"I've never shot with film" That statement caused the salesclerk at B&H Photo in Manhattan to almost fall out of his chair. Especially since I had a Nikon D3 slung across my shoulder.

It's half-true though. I remember using a few film cameras growing up, but nothing significant. When I became serious about taking photos I purchased my D80. From there I went to the D300, then the D3...obviously the logical next step was a used Nikon F4 from the late 80's.

Why? Well as bad as this sounds, I wanted to see what it was like in the old days. I also played a bit with Derek Miller's F4 at Gnomedex and was intrigued.

I purchased the camera and a few rolls of black & white film and set off to the streets of New York to learn. The Nikon F4 features dials for every setting (ISO, Aperture, Shutterspeed, etc) there are no LCD screens. The camera is build like a rock and heavy, but that's good in my book.

I wanted to see if shooting on film would make me a better photographer. Of course there is no preview or LCD to review your photo. There is also no cropping on processing you can do in Lightroom. What you shoot is what you get.

Suddenly I found myself thinking much more about composition and the settings. To cheat a bit I would shoot something with my digital camera and look at the final settings, then attempt to dial in something similar on the F4. But once again with no way to look at the photos I didn't know if any of them were turning out.

The F4 has the same lens mount as the D3, so I am able to use all my lenses. I primarily shot with the 50mm f/1.4 but did shoot a soccer game with my 70-200mm f/2.8. The F4s has the extra battery grip mounted and the speed at which I was able to shoot was just fine.

Over the next few weeks I shot two rolls of 36-exposure black & white film. With the instant gratification of the LCD preview gone I constantly wondered if I had gotten the shots I wanted. Now it was time to develop the film, which was an adventure in itself.

In my neck of the woods there are very few film labs left. Calling around to a few friends one suggested Sam's Club or Costco since they still developed film on-site. Heading to Sam's I was told they don't process black & white film on site, it's sent to Tennessee and has a turnaround of 3-4 weeks. Ouch.

Luckily there is a great camera store in Orlando called Colonial Film & Hobby which has a lab on site and can develop black & white film. I had the rolls developed and the negatives scanned to CD.

Looking over the photos I was actually quite surprised that I was able to get some good shots. Yes the exposure was off a bit in some, but overall I liked what I shot. The black & white is a bit of a crutch since it will mask many of the off-tone color if I had shot normal film.

I've uploaded all the shots to a group and will continue to play with the film camera. The only bad thing is now I'm carrying a number of cameras with me.

"Does Design Matter?" That's the question I asked during my presentation with Matt Jones from Dopplr at the Sarasota International Design Summit this past Tuesday.

Before I was crucified by the audience, I quickly said it still does, but perhaps not as much.

Why? I threw out the concept last week, asking, "when so much of a brand's content is consumed via RSS, Facebook, Twitter...does design matter?"

Sure you can design a good looking blog, but if a large percentage of the readers use an RSS reader, does the design matter? Also, what is going to keep you coming back to a corporate blog? It's the content, not the design.

Many organizations are realizing the interactions they have with customers on sites like Twitter and Facebook are very rewarding, however you have very limited design flexibility on those sites. In the case of Twitter you can tweak some of the page settings, but your primary brand-design element is a 48 x 48 pixel avatar.

We recently dealt with a client that had a logo that didn't shrink well, that is when it was 48 x 48 you couldn't really tell what it was. It sounds funny, but things like that are now a design consideration. I remember a while back when a brand was always worried about how a color logo would transition to black & white for print purposes, now it's shrinkage :-)

In a post over on the Mplanet blog I touch on some of these same subjects. However one point I made was that perhaps in this new world of distributed content that small branding you can supply (even if it's 48 x 48) might help you stand out in the crowd. Those that are customers or evangelists can look for that 'official' seal.

As I said at the Design Summit, I don't have the easy answer. But, it's an interesting issue that I think that every organization that engages in social media will have to deal with.

Cross-posted to VoceNation

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

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!

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

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.

Will you be going?

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.

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.

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.

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