Digital Walkabout

IDF 2010

Intel Application Lab in Portland on August 25

The registration website has gone live for our next Intel Application Lab, happening in Portland on Wednesday, August 25.  This will be of particular interest to Mobile and Web 2.0 developers, wanting to understand how Intel's mobile tools provide a cross-platform solution for mobile applications.

Find all the event details (including agenda) at the registration website http://bit.ly/applabblog

Also, see the Facebook Fan Page at http://www.facebook.com/dev4atom

Creators Project and Intel in NYC

Intel captured New York's attention Saturday with “The Creators Project,” a unique cultural event that that threw together art, film, music and 3,000 young New Yorkers into one cavernous, collective space in lower Manhattan.

Collaborating with media company Vice, Intel took over Milk Studios—an eight-story film studio and gallery—to showcase how some of the brightest young artists from around the world are using technology to make their creations.

“The Creators Project” is our most ambitious effort yet to make Intel’s brand more relevant to an important new market segment: the “Millennial” generation of tech-savvy young adults worldwide.

The event’s highlight was a surprise appearance by controversial Sri Lankan rapper MIA, who sang songs from her new album “Maya” in front of about 1,500 delirious attendees.

“We’re getting close to the edge with her,” Intel Chief Marketing Officer Deborah Conrad remarked, “But the most important thing is that we are getting on people’s radar screens of being a part of really edgy innovation and art.”

MIA was just one of the young international musicians performing last night. Also appearing were rapper Die Antwoord from South Africa; New York rock bands Gang Gang Dance and Sleigh Bells; and the British -guitarist and DJ Mark Ronson.

 

New York rock trio Interpol played early in the evening on the loading dock of Milk Studios. Though the event had limited attendance, the loading dock was open to the street, allowing any passersby to participate in the show.

Long before MIA and other artists took the stage, hundreds of young people began to line up outside the conference venue, New York’s Milk Studios. Attendance was limited to 3,000 people—yet more than 10,000 people sent in applications to attend. One twenty-something Google employee told me, “All my friends wanted to go to this. I was the only one who got in.”



Chief Marketing Officer Deborah Conrad, left, and John Galvin, director of partner marketing, led Intel’s participation in The Creators Project. Here they’re standing in front of one of the first things visitors saw when they entered the venue: a bank of more than a dozen Intel-powered laptops. Attendees were free to use them to peruse the artistic line-up, and to communicate with their friends via email, Twitter, Facebook or any number of social media platforms.

Though Intel was the sponsor of the event, visual branding was kept to a minimum. “We’re really trying not to hit people over the head with marketing hype,” said Abigail Pontzer (above, left) with Intel’s Corporate Marketing team—herself part of the “Millennial” demographic. “But people can see that Intel is the technology used to make the art and music.”

For example, scattered throughout Milk Studios were large HP TouchSmart PCs. The touch interface made it easy to find information about the artists at the Creators Project. The colorful computer kiosks themselves were designed by visual artist Takashi Murata, who said he uses computers to come up with new visual textures and colors that would be impossible to do with standard artistic tools. 



One of the most intriguing installations at the conference was a participatory art project called “The Digital Flesh” by an artist collective known as Radical Friend, widely known for their music videos.

Pontzer described it this way: “You enter this giant cone. Then your image is scanned in 3D, using a desktop PC. Then the image is uploaded to this ‘holographic being’ that includes all the scans, that you can see online.”

Once the installation has travelled around the world—next stop, London, followed by Sao Paulo, Seoul, and Beijing the completed digital “being” will be unveiled at a “digital séance” that will be part of a three-day finale in Beijing later this year.  

Conrad and Vice Founder Shane Smith touch a light sculpture by U.K art and design collective United Visual Artists. Consisting of three huge panels with thousands of computer-controlled LEDs and a concert-quality sound system, the sounds and lights change in reaction to movement and touch of viewers in the room.

Intel worked with Smith’s team for months on the Creator’s Project. After taking in the whole experience, Conrad said, “This event has exceeded our expectations by far. We’re hitting exactly the demographic we were looking for, and connecting young people to the experience of making art, while using our chips. That’s key—it’s not about the chip, it’s the experience you get from it.”

Down the hall, thousands of lights float, changing colors in complex patterns. Muti Randolph’s Deep Screen was a 3D installation using 6,144 animated light spheres, controlled by his computer. The installation was big enough to walk into and get immersed in the light. 

What’s an “art happening” without celebrities? Here film actor Josh Hartnett, center, poses with Intel’s Arlene Villaneuva, Rebecca Brown and Kimberly Swank, of Corporate Marketing, as well as Arjun Metre of SMG.

Hartnett observed, “The way the artists are using technology is really interesting. Some of it works, some of it doesn’t, but it’s all very cool.” 

OMG Cloud Computing Standards Summit

The Object Management Group is holding the Cloud Computing Standards Summit July 13-15 in Arlington, VA, as part of their Standards in Government & NGO's Workshop.The Summit will focus on  standards for government clouds. Participants include:

Peter Mell and Tim Grance - National Institutes of Standards and Technology
Reuven Cohen - Cloud Computing Interoperability Forum)
Kevin Jackson - Dataline, LLC
Mark Carlson - Storage Network Industry Association
Winston Bumpus - Distributed Management Task Force
Robert Grossman - Open Cloud Consortium
Craig Lee - Open Grid Forum
Nils Puhlmann - Cloud Security Alliance
Douglas Johnson - Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS)
Jim Warner - TM Forum
James Odell - OMG SOA SIG Co-Chair, CSC,
Ralph Thrash - CSC

Recommendations from this summit will be made available to the July 15th, NDU IRM Cloud Computing Symposium attendees. 

The establishment of compatible industry and government standards are crucial to the broad adoption of cloud computing. Just as standards allowed the global spread and enhanced the utility of the Internet, standards will drive the utility of the cloud computing paradigm.

Registration for this event is available at http://www.omg.org/registration/GOV-WS/css/index.htm

In the Cloud(s) this week

I will be attending Cloud Camp SFO and Structure 09 this week in the SF Bay Area, and am looking forward to meeting a lot of my friends from the Web, Cloud and IT mgmt areas next week. If you are planning on attending any of those events, feel free to ping me....

BriForum2009

Come see me speak at BriForum 2009 taking place July 21 - 23 at the Hilton Chicago Hotel - the three-day conference focusses on end-user virtualisation and practical cloud computing. Along with fellow industry experts, I aim to provide comprehensive, independent and advanced technical information, best practices and practical tips and techniques to get you started with cloud and to enable you to reduce TCO for your organisation. 

Learn more and register today online, by phone (781-657-1380) and see if you qualify for one of the admission fee pricing discounts.

MAX 2008 Call for Topics is open

The official Adobe MAX 2008 Call for Speakers and Sessions has been opened - the best and most innovative topics and presentations are being sought for MAX 2008 in North America, Europe, and Japan. The event will take place in San Francisco, Milan and Tokyo. This is a great opportunity to present and discuss the bleeding edge in Adobe RIA, Web and SOA technologies and their application. As such, post a session that you would like to present or attend at Adobe MAX 2008.

Thanks for helping making Adobe MAX 2008 a success.

WebManiacs 2008 - Early Bird Ending Soon

Building on the success of last year's FlexManiacs, the new WebManiacs, to be held May 19-23 2008 in Washington, D.C., is 2 events in one - CFManiacs and FlexManiacs,. With more than 50 speakers, 200 sessions, hands-on sessions, and more, WebManiacs is an excellent opportunity to get the latest on ColdFusion, Flex and AIR. Early-bird discounted pricing closes on March 14th, so register now. Meanwhile I'll refrain from any Early Bird humour. :-)

WebManiacs - ColdFusion, Flex and AIR conference

I will present at WebManiacs in D.C. this year - WebManiacs is an expansion of the 2007 FlexManiacs conference, to now include 2 days of CFManiacs for ColdFusion content. The FlexManiacs portion (which includes Flex and AIR content) will run for 3 days as with the 2007 conference.

The 2008 conference will run from May 19 - 23, with registration is $649 for all 5 days. Also, one can attend the 2 days of CFManiacs for $299, or the 3 days FlexManiacs for $449.

I will present on "What's New with Flex 3" on May 20th. I am looking forward to see everyone in D.C. this May.

Flex Camp in Chicago - Jan 2008

A Flex Camp will be held in Chicago on January 18, with a keynote by Bob Tierney and presentations by Josh Berling, Jeff Tapper, Mike Labriola, Mike Nimer and Shashank Tiwari. Cost is $20 for the entire day of Flex training, which includes lunch.
URL: http://flexcampchicago.com/