As most of you might know, today(/yesterday) I attended 2M09, the biggest free multimedia-fest in Europe. I met a lot of cool people, it was really great. Too bad I had seen a lot of these sessions earlier this year at FITC Amsterdam. (But that’s no issue. I got to hang out with a lot of cool people, so all is good )

And let me add this: Big up to Koen and the Multi-Mania crew for yet another unforgettable edition of this amazing event. You guys are so bad-ass for doing this!

What is this really about?

Yesterday night I came up with the idea to broadcast a livestream using Qik on my iPhone. I found it to be a geeky idea, and heck it’s free, so why not?
And so it happened: At 9.30 AM this morning I was standing in the main room when I started the broadcast. I pushed an alert to Twitter as soon as the stream was up. Only seconds later the view-counter on my iPhone screen went up! 4 viewers… 9 viewers… 15 viewers… It peaked at 44 viewers. And not only were all of these people seeing what I was seeing; Qik was saving the video on its servers as I was streaming it, so others were enabled to view the video later on. After only one day, the video had 1300+ views!

I was amazed. To some people this might not be a big of a deal, but let me break it down for you:
The video you were seeing was a live feed, being sent from a cellphone… Wireless… Video & Audio capturing,  uploading it to the Qik servers, and appearing on your computer screen at home…  Whatever it was you were seeing in that video player, it only happened seconds earlier in real life! And wherever you were in the world, you were able to see it!
Some might go: ‘Ok, no big deal… News stations do that…’. Exactly! But I’m not a news station. I’m a regular guy. Anyone could’ve been there and have access to that technology! Qik is a free service, and the client seems to run on a lot of phones. So bottom-line you need 2 things:

1. A Qik-enabled phone
2. A 3G connection or Wifi access

Everytime I think about this it amazes me all over again!

What am I trying to say here?

Technology rocks! Being a geek rocks!
Using social networks like Qik and Twitter (in this case)  enriches our life in a way which is hardly believable and yet we have seen it in action! News stations for example: The Twitter community proved multiple times that it is many times faster and more accurate than most popular news stations! And those people are paid (!!!) to be the first to know!

Yea, but what am I REALLY trying to say here?

We’ve got the technology at our finger tips and we can use it with (almost?) no restrictions!
We live in an exciting time and we are given such amazing oppurtunities. I really hope to see services, such as Qik, to be used on a more regular basis because anyone can bring reality from anywhere to your computer screen at anytime.

Thanks to anyone who inspired me today at 2M09. You guys are amazing. See you next year!

With only 15 days to go it’s about time: 2M09 registrations opened up a few days ago.
Multi-Mania is one of the fastest growing multimedia fests around and it just keeps getting better. This year, for the first time ever, Multi-Mania is a 2-day event! One day full of (free) workshops. One day full of (free) inspiring, technical, creative and educational sessions.

This will be the third time I’m attending Multi-Mania and the speakerlist just blew my mind: Aral Balkan, André Michelle, Rob Chiu, Peter Elst, Serge Jespers, Scott Janousek, Sakri Rosenstrom, Rob Bateman (how is this guy’s nickname not ‘Batman’??), Niko Stumpo, Thomas Joos and many others.
It seems like there’s no end to that list… I’m blown away…

Some people mind need a reminder: An event like Multi-Mania for free starts to make look other conferences look bad… Really… Think about it for a second. A big up to Koen De Weggheleire and all the rest of the Multi-Mania crew for making this happen year after year.

Multi-Mania 2009 will take place in Kortrijk (XPO). Make sure you mark may 18th-19th as 2M09… And don’t forget to show up. It’s a free event, but registration is required so make sure you don’t forget to do so.

See you there!

Monday

• Keynote
• Aral Balkan – The future is so bright, I gotta wear shades
• Ralph Hauwert - Professionally Pushing Pixels (with Flash 10)
• Niko Stumpo – Unique Experiences
• Seb Lee-Delisle – Papervision3D, simplified
• Joshua Davis - New Works

Tuesday

• André Michelle – Boing Bumm Tschak!
• Keith Peters – Art from code
• Mario Klingemann – The Tinkerer’s box
• Jared Ficklin – Seeing sound
• James Eberhardt – Introduction to iPhone SDK for Flash Developers
• David Carson – The rules of graphic design

I really must admit, there were some hard choices… The FITC schedule is packed with intresting topics… I wonder if they’ll record the sessions and release them to the public afterwards.
If you happen to be going to one/some of the same sessions: feel free to let me know in the comments. I’d love to meet up!

09.30u / 10.15u – Adobe’s opening keynote (with sneak peeks?)
10.30u / 11.15u – The GAE SWF Project
11.30u / 12.15u – SQLite in Adobe AIR
12.30u / 13.15u – Having fun with Flash and Air
14.00u / 14.45u – Design Challenges, Standards Solutions
15.00u / 15.45u – Today we scan the stars… tomorrow everyone!
16.00u / 16.45u – Flash 2D & 3D Effects
17.00u / 17.45u – The Pixel Whisperer
20.00u / 21.30u – 2M08 awardshow
21.30u / 02.00u – 2M08 Party powered by Boulevart

Wat doen jullie?

Door het succes van de voorbije jaren zal Multi-Mania dit jaar uit 4 tracks bestaan! De line-up is redelijk mind-blowing als je het mij vraagt, maar ik ben dan ook snel enthousiast.

Multi-Mania is gratis, maar registreren is verplicht. Dat zal dan ook kunnen vanaf 28 april.
Heb jij een kickass project gemaakt dat rijp is voor een stoere Multi-Mania award? Er zijn 4 open categorieën waar je je werk in kan zenden, en de greep naar de gewilde award kan wagen.

Er is ook een badge te downloaden op de Multi-Mania site. Ikzelf heb deze even in een simpele WordPress plugin gestoken zodat het implementeren in je sidebar wat sneller gaat. (Getest op WordPress 2.3.3 en 2.5)

1. Download de widget hier.
2. Unzip het bestand, en upload de ‘2M08-Attendee‘ map volledig naar je ‘wp-content/plugins/‘ map
3. Ga naar je WP-Admin, en activeer de plugin
4. Ga naar presentation > widgets waar je de 2M08 widget in je sidebar kan slepen.
5. Opslaan
6. Je bent klaar

Ikzelf zal aanwezig zijn. Zul jij er zijn?