DIY DAYS - PHILADELPHIA

On a steamy, hot Saturday in August I can think of a lot of places I'd rather be . . . floating in cool swimming pool or at the shore. And after spending the last week on the road shooting corporate pharma work in Boston the last place I thought I'd spend this Saturday, August 1st was in the warm, dark Chaplan theater at the University of the Arts attending DIY Days Philadelphia. And yet, here I am.

The day started off with a keynote from the energetic author, teacher, documentarian Douglas Rushkoff. Rushkoff's take on "How capitalism killed narrative and how to grow new ones" was an inspiring and witty way to wake up. Unfortunately the follow up talk I attended in the Black Box Theatre put me back to sleep. Maybe it was the hypnotic fireplace video played on a big screen in the back ground, though more likely it was the low drone of Lance Weiler and Chuck Wendig speaking softly into microphones that needed to have been kicked up a notch to be heard clearly in the back row. Bottom line, what was billed as "The Evolution of Storytelling" and specifically technology's impact on the art and craft of storytelling was more DIY-the Lance & Chuck show and storytelling as it applies to gaming and not enough concrete information about how one can develop stories that travel across screens and devices.

I caught the last couple minutes of Esther B. Robinson's (film producer and founder of ArtHome) talk about "Building a Creative Foundation" and was sorry to have missed it.

Next up . . . "What You Need to Know - Fair Use" which is all about the line between remix culture becoming more fuzzy and thus it's more difficult to consider what is Fair Use by Nina Paley (filmmaker "Sita Sings the Blues"). This is the "FREE SPEECH" part of the program . . . hello, Dad--are you listening? (FYI-my father was the photographer of the most iconic photographs of the Berkley Free Speech Movement).