The Lookout on DVD

The Lookout arrived this week on DVD. If you haven’t seen it add it to your Netflix queue. Better yet, go buy the DVD like I did today. It’s one of the best movies I’ve seen in the past couple of years. I saw it in the theater and liked it just as much tonight watching it for the second time.

lookout

Here are a few links on the film:

The Lookout Trailer at Netflix

Review at Rolling Stone

IGN Reviews the DVD release

Richard Roper review from the Chicago Sun Times – Roper named this movie his favorite so far this year.

Technorati Tags: , ,

My favorite Gnomedex 2007 reviews

I’ve read a number of Gnomedex reviews over the past couple of days and there are a few I enjoyed.

  1. Dave Delaney tells us what he learned at Gnomedex. I could not agree more that “open money” should be explained in 140 characters or less. The review is full of insider jokes that will be better appreciated if you were there.
  2. Ethan Kaplan – “We pay attention to some stupid fight between overweight white guys inside a conference hall, where outside there are significant problems that we ignore for the sake of our own false prophet building”
  3. Scott Rosenberg –  Scott provides a thoughtful run down of the sessions. I enjoyed his review of the Calacanis controversy.
  4. William Smith at Sugar Attack gives a blow by blow review. Check out this Robert Steele quotes such as “I don’t have time to fool around with Wikipedia, it is full of morons”
  5. Randy Stewart created the Gnomedex 2007 poster. Excellent!
  6. Official Gnomedex comics are up on Flickr
Technorati Tags: ,

Visiting the Seattle Aquarium

We visited the renovated Seattle Aquarium today with our kids and had a wonderful time. There are many interesting exhibits to see and we plan to go back soon.

DSC_0756 One thing I noticed is that as many of us grow older we go from doing to watching. One example would be that I used to play a lot of basketball and baseball. Now I spend far more time watching both on TV.

At the aquarium, this point was driven home as I noticed the exhibits my kids found most interesting were those that included a hands-on element. One particular exhibit was an open tank that included various marine life that encouraged the kids to gently touch. They kids loved touching starfish, crabs and various colorful sea anemone. They couldn’t believe how rough and scratchy the starfish felt.

Kids love to touch, and move and play with items. As adults sometimes we’d rather step back and observe. It was fun to watch our kids enjoy the exhibits, but it was even more enjoyable getting my hands wet with my kids as we learned about sea life.

Kim does a good job of jumping in to whatever activity the kids are doing and playing alongside them like when she and Luca play the piano together.

I’m going to do a better job of getting involved at that level with my kids even if it means getting dirty of wet. Or both.

Technorati Tags:

The Good the bad and the weird of Gnomedex

The Good:

  1. The Derek Miller interview – well done and very touching
  2. Guy Kawasaki – he was the real keynote of the show
  3. The Ignite Speakers – provided a much needed spark to day 2.

The Bad:

  1. The internet – the first day was really bad but did improve
  2. The hecklers – most attendees come to listen to the speaker, not people yelling at the speakers.
  3. To pitch or not to pitch? – After Calacanis got blasted by Winer, several speakers didn’t know if it was ok to talk about their product or not and this left everyone uncomfortable.

The Weird

  1. One of the speakers telling us about his favorite “open source spam product”.
  2. Another panelist asking the audience if everyone has heard of Newsvine and WordPress. That answer would be yes, we have. Many times.
  3. Scoble not getting fired – At the very end of arguably the best session of the event where Chris interviewed Derek Miller and the audience gave him a very touching standing ovation, Scoble was standing near the stage. When people sat down, he yelled out to Chris on stage that he wasn’t fired as was being reported in Valleywag. The timing was so bad that people were talking about it in the chat room hours later. In Roberts defense, he spent most of the event out in the hall so maybe he came in late and didn’t understand the circumstances of his remark.

All things considered, Chris and gang pulled off a fantastic event.

My top 10 suggestions for improving Gnomedex

Admittedly, this was the first Gnomedex I’ve attended. I’m told it was very different from past years. Overall the event was a lot of fun and several of the speakers were fantastic. But, like anything, it can be improved. Here are my suggestions for improving Gnomedex 2008 which I hope is held again in Seattle.

  1. Reduce the number of breaks – Three a day is too many in addition to the lunch break. The nature of Gnomedex is casual enough that when I needed to use the restroom or grab a drink I could leave my seat and return within a couple of minutes. I usually went out during the Q&A sessions. Each break means more noise and distractions get invited to the session. I’d line up talks to lunch and maybe throw in one break in the later afternoon.
  2. Wire the room – The wireless internet ranged from unusable to OK by the 2nd day. As good as the food was, I’d rather have a few less choices in the buffet line but a fast, stable connection.
  3. Stop the Hecklers – The speakers have carved out time in their schedule to speak to us. Many have traveled to Seattle and hopefully spent some time preparing a suitable speech. The very least they should have our attention and respect. As much as I agree with Dave Winer calling out Calacanis, he should have held off until the Q&A. People yelling, “RIGGED” and “PUT THE SHOE ON THE HEAD” stopped being funny about 5 seconds into the joke.
  4. What’s the point? – I still have no idea what the “open money” or “energy” guy were trying to get across. A clear opening statement from every speaker would help such as, “Here is what I’d like to get across to you….”
  5. More from Chris and Ponzi – I know Chris and Ponzi run the show but I was looking forward to hearing from them both and was disappointed when that didn’t happen. I follow Chris because I find his views on technology interesting and I’m certain I’m not the only one. I would have traded half the sessions just to hear Chris and Ponzi talk about whatever they wanted. When I attend a Microsoft or Apple event I expect to hear from Gates or Jobs. The same thing goes for Chris. He’s the man, he’s the brand.
  6. Simplify the Giveaways – Today was a lot better than yesterday but there’s got to be a better way to hand out the prizes. Collect the business card beforehand, put them in a large bowl and have your dad pull them out one after another. What took 30 minutes the first day should take 5.
  7. Less is More – Cut the session talks down to 20 minutes. Several of the speakers could barely fill 20 minutes yet were scheduled for 45. Watching the Justin.TV guy was painful. For the speakers to deliver a crisper, quicker, more concise speech by putting a limit on the number of slides and cutting back each talk to 20 minutes. Did you notice how much more engaged the attendees were during the 5 minute Ignite talks? Guy Kawasaki and the opening keynote are excluded.
  8. There’s no need to hand out pads of paper and pencils – I didn’t see a single person use either and they just got in the way.
  9. Put up a Twitter screen – Unless your Engadget, live blogging is dead. Attendees tend to Twitter during the talks and wait till later in the evening to blog. I know this is a limitation of Twitter but I would have enjoyed an easy way to track my fellow attendees via Twitter. How about a Gnomedex Twitter widget just for this purpose?
  10. Find the hot, behind the scenes story and call it out – The elephant in the room this year was the Winer vs. Calacanis feud. Everyone was talking about it on the Gnomedex IRC channel as well as on Twitter and the blogs. It overshadowed most sessions today, but it would have been fun for Chris to bring them both on stage and referee a debate. I’m sure both of those guys would have been up for it.

This years Gnomedex was though-provoking and very enjoyable. Chris and Ponzi pulled off a great event.

Technorati Tags: ,

Derek Miller steals the show at Gnomedex 2007

Paris and Nicole have had a number of  public spats. Clemens tossed a broken bat at Piazza and a feud began. Even Gates and McNealy took jabs at each other for many years.

And now Gnomedex has a feud to call their own: Winer vs. Calacanis. I expected the two friends to patch things up over a beer last night, but that was expecting too much. Instead Calacanis fired at Winer this morning. Winer fired back and this fight continued to get nasty into the afternoon.

I find the whole spat kind of funny yet pathetic. It’s a good thing that Chris Pirillo pulled off a touching hour with Derek Miller this afternoon or the Winer/Calacanis fight would have overwhelmed Gnomedex which is not how it’s supposed to work out.

I knew nothing of Derek until today. Because he recently underwent major cancer surgery the interview was done via video conferencing. It’s hard to explain why it worked but it did. Chris and others were graceful while asking questions. Derek seems like an amazing human being. He was funny, smart and self-effacing. He seems like a genuinely nice person. He mentioned how someone came to visit him in the hospital after the surgery and asked, “Aside from this (cancer) how are things going?” Derek replied, “There is no aside from this right now“.

At the end of the interview, every attendee gave Derek a standing ovation while Chris positioned the camera so he could see everyone. It was clear he was touched by the gesture and so were most attendees. Guy Kawasaki was the star on day one. Derek Miller was the star on day two. Huge props to Chris and Ponzi for making this happen. You created an experience those in attendance will not forget.

Something tells me that Derek would be embarrassed to hear this, but he stole the show today.

Here is a picture of Derek as it looked on the big screen today.