The photo shows Ross because I was (as usual) behind the camera, but for most of the morning it was me in front of the computer.
Some of that time I had company. This is Eduardo, who comes around to be fed.
Category Archives: what I do
SC08 Show Floor
SuperComputing 08, held in Austin, Texas, was a huge show and a huge effort for many of us at Sun, especially Rich Brueckner. The Sun booth was humming, attractions included Scott Tokar, a magician, and Rich’s Java Chopper, complete with biker chicks.
The Glamorous Life
I’ve been told that some of my colleagues envy my job. I admit that it’s a lot of fun – and, when asked what I do, I focus on the positives – but right now I’m mostly tired. This month is the most intense I’ve yet had with Sun. Here’s what it’s looked like so far:
Oct 23: Flew to Minneapolis.
Oct 24, 27, 28: Filmed interviews with the SAM-QFS team at Sun’s Eagan, MN office.
Oct 29: Flew back to Denver, straight into meetings and more office time.
Nov 1-6: Filmed parts of Sun’s Data Management Ambassadors’ conference, fortunately being held near my “home base” office in Broomfield. Especially fortunate because I still had a lot to do organizing the SC08 Student party. Worked long office hours when I wasn’t behind a camera in a hotel conference room. (At least this particular conference room had huge windows, so I didn’t feel like I was in a cave all day.) When I was behind the camera, I was also usually doing something on my laptop, such as running the October stats on blogs and community websites.
Nov 8: Flew to San Diego.
Nov 9: Much-needed day off (it was a Sunday!), went to the zoo. Spent much of the evening on email, trying to finalize details for a blogging contest to be held around an important product launch the next day. Having received no word on a decision by 10:30 pm, I went to sleep.
Nov 10: Woke up and checked email again at 12:30 am, nothing. 5:30 am, still nothing, so I went ahead and mailed it, because the contest began at 6 am Pacific Time. Woke up at 7 to film an all-day ZFS Workshop at LISA.
Nov 11: Flew to Las Vegas for Sun’s Customer Engineering Conference. Lunch with Barton, toured the CEC show floor, hung out and had dinner with my OpenSolaris buds, declined to go to a late show with them, went back to my hotel room, watched House.
Nov 12: Filmed an HPC track that took most of the day, plus one other presentation. In the evening, participated in a Birds-of-a-Feather session on blogging. Disagreement was, er, lively.
Nov 13: After a very bad night’s sleep (my room at Caesar’s was right on top of a disco), got up at 4 am to catch a 6:22 am flight to San Francisco. Lynn picked me up, already dialed in to a staff meeting. In the afternoon, moderated the chat as Lynn’s presentation to Forum 2.0 was streamed online. Had a few ideas about how to do the moderator’s job better, will be writing about those later. In the evening Lynn and I had a meeting with Meena, then went back to our hotel for dinner. Had an extremely hot bath – the cold water didn’t work. At least the bed was very comfortable.
Nov 14: Up early again, interesting news on my iPhone. Hurried to get to Sun’s Menlo Park campus for Lynn’s second Forum presentation, then a dash to the airport for our flight to Austin. Arrived a little before 5, Diana about the same time from Denver, then ran into Matthew at baggage claim. Everyone’s coming to town for SC08. Got our cars, I went to Spankyville, where Ross was preparing dinner for a gang of us.
Nov 15: Up at 8 to catch up on emails and run some party-related errands, then on to film at Sun’s HPC Consortium all afternoon. Ended the day filming an interview with Dr. Jim Leylek. Had a quiet dinner with Dominic, went home and to sleep.
Nov 16: Up early again for the Consortium – first speaker of the day was Andy Bechtolsheim, so sleeping in was not an option! Left early (Peter took over the camera) so I could go help set up the venue for the party. More running around to pick up a tank of helium for the balloons and move our student helpers to the venue. Busy with preparations and then the party (which I think we can count as a success) until about midnight, went home and collapsed.
Nov 17: Woke up at 6:30, my brain immediately whirring madly through all the things I needed to do, though my body emphatically did not want to get out of bed. Made it back to the Consortium by 10 am to continue filming. Left again at 1:30 to go see Ross’ new home, have lunch, return the helium tank, and dash out again to film the opening of the SC08 show floor.
I hope to survive until Saturday, when I leave for warmer climes and something resembling a vacation. I should note that this month has been equally intense for practically everybody at Sun. We’re all looking and feeling a little ragged around the edges by now.
above: I did get to sit down long enough to have a caricature drawn at the OpenStorage Summit
Portrait of a Videoblogger
One of the activities at the Open Storage Summit party was to have our portraits drawn by talented caricature artist Doug Shannon.
I’ve been thinking lately about the differences between videoblogging and professional video.
You might also like:
Professional Videography vs. Videoblogging
^ filming at the Open Storage Summit after-party
I don’t claim to be a professional videographer (for one thing, I’m entirely self-taught). I do videoblogging, which is fundamentally different.
From my (very limited) experience, it seems that professional corporate video is, usually:
- thoroughly planned (and likely scripted) in advance;
- involves quite a lot of large, heavy equipment, with multiple people to set it up and run it.
- the people who do this know how to do media, but don’t necessarily know much about what or who they’re filming (nor do they need to).
- filming often takes place in a studio, which may need to be reserved well in advance, or in some other carefully-planned, controlled location;
- professional post-production (editing, compressing, and posting video) can take a long time
- all of this is expensive
Videoblogging, on the other hand:
- eh… not so planned. When I go to an event, I have an idea which talks I want to film, but things usually get added or subtracted at the last minute. Alongside the formal talks, I also try to grab interviews and other material.
- equipment is minimal and light, reasonable for one person to move around and manage.
- a videoblogger is part of the community, and therefore can see and take advantage of filming opportunities as they arise – or create them.
- shooting can take place anywhere – no reservation required.
- post-production is quick and dirty – the important thing is to get the material out FAST
- all of this is cheap
