The internet has changed my life and without it I would not be where I am today. I have had several proffesional artists and designers tell me that they wished they had the internet when they were young and where happy to see how I was using it. The internet does more than just allow me to communicate with friends.

1. Connect and communicate with professional artists and designers around the world.
2. Write a blog and share my stories, ideas, and thoughts with the world.
3. Follow what other creative people are producing and get inspiration from them.
4. Have conversations on various topics through other people’s blogs and writing.
5. Educate myself on current events and allow me to do research on my interests.

When you are able to do these things online, they are very valuable. I consider them a neccesity to my lifestyle and work and am glad for what it offers.

Yesterday, I got an email from SXSW saying that the time for voting on panels is coming to a close. I did not realize that this was coming up so fast, and thought I would make an attempt to get some last minute votes. At the bottom of the post you can read more about my three panel submissions. But for now, these are the titles of my proposed panels.

These three panel ideas I am very excited about and would love to be able to get together a group of people and share our thoughts and have a conversation with the SXSW community. I have never attended SXSW before, instead for the past two years I have followed the conference through blog posts of those who went. If my panel submissions were to be accepted, I would get a complimentary pass to the conference, thus decreasing the high cost for someone without a steady income to attend. (by the way, I am 17 year old designer, blogger, and entrepreneur)

So if you think I have some good ideas, pleas go and vote. Thanks.

There has been much talk lately of the issues and problems with this conference, and I thought now might be a good time to share my thoughts and ideas on this with you.

From what I have heard, the major problem is the quality of the panels. I think that people need to talk about there panels ahead of time, its not the hard with a few emails. I also think that when voting for a panel online, your vote should count more if you are planning on attending or have attended in the past. If my panel was chosen I would make sure that we had a simple presentation that was designed well, a handout for people to leave with, a way for everyone to continue the conversation after the conference online, and I would make sure that the audience got a good amount of questions and comments in. Now I have never been to SXSW before, so I don’t know if people have already done these things.

Moving on, here are the descriptions of the panels that I would like to share with you. Simply click on the link to go vote and leave comments.

A New Kind of Social Media Consulting
A group/network of thinkers, designers, business people, and developers coming together and offering consulting services, thus drawing on everybody’s expertise and offering consulting to brands and companies to get them taking advantage of the new internet, online communities, etc. Could be compared to an artists residency program.

The Internet Creating Real World Interactions
No longer is it just about interacting with people online. Rather, it is about taking that experience offline and into the real world. Such examples include Meetup, Un-conferences, Co-working, Streetmining, Photowalking, 1000 Journals, and more. Learn how this could work for you and your business and why it is important.

The Future of Learning
Not about why we have to bring blogs, wikis and the internet into the classroom. Rather about how teachers and students can use them to collaborate, connect, and be educated. Take a look at re-structuring the classroom, sustainable education, the design of educational space and more.

I have received several responses on these ideas, one from Twitter, one on this blog, and one on the panel picker website.

“The second one particularly interests me. I’m impressed by your ideas.”
-Carolyn Foote

“Appreciate your 2nd SXSW 08 panel submission. Lots of potential there!”
-Christian Long

“Wow, sounds interesting! If you’re interested in a panel member, let me know!”
-Jake McKee

Thanks for reading and for your support. Feel free to leave comments and get in touch with me. Thanks again.

I just finished working on my new website.
There is a screenshot below. It’s made using Indexhibit.
You can visit it at www.ethanbodnar.com

Back in the day when I first got word that the great folks behind Purevolume were coming out with a social network I got excited. Well, Virb finally came out and I never really got involved that much in it. I use it to discover some great musicians and band, but other than that, I don’t use it that much. Facebook is where all of my friends are at, even the bloggers who appear in my feed reader every day are on Facebook now. But, I recently went back and logged into my account at Virb and started fooling around. This is what I found and what I would like to see in the future.

The way I see it Virb is a different kind of social network. It is one for people who like to make things look good and use things that look good. For the artists who like a good looking social network. I saw somewhere someone call it the “designers version of Myspace. Just because all of my friends aren’t on Virb doesn’t mean that there is no value for me. I can use it to connect with artists, musicians, bloggers, and more.

So far, Virb has gotten some things right. They allow you to integrate Flickr, added widescreen video, made easy to track what music you are listening to with VirbTunes, and more. Furthermore, the way the allow you to customize your profile is very well done along with the ability to turn customization off. Some people have done a really nice job customizing their profiles.

But I do have some suggestion for it and from what I have heard the Virb team is busy working on improving Virb as we talk. Here is what I would like to see at Virb in the coming months.

-More integration from other web applications and communities like they did with Flickr.
-It takes too many clicks to view your friends profile.
-Some beautiful custom CSS themes for those non programmers among us.
-That Google advertisement at the bottom is huge. I am guessing they just put that there temporarily until they figured out their advertising strategy, at least I hope so. I think that they have a huge opportunity to develop there own non-intrusive advertising platform. They could allow ads to be targeted based on profile information.
-The Virb Blog is a little lacking. I think they could blog a lot more. But maybe that’s just me.
-They still have yet to add the “Virb is…” section. When they do this it could be huge. Allowing the users to find content and other people through this could be great.
-Since a lot of people on Virb are of the creative type, I think they could add a feature for Projects where people could highlight what they are working on in the profile and in the “Virb is…”section. This way others could offer feedback and people could share their projects.

That is all I have to say. I see an awesome future for Virb!

Check out my Virb profile here. (still being worked on)
Check out the blog by the company who makes Virb called The Big Noob.
Check out what other people are saying at Joshua Blankenship’s blog where he asks for feedback on Virb.

There has been a lot of talk about Twitter versus Pownce. So I thought I would present my take on the whole thing. I am not going to give you a review of each and tell you which one is better. Instead, I thought I would use this opportunity to have a conversation about where this is all going and what it means for the future of social media, blogging, and online communications.

I think we are going to see a lot more people starting to streaming their lives. This is made up of two concepts.

Online Activity:
Allow people to create a stream of all of their online activities by using the RSS feeds from web applications.

Offline Activity:
Have people post updates on what is going on in their lifes. This can mostly be compared to Pownce and Twitter.

We need a solution that would accommodate this concept, allow us to have a network of friends, and create/view content in multiple ways. I think that Twitter should re-design their site, keep their simplicity, and add the concept of an online activity stream.

I think that we are going to see people move away from blogging toward a model like this. No, I don’t think blogs will start disappearing, the people that have a good audience and those who write longer posts will be sure to continue. But the average blogger will start streaming their life and writing short posts. They will focus more on the conversation. They will share ideas in small form factors. They will create concrete networks of people around them based on what everybody is doing online and off.

(I am aware that there is already services out there that do some of this stuff. But it hasn’t been perfected and there are problems with them)

For now here is my story of how I came to be on Twitter and Pownce…

About a month ago I decided it was about time to sign up for Twitter, the ever so popular service that allow people to share updates of their life with people. In the past week I really started getting into it and found many people whose blogs I read, who I have collaborated with, or met at conferences already on Twitter.

Then along came Pownce. I got an invite and tried the service out. The main difference between Twitter is that Pownce adds file/event sharing and is a better design. Though design is not the main thing people care about in this case, for a service like this it is all about functionality.

So, I have set up accounts at both places but for the most part I will only update Twitter. I have already found a good amount of people who I want to follow on Twitter and don’t feel like finding them again. If I want to share files with my friends I will just use a file sharing web application. Twitter is simple and doesn’t make it complicated. Twitter has an API and from that has come some wonderful apps that were made by the community. And lastly, Twitter has mobile updates which seals the deal. Twitter is for me.

Check out coverage from some other people…

Brian Benzinger at Solution Watch gives his impressions of Pownce.
Nik Cubrilovic writes about the importance of Twitter’s API.
Glenn Wolsey gives a good overview of what Pownce is all about.

Check me out and add me on Twitter and Pownce.
I have several invites left for Pownce. Leave me an email if you would like them.

This is the first conference that Carsons systems have advertised for. Some of it was done through bartering and deals with blogs and publishers. The main thing that Ryan said was to measure your goals and campaigns because it is worth it. People started making comments on what they had done to advertise the conference and Ryan said that he didn’t want to make this feel like the audience had to help him. They had placed an ad in a magazine which had three things wrong with it. The colors were not well matched at all, there was no call to action, and the word “conference” was not in the ad at all.

(This presentation was done because a speaker was unable to make it)

Jay Adelson, the CEO of Digg and Revision3, gave a nice presentation at the conference. He said that it is time for the return of old time sponsorships. By this he means having advertisers sponsor online video shows and have product placement. Thus allowing the videos to be distributed across platforms such as Apple TV, iPods, and more.

What I think we need, is to first set the standards for this and then develop an online marketplace and network where adertisers, distributors, content owners can come and make deals, get sponsorships, and communicate easily.

Talked to Ted Murphy who is the CEO of PayPerPost. What his company does is pair up advertisers to bloggers. The bloggers are paid to blog about what the advertisers product is. It has been a very controversial service. I, myself don’t quite fully approve of it, but think it is an interesting model and ackowledge the fact that bloggers want to make money.

Henry Copeland of Blogads had this to say…

“I am kind of sad about PayPerPost.”

We talked to Darren Rowse who is the man behind ProBlogger. Here you can find all sorts of information on blogging, methods, techniques, and most of all how to make money from blogging. He is part of b5media and gave AJ and I some sweet t-shirts for the blog network. It was great to meet him and I look forward to his talk tomorow

I met AJ today when I overheard him talking to Nick (next post) about the Facebook Platform. His brother and his family are the people behind Wine Library and they just acquired Cork’d, which is a social network for wine. He is also the guy behind WiiTube, which is a social network for the Nintendo Wii (which is, as you know a wonderful gaming system). Here they feature videos and information about the games and much more. The network is rapidly growing and they are launching some new stuff next week. Be sure to check out his blog where he has lots of coverage of FOOA.

Jim Coudal gave, what was, my personal favorite talk of the day. Basically, because what he said was not what everybody else had been saying for the whole day. He said the opposite. Jim runs The Deck, which is a design and web development targeted ad network. There are some unique features about the network that I really appreciate and enjoy. First, as Ryan Carson put it, it is a low fi, high volume network. The main concept behind it all is simplicity.

This is how The Deck works. There are around 16 sites that are part of the network. Each site features one small square ad with a small amount of text under it. That is the only ad on the whole page. Then they get around 16 advertisers to run ads on the deck. The only option they have for the most part, is a cost per influence with equally split up views across the network.

I talked to him for a minute right before he went on and the for a minute after his talk. I also gave him my Swap Meat submission. This is a program they are running where people send in items they have made for personal reasons and they are swapped with other items.

He was a nice guy and it was good to finally meet him after following Coudal Partners for so long.

I will be at the Future of Online Advertising Conference on Thursday and Friday hosted by the wonderful Carson Systems in the lovely New York City.

I will try to write a post Thursday night and will have one up on Saturday for sure. Also, follow my Twitter for information on what is happening.
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Alright, I can’t wait to tell you all about.

When I got the email from TED, I watched the video, loved the idea and sent off an email to my Biology and Environmental Science teacher. When this comes out it will be a great tool for teachers.

“Comprehensive, collaborative, ever-growing, and personalized, the Encyclopedia of Life is an ecosystem of websites that makes all key information about life on Earth accessible to anyone, anywhere in the world. Our goal is to create a constantly evolving encyclopedia that lives on the Internet, with contributions from scientists and amateurs alike. To transform the science of biology, and inspire a new generation of scientists, by aggregating all known data about every living species. And ultimately, to increase our collective understanding of life on Earth, and safeguard the richest possible spectrum of biodiversity.”

I am going to continue with somewhat of the same theme that I did for the Newspapers post, only this time with Magazines. And next I am going to write about the future of the news stand. Feel free to Subscribe to my blog.

(This is partially a response to Devin Poolman’s (8020 Publishing) comment)

The main idea here is that magazines should start allowing their readers to participate and have content in the magazine. It is obvious that Time or Sports Illustrated will not become fully written by “the people”, but they can allow people to submit content online and then mix it in with the their current content.

Magazines are wonderful. I subscribe to currently only two magazines: Wired and Time. And its always great to go get the mail and have the magazine sitting there waiting for you to read it.

This is how I started thinking about the future of magazines…

This past summer I discovered Threadless. The online weekly shirt design competition that allows the people to design and choose which t-shirts are printed. This got me thinking about participation in many places such as music, design, television and of course magazines and newspapers. Here was my plan for a magazine that had people participating in the process…

-Create a “creative” magazine with design, photos, illustration, etc.
-Make a website where people could submit and vote on content
-Highest ranking content would make it in the magazine.
-Distribute as a PDF (this was before pdf magazines became big)
-Have a different designer layout and design it each month, costing us nothing to design it.
-Make profits from no intrusive advertising in the magazine and on the website. (based on the same principles that The Deck by Coudal Partners is based on)
-Partner with website for content (Flickr Interesting Photos, Digg Top Sites, Etc.)

-Eventually create new magazines based on certain subject and maybe even print them.
-Allow people to create their own custom magazine with content from the entire line of magazines on different subjects.

So that was the plan, until I realized that I still had to go to school and that I would have no time to do this business. Those were my ideas from back in the summer of 2006.

Then I found 8020 Publishing’s website where they hinted at a magazine like the one I was thinking about. It was exciting to see that they were actually doing this.

Months later I received my first copy of JPG Magazine and was very impressed. The quality of the magazine was great. They are continuing to work on this type of magazine and will be having more titles soon. Magazines should really pay attention to what they are doing and learn from them.

Also, check out Good Magazine The cost of your subscription is sent to a charity of your choice.

Thanks for reading.
Next Post: The Future of the News Stand
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Jason just sent me my Golden Ticket to try out Highrise. Its a great product that they will be launching soon. Look below to see what its all about and to see some screenshots.

I have been thinking about the way organizations can use the internet to spread their stories and get people to help with their missions. I have been recording my thoughts for the past several months and figured that it was about time to share them with you.

Participation and Online Communities
Organizations need to give the people that visit their website ways to participate and communicate with each other. This can be done through forums, wikis, and blogging. By giving people the power to do this people cancommunicate with other people that have the same interests. It also allows for new ideas to be shared with the community.

Creative Expression of Ideas
The internet is wonderful in that it allows anybody to share what they have created with anybody else in the area. Organizations can benefit from this by having people design t-shirts, make art, take pictures, make videos, record music, write prayers and anything else imaginable. These creation will be based around the theme of the organizations purpose and mission.

Spreading the Word
All organizations want to get their message out their and have people here their stories. Organizations can do this through email newsletters, tell a friend buttons, banner and buttons for people to put on the websites, social recommendation service buttons (digg us, add to delicious, ect.), ecards, downloadable desktop wallpapers, and more. Another avenue that can be used is txt messaging marketing campaigns. Give people video clips or audiosnippets to add to the end of their personal videos and podcasts that they upload to YouTube and other sites.

Contribute
Many organizations goal is to aquire financial contributions. I think that organizations should tell their stories and get the word out there. Allow people to express themselves creatively and participate in online communities, then politly ask for money. Maybe give them something for their contribution such as a self published book.

Make sure that you embrace online communities that have already been formed such as Facebook, Myspace, YouTube, and many other sites.

Other ideas that have have thought include the following.

-Starting a blog network based around you organization’s mission and purpose.
-Start an online ad network (such as The Deck) and have the profits go towards your mission/purpose.
-Start a job board for jobs that

I hope that I dont need to tell you to blog. Having a blog for you organization allows you to chare your ideas and stories with anyone. Furthermore, tell stories and have a strong prescence offline as well. I wish you and your organization the best of luck.

Ebay sent my dad a very nice holiday card thanking him for using ebay. I thought it was very nice of them to send an actual card in the mail. Check out pictures of the card.