us for a speedboat ride to see Bill Gates’ house! Coolio. Last day of the geekfest tomorrow. We are having ENORMOUS fun.

*Bruggeman actually.