Technology kicked ass today

And so did 2M09 of course

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!

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• MultiMania 2009 live coverage – (1619 views)
• Multi-Mania 2009: Let’s rock! – (844 views)
• BrightKite: Wat je doet, en waar je het doet – (1269 views)
• I (finally) got my 2M09 schedule – (535 views)
• Twitter: Do you follow me? – (1795 views)