This past Wednesday night I was in New York. Shortly before nightfall it rained, and then stopped. Nothing better than neon and night combined with wet streets.

I had some of the same luck in Seoul earlier this year.

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Where to start? Perhaps late, late in the sense that the planning for this year's BlogOrlando started much later than previous events. I was even concerned that we couldn't pull it off. But thanks to some help from some great folks like Chris, Rob, Danny, Ryan and yes you Alex.....we did it. Our tracks grew from four to five, our registrations grew and so did the turnout. A big thanks to all our sponsors, especially Ideablob and Voce :-)

In the end 238 of us showed up at Rollins College this past Saturday to learn from each other. As my colleague Mike Manuel said, "Leave your brand at the door, bring your brain." What makes this event so different? Spike from Brains on Fire probably put is best:

I’ve never been to a free conference before. And the difference of engagement levels between a free conference and a fee-based one is night and day. I guess it might be because everybody that’s there WANTS to be there. They CHOSE to go. They CHOSE to give up a Saturday and engage other passionate people. I’m afraid most conferences I go to are full of people that have been sent there from their company. They’d rather be checking emails or anywhere else. But it’s part of their job description or a requirement. The result is sometimes a very low engagement level.

BlogOrlando was the exact opposite.

Thanks Spike. Also, a big thanks to all the session leaders. Each of you contributed something, and I hope many of you learned something from your audience as well.

Jake McKee kicked us off with a story about how LEGO learned to listen to its fans and became better for it. Yes it was a bit marketing/communication focused, but it's also part community, and well it's LEGO.....geeks love LEGO. Even the non-marketing types learned something. From there it was off to the breakout tracks. Just about every session I checked in on was packed.

Room size is always the big debate. Last year we had a few rooms that were packed to the gills, but sometimes those close quarters breed better, more lively discussions. While I like the increase in attendance, it's the smaller discussions that are sometimes the best. I never want to get away from this format. That's one of the reasons we split into five tracks, I wanted to keep the groups smaller.

It was also important to split tech into two sides, basic and advanced. If you keep having the same conversations year-after-year you end up alienating the veteran attendees, you need to give them something new. However, you still need the core stuff for the newbies. Striking that balance is the key.

Highlights for me were the sessions professionalism/identity sessions by Amber Rhea and Jake McKee. I also heard great things about Alex Hillman's session as well as Spike's session on WOM and Geno's session on movements. There was a reason I invited Geno and Spike, they're great guys who do great work. I hope everyone who attended their sessions agree.

Sadly I missed the Orlando Scene session, but thanks to Ted and Andrew from IZEA there are Ustream archives of that session as well as many others.

For most of the day I ran around making sure everything was running smoothly. Luckily we had no major wifi issues, thanks to Mike from Rollins IT, who many of you met. During my downtime I would check out the ongoing Twitter-stream and appreciated all the discussion and positive comments the event was receiving. Today looking over all the recaps, it's much of the same...thanks.

We ended the day with Erik Hersman. I picked Erik for some specific reasons, one he's from Orlando, but most importantly because the work he's doing spans so much of the discussions of the day. As I said when introducing him....most of us were at the event for different reason, pr/marketing, journalism, personal expressions, business, etc. A project like Ushahidi makes all our 'personal' and 'business' needs seem trite.

I hope at the end of the day everybody that attended learned something and made some new friends.

Will we be back next year? We'll see, give me a few weeks to rest and catch-up with my work-life and family-life.

Photos courtesy of Alex and Sean...thanks!

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BlogOrlando has come to a close for the third time. I'm exhausted, but I hope to get some post-event thoughts up tonight.

Thanks to my friends at Walt Disney World PR that hosted the think-tank event on Thursday. We had a blast.

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At some point last night I received my 1,000,000th Flickr view. I've said it here and at events, we take to what we're passionate about, and lately for me that's been photography. While this blog has dwindled, I've ramped up my attention to Flickr and the community there. Thanks to everybody that counted towards that 1 million. Let's go for two.

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The big 'idea' news last week was Oracle's launch of Oracle Listens. A campaign where they solicit ideas from end users. Charlene Li blogged about it and gave Oracle kudos for the effort. My big question is what does legal think of this? Oracle does things a bit differently than the other idea-submission sites like Dell's Ideastorm or My Starbucks Idea. We'll come back to that difference in a second.

Many corporations have a number of legal hang-ups when it comes to social media. Among entertainment and media organizations a special concern is idea submission. For example, I want to sue NBC, because six years ago at a conference reception I told an executive about my idea for a TV show based on regular folks who are superheroes. Just kidding, but you get the gist.

Enter the new concept in social media sites, the ideastorms. I name the genre after Dell's launch of the self-titled Ideastorm last year. Dell asked for your ideas and then allows the community to vote on them. The top vote recipients hopefully get the nod from Dell and enter production. But what about those lawyers and idea submission?

In Dell's case you need to register and agree to their terms of service before submitting an idea. In those terms are language that states you give all rights to the idea to Dell. Here's a snippet:

You grant to Dell and its designees a perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive fully-paid up and royalty free license to use any ideas, expression of ideas or other materials you submit (collectively, “Materials”) to IdeaStorm without restrictions of any kind and without any payment or other consideration of any kind, or permission or notification, to you or any third party. The license shall include, without limitation, the irrevocable right to reproduce, prepare derivative works, combine with other works, alter, translate, distribute copies, display, perform, license the Materials, and all rights therein, in the name of Dell, or its designees throughout the universe in perpetuity in any and all media now or hereafter known.

However they do offer $1000 to purchase some ideas or concepts:

Dell shall have the exclusive option to purchase from you and acquire all right, title and interest, including, without limitation, any copyrights and other intellectual property law in and to the Materials you submit, which rights shall include, without limitation, the irrevocable right to reproduce, prepare derivative works, combine with other works, alter, translate, distribute copies, display, perform, license and apply for copyright registration for any or all of the Materials, and all rights therein, in the name of Dell, or its designees throughout the universe in perpetuity in any and all media now or hereafter known. The option shall be exercisable by us from the date you submit the Materials until 1 year from that date. If we exercise the option, you agree to accept payment in the amount of $1000 USD or value in kind at Dell’s discretion, and you agree to execute, acknowledge and deliver such other instruments consistent with an assignment of the intellectual property as may be reasonably necessary to carry out or effectuate the purposes or intent of the assignment of the Materials.

Starbucks has a similar model. You need to create an account and agree to terms before submitting an idea.

A general counsel at one firm we met with recently said those terms would never hold up in court. Of course I will insert the standard IANAL (I Am Not A Lawyer) statement, but it did give me pause.

Ok, back to Oracle. With their implementation you can submit an idea, receive confirmation it's been received without agreeing to any terms. Entering something on the homepage and clicking submit you receive this screenshot which says, "Thank you! We received your feedback." At that point you can create an account and continue on, or just leave. If the legal counsel we talked to didn't like the terms of Dell or Starbuck's concepts, I wonder how they'd feel about Oracle's lack of terms (sorry that's a rhetorical question).

Ok, I do think that it's a bit of overacting. Yes, many of the people submitting ideas are genuinely interested in seeing the companies they support succeed. But what happens if that simple idea you submit does turn into let's say a 1% profit growth for Dell, Starbucks or Oracle. Mention that to any attorney and I think they might be willing to challenge those terms.

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On Friday I'll be flying to Atlanta, and then making the quick drive to Athens, GA for the UGA Connect conference. I attended the inaugural event in 2007 and enjoyed the mix of familiar colleagues and students eager to learn.

Will you be going?

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We're two weeks away from BlogOrlando 2008 and things are shaping up nicely. Our schedule and session list are set, t-shirts are about to be ordered and the happy-hour plans are in place. There is still a bunch of behind-the-scenes work going on though....it's going to be a fun two weeks.

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This October I'll be speaking at the Sarasota International Design Summit. The speaker line-up is quite impressive, so I'm honored to be part of the mix. On Day 2 I'll be leading a session briefly titled, "Does Design Matter?" Following me will be Matt Jones from Dopplr, who will answer that question.

The gist is, in a social media world where a large percentage of your customers/fans consume your content via RSS, Twitter, Facebook, or some other third-party location how can you maintain a brand experience, if at all....and does it matter?

One unique thing the conference organizers have done is print Moo cards for the speakers. As you can see the cards promote the event. They also threw in one of the new Moo card holders. Nice touch.

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This is where my photo hobby began, my first camera, and my first digital camera, the Kodak DC290. Sure I had other cameras growing up, but this was the first camera that I actually cared what I took pictures of.

At the time I purchased this legend in early 2000 it was one of the first 2.1 megapixel cameras and cost a nice $1000. Throw in another $200 for the 96MB compact flash card and we were in business. Basically the same I spent for my Nikon D80 and a few 2GB SD cards :-)

How far we've come.

I actually lost the DC290 I originally had, but saw this for sale at a camera store today, $38.

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I'm sad to be missing WordCamp this year, but we have a work retreat in Tahoe and then I have to get home for some family fun. Luckily, some of the crew from cnp_studio will be there. I'll look to Sean to take over the mantle of event photographer :-)

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This week's edition of PRWeek features a story about the Sony PlayStation program that I am proud to be a part of. Mike has posted some thoughts over at VoceNation.

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Just a follow-up to my previous post on Golden Gate shots....here are some of my favorites. It's amazing how small tweaks in camera settings can lead to such different shots.

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So PR Week is having this little competition........so go vote for Voce!

Hyku isn't nominated since I stopped PR blogging a while back :-)

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Some have noticed that I upgraded to a Nikon D3 this past week. I'll write up a full review in a few weeks, but the quick view is the camera is amazing. Here's a quick shot of the Bay Bridge I took on Sunday. Zoom in to see the detail.

I have a number of shots from Sunday to process, as well as the night shots of the Golden Gate Bridge.

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BlogHer 08 has come to a close. It was my third BlogHer and as always, I had a blast. Here are some photo highlights. The entire set is here.

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During BlogHer I snuck down to the Golden Gate Bridge on Friday night to take a few shots. Here's the first of many more to come:

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Yes I will admit that carrying around a big DSLR camera is a bit of a drag sometimes, and there are other times I really don't want to take my camera to a certain environment, say the beach. For all the 'other' times I want a camera, which is almost all the time, I picked up a small Nikon Coolpix S600.

Why a Coolpix? Well I'm a Nikon fan, duh, but my interest in photography started with my original Coolpix 2100. I could take some pretty decent shots with that.

After using a DSLR for a while you do become a bit of a picture snob, that is you look at shots from a point & shoot and start to pick out the small little issues, i.e. quality, clarity, etc. But you soon get over that and realize that the smaller cameras can take some good shots. Scott Beale played around with the Fuji FinePix and discovered the same thing.

However I wanted to get as good a point and shoot as I could, while still keeping the form-factor small. The S600 has a glass Nikkor lens and uses the same VR technology that many of the high-end Nikon lenses use. The sensor is 10.0 MP and can shoot as high has 3200 ISO. Toting around the S600 for the past few weeks has shown me that the camera can take some great shots in the right situations.

Ultimately it's about knowing the camera's limitations. One of which is speed, as in a fast shutter. Using a DSLR like the D300 for too long you expect things to be fast, and there isn't really a fast point-and-shoot on the market. Trying to take 'action' shots of my son never quite works out. Shooting still-life, landscapes and a variety of other stable subjects works great. Here are a selection of shots from the S600 this past weekend.

If you look at the large version of this photo, the sharpness of the whiskers on my face is amazing, although somewhat disturbing on another level :-)

Shooting at night it's always good to have a stable platform. Yes a tripod can be overkill for a point-and-shoot, but what else can you prop the camera on? For this shot I just set the camera on a sign. Not bad.

The Macro function is easy to use, but I haven't tested it too much, the same goes for the high ISO. I'll play a bit more and post a follow-up.

So far I've been very happy with the Coolpix S600. I planed to turn it over to my wife so she could always have a camera, but I don't want to give it up. I might need to buy another.

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Heading out in a little bit for a beach weekend in Hilton Head, but next week I'm off to California, specifically Palo Alto and San Francisco. Next weekend brings BlogHer and my third visit to this great event. Looking forward to catching up with plenty of friends.

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Registration is now open for the 2008 edition of BlogOrlando. So go do your thing:

http://blogorlando.com/register/

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My first 'big boy' camera was the Nikon D80. I purchased it in September of 2006 and never looked back. While the D80 has been a great camera I was putting some serious miles on it. In August of last year Nikon announced the D3 and the D300. The D300 seemed to be the next logical step. It was a notch-up in just about every aspect and was a bit more rugged than the D80. In March of this year I upgraded :-)

Upon first impression you see that the D300 is a bit bigger and heavier than the D80 (Paul Stamatiou also noted this). The difference is more in the width of the camera than the height. I always mount the external battery grip so a big and heavy camera is nothing new to me. Below are some comparison shots of my D80 and D300 rigs.

I was able to take the D300 with me to London and was amazed at some of the shots I got, some of which are highlighted below.

The things that drew me to the D300 were:

More Rugged: Have I mentioned this before? The D300 is a descendant of the D200 and the D100, so it's sometimes referred to as a pro photographer's second camera. The thought is most serious pros own a D2x/D2h (or the D3 now) and the DXXX serves as a backup. Often the DXXX has the same internal workings as the pricier sibling, just a smaller body. While the D80 is great, all the trips and conditions were starting to show on the camera body.

On the D300 the subframe is magnesium and you can feel it. The entire camera is almost a grip and feels great. The strap hinges are also more robust than the D300. Back when I was deciding between the D80 and the Canon Rebels one of the issues I noted was that the lower-end Canons felt too-plasticy while the D80 felt sturdier. The D300 is a step above this, you 'feel' that value/quality. Yes it's a minor point compared to other aspects of the camera's performance, but it is an issue.

D3 in a Small Body: Not entirely true, but much of the D3 lineage is in the D300. Yes it's still a DX sensor rather than the new full-frame FX, but did I really need that? There are an increased number of focus points as well as a nice 12.3 MP sensor (not going into the megapixel myth here though). On the back-side there is the nice 3" LCD. It's one of those small things, you think well that's slightly larger than the D80, but once you use it, you look at the D80 and say, boy that looks small. Combined with decent glass I am amazed at the clarity and color I can get (see below)

Higher ISO: Both the D3 and D300 have stepped things up in the sensitivity range allowing you to shoot at even lower light conditions. You can max things out at 6400 ISO, but I mostly shoot at 1600 in low light. Many times I'm shooting at conferences with low-light and the D300 has been great for this.

The photos below are a great example of the all-around package of increased sensitivity and speed of the camera. These were taken with the D300 and the 70-200mm lens at night in a hand-held position (as in no tripod). Could they be a bit sharper? Perhaps, but without a tripod I don't think so.

Speed: This thing shoots fast which is great for action photography or as parents call it, every day :-) Setting the camera to Continuous-High and pressing the shutter button is a good parlor trick, people are amazed at the speed. The photo below would be good if it wasn't for the poor framing on my part, i.e. the guy standing in the background with the point and shoot, but it shows the action you can grab. The cyclist was taking part in a local criterium, i.e. riding rather fast :-)

Liveview: Honestly I rarely use this feature. Liveview mimics the standard LCD as viewfinder format that most point and shoot cameras have. I know some people have raved about it for setting up shots on a tripod, but I rarely use one. Perhaps one day I'll start doing more landscape with a tripod.

What are the drawbacks?

Weight: Yes it is heavier and bigger, but I think that just comes with the territory. However it is interesting to compare the D300 to the D40 or even the Nikon Coolpix S600.

Controls/Settings: Yes I am that guy that picks something up and tries to use it without using the manual. I did the same thing with the D300 and noticed quickly there was no green 'Auto' setting. At first I thought, wow this thing doesn't have an auto setting. Actually it's there. It's P for 'Programmed Automatic' :-)

What took me a week or two to adjust to was the minor tweaks. What I mean by this is rarely now do I just point and shoot. I think about what I'm shooting then dial-in the settings I want, take a few test shots then adjust. Yes it's a few more steps in the routine, but doesn't really slow me down.

Cost: This is a variable depending on your budget. The D300 retails for around $1800 so it is an investment, however it is a natural upgrade path for enthusiasts that have been using the D80 for a while and want to take the next step. With the more rugged build I would also assume the D300 would hold up better over time than the D80.

Of course the camera is only one part of the equation, I am fortunate to have some good lenses. With the D300 I carry around: 17-55mm f/2.8, 70-200mm f/2.8, 10.5mm f/2.8 and a 50mm f/1.4. Those lenses will always stay with me even if I upgrade cameras again. I also use the MB-D10 battery pack/grip. With the battery pack I rarely (as in never) run out of juice. I can shoot for a few weeks at a time without worrying about chargine. As of yet, I still have no external flash.

Going back to my post: Which Camera? D80, D40, D40x or D60? There is now a new model in the mix, the D300.

How does the D300 weave in? Well if you're serious about the hobby then it's a tough call between the D80 and the D300. If you're lucky, you have a friend that's looking to upgrade from a point and shoot...sell them your D40/D60/D80 and go for the D300 :-)

What's next? Well the D700 was just announced and there is always the big-daddy D3. The D700 brings the full-frame FX sensor to the D300 body for a cool $3000.00.

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