Review | Vegas Geek

Review: Underwater Housing for Canon PowerShot S90

June 29, 2010 4 Comments

Last year we went to Jamaica during Thanksgiving and spent the entire week in or around the water. I was really bummed that I wasn’t able to take my camera with me while we did many of the activities that week. As we were getting ready for our trip this week to Lake Tahoe, I knew I didn’t want to make the same mistake twice. So, I did a quick search and found the Canon S90 Underwater Housing. I placed my order on Tuesday and it showed up just in time to come along for the trip!

They camera fits in easily and once you close the case, your camera is held in place perfectly. The case does have a bit of a bulky feel to it, and it was a bit heavier than I was expecting. Not uncomfortably so, but it does have some weight.

The case has buttons and knobs for easy access to all the camera’s functions. If you were planning on taking the camera diving and you are wearing diving gloves, some of the buttons may be a little tough to access. But for bare-hands, you’re not going to have any troubles.

Here’s a photo and video taken at the lake.

At about $175, the waterproof housing isn’t exactly a cheap accessory. But, after having it at the lake and taking photos of my family while splashing around in the water, I couldn’t be happier that I bought it and only wish I would have done it sooner.

Filed Under: Reviews Tagged With: camera, Photography, review, waterproof

One month with the iPad

May 7, 2010 3 Comments

ipad In the month leading up to the iPad release, I was on the fence about picking one up. There was no question that I wanted one. A friend pointed out that since the iPad wouldn’t support Flash, the ability to watch videos on sites like hulu.com and more importantly, Netflix, well, that was a bit of a showstopper for me. That all changed when Netflix announced they had developed an iPad app. Game On!

I picked up my iPad the second day they were out. I had already made the decision that I wasn’t going to get the 3G version since I believe that I’ll use it mainly around the house. Plus, I already have a Clear wireless account, so picking up a Clear Spot would give me wireless access anywhere around town.

So, after a month of owning it, here are my thoughts on the iPad.

Initial Setup

When I first got the device home I immediately plugged it in and told it to sync everything; contacts, music, videos, photos… I have over 16GB of music, so the initial setup took quite a while. Actually, from what I recall, it took roughly twice as long as when I set up my iPhone syncing roughly the same amount of data. Now, that could just be a perception thing because while it was syncing, I was dying to play with it.

Since I have been an iPhone user for a few years now, it takes zero time to get used to the controls. I found the settings app, turned on the WiFi and connected to my home network in a matter of seconds. I heard that some people had issues with their WiFi, but not me. As soon as I was connected I loaded up Safari and checked out my sites to see how they displayed on the iPad. The pages loaded fast and they looked great.

Initial Reaction

Damn, that’s a good looking screen! Seriously, you have to hand it to Apple, they make gorgeous displays! The screen is big, bright and beautiful.

iPhone Apps on the iPad

During my initial sync I included all my iPhone apps. I’m not 100% certain that they ALL worked on the iPad, but during the first week I tried using several and there wasn’t any technical issues that I ran in to. However, apps designed for the iPhone would load up in an iPhone sized box in the middle of the iPad. There is an “X2” button on the window that would resize the app to take up more of the iPad screen. The result was usually a pixilated version of the app. The iPhone apps lasted 3 days on my iPad before deleting them all. I’d rather wait for for an iPad version of the app to come out.

iPad Apps

The first thing I noticed when searching for iPad apps, there just aren’t that many of them (yet). This is just an Early Adopter’s Tax. There are more apps being released every day, so it’s just a matter of time before that issue is taken care of. I also noticed that iPad apps are a tad bit more expensive.

Here are some of the apps that I’m loving so far:

Netflix – Search, click, wait 30 seconds, watch. This app is awesome. Since this was the app that caused me to buy the iPad, I’m happy to report that I LOVE this app.

Kindle – I’ve already completed 1 book and am half way through a second. Buying books through Amazon and having them delivered to the Kindle app is dead simple! Something really cool happened earlier this week, I had pre-ordered a book in Kindle format. It had automatically synced to my account the day it came out. Brilliant.

Twitterific – I was initially bummed to find that there isn’t a Tweetie app for the iPad (yet), Twitterific is a pretty solid substitute in the interim. Holding the iPad sideways you get a nice menu down the left that lets you get to your DMs, Replies, searches and lists really easily.

ABC Player – Much like the Netflix app, being able to instantly watch shows (like LOST) is awesome.

Penultimate – This is a pretty handy little app for scribbling notes at a conference, eliminating the need for pen/paper. Though, I think I need to find a stylus if I plan on taking a bunch of notes.

… and finally, the games: Words with Friends, Angry Birds, Pinball and Plants vs Zombies. The first three are games I was addicted to on the iPhone. The iPad versions of each are all just visually stunning. P vs Z is something I hadn’t played before, but am now HOOKED! There’s no question that the iPad is going to be an amazing gaming device for years to come!

The Keyboard

At no time do I ever see myself being able to “touch type” with the iPad. First off, I use a Dvorak keyboard, but second, there just isn’t any tactile response to it. I’m fairly proficient using my own version of a hunt-and-peck, and I assume that will just get better over time. I just picked up a Logitech diNovo Mini wireless Bluetooth keyboard. My initial tests using that are very promising.

What Can’t It Do?

So far there have only been two times where I wasn’t able to do something I wanted to do using the iPad. Both times it was related to using Flash in a browser. While it was a tad-bit annoying, honestly it’s not something I’m going to lose sleep over. It won’t be long before site developers are looking at their Flash elements and seeing what they can do to provide an iPad compatible version in it’s place.

Summary

The iPad isn’t for everybody. The naysayers like to point out that it’s an overgrown iPhone with no camera or phone. That’s fine. It’s going to take some time before the Killer Apps start showing up that really separate the iPad from the iPhone, but in time you’ll see. These really are two different devices with two different functions.

There hasn’t been a day since purchasing the iPad that I haven’t used it at least once. It’s nice to be able to read in bed without needing a light on. Watching a movie on an airplane or sitting on the couch and browsing the web or answering emails or Twitter or playing Plants vs Zombies… In short, I love it!

Filed Under: Technology Tagged With: apple, geek, iPad, review

Viva Elvis review

January 10, 2010

viva-elvis

On New Year’s Eve we had the chance to go check out the latest Cirque Du Soleil show, Viva Elvis. New Year’s Eve isn’t a day I would normally head down to the Las Vegas Strip since they close off the streets around 6:30 when the mayhem starts to happen. But, these tickets were for the 4:00pm show, so we figured we could high-tail it out of there and be back home long before the crazyness began. Lucky for us, that is exactly how it happened!

We left the house extra early since we were going to a brand new casino, on the strip, on New Year’s Eve. We figured we’d need extra time, and boy were we right. It took us over an hour to get from our house in to the valet parking at Aria. This drive should normally take us no more than 25 minutes. Once we were parked we headed inside. The new casino is gorgeous, of course. We made our way to the theater and quickly found our seats in the balcony.

A few minutes before the show started, one of the characters from the show walks through the crowd handing out prizes for correctly answering an Elvis trivia question, singing like Elvis or for giving your best Elvis lip curl. The fan interaction is always fun and I’m glad that aspect got added in to the show.

I’m not going to dissect the entire show, but I do have some constructive criticism I’d like to share:

First up, the stage/seating. In most of the Cirque shows, the stage itself plays a pretty big part in the show. If you have ever seen ‘O’, Mystere, Love or especially Ka, you know what I’m talking about. In some of the shows the people sit on all sides of the stage, in others the stage moves and contorts to change the dynamic of a scene. In Viva Elvis there are a few times where the stage has sections that raise or lower, but for the most part it’s flat and the audience is sitting all on one side like you were seeing a movie.

Next up, the dancing. If you ask people who have never seen but only heard about a Cirque show what they are all about, they’ll most likely tell you about the amazing acrobatics. This show has a couple acrobatic segments, but there are far more dance sequences than there are acrobatics. Not trying to take anything away from the amazing trampoline segment, but that’s a pretty small portion of the show compared to how many times you’ll see formations of dancers shaking their stuff. I’m not saying they aren’t good at it. But throw in some back flips or something.

And finally, the narration. Most of the Cirque shows tell a story or take you on a journey, but, they don’t necessarily do it with spoken word. They do it with creativity. In Viva Elvis they use an actor playing the part of Col. Tom Parker, Elvis’ manager. He walks in and out of scenes throughout the show walking you through the life of Elvis. I’ve always thought that Cirque shows were meant to be enjoyed universally no matter what language you spoke.

I certainly don’t mean to bash the show. We both enjoyed it and there are definitely some bright spots to be found. For example, the two drummers in the show are absolutely fantastic. The trampoline scene, like I said before, is great. I could have watched those performers for hours! They also have some great footage of Elvis that they intertwine with the show nicely.

I know the show is new and I write this hoping that they see it (everybody reads my blog, right?) and can make some edits to the show to make it awesome. It has a good base, it just needs some polish.

In my best Elvis voice, ‘Thank you very much.’

Filed Under: Entertainment Tagged With: cirque du soleil, Elvis, review

2009 – a year in photos

December 31, 2009

2009 was an awesome year for me. I did a ton of traveling, I met dozens and dozens of really great people, I learned a ton of new stuff and, in general, I had a really great time. When I sat down to try and write a recap, the only way I could really remember all the cool things I did was to go back through my blog archives and my flickr feed. Photos seemed like a lot more fun, so here’s a recap of 2009… with photos.

January – WordCamp Las Vegas

I was absolutely blown away be the response I got from putting together WordCamp Las Vegas. That smirk on my face is definitely me thinking, “Did I really just pull this off? Yeah, I think you did.” The success of that event is something that I’m very proud of and the list of people I would need to thank for their support would take too long so I’ll just say a collective ‘thanks’!

January – Beer ‘n Blog

One of the best parts of running WordCamp was sparking the interest of a group of Las Vegas bloggers to get together on a weekly basis to talk tech over a couple pints. I think this was taken at the first event. We had nearly 50 people in attendance. What a blast!

February – Twestival Las Vegas

One of the great things about social media is the ability to bring people together offline. When you tell people that they can come out and have some drinks and all the money goes to charity, well, I’d call that a no-brainer.

February – Photo Safari Noobs

Take 4 guys, throw them and all their camera gear in an FJ Cruiser and point them towards Denver. Stop everywhere along the way that looked like it might make for an interesting photograph. That’s exactly what we did. It. Was. Awesome.

February – WordCamp Denver

WordCamp was the thinly veiled disguise that we used in order to sneak away for the Photo Safari trip. Here we are at lunch with Micah Baldwin, Ben Huh, Austin and Jeanna during a break at WordCamp. The lady in the foreground has kicked Todd out of his seat so she could get a photo with Micah because he’s awesome. Yes, we made fun of him for it.

March – Redondo Beach

My family has owned and operated a fish market called Captain Kidd’s in Redondo Beach for the past 30+ years. I grew up working there and even after 10 years of eating there 5 days a week, it’s still my favorite place to eat. This is us with 4 generations of our family getting together for some seafood.

April – WordCamp Reno-Tahoe

Yeah, I know. This isn’t a photo. But, it WAS the first time I got to stick a badge on my website that said I was speaking at an event. WordCamp Reno was one of my first public speaking events. I wasn’t as nervous as I was expecting to be. I am very appreciative of Colin Loretz for the invite to to speak.

May – WordCamp San Francisco

The granddaddy of them all. WordCamp San Francisco. There were nearly 800 people at that event! It was so big that there were people there I was TRYING to find and wasn’t able to. That’s a pretty big event in my book. While we were there we took some time to play the part of tourists. We went to Alcatraz and the Height/Ashbury district, but can you believe that we didn’t get to see the Golden Gate Bridge? Next year, I guess…

June – Paxton graduates

One of the proudest days of my life, that was. Watching my Son cross that stage as they called is name and handing him his diploma. That’s something I never did. I dropped out of school long before graduating. I don’t regret the decision I made all those years ago, but, I am sorry that my parents didn’t get to experience what I got to experience that day.

July – Whuffaoke in a trailer park

When Tara Hunt decided to move cross country, she didn’t just pack her stuff and drive. No, she sent her stuff with some movers and she drove a Winnebego from one side of the country to the other stopping at very spots to bring karaoke to the masses. Thanks to some last minute changes of plan, we ended up singing karaoke in the RV park at Circus Circus in 115 degree heat. As crazy as that all sounds, we had a great, great time!

September – Breakfast in Utah

Have you ever asked your spouse “Where would you like to go for breakfast tomorrow?” and have
her respond with a restaurant in a different state? Me, too. One Friday night we decided that having breakfast just outside of Zion in Utah sounded like a good idea. We got up early, threw the kids in the car and off we went. The best part is, we didn’t even go to Zion. We had breakfast and basically turned around and came home. This was a bench a stopped to photograph on the way back out of town.

September – WordCamp LA

Lots of travel this month. We headed back to Los Angeles for WordCamp. We all crashed at my sister’s house and then spent Saturday on the Loyola Marymount campus which was really nice. The night before we introduced some friends to the family restaurant where we BS’d for hours. This photo was taken during Shayne’s presentation a few hours before I spoke at the event. I had plenty of time to get him back… but I’d save that for later…

September – WordCamp Portland

Since moving to Las Vegas, I have said many times that I don’t think I could live anywhere else. Portland changed my mind on that one. I instantly felt like I fit in perfectly with the tech scene they have up there. When I mentioned that to some people back here in Vegas they reminded me that the sun comes out only a couple times all year up there… That may be an issue since I hate being cold… The move is currently on hold. This is a shot of the amazing streaming video that Portland provided. From what I was told, this was the best live feed of any WordCamp to date. Kudos to them!

October – BlogWorld / WordCamp Las Vegas

Running WordCamp as part of BlogWorld was certainly not as smooth as I would have liked it to have been. But, for all the troubles, there were some really great sessions that came out of that event. One other great thing about the event was that Shayne was planning on attending. Time to plot my revenge. The shot below is a 9 foot tall, 8 foot wide mural we made out of Shayne’s avatar. We hung it on the wall in our photo studio and then had him drop by for a tour.

November – WordCamp Phoenix / New York

Many months earlier I was offered the opportunity to speak at WordCamp Phoenix. I gladly accepted. A couple months later I was invited to speak at WordCamp New York. I accepted that, too. It wasn’t until I was booking airline flights that I realized these two events were on back to back days… nearly 3000 miles apart. I made both events but vowed to check calendars BEFORE agreeing to future events. And here’s a shot of the store directly next to the hotel we stayed at in New York.

November – Jamaica

The internet access was expensive and terrible so we didn’t bother using it. The resort offered a bunch of activities but we didn’t take part in any of them. For the first time in I can’t begin to think how long, I did nothing. To borrow a line from the movie Office Space, “I did absolutely nothing, and it was everything that I thought it could be.” Even though we took the trip over the Thanksgiving holiday, this trip was in honor of my wife’s and my 20th wedding anniversary.

December – Chicago

My company was kind enough to send me to Chicago for a conference. I can’t really blame them that the conference was scheduled for December in Chicago. I want to blame somebody, though. Look at that photo above… Now, look at the photo below. These were taken only about 10 days apart. This just isn’t right, folks. For the record, the day I left Chicago it was 4 degrees with a –18 wind-chill factor. :-/

December – Holiday party

For the past couple years my company has really nailed the holiday party! No sit-down dinner needed. Just some snacks and an open bar at a club in one of the Las Vegas casinos. This year was at the Palms. We were responsible adults and rented ourselves a room so we wouldn’t have to try to drive. That turned out to be a good thing since there are parts of the evening that I can barely remember. That’s when you wake up and dread the “You were tagged in a photo on Facebook” notices… Thankfully, we didn’t have that issue… this time.

I’ve already got my camera ready to document 2010 as it unfolds!

Happy New Year!

- John

Filed Under: Entertainment Tagged With: 2009, review

Book Review: Crooked Little Vein

January 27, 2009

For some books it takes a couple chapters to catch my interest. For some it’s only a few pages. But Crooked Little Vein had me hooked on the very first page.

Crooked Little Vein is the first novel written by Warren Ellis. But, this is hardly his first published work. He’s an award winning writer of comic books and graphic novels, including the popular Transmetropolitan series. I haven’t read these yet, but after enjoying his novel as much as I did, I don’t know how I could not go back and read his previous work.

The book is about a private eye who gets hired by a guy from the White House to retrieve the Constitution of the United States. No, not the Constitution that everybody knows about. This one is the “real” Constitution that has invisible amendments and even some sort of supernatural powers. The book has been missing for decades and keeps changing hands in the seedy underbelly of sex, crime and politics.

As you may already know, I’m a HUGE fan of Chuck Palahniuk’s books. Crooked Little Vein reads much the same way for me. I’m likely not the only person to think that as I was lent this book by a fellow Palahniuk fan who said to me, “The whole time I’m reading the book, I knew I had to loan it to you as soon as I was done.”

I’m not a fast reader. It normally takes me several weeks to finish a book this size. I finished Crooked Little Vein in less than 4 days. This means most people will finish the book in a day or two.

You can find out more about Warren Ellis at his website, warrenellis.com and for those of you on Twitter, you can find Warren at @warrenellis

Filed Under: Entertainment, General Tagged With: book, review

WordCamp:Las Vegas 2009 wrap-up

January 14, 2009

I knew it was going to take me a few days before I was ready to write this. But, the time has come. It’s time to say everything I have to say about organizing and running a WordCamp event.

Be warned, this post is going to be LONG and perhaps boring. I’m not writing it for you. I’m writing it for me as a road map so that when I set out to do this thing again next year, I’ll have something to look back on and perhaps avoid some of the pitfalls along the way.

First, let me say that I am very proud of how well WordCamp:Las Vegas turned out. I have never attended a WordCamp event before, so I had nothing to base my event on. At some point I was talking to somebody who said that “organizing a WordCamp allows you to put together a schedule that you would like to see at an event.” This couldn’t be more spot-on. I basically hand-picked the speakers I wanted to be there based on who I would have liked to have seen. It’s sorta like picking my own all-star team.

People have asked me 100 times if I picked that specific weekend because I knew CES/Affiliate Summit was going to be in town. The answer is, no, I didn’t. When I first found out that both of these shows were surrounding “my” weekend, I was a little bummed out. I thought it would be a bad thing. Wow, was I wrong. Because these other two events had already scheduled to bring out some of the big name speakers, I was able to borrow some of their time to have them speak at WordCamp. I seriously doubt Chris Brogan, Jim Kukral or Dave Taylor would have been flying out to Las Vegas on their dime to speak for free at a conference for 150 people. No way, no how!

Which brings up another point, local talent. Many of the previous WordCamp events have been heavy on local bloggers coming in to speak. The Vegas event had only one local speaker and the rest were in from out of town. I don’t know if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but given the list of big names we had on the agenda, I don’t see how it could have been bad.

OK, enough rambling, let’s break this down…

Set a Date
As I stated before, I got really lucky with my timing. Don’t leave it to luck. Do some research and see what else is going on. Not just in your area. Check the WordCamp website to see if there are other events happening the same day you’ve chosen. If so, pick a different day. But, if there is an event going on in your area that you could leverage in to some extra exposure or extra attendees, try to schedule it to fit in.

You should also decide early on if you are going to make it a one or two day event. In my head, I had always seen this event as two days, but I have no idea what made me think of it that way. I’m glad I chose two days, but it really did add an extra layer of complexity. If everything is on one day, there’s only so many things that can go wrong. If it’s two days, that’s twice as many chances.

Don’t forget, if you schedule well in advance you’ll have a better shot at getting a couple WordPress/Automattic staffers to attend/speak.

Enlist Help Early
This was my biggest mistake. I took on too much. But, honestly, I thought that more people would be interested in being involved with organizing the event. But, it just didn’t happen that way. I DO NOT suggest you try to organize an event on your own. Make sure that you have 2 or 3 people who are as passionate about the event as you are before you agree to it. Then, divide up the work. One person can work on finding a location while others can work on equipment, sponsors, speakers and advertising. Taking on this entire event by myself was just stupid. I’m really lucky to have pulled it all together and I don’t think I could do it again.

(FYI – I have already received about 10 offers from people to assist with next year’s planning. I think they were just waiting to see if this event was a total flop before adding their name to it. I’m half kidding here.)

Don’t forget you are also going to need help the day of the event. Plan on 2 or 3 people to work the registration desk the morning of the event. Somebody to shoot photographs, somebody to shoot video, sound, tech, somebody to check badges at the door, etc… I had a staff of 8 (including myself) and that seemed to be just about right for the size of my group.

Venue
Las Vegas has more conference space than any other city in the world, I believe. That does not mean that they give it away. A brand new casino 15 minutes from The Strip offered me a 50×50 room for $5,000 per day. I politely told them where they could stick their podium and kept looking. I wasn’t able to find a library, business or school/university (these were my first choices on where to host the event) that was willing or able to handle a group the size I had in mind, so I was forced to look at more traditional conference spaces. Nearly every casino has conference space, but one of the main issues is Union casinos. If they are a union casino, this means that bringing in my own equipment is a big pain. And, renting equipment from the casino is a HUGE cost. I was given the name and number of a lady at Palace Station by a friend who had recently ran his own conference at Palace Station. The cost of running the event at Palace Station was far and away better than anything I had been quoted to that point. It was so much better, when I was given the price over the phone I yelled out “Book it immediately!”

The event planning staff at Palace Station is fantastic. They were helpful, gave timely information, provided suggestions and were just flat-out easy to work with. I would happily work with them again in a heartbeat. (Thanks, Page! You Rock!)

One word of caution. Before you agree to guarantee a block of rooms to be sold, BE SURE you have a good understanding of how many people you will have coming and staying in the hotel. This had the potential to be a very costly expense as I overestimated the number of rooms that would be needed. Thankfully, things evened out at the end, but it would be better to reserve fewer rooms and let the people who book early benefit from the discount.

Registration
One of the previous WordCamp websites had used eventbrite.com to handle their registrations, so I followed suit. I couldn’t be happier. The money gets deposited directly in to your Paypal account. I have a Paypal debit card so I was able to use that to pay for expenses along the way. Plus, the eventbrite site has all sorts of features like tracking links and affiliate links that could help in having other people promote the event. Sadly, I didn’t find these features until it was too late to make use of them. But, I know where they are for next time.

DO NOT assume that you will get people to sign up for your event early. I opened registration in September. We had 146 pre-registered attendees. 80 of those signed up in the last 10 days. This is a bit of human nature at work, but it really is a pain in the ass for an event organizer. It’s impossible to know how much of anything you need to order. For example, I had capped the registrations at 200. So, I have to plan for 200 people showing up. When it came time to place an order for t-shirts, I ordered 2 dozen extra and my final shirt order was roughly 235. I am now left with roughly 65 shirts. That’s roughly a $300 expense that was unneeded.

One way to combat this issue would be to heavily discount the price of the tickets for people who sign up more than 4 weeks in advance. This will give you plenty of time to order shirts/printed material. As the event gets closer, raise the price. For walk-ups, the price should be even higher. This may go against the “keep it cheap” mentality of WordCamp, but when you are the one footing the bill for the event, you need to watch the bottom line.

Speakers
Finding people to speak at an event is a bit of work. First you need to find people willing to speak. Then, you need to figure out if the content they have to present is going to fit your agenda. Having 5 people come in and all talk about SEO would get really boring. Obviously you will want to have a mix of different types of speakers so that your event will appeal to a wider variety of attendees. Weather you decide to go for a “local” feel, or if you are able to attract speakers from all over the world, the trick is to get the word out. Start emailing potential speakers WAY in advance. The sooner the better. You want to get commitments from speakers early so you can leverage their help in promoting the event. One a speaker commits to your event, ask them to write a blog post or send twitter messages to help you promote the event. They don’t want to speak to an empty conference hall either.

You will of course want to contact the folks at WordPress to see if you can get a couple of WordPress/Automattic staffers to come speak. I was lucky enough to get Matt Mullenweg out to our event along with programmer Joseph Scott. Again, the trick is to ask early to give them plenty of time to schedule it.

If your speakers are going to use a slide presentation, require them to email them to you at least 48 hours in advance. This sounds easy, but many of the speakers write their speech the night before the event. Guys like Jim Kukral perform best under that last minute pressure. But, if you can get all the slide decks on to one computer before the event, you won’t run in to the delays that we had between each speaker. Also, if people are going to be using PowerPoint, BUY POWERPOINT. I mistakenly thought that I would be able to get away with using OpenOffice.org PowerPoint equivalent. While it is just fine if you create the presentation in OpenOffice, trying to import PowerPoint presentations sucked. They looked like crap and we had to end up using a different laptop. This caused even more headaches along the way.

One thing that I didn’t do, but will definitely do next time, is set a price for for speakers who want to come in to speak about a product. This year I had 4 or 5 product related sessions. I let each one of them come in because I felt that they had something to offer to bloggers in attendance. I felt that even if the specific app wasn’t exactly what they might be looking for, it could set off ideas for them that would benefit them down the line. That said, next year there will be a set cost to come in to do a product demo.

Agenda
It’s not always up to you as to when people are going to speak. I had 3 speakers who all requested to speak on Saturday because of scheduling conflicts on Sunday. Still, try to space out the “big names”. Plus, leave some time to let attendees have access to the speakers. The networking portion of the event is critical. Had to do over again, I’d have scheduled more time for networking.

It has been suggested to me to schedule a morning and afternoon break, along with lunch. I think this is a good idea and something I’ll keep in mind for next time. I’m thinking something along the lines of keynote/opening speaker, then a break and then a few sessions before it’s time for lunch. Same basic schedule after lunch.

If possible, schedule activities unrelated to the event. This is something I missed out on and am very sad about. I would have loved to schedule a photo-walk for the Las Vegas Strip for the night before the event. As it turns out I was extraordinarily busy the night before the event, but that doesn’t mean the other attendees couldn’t have gone out shooting. These events should be social. Do what you can to promote that aspect of it and make sure you have somebody else there to run the activity in case you are busy with preparations.

Schedule a staff dinner and include the speakers. This can be done the night before or the night of the event. But again, make it social. As the organizer of the event, I ran around all day during the event making sure things were where they needed to be. This kept me from sitting in on sessions and from speaking to some people who I would have liked to have spent more time with. A staff/speaker dinner would have been a great time to get to know everybody a little bit.

Sponsors
Several people asked me how I got the sponsors to donate money or products to give away. It’s simple really, I asked. I asked a lot. Then, I asked some more. Guess what, a lot of people told me no. The economy sucks so people were watching their budgets. You have got to be ready to hear the word no. Don’t take it personally, just move on.

Try to find local businesses who can donate. Try to find online companies that have synergies with WordPress or bloggers in general. Hosting facilities, designers, plugin developers, etc… Let them know what you are doing and then make it inexpensive for them to donate. Sure, finding one company to throw $5,000 would be nice, but you are far more likely to have somebody agree to a $200 donation. Don’t discount what you are giving them in return. Our site got a fair bit of traffic and there were several other blogs that linked back to the site. These donations have the ability to drive some decent traffic back to the sponsor’s website over time. I’ll personally be leaving the WordCamp:Las Vegas website in tact until it’s time to start planning next years. My sponsors are getting 8-10 months of advertising for their minor contribution. Remind them of that when you are asking for a donation.

Make it easy for them to donate. Have them send payment via paypal. Again, this makes it easy to pay for expenses via a paypal debit card.

One other way to help sponsor the event would be through affiliate links on your WordCamp website. This isn’t something I chose to do, but it could be an option. I’m just throwing it out there…

Costs
So, what does it cost to run a WordCamp. I’ll bet you get a different response from everybody you ask.

Today on Twitter I saw somebody say that WordCamp was sponsored by WordPress. This is very much untrue. Sure, they help promote the event through blog posts, the WordCamp.org website and some goodies to give away, but they do not provide a single dollar of support. I have no problem with this, I’m just clearing it up so you don’t think it’s as easy as saying, “I want to organize a WordCamp event” and all of a sudden money comes falling out of the WordPress tree. You organize it, you pay for it.

My out of pocket costs to run WordCamp:Las Vegas was roughly $4,500. I then received sponsorship money and registration money that evened it all out. I am quite lucky in that I was able to cover the entire cost of the event.

It’s funny, as I went along, more and more things kept coming up to spend money on. I STRONGLY suggest you put together an Excel spreadsheet and keep track of everything you spend money on. You will be surprised how quickly it adds up.

Here’s a list along with links to vendors I used (where appropriate):

Conference Room
T-shirts for attendees Jimmy’s Jam T-Shirts
Lanyards/Badge holders nametag.com
Badges and podium sign Vertical Printing
Banner 24hbanner.com
Food/drinks (if you plan to provide it)
Business Permit (required for Las Vegas. Be sure to check.)
WiFi
Power outlets and extension cords
Office supplies (pens, markers, clip boards, paper for hand-outs, etc, etc)
Projector & Screen
Adapters for laptop -> projector connections
Wireless microphones / speakers (or PA system)
Tips (It’s Vegas, we tip everybody)

The companies that I linked to above all did a great job for me. I wouldn’t have linked to them if they didn’t. If you decide to use them for your event, please tell them that you found them through us. Perhaps we can build a relationship and we can all benefit on some group pricing down the line.

Promotion
Getting the word out for an event like this isn’t as easy as you might think. It takes work. And a lot of word of mouth. But, here are a few things you should do:

Create a dedicated site for the event (example: lasvegaswordcamp.com
Email EVERYBODY in your address book and ask that they tell everybody they know
Send a message on every social media site you are a part of (myspace, facebook, etc…)
List your event on upcoming.yahoo.com
Contact Lorelle as she’s the queen of WordCamp promotion
Blog about the event on your site every week or so
On the dedicated site, write a blog post for every event that happens during planning (confirmed speaker/sponsor and things like that)
Try to get your local media to do a story about it
Ask each of the speakers to blog and tweet about it
Ask attendees to blog/tweet about it
Ask sponsors to blog/tweet about it
Hang a flier in coffee houses or wherever will let you

You can not talk about the event enough. The more people you tell about it, the better your chances of getting people to register.

Well, I think that about covers it. Hopefully this will help you create your own WordCamp in your area. If there is an area that you want me to elaborate on, please leave a comment and I’ll follow-up.

See you at WordCamp:Las Vegas 2010!

Filed Under: Blogging, Social Media, Technology, WordCamp, WordPress Tagged With: review, WordCamp, wordcamplv

My favorites of 2008

December 31, 2008

2008 will be history in less than 24 hours. Before we close the door on it, I wanted to look back and take a snapshot of the things I liked (and disliked) about 2008. These are in no specific order at all. Please feel free to comment and leave your list of faves.

Favorite Gadget: 3G iPhone
This one was easy. The iphone has become more than a phone, I use it as a business and organizational tool. I won’t say “can’t live without it”, but it really is handy.

Favorite iPhone App: Evernote
Having the ability to quickly bookmark something while away from my desk or retrieve information I’ve previously saved has been an extremely useful tool.

Favorite Movie: Choke
You may think this was an automatic decision for me, but it really wasn’t. I had a hard time narrowing down my list. But, at the end of the day, for a movie I had been waiting so long to see, it did not disappoint. It’s one of my favorite books and Sam Rockwell absolutely nailed his performance. Iron Man, The Dark Knight, Wanted and Zack and Miri Make a Porno were all in the running for this one.

Favorite Educational Blog: Strobist
Off-Camera lighting to me is the most interesting and challenging part of Photography. The information and knowledge shared in this blog is priceless. As a bonus, there are over 40,000 members in the strobist.com group on flickr with over 180,000 photos. People take the information they learn from the blog, apply it and then show their results. It’s incredible way to learn.

Favorite Photography Blog: TheBlogIsFound.com
When I grow up, I want my photography to be like Nate and Jaclyn. I find that when I look back through their blog and find sets like this one, I want to email and ask how Carla and Adam are doing. It’s more about capturing the moment and presenting an engaging set of photographs. One of my things to do in 2009 is get out to SoCal and take part in one of their shoot shops. So much to learn from these two.

Favorite Memory: Our trip to Alaska
Face it, everybody is too busy these days. We go go go go 1000 miles an hour all the time. My kids are growing so fast and it won’t be too long before the idea of taking a vacation with mom and dad will seem like torture to them. Getting away with just the 4 of us was absolutely incredible. Even if we were to hop back on the ship and head back to Alaska tomorrow, it wouldn’t come close to how special that trip was to me.

Happy New Year to you all. I hope you go out and make a million memories in 2009.

Filed Under: Blogging, Family, Photography Tagged With: 2008, favorites, review

A quick year in the life of a blog

December 27, 2008

After blogging on geeeek.com for several years, for some unknown reason I decided to move my blogging to a more personally branded domain. Enter: JohnHawkinsUnrated.com. Last year on December 14th I started JHU and since then geeeek.com has fallen in to ruins. Actually, so have a few of my attempts at blogging. I have “plans” for many of these projects, it’s just finding the time to execute the plans that I need to work on. Really, what I need to do is find direction and figure out which projects are important to me and which are not. JHU I plan to keep as my personal blog. A place for me to rant. Welcome.

This is post #172 since the beginning of JHU. I was going to go back and pick out some of my favorite posts from the year, but I’m working on something similar for a post on New Year’s Day. so instead I thought I’d do something a little different. Here’s a snapshot of the “popular tags” found on JHU so far. I figure this would be a good way to figure out what my blog is all about.

Review: Underwater Housing for Canon PowerShot S90

One month with the iPad

Viva Elvis review

2009 – a year in photos

Book Review: Crooked Little Vein

My favorites of 2008

Top 5 posts of 2008

A quick year in the life of a blog

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