In case you didn’t catch wind of it through our announcement last week or via the Facebook event page, let this serve as a friendly reminder that Chris Pirillo is stopping by Amici Espresso (206 6th Ave.) for a meetup tonight from 5:30-8:30. Pirillo, the Des Moines-born founder of the Lockergnome blogging network and the Gnomedex conference, now lives in Seattle but has made time for get-togethers with tech enthusiasts in his hometown on trips back to Iowa over the years.
For Gnomedex, which Pirillo started in 2001 and organized for the 10th time last year, change is coming. Pirillo (left, photo from facebook.com) couldn’t comment extensively on the event’s future because plans are still being ironed out, but he said that Gnomedex, in a slightly altered form, will likely return in November in conjunction with another event in the Seattle area.
On the more immediate horizon, Pirillo said he was eager for tonight’s meetup, and he was happy to answer our questions about coming home, his current endeavors and his take on trends within the tech blog space.
Thanks to our sponsor
Silicon Prairie News: What brings you home?
Chris Pirillo: My girlfriend wanted to go to the Iowa State Fair. So it’s as simple as that. She’d never been to Iowa before and, she asked my parents, she said, ‘Well, maybe Chris will go.’ And they said, ‘Nah, he’ll never come back.’ I know what kind of weather we have here in Iowa around August time frame, and it looks like I dodged that bullet by a week.
SPN: Did the fair live up to the expectations?
CP: Oh yeah. Had friend butter. Fried Oreo. We ate our way through the fair, I think, as mom would say.
SPN: Aside from the fried food tour, what does the chance to come home and mingle with some folks from the local tech community mean to you?
CP: Well, it’s always changed. I mean, back when I had started Locker Gnome … to (describe) the Des Moines tech scene, is nascent the word I want to use? It wasn’t even beginning, quite honestly, as much as people would say it had been established. As far as a general interest beyond larger corporations or businesses was concerned, there wasn’t much there.
And, you know, for a number of years there was the ISA (Iowa Software Association) which then morphed into SITI (Software and Technology Association of Iowa). But that was nothing more than a political organization, and that was the best we had in terms of any kind of, I guess, intercommunication within the tech scene. And this was, of course, long before blogging, long before social media. You know, networking with anybody was somewhat of a challenge. …
But even the scene (on a trip to Iowa a few years ago), I was like, you know, this is really cool. And then we had another meetup, and then I would say about 30 or 40 people showed up at a bar or whatever, and I was like, you know, this is really cool. We didn’t have this, or I didn’t have this, when I was trying to make a foothold in Iowa and trying to really kind of put it on the map. … I wasn’t even preaching to any choir, because there was no choir to preach to. I tried to assemble the choir to preach to the choir, but that was impossible.
SPN: Given the evolution of things you’ve seen over the years, what stands out to you in term of trends within the tech blog scene today?
CP: It’s easier and more difficult at the same time. It’s easier to get published, and it’s easier to be seen, insofar as that the tools are now widely available. It’s also more difficult to assert your own voice and your own presence because everybody can do it. And because everybody can do it, everybody is doing it. So, you know, the onus is on you to do something different. … In the beginning, you had to overcome hurdles, and there were very few people who could overcome those hurdles to get something done , which is what made you know the people who did it first you know kind of notable or recognizable compared to today, where anybody can set up a WordPress blog and they’re off to the races.
SPN: In your experience blogging, and if you were to espouse advice to others, how do you distinguish yourself with all the noise today in the blog scene?
CP: I guess, you know, my business has always seemingly stemmed from my own personality, so I’ve been lucky enough to have a strong enough personality that it has driven that forward. And without that – without a strong voice, without a strong position – you’re just going to get lost in the masses. So sometimes you have to take strong positions, whether you know people agree with you or not, people believe you or not. You have to be resolute in the things that you do.
SPN: Where do you find that resolve? Where does the drive to do what you do stem from?
CP: I don’t know. I couldn’t tell you. I could say upbringing. My parents never paid attention to me so … I’m kidding. They probably paid too much attention to me. Actually, to tell you the truth, I think a lot of it stems from that, even back to early childhood. You know, when you give the child attention and the child craves that attention, the child continues to crave that attention even into adulthood.
SPN: What’s the latest with Lockergnome?
CP: Still pushing forward. You know, we’re driving the content, not just on the actual website itself. We actually have a series of websites but also building up. I have been building up the YouTube presence. You know, people ask our numbers and statistics all the time, and I’m like, ‘Well it depends on how you’re looking at it.’ I mean, we’ve got close to 200,000 people who subscribe on YouTube, an untold amt of RSS feed subscribers, email subscribers, Facebook, Twitter — you know, you can get at it 17 different directions. But the end game for Lockergnome in terms of building up content at this point is for acquisition.
