Screen grab of Boston Sport's Then and Now blog, which is managed by Blogapalooza organizer Joe Gill

Successful sports blogger Joe Gill can add successful blogging event promoter to his CV. Joe put on his second Boston Sports Blogapalooza at the Baseball Tavern in the Fenway yesterday. Billed as a networking opportunity for Boston’s sports blogger community, the event brought together the legacy media like Comcast Sports Net (CSNNE.com) and the foot soldiers of the new media with over one hundred bloggers in attendance. The bar definitely helped to loosen up the crowd for some enthusiastic participation in the networking sessions, panel discussions, swag raffles, and live entertainment.

Pixelwiremedia got involved with Joe’s event through our involvement with Kevin Youkilis’ Hits for Kids charity. Kevin’s charity was a beneficiary of the event and charity staffer Casey Mosca sat on the social media panel. Naturally, we’d want to get that covered, so I was glad when Joe approached me about attending.

Joe is high energy. He is almost as enthusiastic about the possibilities of the new media as he is passionate about the past present and future of Boston’s sports. When he combines the two he creates a lot of buzz. I’m going to let the movie or movies that we produce from the event speak for themselves, a big part of the edits will be the interview that I did with Joe. If you’re a fan of sports or social media, you’ll want to see and hear Joe do his thing.

In the mean time I just want to thank all of the great bloggers who took the time to do on camera  interviews for Pixelwiremedia. Boston is a great sports town, and these new media writers are truly adding insightful and unique perspectives to the conversations we Boston sports nuts are having on a daily basis. Thanks Boston Sports Bloggers!  – Jack

Photograph of Philip Bloom leading his DSLR workshop at Rule Camera taken from my front row seat.

There is no doubting that Philip Bloom has made himself a force in the DSLR world. Phil bills himself as a Director of Photograhpy, and his certainly is that, but he is also a leading advocate of the DSLR revolution currently changing the world of film making.

I first saw Phil’s work when searching for video that replicated the shallow depth of field look that we were using to photograph events. My editor found this movie, Piccadilly Furs, that Phil made using a 35mm lens adapter on a Sony video camera. We were blown away, and we’ve been fans of Phil ever since. So when Phil’s traveling workshop, Harnessing the Power of Your DSLR, came to Rule Camera, I made sure that I was in attendance. I’m glad that I did.

Piccadilly Furs was made right before the new HD video capable DSLRs hit the market. We knew that we wanted to recreate this look, but we were not fired up about having to invest in the clunky, finicky, expensive lens adapters, which made that look possible. Fortunately, at about the same time we were pricing adapter gear, Canon announced the first HD video DSLR camera. Great news for me, devastating new for folks selling lens adapters. Anyway, I bought one of the first Canon DSLR’s to come off the production line, and began making “digital films” with it the next day.

Phil was also an early adopter of the new cameras and new way of film making. He did a masterful job of positioning himself as the leading expert in the field through his very successful blog and training programs. Much of Phil’s success has to be due to his infectious creativity and enthusiasm for film making. Maybe it’s the English accent, but he shares his vast technical ability in a fun and reassuring manner. He delivers real value that makes  you want to follow him. Read the rest of this entry »

Pixelwiremedia.com coming soon temporary homepage.

I’ve setup my share of Wordpress blogs. A couple were for myself, but mostly they’ve been for clients. Wordpress is great for blogging, especially for rookies. It’s free, easy to setup, a snap to use, has lots of powerful features, and is well supported by a large user community.

If you’ve ever setup a Wordpress blog, then you know that the software generates a first post, which is always titled “Hello World!” I typically delete that post in favor Read the rest of this entry »