DrupalCampLA – September 13th and 14th, 2008

August 19, 2008 by Douglas E. Welch

DrupalCampLA is all about Drupal, a high-end yet free content management system for building amazing, interactive and community driven web sites. If you need to branch out beyond the typical web site fare, Drupal could be for you.

Furthermore, the Drupal users of LA are a great group of people, freely sharing their expertise and showing of some amazing sites.

Best of all, its all FREE!!! (Except for parking, or better still, Metro Day Pass – $5)

One part of a successful New Media strategy is a strong online web presence. Drupal can go a long way towards making that possible.

From the DrupalCampLA web site…

Who is this event for?

Everyone interested in Drupal. Beginners, Designers, Developers, Community Leaders, Artists, Bands & Musicians, Non-technical People, Technical People, PHP Developers, MySQL & PostgreSQL Developers, CSS & Web Standards folk, User Experience Architects/Designers, CTOs, CEOs, Start-ups, IT & IS teams, Photographers, Videographers, Bloggers, Podcasters, DJ’s, Entertainment Agencies, Marketing Firms, Learning and Education Centers, Students, Teachers, Principles, Managers, Project Managers, Development Managers, C#/.Net people, Ruby people, Java people, Python people (no, really), JavaScript & jQuery junkies, Ajax ninjas, Digital Samurai, Models, Open-Source lovers, CMS anyone, Apache heads, LAMP stackers, and of course – Drupal fans!!!

How much does it cost?

The event is free (no ticket charge). We’re ironing out details so don’t get mad if you have to pay for parking each day as this is a really dope event, and everyone agrees it staying free is insane on our part, but we (and our sponsors) are awesome like that.

More info and registration at drupalcampla.com

New Media Interchange LA Meeting Tomorrow Night – May 28 @ 7pm

May 27, 2008 by Douglas E. Welch

We are only a day away from our first meeting of the new group, New Media Interchange.

My goal with this group is to bring together traditional and new media artists and technicians to foster the creation of new work.

I see so much wasted effort here in Los Angeles and much great creative work that is simply thrown away if it can’t find a place in the traditional media landscape. I have many friends who work on both sides of the traditional/new media world and would love to see them working together to create something instead of spending their lives pitching ideas with little to show for it.

We now have a new, open, market for our creative work and we should seek to exploit it for our benefit. Whether you are trying to create a promo piece for yourself, a show with online distribution of even an idea for a traditional broadcast television show, new media can provide you tools to get your message out to your audience directly.

Join us both online and in-person at New Media Interchange and let’s all make something special!

Please join me for the first meeting of New Media Interchange on Wed, May 28, 2008 at 7pm

The location is Panera Bread in Studio City

Ventura Boulevard
12131 Ventura Boulevard
Studio City, CA 91604
(818) 762-2226 | phone
(818) 762-5566 | fax

They have several good spaces indoors, a large patio and free Wifi.

Please RSVP for the meeting using Upcoming.org

Monitor your virtual personalities

January 28, 2008 by Douglas E. Welch

I have been using Twitter for a while now and watching my over 200 “friends” twittering away I began to see a definite “personality” associated with each individual, myself included.There was one, fairly well-known, podcaster who I began following as I have enjoyed his shows, his writing and his talks at the annual Podcast Expos. After a week or so of following him, though, I began to see a side to his online personality that was quite disagreeable. Despite my previous good experiences with him, I found his Twitterstream to be angry, depressed and combative. If you judged him only on what you saw in his Twitterstream, you would probably have avoided him, had you ever met him in person. After about 2 weeks, I finally stopped following him.Did her ever hear from others how he was perceived? Did he notice himself the personality he was projecting through his stream? I don’t know, but it made it very clear that everyone needs to monitor what they saying, and how they are saying it, online and make sure their online personality fits with their “real world” personality. Otherwise, they may be making very difficult for others to understand them.

…it made it very clear that everyone needs to monitor what they saying, and how they are saying it, online and make sure their online personality fits with their “real world” personality.

Using Twitter as an example, you can go back and review pages and pages of your own messages, isolated from the surrounding conversation. A quick trip through your archives can be very illuminating. You can very quickly get an overview of the tone of your messages and the content. Are you replying a little or a lot? Are the messages clear or filled with jargon? While your tone will vary from day to day, do you see a tendency to be nasty, dismissive, mean? If that is your usual personality, so be it. There is, at least, a consistency between you online and offline personalities. It is when the personalities don’t agree that things get weird and followers get confused. Much like my example above.Now, repeat this exercise for your other social network communications and even your email. What are you really saying about yourself online? What impression (especially the all-important first impression) are you making on folks who first meet you online?