Bryght - Community content hosting

Raincity Studios acquires Bryght

Wed, 21 Nov 2007 06:00:00 -0800

It's a Deal

We can finally take the wraps off something we have been cooking up for a while. Raincity Studios has acquired Bryght (press release)! The expanded company will operate under the Raincity Studios banner and the Bryght name will live on through the hosting products (i.e. Bryght Light Sites and Bryght Virtual Private Servers will continue). Raincity Studios will also continue Bryght's work in leading edge technology like Jabber / XMPP and OpenID. And of course, all Bryght guys are now Raincity guys!

Looking forward by looking a wee back

The Bryght Guys first met Robert Scales, Mark Yuasa and the Raincity Studios folks at a New Media BC "Building 21st Century websites" event way back in November 18, 2004 (here's photographic evidence). Amazing to think that was almost exactly three years ago.

Raincity Studios officemates at 1 Alexander run their first Thursday BBQ

Fri, 26 Oct 2007 11:58:48 -0700

Raincity Studios become our new officemates at the beginning of October. We said goodbye to NowPublic as they moved into larger offices to accomodate their growing team.

This past Thursday, the Raincity crew took charge of their first 1 Alexander Thursday BBQ (we have an open offer for anyone to come by the offices on Thursdays at 12:30pm to join the BBQ...no need to RSVP, just come on down to the office). Burgers, smoked turkey, smokies, some veggie platters, and lots of Dr. Pepper were consumed.

Raincity Studios are long time partners of Bryght. Their very first year of operation, they built over 30 separate websites using our Bryght Light mass hosting platform. They're now a full services design and development shop, and doing great work all over the world (Robert is off visiting China with Kris Krug as of today).

Welcome, RCS crew, and thanks for being such great officemates (heck, you're even podcasting for us). You can see some of the pictures of their new space in our office with photos tagged with Raincity Studios on Flickr.

Unwire your block one Meraki at a time

Fri, 14 Sep 2007 15:29:53 -0700

There's no need to wait for the mythical City of Vancouver WiFi. Build your own WiFi mesh today with a Meraki box imported by Mike West with some help from NetEquality. Bryght in combination with the folks at Outcome3, Nitobi, Donat Group Enterprises, Communicopia, Elastic Entertainment and more daily are "unwiring" our very large extended Gastown block (Alexander to Abbott-ish initially with the goal being everywhere in Gastown eventually) of tech friendly companies. This means that anywhere you are in the mesh you will be able to use WiFi.

Raincity Studios social media maven Dave Olson explains what this means:

QUOTE

When considering the usage patterns (home users at night, business user by day) there is certainly abundant redundant bandwidth available and yet no reliable way to just get online without trying a bunch of SSIDs, risking cleartext password, hacking through a backdoor or other scheme.

DrupalCamp LA 2007 and California Final Thoughts

Wed, 12 Sep 2007 00:25:11 -0700

DrupalCamp LA was wonderful thanks to the incredible organization of Crystal (and others who I am too lazy to name here) and to the participants. Here are some thoughts on DrupalCamp LA and this part of California in general:

People - loved meeting up with our close partners at WorkHabit (great to finally meet Earnest and Dominic) as well as meeting some new folks like Markus, Jen, Mike, Steve, the army from Achieve Internet (thanks for the drink and food on Saturday!) and many others
Drupal Install Profiles - not only do you want one, but if you are a consulting shop, you need one, watch for Boris's follow-on presentation at DrupalCon Barcelona
Deployment - as ably presented by Jonathan of WorkHabit and Mike - What happens if you have hundreds of sites and need to upgrade them? What do you do if you have a popular social media Drupal site with content being added continuously and users being added continuously and you want to upgrade it? Bryght and WorkHabit have been dealing with these issues since 2004, it's now hitting other big time firms in the Drupal ecosystem like Lullabot, Warner Brothers and Achieve Internet. DAST, AutoPilot, and Hostmaster 2 are the keywords to watch.
Theming - I enjoyed the beginning of Milind's Drupal theming presentation. I wish I had time to synthesize all the Drupal theming presentations I have seen into one Godzilla kick a*s one :-)
Venue - AOL Beverly Hills was spectacular. Great conference rooms, kitchen and lots of places to sleep, recharge and hold informal meetings and the bandwidth rocked. I uploaded many many photos at consistently at 100KB/second!
Cars - shiny, big and expensive (many many Mercedes and BMWs) seems to be the order of the day. I drove brother in law Andy's 2001 BMW 330 for 20 minutes; I am not into cars but if I was it would be BMWs - I'll stick to cheap, cheerful and economical Japanese cars like Hondas. The taxi driver of Armenian heritage who took me to meet my Mom was thankful to his Filipino doctor and when he heard I was of Filipino heritage and meeting my Mom, he drove very fast and very safe in his big American taxi.
Mirror World (à la Gibson's Pattern Recognition) - LA seems to be a subtly different mirror of those days in Vancouver when it's sunny: every street is big and wide unlike Vancouver, the sun shines perpetually unlike Vancouver which bizarrely had the same weather as LA but a few degrees cooler, there are freeways everywhere unlike Vancouver (which could have gone down that path but through hard work and accidents of history did not)
Food: My brother in law took good care of me: delicious Japanese organic food at Fukada in Irvine, great coffee at Abbot's Habit, great Mexican food, yummy retro Italian American at Andre's with my Mom who happened to be in town and my aunt, can't wait to go back to Glendale and eat some seriously delicious and inexpensive Filipino food
Capitalism: 15 million people with lots of entertainment money and geeks meant great shopping: Samy's rocks for photo stuff (bought a FireWire 800 Compact Flash Reader to replace my broken USB one) and I went to two Apple Stores and Fry's

NMBC PopVox Awards - Nominate your favourite new media today!

Tue, 21 Aug 2007 19:34:43 -0700

Got a favourite Web 2.0 application, mobile game, digital short, game, digital effects, music score, something that qualifies as the 'best of BC' new media or some other cool new media? Then nominate it today for the PopVox Awards (fine print: must have been released between September 2006 and August 2007; check out the full rules). Nominations are free and the winners are determined by online voting, i.e. vote for your favs from September 8th-17th after nominations close on September 7th.

The winners will be announced at the opening of the Vancouver International Digital Festival aka Vidfest on September 22nd. The PopVox Awards are organized by New Media BC, the organization behind Vidfest, and the website was a collaboration between Bryght and our friends at Raincity Studios (check out RCS's PopVox announcement) with Bryght providing some custom Drupal coding and some Drupal design as well as hosting on a Bryght Virtual Private Server.

email2 - Security through privacy

Fri, 17 Aug 2007 07:20:26 -0700

email2 is the tool for you if you are looking for a hosted, secure email solution that helps you to observe regulatory requirements such as Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA, etc. In addition, email2 also offers secure attachment management, private video messaging, and guaranteeable message tracking. And don't worry, it's fully compatible with regular email!

email2's public website, which is hosted on a Bryght Virtual Private Server on our Bryght Hosting Platform is a beautiful example of how Drupal can be a great system for more traditional static sites as well as community driven social sites.

Derek Houg, Patent & Technical Writer, of email2 says:

"The best thing about our site is the fact that our content can be quickly and easily entered into a unified theme. Users with absolutely no HTML and CSS experience can create necessary content that is compatible with our graphic layout. Using the Drupal themes feature, we were able to create a fantastic looking website and maintain it with minimal work.

PhotoWalk and PhotoCamp @ BarCamp Vancouver

Thu, 16 Aug 2007 14:38:55 -0700

This weekend is BarCamp Vancouver and I'll be heading up a PhotoWalk on Friday night and a PhotoCamp on Saturday.

Here's some shots from last years late night photowalk at BarCamp.

If you're interested in photography, cameras, or just want to take a walk around east Van with us... it would be great to see lots of you out there. Here's the details. Get in touch with me if you have any questions. :)

PhotoWalk
- signup on FaceBook
- meet at WorkSpace
- 11pm, Friday August 17th

PhotoCamp
- signup on the Wiki
- @ Workspace during BarCamp Vancouver
- TBD, Saturday August 18th

Creative Commons on the Lab with Leo

Tue, 07 Aug 2007 13:33:04 -0700

About a month ago I went on the Leo Laporte show to discuss Creative Commons. Below is the video (holy crap it's already been watched online 1,600+ times!) . Since then I've also recorded sessions on Bryght and Facebook Apps but they haven't aired yet. I'll post them here when they do. Tomorrow I'm going back on the show (twice) to talk about 1) Social Software and Online Communities and 2) Protecting Your Privacy Online.

Posting this is a couple weeks overdue but I'm trying to play catchup and get my digital houses in order before embarking on Bryght World Tour 2007.

Also (Mom) here's a couple pics of me on the Lab with Leo set.

Bryght World Tour 2007

Thu, 02 Aug 2007 12:22:57 -0700

This is a quick post to update customers, partners, collegues and friends of my upcoming travel schedule and the events that Bryght will be participating in over the next few months.

Gnomedex 7.0 - heading down to Seattle to see Chris and Ponzi and the rest of the uber-bloggypodvlogger digerati. Always one of my favorite events of the year. Seriously be ready to get your geek on.

Barcamp Vancouver - Vancouver's 2nd Barcamp. I'll be leading a PhotoCamp. 180+ people already registered. Hear me now, believe me later... don't miss out... this is a great grassroots technology and geek networking event.

Barcamp Beijing - the first ever Barcamp in Beijing. Scales and I are still pulling lots of details together but we have a date and a venue so the show *will* go on. :)

China Access 2008 - I will be presenting on Social Media and the Internet at this years China Access 2008 event for the creative services industries in Beijing.

Barcamp Shanghai 2007

Thu, 02 Aug 2007 12:12:31 -0700

Start: 2007/09/08 - 9:00am

Location: Shanghai, China

BarCamp is an ad-hoc un-conference born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos and interaction from attendees.

Barcamp Shanghai attendees are encouraged to give a demo, a session, a presentation, or help with one. All attendees are expected to be participants. All presentations are scheduled the day they happen. Prepare in advance, but come early to get a slot on the wall.

Presenters are responsible for making sure that notes/slides/audio/video of their presentations are published on the web for the benefit of all and those who can’t be present.

Anyone with something to contribute or with the desire to learn is welcome and invited to join.

Barcamp Beijing 2007

Thu, 02 Aug 2007 11:21:06 -0700

Start: 2007/09/02 - 9:00am

Location: Beijing, China

BarCamp is an ad-hoc un-conference born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos and interaction from attendees.

Barcamp Beijing attendees are encouraged to give a demo, a session, a presentation, or help with one. All attendees are expected to be participants. All presentations are scheduled the day they happen. Prepare in advance, but come early to get a slot on the wall.

Presenters are responsible for making sure that notes/slides/audio/video of their presentations are published on the web for the benefit of all and those who can’t be present.

Anyone with something to contribute or with the desire to learn is welcome and invited to join.

Barcamp Vancouver 2007

Thu, 02 Aug 2007 11:10:06 -0700

Start: 2007/08/17 - 6:00am

End: 2007/08/18 - 6:00am

Start: 2007/08/17 - 6:00am

End: 2007/08/18 - 6:00am

Location:

BarCamp is an ad-hoc un-conference born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos and interaction from attendees.

Barcamp Vancouver attendees are encouraged to give a demo, a session, a presentation, or help with one. All attendees are expected to be participants. All presentations are scheduled the day they happen. Prepare in advance, but come early to get a slot on the wall.

Presenters are responsible for making sure that notes/slides/audio/video of their presentations are published on the web for the benefit of all and those who can’t be present.

Anyone with something to contribute or with the desire to learn is welcome and invited to join.

Gnomedex 2007

Thu, 02 Aug 2007 10:42:40 -0700

Start: 2007/08/09 - 9:00am

End: 2007/08/11 - 6:00am

Start: 2007/08/09 - 9:00am

End: 2007/08/11 - 6:00am

Location: Seattle

This summer, hundreds of the world's leading bloggers, podcasters, and tech-savvy enthusiasts will once again descend upon the city of Seattle, Washington (August 9th – 11th, 2007).

The seventh Gnomedex conference is generating buzz in the blogosphere, which underscores our reason to produce it. Indeed, we will once again become the crossroads between producers and observers, between users and developers.

Who? Influencers, Entrepreneurs, and Tech Enthusiasts!
What? A confluence of leading bloggers and new media!
When? August 9th – 11th, 2007!
Where? Bell Harbor Conference Center in Seattle, WA!
Why? Because all things are possible!

FORPeace - A web site for Peace and Community

Mon, 30 Jul 2007 18:17:29 -0700

"We envision a world of justice, peace, and freedom". Thus starts the vision for FORpeace. FOR Peace.net is a recent Bryght Light site which is in its early days but already is compelling and moving.

One story that is particularly poignant is Our Way Home Reunion about a recent gathering and reunion of Vietnam resisters and Iraq war veterans in Nelson, British Columbia aka "Resisterville" .

The person behind this site is ForPeace Community Co-coordinator Ruby Sinreich who is bootstrapping ForPeace's online Web 2.0 presence with this Drupal site, as well as a Second Life presence and instant messaging.

She says: "The best thing about our site is that we have opened up a dynamic channel for telling our stories and making connections. A number of my colleagues have already make their first blog entries including our Executive Director"!

Ruby also loves the SimpleMenu module from Drupal community member m3avrck that Bryght has bundled as part of its Bryght Basic Install profile (available to all Drupal users on our public wiki not just Bryght customers) that provides simple, easy to use administrative menus as well as Google Analytics integration and other goodies in Bryght Basic.

Progressive U - students blogging for progress

Tue, 26 Jun 2007 22:12:06 -0700

Broad prosperity. Shared responsibility. Effective government and progress toward a better future. Progressive U has kickstarted and nurtured students (and former students) blogging about progressive issues and creating their own voice in the media since they started as a Bryght Light site back in February 2005.

Thanks to the hard work of the Progressive U team (including founder and publisher Art Morgan) and gentle fostering of the community, Progressive U was an early success for Bryght and continues to thrive so much that others including Inside Bay Area have taken notice.

They have moved to a Bryght Virtual Private Server on our Bryght Hosting platform to accommodate their high traffic and need for extra features to facilitate the conversation on the sites.