Posts Tagged ‘flickr’

Posted on September 18, 2010 - by Wayne Sutton

iPhone 4 photos from SPARKcon Day 1 & 2: ideaSPARK + fashionSPARK

From SPARKcon.com

SPARKcon celebrates creativity in the NC Triangle.For 4 days, Raleigh’s Fayetteville St, public spaces, clubs and stages will be filled with art, music, dance, film, fashion, design and more. SPARKcon showcases local cultural richness through an open-source approach to collaboration and cross pollination. It’s completely grass-roots and by the people for the people!
SPARKcon is a program of Visual Art Exchange.

Thursday, kicked off SPARKcon with ideaSPARK and last night I attended fashionSPARK, here are a few photos from both events taken with my iPhone 4. Some photos were edited with TiltShiftGen iPhone app.

Attending SPARKcon, be sure to download their iPhone & Android Apps:

Complete Gallery

Posted on September 11, 2010 - by Wayne Sutton

Photo Gallery: Heroes, Villains and Special Effects from the Museum of Life and Science

Today at the Museum of Life and Science in Durham, NC they held an exhibit focused on the science behind entertainment in the fields of special effects, make-up artistry, video game design, comic book art, and staged combat. My friend/partner and founder of TriOut Lawrence Ingraham had a booth setup for his iPhone and iPad kid application gaming business called Tantrum Apps. I stopped by the museum to show my support and got a chance to meet Dave L. @sonofalink and @TeddHuff as well as a chance to see a lot of awesome “Heroes, Villains and Special Effects”.

Here’s a list of the exhibit participates:

Dean Jones
Emmy Award-winning special effects make-up artist and director will be on-hand displaying his masks and making up models. His impressive credentials include Pirates of the Caribbean, Day of the Dead, Star Trek and more!

David McClutchey
Local actor, stunt coordinator, and fight choreographer demonstrating stunts
with a sparring partner.

Gary Destefano
Accomplished artist, science fiction diorama and model maker presenting his superhero and
pop culture work.

Star Wars characters
The Carolina 501st Garrison, a volunteer international Star Wars costuming organization which makes appearances to raise funds for the Make-A-Wish Foundation, will roam throughout the Museum grounds.

Stuntman Science
Test our mini stunt men and woman as they crash cars and jump off buildings. What can you do to keep them safe? Come to The Lab on the second floor 10:30-12:30 and 1:30-3:30 on Saturday.
GAMING COMPANIES
Redstorm Entertainment, Inc. division of Ubisoft Entertainment will demonstrate how game companies take ideas and translate them into features through animation and prototyping. The studio will show off early, playable prototypes of past projects and show how concept art helps to bridge the gap between the ideas and the final game.
Epic Games Inc. Established in 1991, Epic Games develops cutting-edge games and cross-platform game engine technology. The company has created multiple million-selling, award-winning titles in its Unreal series, including Unreal Tournament 3 for PC, PLAYSTATION®3 and Xbox 360®. Epic’s Unreal Engine 3 has also been recognized as the number one game engine by Develop magazine.

Virtual Heroes, a Durham based company will demonstrate and discuss the design and creation of its Moonbase Alpha game, an exciting new, free online video game designed to show how NASA content could be combined with a cutting-edge game engine to produce an experience that inspires interest in science, technology, engineering and math.

Republic of Fun (SATURDAY ONLY) has created a proprietary technology and process for using crowd-sourcing as a way to produce and develop games for iPhone, WiiWare, Xbox LIVE Arcade, the PlayStation Network and now iPad. By focusing on community, RoF gives gamers a chance to be involved in the development process, producing games that they really want.

Tantrum Apps Fun, simple games to play with your children, and great distractions to avoid a meltdown. Each game is designed by parents, for parents, featuring high quality images and sounds along with bright vibrant colors. Educational and entertaining, Tantrum Apps iPhone games are great for kids of all ages.

Walking around with my trusty iPhone 4 I took a few photos. Below are a some of my favorites along with an embed flickr gallery.

The exhibit is open tomorrow and if you have the opportunity I recommend you stopping by.

Posted on June 22, 2010 - by Wayne Sutton

Can the Biltmore Estate use social media to enhance their offline experience? Photos and recap from the blogger outreach trip.

Last week I had the opportunity to be one the invited guest to the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, NC for their Biltmore blogger outreach and social media event. I was joined by my wife @LaToyamsutton along with about 8 other bloggers and their families. The event was organized by Biltmore’s Corporate Communications Manager, Jean Sexton @injeanius and some of the other bloggers who attended were @RealLifeSarah @IlinaP @StacieinAtlanta @pensieverobin @JenniferPerillo @mantripping @ManTripping @connerty. It was great to meet everyone and catch up with a few who I’ve known already.

Jean Sexton @injeanius

The goal of the blogger outreach was to increase exposure to new audiences through the use of social media and build relationships with those invited as the Biltmore estate looks as using new tools and online technology to increase visitation and over all sales. During our visit we had a full schedule and had the opportunity to stay in the Inn on Biltmore hotel that was open in 2001. Outside of the Biltmore House tour itself some of the other scheduled plans for the bloggers were:
Blogger group dinner at Cedric’s (one of their newly open restaurants)
Biltmore House (audio tour) & Gardens
Biltmore House “Friends & Family” Specialty Tour w/Museum Services
Biltmore House Rooftop Specialty Tour for spouse/family members
Dinner at the Bistro restaurant
Land Rover Driving Experience Adventure
Lunch at the Corner Kitchen in Biltmore Village

The overall experience at the Biltmore Estate was wonderful, full of learning, history, walking, relaxation and lots of great food, especially the desserts. I learned a lot about George Vanderbilt who is the mastermind behind the famous Biltmore House, along with his vision for the house as a get away from the fast city life and how the Biltmore Estate continues to be a thriving business today. I won’t go into too much detail as I encourage you to plan a trip to Biltmore Estate if you have the opportunity. Tip, if you visit the house make sure you go on the audio tour as you’ll learn a lot more.

After one of the dinners, I had a chance to talk with Kathleen Mosher, Director of Communications of the Biltmore Estate about how they could use social media with their existing marketing efforts. We discussed the some of the challenges and opportunities the Biltmore has, as the world continues to move to become more digital/gadget friendly but yet socially connected online. Here are some of the “nuggets” from the conversation.

Some of the Challenges and Opportunities of the Biltmore House using social media/new technology for marketing:

• The Biltmore House goal is to get people to drive and visit the Biltmore house along with promote and sell their other services.
• You can not take pictures or videos inside the house
• Connect and build a relationship with the hundreds of visitors they have each day
• Find a way to tell more about the history and experience of the Biltmore House online without feeling as though you could lose sales.
• Training hundreds of employees if you implement more digital interactions and tools
• Measuring/tracking content from visitors online
• Implementing an offline social marketing plan to build a relationship with visitors online for pre and post engagement
• Find a way to connect with visitors while they’re on the property such as twitter followers and/or Facebook fans/likes, flickr friends, etc
• Encourage more user generated content and feature it on Biltmore more online properties
• Create self guided mobile tours via mobile applications and/or QR/Bar-codes

After leaving the Biltmore Estate, we had the opportunity to meet Sherida Buchanan @Foodtopia at the Corner Kitchen @CornerKitchen for lunch. During lunch we were treated to some of the best pork chops and chocolate I’ve ever tasted and learned about the http://www.brewscruise.com/in Asheville (#idontdrink). We were also told about how awesome Asheville is and how they support one another by purchasing food from local vendors.

Regardless of what happens next or the results from the Biltmore blogger outreach I believe they’re on the right track and I’m excited to see what they do next online and offline. To Jean, the entire staff from the communications department to the tour guides, thank you for an awesome experience.

FYI I took over 100 photos during the three day venture and you can see them below via flickr.

The Biltmore Company
828-225-6709
www.biltmore.com
www.facebook.com/biltmore
www.twitter.com/BiltmoreEstate
The Biltmore House on TriOut

*Disclosure: “Biltmore invited me as their guest. My travel, admission and other expenses will be covered.”

How would you like to see the Biltmore Estate use social media?

Posted on September 7, 2009 - by Wayne Sutton

Caption contest! What was I thinking?

This photo was taken at Social Fresh, a social media conference organized by Jason Keath in Charlotte, NC. Andy Ciordia snapped the photo but I can’t remember what I was thinking at the time.

Leave a comment starting with “Wayne was thinking” and the best comment will win a prize. Maybe an iTunes gift card or something nice.

*Any offending comments will be removed but let’s have some fun.

Thanks and Happy Labor day.

Update: Caption contest ends at 11:00 P.M. tonight

Update 2: Eric you can only have one more submission

Posted on June 6, 2009 - by Wayne Sutton

Friday Fix: Using Charts to explain Social Media via flickr search

To some Social Media is easy to explain and you “get it”; to some if you hear the words “social media” one more time you’re going to explode but for others not only don’t you get it or see why the world is a buzz about social media but you may even need a chart or graph to understand social media, how it works and what sites are social media/networking sites.  If that’s you just do a quick search for social media on flickr and you’ll find a few charts that may help you out.  Here’s three that may be useful to you.

Uploaded on June 9, 2008 - by fredcavazza

Uploaded on June 9, 2008 - by fredcavazza

Uploaded on October 26, 2008 by Gary Hayes

Click on each image to see a larger version.