Photos and Favorite Moments from Gnomedex 2008

Watch carefully, for it is a well known fact that Chris Pirillo may at any moment place a random shoe upon his head. If you are not careful it may even be your own. The real trick to Gnomedex‘s success is not in Chris’s ability to disarm an audience with a shoe but in his ability to gather speakers that topically open doors to innovation and imagination. The cherry on the cake is that Gnomedex always manages to have the best spread in terms of food of any conference because the Pirillos know that you have to feed your audience well to maintain their creative energy.

Here is my list of favorite moments and photos from this year:

Our Hosts:


Ponzi Pirillo, co-host, and Maryam Scoble, Speaker Coordinator, without whom Gnomedex could never have been organized. Photo courtesy of Kris Krüg.

Because doesn’t it look like this man can organize?:

Chris Pirillo, co-host, with aforementioned random shoe. Photo courtesy of Kris Krüg

The Sessions:

Scott Maxwell, Mars Rover Driver Team Lead at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, stole the show with the only standing ovation this year. It is just hard to compete with the coolness of JPL in a room full of geeks. Plus Scott’s tone was pitch perfect. Photo courtesy of Kris Krüg.

Ben Huh, Head Tinkerer, ICanHasCheezburger.com was characteristically funny and had the best in session quote: When asked by Scott Maxwell when he could have his photo finally up on ICHC, Ben replied that there was a “light year delay”. Photo courtesy of Randy Stewart.

Mark Bao, 16 year old wonderkind and President/CEO of Avecora, and Francine Hardaway, ageless wonderkind and blogger, had a great communication between generations. Photo courtesy of Derek Miller.

Amanda Koster, photographer and founder of Salaam Garage, gave the best interview of the speakers I got to talk to at Gnomedex and one of the most human presentations. Photo courtesy of Josh Hallett.

Nathan Wade, University of Washington Undergrad within DXArts department, described his Serial Cyborg project. While Nathan’s presentation was in many ways the polar opposite of Amanda’s (someone in the audience during the Q&A asked him not to take any jobs offered to him by Skynet) he still provided a fascinating artistic viewpoint. Marcel Duchamp would have been proud. Photo courtesy of Kris Krüg.

No conference is interesting without a little bit of controversy which Sarah Lacy, author, doing her best to stir it up by not learning from SWSX. Photo courtesy of Shashi Bellamkonda.

Perhaps she didn’t want the man on the name tag to get all the credit:

Sarah Lacy. Photo courtesy of Lee LeFever.

But just so we don’t take ourselves too seriously it is good that #1 of The Order of the Fez invaded Gnomedex. Photo courtesy of Kris Krüg.

The Personalities:

Derek and Air Miller, content creators extraordinaire. Photo by Tanya Davis. Photo courtesy of Derek Miller.

Brian Solis, photographer and editor-in-chief of bub.blicio.us, and Jeremy Wright, CEO, B5 Media. Photo courtesy of Brian Solis.

Robert Scoble, evangelist of Longhorns and other things, and Eric Rice, new media producer and virtual worlds guide (Wayne Porter probably has drinks with his avatar). Photo courtesy of Brian Solis.

Chris Brogan, VP Strategy & Technology, CrossTech Media, who foolishly allowed me to hijack him on multiple tours through the city. Photo courtesy of Lee LeFever.

The Sunset:

Brian Solis captures the beauty of Seattle summers.

Special thanks to Sean Bohan, VP Strategy & Production at Athletes’ Performance, and Britt Raybould for enduring the search for dinner; AND to Nathan Thompson and Steve Spalding of Grooveshark.com for bearing witness to the guy with the Katana; no one would believe me otherwise.

Have a photostream or photo you want to highlight from Gnomedex ’08, please add them to the comments.

About Angel Djambazov

Born in Bulgaria, Angel Djambazov has spent his professional career in the fields of journalism and online marketing. In his journalistic career he worked as an editor on several newspapers and was the founding Editor-in-Chief of Wyoming Homes and Living Magazine. Later his career path led to online marketing where while working at OnlineShoes he earned the Affiliate Manager of the Year (2006) award at the Affiliate Summit, and In-house Manager of the Year (2006) award by ABestWeb.

For four years Angel served as OPM for Jones Soda for which he won his second Affiliate Manger of the Year (2009) award at Affiliate Summit.

Currently Angel serves as OPM for KEEN Footwear and MedicalRecords.com. His former clients include: Dell, Real Networks, Jones Soda, Intelius, Graphicly, Chrome Bags, Onlineshoes.com, Vitamin Angels, The Safecig, and Bag Borrow or Steal.

Angel is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Publisher for ReveNews.com and ReveNews.org.

Angel lives north of Seattle, spending his free time reading up on obscure scientific references made by his wife MGX, while keeping up with a horde of cats and a library of books.

You can find Angel on Twitter @djambazov.

Website: http://revenews.com