I think social media is amazing for many reasons, at the top of the list is the ability to turn online connections into real life relationships. I’ve experienced this many times, from tweetups to business meetings, and I marvel at how far we have come with technology over the last decade. Recently I wrote a post asking if there was a photographer in the San Francisco area that would be available to join me for an afternoon at Alcatraz Island with my kids, and advertised it only via my blog, Facebook and Twitter. I wasn’t sure what kind of a response I would get, and was surprised that I actually received over a dozen serious inquiries! Photographers from the very new to the very experienced got in touch with me, and all of them sounded great. I ended up picking Matthias Giezendanner from Matthias Photography, he sounded like he would really fit in well with me and the four kids, the pictures on his site looked great, and his bio really made the decision for me.

I’m looking for a photographer that is in San Francisco (or close enough that they could easily get here) for a shoot lasting most of Saturday, September 5th.  I think the ideal photog would be somebody that has a little history with taking pictures of people and places, but hasn’t broken through to the big time yet.  The project will be taking pictures of me and my kids for most of the day, and in return I’m going to promote the heck out of you.  Here is the deal:

The Gig

On Saturday, September 5th I’m going to be hitting some cool points of interest in San Francisco with my four kids.  I would really like to capture it all with pictures, but I’m getting tired of lunking my own camera around everywhere, and frankly it’s a little challenging to get in any of the pictures with them.  We’re going to be going to Alcatraz Island around noon, and after all of that we’ll go for a quick hike/exploration in The Presidio, ending up at an old gun battery pretty near the base of the Golden Gate Bridge.  I’m not really wanting posed photos (although a few would be nice), but rather would have candid shots of the experience…me and my kids, them doing things that kids do…the good and craziness of life with four kids in San Francisco.  The total time commitment for this would be from 11am to about 6pm (maybe a little earlier).

In just an hour or so I’m going to hope in my batmobile and head north to the land of geeks.  That’s right, I’m going to San Francisco.

I’m going to be attending The Start Conference tomorrow, and I’m pretty excited to be a part of it. The conference is billed this way:Quit your day job.

"Start is a one-day conference in San Francisco designed for smart, talented Web people to take hold of their ideas, follow their dreams, and start their own companies."

I’m not going there to learn how to start my own company (I’ve already done that a couple of times, the school of hard knocks has been good and bad to me), but I’m going there to hear and learn from some pretty savvy folks so I can help build other people’s companies and projects into things of spectacular success!  The conference speakers include people from Flickr, Twitter, Wordpress, 43 Folders, TypePad and other amazing companies.  It almost sounds like too much info for one day…but I’ll do my best to take it all in.

A couple of notes about my travels over the next week.  First, I am not taking a laptop.  I plan on doing all communications, including blogging, from my iPhone.  Yes, I’m throwing the gauntlet down.  We’ll see if I love this thing after a week, or if I want to stab myself in the eye with a shrimp fork.  Second, and somewhat related to the first, this will be my first all-Moleskine conference.  I’m looking forward to putting pen to paper again, it’s been a while.  Third, I will be Tweeting with the hashtag #start08 unless the conference folks declare an "official" hashtag, which would be cool.  Sidenote: if you are putting together a conference or large get together of some type this year, you should declare and official hashtag so the tweeps can embrace it and have some uniformity.  You’re welcome for the idea.

That’s all folks…see you in San Francisco!  Oh, if you are going to be there, DM me on Twitter, username is @mattsingley