Commanding Chaos for Coworking, Open Source and Creative Communities

May 2008 Posts

This is Internet TV

Sat, 05/31/2008 - 09:06 -- rprice


This is Internet TV, originally uploaded by Liberatr.net.

I've been hearing Leo Laporte talk about setting up his video streaming for weeks now, but he's constantly down-playing the awesomeness of the whole thing. Today I finally had a few spare moments to check it out, and I have to say that this is what Internet TV is supposed to be. He's got some great cameras and awesome lighting, and apparently he's able to have guests in the studio as well.

This is every podcaster's dream - you get to time-shift your shows, but you can have interactive features and discussion during the recording - there is a chat room under the video window at all times with a deluge of rolling comments from the TWiT Army.

Maybe Leo is a fluke because of all of his built-in celebrity, but I'm just happy he's making this happen, paving the way for the little guys.

Nice work.

Internet TV in Action
This is a full-sized version of the video stream - that's just a pretty thing - it looks and sounds fantastic.

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Did you get enough Fringe Crush?

Sat, 05/31/2008 - 06:42 -- rprice

This year I thought I'd employ a bit of science to my Blogging of Fringe - I was worried the site had turned into all Fringe Crush, all the time, and completely about local acts instead of National and International. I was mostly right.

Here are some handy graphs to point out why we suck:
Fringe Crush Wins
Here we see Text only posts at 10%
VoiceMail Reviews and audio at 13%
Any non-Fringe Crush videos at 37%
Fringe Crush takes it home with 41%

My second criticism is that we favored local, and the numbers don't lie:
Local vs. Otherwise
International 6%
National Acts 13%
On the Fringe 38%
Local Artists 43%

This scale is even graded on a curve, because I counted Bric-a-Brac as national because they're from Austin, but they all used to live here, and they were produced by Beth. And the only things in the "On the Fringe" category were folks who were not in shows, but many of them have been in the past.

That means we had a distribution like this:
Us and Them
I guess 19% isn't bad for Long Tail content. I'd like to do better. It's a mission of mine to keep that number above 20% all the time, so I guess we did pretty well this time.

The Videos and Audio did have some categories we threw them in:
Content Channels
The new Fringe Moments were 11%
The VoiceMail Reviews at only 13%
The favorite Fringe Crush with 41%
Everything else this year with 35%

Also, I was very proud of us when I found out Beth would be presenting a Fringe Crush award for the show with the most crushes. Denna counted up the results, and by no surprise, VarieTease won! I think that's a challenge to the cast of Oral to do some more campaigning for next year.

One last statistic, of the 32 shows I saw, 55% of them were not local.
Local vs. Otherwise, tickets bought
Again, we're counting Bric-A-Brac and Parlour Games as National, because they are... sortof.

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Orlando PHP Tonight: Drupal

Tue, 05/27/2008 - 06:56 -- rprice

At DeVry University near the Mall of Millenia, tonight at 7PM, I will be presenting at the 2nd ever Orlando PHP user group meeting. David and Derek asked me to come talk about Drupal after my peanut-gallery comments during last month's framework shootout event.

Topics for discussion:

  • What is Drupal? (origins, community, open source)
  • Everything is a node, except the things that aren't.
  • What's in a name? Drupal Taxonomy and Categories
  • "Go ask your mother": Drupal's Access Control system.
  • Modules, data types, and hooks, oh my!
  • What's on the menu? Everything!
  • Flexible sidebars with blocks, regions, and visibility.
  • Content vs. Layout - Drupal Themes

I will also be showing off some of the features we used to construct the OrlandoFringe.org, FloridaCreatives.com and Petentials.com websites.

For those curious to learn more Drupal, we have a whole slew of lectures planned into the fall through the Florida Drupal group on groups.drupal.org - our meetings are second? Saturdays of the month at the MindComet offices in Maitland, just off of 434.

In other PHP UG news, the Meetup.com PHP group, hosted first Thursday of the month at the Bonnier Corporate HQ in Winter Park Village (above Brio) will be coming up June 5th. 4 programmers representing Zend Framework, CodeIgniter, CakePHP and Symfony will be building a blog in 10 hours using the same database tables, then taking another 10 hours to extend the blog platform. Hopefully this will serve as a fun and informative hands-on introduction to the strengths and weaknesses of these 4 popular PHP frameworks.

P.S. See Eric's Blog for a description of the Shootout rules.

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2008 Patron's Picks at the Fringe

Sat, 05/24/2008 - 07:39 -- rprice

Patron's Pick is the only accolade our Fringe Festival bestows on shows, whether local or out of town. I think all of the Picks this year will end up being local, which is a crying shame. I should check previous years and see if out of town shows have earned this honor in the past.

Patron's Pick day is great - you have the day off of work, you have already sort of seen everything you want to, and you're also not rushing from one venue to the next and worried about scheduling things, because there is only one show playing at any given time - this makes parking a bit easier, too, from what I can remember.

Genevieve says in today's newsletter:

Here are the Patron's Pick winners and their performance times on Monday. We are still waiting on Blue and Brown, as it is a very tight race! As soon as we know, it will be posted on www.orlandofringe.org!

Yellow Venue: Skip Peril and the Players of the Lost Trunk, 10:15 am

Fringe Fundraiser: T.J. Dawe's The Slip-Knot, a benefit for the Fringe, 11:30 am in the Orange Venue

Red Venue: Alice in Wonderland, 1:15 pm

Green Venue: Dysfunctional Fables, 2:20 pm

Orange Venue: When Pigs Fly at 3:30, pm

Silver Venue: Reefer Madness, 4:20 pm

Pink Venue: Here Be Dragons, 10:00 pm

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Radio Rickshaw Fringe Podcast

Sat, 05/24/2008 - 06:19 -- rprice

Cast and Crew of the Greg Barris Heart of Darkness Rock and Roll Circus, Orlando Fringe
Greg and John, and someone else... maybe the tech?

Two years ago, John Valines and the Rickshaw Boy crew won the Fringe of the Fringe Award - last year they gave it to Blogging Fringe. Radio Rickshaw is a long-running podcast here in Orlando with a small network of shows, and a barbershop quartet.

Also hosting this episode is Greg Barris from the Heart of Darkness Rock and Roll Circus. I actually don't know much about Greg, except he used to live in Orlando, and he was involved with SAK Comedy Lab. His show was part monologue and part stand-up comedy, and it was pretty good.

Sometime during the week, I bumped into John and Greg with the Marantz recorder interviewing folks, and they talked to me a bit. I talk about Twitter, USB Humping Dogs and Fringe Shows, and I might be on mushrooms.

Radio Rickshaw Episode 62: Fringe 2008

Listen to the show.

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Final Weekend of Fringe

Fri, 05/23/2008 - 03:14 -- rprice

Only 3 more days! (plus Patron's Pick Day) Looks like When Pigs Fly and Alice in Wonderland have already been announced as Patron's Picks for their venues, which sort of makes sense. If you're interested in supporting the Fringe AND seeing TJ Dawe, check out Monday morning at 11:30, when TJ will be performing the Slip Knot.

As we rolled into the weekend last night with some light rain and lots of folks crowding the Shakespeare Center, I noticed three college-looking kids soliciting people for photographs. I walked up to tell them about Blogging Fringe, and it turned out they were the Orlando Metromix "SHOCK SQUAD"! Is Metromix the Sentinel one, that's going to be changing their name? It's not CityBeat, is it? It's one of those. I went to see what coverage they had of the festival, and it was exactly one article - recommendations based on watching the preview. Also, no comments allowed. They asked me to link to them, and in hopes that they link back, here we go.

Check out Orlando Metromix's Fringe Photoset - lots of familiar faces in there.

Last night, I lost my festival program. Normally no big deal, but this was different - I had written all sorts of notes in my program, marked down page numbers of shows, kept my tickets inside, and started to feel like my program was a treasured item - sort of like a stuffed animal or something, now lost. I checked the Brown Venue, the Blue Venue, the Ticket Booth, and the Garbage Can too, but my program was gone. I went to the box office to get some tickets re-printed ( handy reason for using credit card or the internet to buy your tickets), and proceeded to go through the tickets I did have with the volunteer to make sure I wasn't missing any others.

Apparently, I've seen a lot of shows:

  1. A Brief History of Petty Crime
  2. American Squatter
  3. Boom
  4. *Flamenco con Fusion 08
  5. Galapagos: The Directors Cut
  6. **Here Be Dragons
  7. *Mark Baratelli
  8. Move!
  9. MR. FOX
  10. *Mr. Marmalade
  11. **New Rochelle
  12. On Second Thought
  13. *once upon a time: The End
  14. Oral
  15. Parlour Games
  16. perfectly broken
  17. Power To Pleasing: The Sex Lives of Teenage Girls
  18. *Red, White, and Ignorant: An American Love Story
  19. **Reefer Madness
  20. Shadows In Bloom
  21. Skip Peril and the Players of the Lost Trunk
  22. *Swell
  23. The Boy's Own Jedi Handbook
  24. *The Bric-a-Brac Vagabond Vintage Variety Show
  25. The Cody Rivers Show presents: Stick to Glue
  26. The Greg Barris Heart of Darkness Rock and Roll Circus
  27. *The Slipknot: A Benefit for the Orlando Fringe
  28. Totem Figures
  29. TV iMature
  30. *Wet
  31. **VarieTEASE: No. 24 Doll Factory
  32. When Pigs Fly

* Indicates shows I have not seen, but I have a ticket for.
** Shows I saw after writing this blog post.

All of these shows (that I have seen) are awesome. Go see them all. If I could only tell you three, I would include The Cody Rivers Show, On Second Thought and Boom (not in that order). I would say Power to Pleasing, but it's sold out. I continue to tell folks that if they haven't seen any dance, they MUST go - we always have great dance at this festival, and I'm seeing all of the 5 dance shows this year. Lastly, (not leastly) if you've never seen TJ Dawe, Barry Smith, Jimmy Hogg, Greg Landucci, Gemma Wilcox or any of the other out-of-town monologists (like Paul Hutcheson from On Second Thought, mentioned earlier), they are all worth your time and money. This is also not counting Patron's Pick day, where I plan to see some shows that have floated to the top, but I managed to miss. It should be a fun experience.

What was also a fun experience was getting a random contact from some folks from Rake Theatre down in Boynton Beach - they're putting on Fluency this week at the Fringe. Apparently, they are wanting to start an all-Florida arts blog - a very ambitious project. I have about 3 such very ambitious projects in my head, in the works with locals, or I at least own the domain name for them.

The South Florida folks' project is called, of all things, Florida Arts Blog, which is a Wordpress.com site right now, but for some reason the posts about Fringe have disappeared... ::shrug:: Something and someone to watch in the coming weeks and months. I am trying to sell them on Florida Creatives myself, blogging can come later. They've also got a link to Mark's Orlando Arts Blog up there... I wonder if they've been emailing him too...?

Other things happening this weekend would be:

Orlando Silent Rave (see a video)
Saturday, May 24th, 5:24PM @ the Green Lawn of Fabulosity

Kite Flying 2.0 with Radio Rickshaw and Greg Barris
Sunday, May 25th 11AM - 5PM @ the Green Lawn on Drunkenness

Zombie March 3.7 with Rich Weirdos and Friends
Saturday, May 24th @ 3PM Park Ave and 5PM Lake Eola

If you know of more cool stuff, leave a comment and we'll get it listed.

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Where's the Fringe discussion?

Tue, 05/20/2008 - 03:41 -- rprice

As it is every year, we post dozens of articles on this site, and everyone reads the Sentinel blog... I love what they're doing over there, I just wish we had a little of their budget, standing in the community, or the built-in reputation that you get from being a year-round player in this game. If I could pay five seven bloggers, this would be a different world indeed.

As long as you're comfortable with using your real name (and everyone should be by now), you can go participate in some of the conversation over in Maupin-Land, a magical place where they've never heard of video or photos.

The best conversations every year take place at the Attention Must Be Paid blog, and there are invariably a few posts with dozens of comments, like this one entitled "From the Fringe: What's Good?" (24 comments). Then there's one that's pretty much the same idea called "What's Fab about the Fringe?" (15 comments) -- I fail to see the difference between the two posts.

Other posts have garnered between 4 and 6 comments, like the reviews of When Pigs Fly, The UnNaturals, Tod Kimbro, Blues: A Handbook for the Future Homeless, and of course Galapagos, which appears to be this year's "best kept secret".

Actually, I'm surprised we don't have an 80-comment war happening - maybe they've lost their edge. We never had it to begin with, it seems.

Sure, the Sentinel claims to have a "Complete Fringe Festival Coverage" page, but all they did here was repurpose the same content they created somewhere else (and often not for Fringe), and they don't even fit all the reviews on one page.

I know they are working with archaic technology, but if you've got the budget to hire 8 people to write about it, can't you get Danny to post a list of all the reviews on one page?

I had some big plans for this year's Blogging Fringe, but they had to be put on hold while I figure out how to have a full-time job and be "that guy" at the festival. Also, helping out with the actual Fringe website took a few of my ideas and gave them back to the festival, which is as it should be. With any luck you'll notice Blogging Fringe coming out of the beta-testing period next year with a critical extra feature that I guarantee the Sentinel and the Weekly wouldn't touch with a 10-foot pole: publicly editable pages for all the shows so we can have all the videos, links to reviews editable by anyone so we can have a for-real community site.

Actually, next year, there may be a completely different concept out there, but that depends on several factors and some collaborations I have in the works with Katie Ball. Look for some fun stuff on the horizon.

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Orlando Fringe Begins!

Fri, 05/16/2008 - 11:35 -- rprice

Last night was the first day of shows for the 2008 Orlando International Fringe Theatre Festival, and I must say the Fringe has got a lot of great stuff going on! So many wonderful shows, both from Orlando regulars and some new folks as well - there's even a show that takes place in the women's bathroom! No matter what happens at this year's festival, you'll be sure to find daily updates at http://www.bloggingfringe.com

First thing you'll notice is that the size of "The Green" has about tripled in size, with the Beer Tent remaining the center of attention. Because of the Fringe Membership drive and the special treatment for VIP members, beer/wine tickets are now $4 each, but I've seen some folks getting $1 off with their badges.

I saw Voci Dance's "Perfectly Broken" at the Red (outdoor) Venue at the Orlando Shakes (the old beer tent location, and I think this is such a great use of this space! Even if the conflicts with the Orlando REP are resolved next year, I still would love to see this extra venue stick around or replace the old Red Venue, which was so tiny and hard to find.

Voci didn't disappoint either, with an all-new show - lots of solos, more dance pieces that tell short stories over the course of two or three pieces, a live two-piece band and some really amazing dancing. I also liked the "Vocitini" table they had set up outside.

Some cool things to check out are Tod Caviness' Poetry Vending Machine - $5 gets you a custom-written poem by one of the poets in residence. Also check out the Saturday night Poetry Smackdown events.

Another interesting addition is the Digi-Dada Theatre - Mark Biddle from The Office Art Gallery has written a series of short skits for Fringe Patrons to perform on camera in his mini-TV studio at the Shakes Fest, and he will be compiling the clips into a longer surreal piece to show off sometime soon.

Check out both Tod and Mark talking up their respective projects over at bloggingfringe.com/category/video/

I also went to the opening night of Gemma Wilcox's "Shadows in Bloom", which feels like a prequel to last year's "The Honeymoon Period is Officially Over". I'd like to ask Gemma and see what she has to say about this. Lots more characters, and lots more Gemma!

We are just getting started, but there is one more thing I'd like to mention - anyone and everyone has the ability to get their 15 minutes in this year, thanks to Blogging Fringe. I will be syndicating blogs - it's simple and you get to keep all the publicity! Just send me a link to your blog or your blog's feed - I'll filter out posts that mention the Fringe Festival and re-post them to Blogging Fringe. When people check out the most recent posts on the site or do a search, they'll see your posts, but when they click the links, they are directed to your blog, so you get to keep all the comments and maybe make some new friends in the process. Contact me through www.BloggingFringe.com or MySpace/Facebook to get listed as a Contributor.

Last but not least, come join the Florida Creatives on Monday for a visit to the beer tent and some socializing - we'll be there from 6PM until 7:30, then we'll head to the Shakes for Barry Smith's show, American Squatter.

Hope to see you all out at Loch Haven Park this week! Happy Fringe!

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May is a Kickass Month for Arts Events in Orlando

Wed, 05/14/2008 - 17:31 -- rprice

Why is May such a great month for holding events? Sure, for our Northern friends, it means the end of bad weather, the opening of roller coaster parks, and a change in the scenery as the trees and flowers start to show their summer colors, but here in Florida, it's more like the start of the summer's hot, humid, rainy monotony, the arrival of the tourists, time-share owners, kids on summer vacation, religious zealots protesting Gay Days, and of course, bad drivers in rental cars.

The main reason I look forward to May every year is the arrival of the Orlando International Fringe Theatre Festival (Thursday the 15th through Monday the 26th). Every year, theatre companies, dancers, comedians, clowns, musicians, improv actors, writer/directors, solo acts and large ensembles, exuberant teenagers and road-hardened veterans alike grace Loch Haven Park with their creativity and energy, and Orlando gives every ounce of it (and more) back to them as many of the national and international acts begin their Canadian Fringe circuit, which brings them to a new city every two weeks. Show prices range from free (as in free software) to $10, and all shows require the one-time purchase of a $6 festival button - 100% of your ticket money goes to the artist. This is one of the only unjuried, uncensored events I know of in Orlando outside of a few open-mic nights, and even some of those are passing judgment on the performers (the other best example here is BarCamp).

18 months ago, I started gathering a group of my friends together every third Monday of the month for an event called Florida Creatives Happy Hour (Monday the 19th, 6PM @ Loch Haven Park). Now, those original 8 friends are hardly in the same room, but the group has grown to something resembling a small political party representing the creative professionals and hobbyists here in Central Florida (with a group getting started in Jacksonville as I write this). This month's Florida Creatives falls during the Fringe Festival, so at 6PM on the 19th we will be descending upon their "Green Lawn of Fabulousness" to have a beer and some soul food and socialize. At 7:45, we will be attending American Squatter, starring Barry Smith, the creator of last year's sell-out hit Jesus in Montana. Tickets are $10 plus your $6 Fringe button.

Despite the fact that Fringe starts on the same day every year, another festival seems to think they are better than the Fringe, by starting on the exact same day. Yes, the Florida Music Festival runs Thursday the 15th through Sunday the 18th this year, at pretty much every available venue downtown. In past years, you've been able to buy a one-time pass that gets you in to all the shows for the whole weekend, as well as nightly passes - buying a ticket to just one show will hardly do such an event justice. The festival also has a short film as well as an art contest, check these out too if you can find the time in between all of the other events happening at the exact same time.

What other events? How about that bizarre craft bazaar held semi-bi-anually at Stardust Video & Coffee, Grandma Party? (Saturday the 17th, 10AM to Sunset) For some reason they opted out of celebrating Earth Day in favor of overlapping with FMF and Fringe this year - the reason why is left as homework for the reader. Actually, if you find out, please try to explain this one to me too. At G-ma Party, you'll not only find loads of handmade goods, like the cereal-and-eggs inspired work of the Breakfast Bunch, but trendy t-shirts, buckets of buttons, live music by some of Orlando's best local bands (at least those who are friends with the festival organizers), a bal-looney community pool, and of course rummage piles and raffles.

Not as culturally significant, but still worth a mention, the second ever Florida Drupal User Group meeting will be held at the offices of MindComet in Maitland this Saturday (May 17th, 1PM). Check out the event and any follow-up at groups.drupal.org/florida.

Still more to come in this round-up of events, because I couldn't write such a blog post without mentioning the Corazon Art and Music Festival being held at the Orlando Brewing Company (Sunday the 18th, starts 1PM, All Day). As I'm writing this I don't have access to any listings, but I know tickets are $5, and I can give a serious recommendation, as this event is being thrown by Robert and Jonathan from Gamble Records, the folks who brought us the ELLA Music Festival in October. I expect you will see lots of singer-songwriter type acts, and you can trust Robert Johnson's rolodex to bring you some great music (and art?).

There must be more happening during the next two weeks, but isn't that enough? Of course, we can't forget about this Friday (May 16th, 8AM-11AM) and the Likemind Orlando coffee meetup at the Lake Eola Panera Bread. This month there will be free coffee and hopefully a few free copies of a book called Murketing - I don't have a lot of details about it, but I know the publishers of the book are sponsoring the coffee and snacks all over the US, so they get serious props.

If I'm missing anything here, please leave a shout-out, and I'll try to include it in the next bulletin. Until next time, have a great May!

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New Ryan Price Media Blog Syndication Feed

Mon, 05/12/2008 - 07:32 -- rprice

I recently tried to sign up for a service to get my feed syndicated, and they complained about my Flickr photos and daily links entries that only appear in the RSS feed - they said entries with repetitive titles feel like spam for their users - I can sympathize. When you're looking at the blog, my links and photos appear in the sidebar, but on RSS, I am aggregating a bit.

Therefore, I have created a syndication-friendly feed for Ryan Price Media:

RSS Ryan Price Media Blog Entries Only Feed

I also added a link to the Liberatr.net feed in the left-hand sidebar on the blog just to make it more visible. If you're not currently subscribed to that feed, check it out.

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