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I had a great time at the Ion Conference last week.  What was different about this conference was that the organizers focused on the social aspect of doing business.  The speakers and sessions were good, but what stood out were the many networking opportunities integrated into the event. 

There was a half an hour space between each session.  All of the rooms were fairly close together and connected to each other by a lobby that was usually filled myriad of refreshments.  Food and drink and free time generally facilitates conversation.  That combination resulted in many conversations about the game industry, the entertainment business and otherwise with some very interesting and lovely people.    

That said, I’d like to give a shout-out to a few of the many folks I met:

• Daniel Ostenso from the Illinois Institute of Art
• Sabrina Gasson from Testronic Laboratories in the UK
• Shawn Foust, Associate at Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton, LLC in Century City, CA
• Greg Lester from Colliers Interantional in Bellevue, WA
• Tim Robinson from Krome Studios, Australia
• Radha Kotamarti, Microsoft
• Chris LeFeaver, a Canadian working for Amberlight in London
• Connie Gougler, Iovation in Portland, OR
• Nathan Emerson and Andrew Maxwell from Markee Dragon in Portland

See you guys next year, I hope! 

The animators now have their own cozy little abode downstairs in Suite D.  Today was Ryan and Jenna’s first day with us.  Our old friend Suzanne Kaufman (3D animator and instructor at Digipen) is also contributing to the CO2 in that little tiny room…  We’re happy to have them all here at Plexipixel!

Kristi and Matt created the animation, designed and developed the original Photosynth site a few years ago (it’s morphed a little since then).  Photosynth was developed in conjunction with University of Washington and Microsoft researchers and Seadragon technology. 

Photosynth technology was used in the “CSI:NY” episode last night with just a small amount of Hollywood magic.  It’s a pretty crazy application so it might have seemed like a bunch of hocus pocus, but nope…  It is actually that cool.  You can even download a demo of the application and try it out yourself.

Plexipixel is represented at CES for the second year in a row (last year we did a video to announce Real’s partnership with Tivo).  This year, we created a video using Lenny Kravitz’ new single “Bring It On” to show off the new portable GoGear and Philips’ Streamium home products that are Real/MTV Rhapsody enabled.  The video was shown at the Philips press event on Saturday (1/6/2008).  It’ll also be shown at Real’s booth during the show.

Check out the press on Engadget on both the announcement and the video:

1:16PM PT - Andrea is now talking about the company’s partnership with Rhapsody, and online music sales. Matt Rowlen from Rhapsody has taken the stage now. He’s touting the company’s wide coverage. Now they’re rolling a clip made with Lenny Kravitz. It’s pretty funky, also, someone is playing the electric guitar.

1:19PM PT - Rhapsody is now (or will be soon) available for Philips devices. Mind blowing. Now Andrea is back on talking about lifestyle and design.

(source Engadget–2008/01/06/, Live Coverage From the Philips Press Event)

Our Holiday Card was seen on the Frames Per Second Magazine blog between the entry for Apple’s Rankin-Bass inspired stop motion Holiday ad (directed by Drew Lightfoot) and the WALL-E trailer.  It also got a shout-out on Cold Hard Flash.  Not too shabby!

P.S. I also noticed that one of my favorite illustrators S. Britt is linking to our blog from his blog.  His work and his cat Edsel are so insanely cute.  *wowie*

Our own Matt Tamaru was featured on Cold Hard Flash today for his animation of the opening sequence for The New Ballard & Ballard Cartoon Hour. It’s great to know that this project, part of a collection of collaborative installations exhibited in 2005, is still getting attention!

Before Plexipixel, Matt and I met each other.  Where did we meet?  T’was the year 2000 at the Seattle Spring Scoot Scooter Rally.  Matt had a green and cream 1974 150 Super Vespa and I had a yellow 1974 150 Super Vespa.  The rest is history.

To commemorate the 2007 AmeriVespa National Scooter Rally, Matt has updated the scooter girl design he did in 2002 and has completed a new design for this year. 

The below are I-Phone wallpaper ready sizes of the t-shirt designs that will be sold at Amerivespa this weekend.  Toot Toot!

Check out the Cold Hard Flash article on our friend and confidant (shhhh!) Joel Trussell.  We told you that Matt worked on Cold Cut’s “This Island Earth”.  See!  We didn’t make it up. 

One of our first big clients and his work was written up in the recent (April 2007) issue of Wired.  Lenn Pryor and his team were responsible for Channel 9 which openned up the door for more transparency of Microsoft and the mysteries behind “the big walls”.   If you’re a fan of Major Nelson or Robert Scoble, you have Lenn Pryor to thank.

Lenn and the rest of the Microsoft Platform Evangelist team were a delight to work with–they were refreshingly creative, honest and down-right friendly.  It was an honor to have gotten to work with those guys. 

Cheers to their vision, passion and Channel 9!

Here is an article about Adobe’s free public beta version of its new Soundbooth software featuring Plexipixel’s own Matt Rodriguez.