October 14, 2023 • 42 mins
Join me, Kris Krug, as I explore the intersection of art, technology, and community in this new MOTLEYKRUG podcast episode.
We delve into the power of Your Unique Venn Diagram, discussing how it has become more valuable than ever in our rapidly evolving digital world.
I share my perspective on the evolution of the internet, emphasizing the power of technology to unite people on a soulful level.
We also explore the influence of location on creativity and my commitment to self-authenticity in the creative process, highlighting the role of tools like AI in fostering personal growth.
Discover the importance of curiosity and balanced exploration in the ever-changing landscape of augmented creativity, as we aim to inspire intentional navigation of emerging realms while cherishing the bonds of community.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to unique ways with Thomas Stewart.
(00:02):
We're here in the Vancouver studio
with that super awesome guest.
He's additional pioneer, a photographer,
a creative technologist, an author, and an educator.
His mantra is technology is best
when it brings people together.
Please join me in welcoming Chris Krug.
Welcome.
Thanks a lot, Thomas.
What's up, Benjyday?
Yo, ready for dream lessons?
(00:23):
I survived in the audio podcast.
I woke up this morning, man,
and you can have a walk in here with a clipboard with my own 20 questions on it
and ask him this guy that's made it.
There'll be an honest episode where I come back
and subject you to this type of interrogation.
We can definitely do that.
Number one, what do you do?
I'm an artist.
I'm a photographer.
(00:44):
I'm a web developer.
I'm writing a couple of books.
I have a creative platform through my video blog,
I'm a podcast where I'm exploring future technology
with other artists and creatives.
I've been following Chris's work for a while now.
And then I went up to look at your profile
and you've got the photos with amazing people from around the world,
and it's absolutely fantastic.
(01:05):
My camera was like a Willy Wonka golden ticket, man.
It took me in through so many side doors and back doors.
I got to sit at the feet of some of the just most interesting people on the world.
Me and Mikhail Andorovichev, we were at We Day at GM Blades,
and I was the photographer, and it was a lineup of people.
It was standard.
I took a picture taking with him, and he noticed me.
(01:27):
I sent this big security guy over to tap me on the shoulder
and be like, please come with me.
I had this crazy mustache at the time.
I had just joined the fire department on Galeano Island.
You have to have like a clean little jawline
so you can put the breather on your mouth.
I had this crazy mustache, and he was just tickled by it.
He wanted his picture taken with me.
He picked on me over, took this picture.
(01:48):
There's also some crazy stuff.
On the mountain Gladwell, there was a key-end speaker
at a conference I was at in Seattle, and I got a chance to catch up with him.
I smoked a joint with Richard Branson.
I think there's a picture of that up there.
I was at the Grammy Awards with Roy Henry Vickers.
He's an Indigenous artist from northern BC.
He runs Eagle Area Gallery out in Latino.
(02:09):
He was up for a Grammy Award for best packaging design for a box set
for the Grateful Dead's 1973 and 1974 Vancouver and Seattle Northwest tour.
It was so cool.
He had to do this full Indigenous cedar box thing that he took out.
So he was up for a Grammy against Weird Al Lankovich.
And he brought me down there with him to make photos and videos along the way
(02:32):
and tell the story.
We're about to go in.
We had just walked through Red Farb.
It came in full regalia with his chief, Ted Walkus.
They both walked the carpet in full regalia.
These are people in the fanciest attire known to mankind.
And these two stood out.
Everyone wanted their photos taken with them.
We get through to the end and taken off the regalia to go inside
and up roll this guy in a full pink leather onesie with studs.
(02:59):
And it was Post Malone.
And he asked me if I wanted to smoke a joint, dude.
And so I did.
And I took a picture with him.
And that one's up there, too.
I remember seeing a clip of you with Dr. Ron Bernan.
Yeah, man.
I'm 45 years old.
I've been around the Vancouver technology scene
for almost 20 years.
I knew Ron a long time ago, early in the early part days.
And then when I was doing work with New Media BC, which
(03:21):
later became DigiBC.
And this is before the Great Northern Way campus
and the Masters of Digital Media program.
Those things came out of that work
that we did with Ron Bernan back then.
Yeah, unbelievable.
Yeah.
Yeah.
OK, number two, what's the key piece of knowledge
that makes you different?
That's really interesting.
Lately, I've been thinking that, very practically speaking,
(03:41):
I've lived and worked through all three, let's call them,
of the internet revolutions, like the graphical web browser
kind of thing, where we started building web pages for people
and stuff.
And then later, the mobile social revolution,
let's call them, 2.0 or whatever, blogging, Twitter,
YouTube.
I was messing around with those tools right from the get-go.
And then now here, with, I guess we're calling it Web 3,
(04:03):
but AI and some of the blockchain crypto stuff.
And I've been just running alongside of it
and trying to figure it out and make sense of it
and share that with my community and stuff.
So maybe that's one thing that makes me unique.
I've been interested and involved in all three
of these big waves of the internet.
I'll never forget the story about how
you were going to school for the first time
(04:24):
and found this group of Korean coders
who were building stuff with Netscape, Navigator, Gold.
I was really on to that, too, but I never
heard of Netscape, Navigator, Gold, so that's pretty cool.
The revolution for that one was you just saved the web page
that you were on and it had an edit tab on it.
So it was the first thing I'd ever seen where you could just
clone what you were looking at, make some modifications,
(04:46):
and post it and call it your honor or whatever.
Yeah, I feel, in general, very lucky.
I feel like I've been at the right place at the right time
and then just try to make the most of it or whatever.
So those ESL guys in my dorm taught me
all the web pages and stuff.
And then I was one of the first users of Flickr and Twitter.
My username for Flickr is KK.
(05:08):
And my username for Twitter was KK for a long time
until I stole it.
And I just was the right head at the beginning.
So my photography career exploded as Flickr exploded.
We did that at the same time together,
me on the backs of this wave of sharing and building
audience and community and stuff.
So I just feel like I've been at the right place
at the right time.
(05:28):
And now with AI, I feel like you're right exactly there
again, right?
It captivated my attention like six months ago.
And I started tinkering with it.
And it was clear it was like big thing.
So I started, I don't know, for lack of a better word,
like convening my community around me using the new tools.
So I started the Discord that I got a bunch of folks on
where we chat and hang out about this stuff
and support each other's learning process.
(05:50):
That's the whole learning out loud thing
I've been liking to talk about.
Yeah, I hope so.
Okay, through why this, of all things,
why do you do what you do?
Yeah, I didn't exactly always do this.
Like when I was in my 20s,
I was living a bit of a different life.
I was in a marketing department.
I didn't even really know that photographer was like a career.
(06:10):
I hadn't even really clued into that.
That was something you could do.
You could make portraits and photos of people and things
and travel around the world doing that, whatever.
And so as I like opened myself to that
and leaned into it, I've gotten to this place where I,
I don't know that I can do anything else, man.
I've like fully embraced this kind of like
alternative creative path and just the weaving together
(06:33):
multiple mediums, but also like revenue streams and stuff
to make like a patchwork quilt of creative awesomeness.
And it is about photography,
but also it's about the kind of tangential aspects
of photography, the community building, the technologies,
staying, being in the right place at the right time,
as you say, right?
Yeah, okay, so my bread and butter is photography
in that it's a line item in marketing people's budgets.
(06:56):
It says photographer with a number next to it.
And I try to work into that space,
but I don't do it as an end in itself.
It's not for, I'm not precious about my photos.
I want to get them out into the world
with credit or without credit.
I want to use them as a community building activity
where like, when I go to these events,
I just got back from Dent.
(07:17):
And when I'm at Dent or these other events,
the perspective that I try to shoot from is,
I want each attendee to be able to go to this big set
of 1,000 photos I publish at home
and see themselves in multiple locations,
like maybe at the opening party
and maybe once in the audience,
and maybe they gave a speech
and there's five stage shots of them.
And I also try to think about the other,
(07:37):
just the event itself and the partners of the event
or the sponsors, even though I don't necessarily
owe them anything, but in so much as they're telling
an interesting story, I try to document the event
from their perspective as well.
And then just get that out there as a means to share
and connect.
Tagging people in albums of photos is such a great way
for communities to interconnect with each other.
(07:59):
Because at the end of the event, if I do a group shot
and I tag everybody on it, Facebook,
all those people start to interconnect with one another.
And that's a great place to talk to them,
invite them into other places like a discourse server
or other things and stuff.
Yeah, I love photos, I love photography,
I've really elevated my game in terms of my craft,
but it's not like my own itself,
(08:19):
it's the first step towards building awesome internet shit.
Cool.
So at the time of this recording, we're talking about AI,
we're talking about the looming end of the metaverse
we're talking about, the AR headset from Apple
coming out at some point.
So that ties into this question,
what does your future look like?
Man, I'd like to know a lot about those.
(08:40):
What do you mean by the looming end of the metaverse?
I don't know, I feel like people are like,
yeah, the metaverse was cool, but then it didn't work out
and it was a failed plan or something.
I think that they've been aggressively spending on it
and maybe we're hoping that it would come
to financial fruition before it has or whatever.
The Apple thing's not quite out yet, right?
(09:00):
No, it's not.
I'd be hesitant to call the game over there,
predicting the world before the Apple thing
has entered the market.
It's a little slower, but obviously I think that,
I don't know, some of these dystopian futures of us
spending a lot more time in the virtual world
does seem inevitable.
So yeah, I wouldn't count that one quite out yet.
Yeah, you guys are in my feed, get out of my feed.
(09:22):
The metaverse is coming, it's real.
It's like, you know what I mean,
I'm not a big metaverse proponent,
but I definitely, if you're calling out us
inhabiting a somewhat digital space,
you should reconnect with one another
and do real commerce and shit like that.
It might not look exactly like they think
it's gonna look today, but I think that's probably coming.
Yeah, yeah.
(09:42):
My future, I've had a bit of an affinity
in the last couple of weeks since I talked to you on the audio.
I was at this conference, Dan, the future,
and I just found a Steve Jobs quote.
It's really awesome, man.
I call it like an idea as an inspiration festival.
And I've been doing it for 10 years
and playing a big role in the community
through doing the photos and stuff,
and leading photo walks.
And I've watched the event grow up.
(10:04):
I was sitting down at one of the parties
and I had a, I don't know, 100 point glass of wine
in my hand from the community Somalia
and it made us share his fancy one of the best.
And I was looking at Jason Preston and Steve Brovac,
who were like the organizers, and I was like,
this event is amazing right now.
This isn't as good as it gets.
And I was like, and thinking,
it hasn't always been like that.
(10:25):
We've grown into this type of thing or whatever.
This community is rich.
I would stand there talking to someone
who I don't talk to at every event,
but I know her really well.
I feel a sense of like community with her,
even though I don't know her like date and like,
have you been going to this event?
Yeah, well for a long time.
And I was just realizing that the depth of the community
in the damn world is really rich.
It's grown over time.
I was like, yo, if you don't put your stake in the ground now,
(10:49):
it can never grow into something awesome.
Like the only thing holding me back
between having an event like this right now
is that I didn't start it 10 years ago or something like that.
So I declared to myself and to my buddies,
Jason and Steve, I'm like, this is really inspiring me.
I wanna do something similar.
I wanna convene my unique networks of creative technologists,
(11:12):
startup entrepreneurs, people like you in the design world,
architects, like musicians.
And I wanna have my own kind of ideas and art festival.
And I'd like to travel to somewhere with these people
and have a mix of like activities and talks
and like art that we experience.
(11:32):
But I'd also like to blend in an element
of like a hackathon or something too,
where like this dance community is awesome and powerful.
And I would wish that we would build something together,
spend like half a day or day building something together.
The hackathon I went to was just so cool,
watching people come together and add coding
with design, with marketing, with all these different things
and build like a product in a weekend that actually worked.
(11:54):
Like that's a really cool prospect.
It's not going to be called Krugfest
and it's not gonna be centered around me in my face,
but I am working the Krugfest envisioning a future
in the next 12 months.
Yeah, maybe I'll be able to get 50 people out the first year.
I think that would be a really big success,
but I'd love to grow it over time
and have it be like a mini artistic creative tent talks
(12:18):
in the early days or like a dance or an element
of South by Southwest and stuff like that.
Anyway, I hope that is part of my future as well.
Because I feel like that happened with NFT
is a lot of people were like onto NFT at the beginning
and then it propelled into this mature face
and everyone is like, I missed out.
We're talking about some of them you can miss out on
when we're talking about your...
Well, okay, so I hear what you're talking about
(12:41):
and I have some thoughts about that in relation to AI.
When I'm talking about missing out in this case,
I'm only talking about in terms of my own lifespan.
I'm 45, I'd love to have an event like this.
It takes time to build it.
These guys have been, it took them a decade
to get where they're at, but I was like,
I should do this now or before they pass them by
or I'll never get it to the point where I want it to be.
(13:02):
In terms of the AI stuff and like missing the boat.
All right, I'm of two minds about this as I offer them.
On one hand, I think it's very important to,
as I said, run alongside it, get up to speed,
learn about this stuff.
And I think that will help you,
give you an advantage over people who don't.
(13:24):
I think it will help you.
The most important thing is it's gonna help you
develop this like AI mindset.
Like thinking about how we interact with AI
and how it can be the most useful to you
because some of the ways people use it at first
on the surface to do writing or different things,
they are very like superficial relationship
to this amazing tool, right?
(13:46):
So I think developing an AI mindset is more important
than getting on the bandwagon
and getting all hyped up about it or whatever.
And so I both think it's critically important
that people start figuring this stuff out now
and figure out how they want to relate to it,
how it relates to their career and their communications
and all that kind of stuff.
But the flip side is this stuff just keeps getting easier
(14:09):
integrated into more and more stuff.
So like Microsoft today, who's a huge investor in AI
through their Azure platform,
like they're really the main investors in OpenAI,
the company and Chash-Upt.
It all runs on Azure, on Microsoft or whatever.
So Microsoft today, and it's really taken the tech world
by storm, has relaunched everything, Bing,
(14:29):
and Microsoft 360 and all this stuff under this AI,
everything all the time brand,
literally one big media app to rule them all.
He talks to the AI, talks to all the things and whatever.
And so long way of saying people who don't jump at it
with enthusiasm like we have won't necessarily
get left behind because there's gonna be,
(14:51):
in Gmail right now, there's a button
where it's starting to email.
And it just, AI populates the email
based on who you need to talk to and what you need to say.
It's gonna keep being pushed down to the,
all the ways that everyone has access to it.
But I do think in terms of developing a strategic mind
about it is important.
You'll benefit from, you'll benefit from that.
I have one more thing.
(15:12):
I made a video a couple months ago
about AI agents and stuff like that.
And the competitive advantage you gain through using AI.
And I do still think there is something there.
I do think that people who develop this AI mindset
sooner rather than later or sooner vis-a-vis their peers
will have potentially an unsurmountable
potentially created advantage where they like,
(15:34):
you know, have become superhuman intellectually speaking
on the internet a year before their peers.
And what does that allow them to do?
I'm building software now.
I'm building my own tools.
I'm really expanding my footprint in the last six months.
A lot of it on the back of AI stuff.
Will that put me into a position
by people who decide to do that 12 months from now
(15:55):
or two years from now?
I'll always be playing ketchup.
I don't know, but.
Yeah, not to overstate it.
We had Mayor Saeed on the show on the audio podcast
who has his own podcast and started pretty early on.
We had Debbie Millman on the show
who started really early on with the podcasting.
And now everybody's, everybody can have a podcast.
Everybody podcasts now, but we wonder if it's too late.
(16:16):
Very much feel that way about a lot
of the kinds of issues these days.
I know.
Hey, in some ways it's flooded and it's late
and all those things like you said.
You're starting a podcast on one hand, that's true.
On the other hand, okay.
I've come to learn that like our unique Venn diagram
that makes us us is more valuable to the world
(16:38):
than it's ever been.
Like you're in the intersection of like Desire and AI
and Douglas Copeland and Vancouver is very unique.
Every time you talk or synthesize ideas
that you've been exposed to,
you're producing original content, right?
Things the AI can't necessarily do
and that you're synthesizing your unique experience
(16:59):
and putting it into the world.
And that's what AI then later like trains itself.
So yeah, I don't think it's too late
to put yourself out there.
And I think there's this side benefit anyway,
and this is actually what got me into
the whole podcasting thing and the video blog.
I wanted to build this digital avatar of myself,
like they're calling my clones or whatever, right?
(17:21):
I wanted to build an AI generated video or 3D production
of me that had an intelligent AI in it
that had been trained on everything I've ever read,
everything I've ever seen.
And then not the things I haven't,
like my unique media and academic consumption,
(17:42):
my unique voice, my unique ideas.
And I thought the way I did that out there
was like the audio and video, right?
Anytime you're talking to this microphone,
Tom, you're potentially training the AI
on your unique Venn diagram of perspective
and thoughts and stuff.
And I believe, you've probably heard me tell people
that I think they should use their audio recorder
(18:04):
to record ideas and jot them down
and feed them to the AI later and stuff.
So I think that even if you never grow a Joe Rodin style,
monumental audience, the head of the AI stuff,
it's still valuable.
You're capturing your unique thoughts and ideas
and you're putting them out there in the world.
You're finding your own voice in your own place.
You're building an audience around yourself
(18:24):
and you're figuring out what to do about that.
Now that you've got your voice
and your audience and your channel,
what do you wanna do now that you've got this power?
So I think that's valuable.
I think it's valuable.
It's not just about winning, it's about learning
and having a good time.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Okay, number five, we're in Vancouver.
We're here in the studio.
(18:45):
And the question's about location and place.
How do location and place play a role with what you do?
Yeah, it's interesting.
I'm answering some of these questions
different this time than the last time.
I was really place rooted over the pandemic.
I was out on Galeano Island and Hornby Island
and ran into a farm and an animal, big Jesus,
I was growing veggies and ganja and stuff.
(19:08):
And my world was very much very local,
the local community and stuff.
I was also recovering from a big hack in 2017.
I lost everything in 2017, my main domain name,
my main Gmail addresses,
also my PayPal account and stuff got drained,
but ended up getting restored.
The only thing I had was the email in my domain name,
but it was devastating, man.
(19:28):
It brought me to my knees.
After living open and out loud in public
for the whole internet,
it really made me second guess a lot of that stuff.
And so I hung through down in Galeano Island
between traveling to Africa and doing some other things,
I was laying somewhat low.
So now though, I think I'm taking back off
and I would say that on a longer arc,
(19:49):
I'm an American, I'm a land immigrant here in Canada,
I've been living for 25 years.
I don't feel the strong, normal American patriotism
or I feel more connected, I would say,
in some ways to Canada and Canadians than the States.
And even more than that,
I feel part of this bigger digital community,
this tribe of internet people,
(20:09):
these folks that I met both online,
but the internet has brought me together with
in real life as well.
I really feel I won't be too radical,
but the internet allows me to see the true connections
between people and all of a sudden,
national boundaries and other things make a lot less sense.
And in fact, as we face climate change and AI,
the threats of AI,
(20:30):
we can't just solve this on a nation by nation basis.
Climate change affects everybody equally,
the bigger polluters and the not polluters.
And so there has to be a way that we all get a voice together
some international referendum or consortium
in which we talk about these things and like,
what good is it if 99% of the countries
(20:51):
have responsibilities of AI and that one of those ones doesn't
and then something gets out
and we have to build free theater tools
to contain the one from the rogue nation
that got out or whatever.
I don't know, I can see some of this tech lead us
to our future where hopefully,
we see less of our differences,
maybe that boost nations.
(21:11):
We realize with all one people on the earth
that we try to make some decisions
around our future together in that way.
Yeah, and to add to that,
pandemic had a certain kind of place
that we have to deal with
and then post pandemic has been at a certain kind of place
as well, especially with the in-person events
and high ticket items for in-person events
with Taylor Swift concert prices going nuts.
(21:31):
We're in this kind of new version
of what real life place is, right?
Yeah, man, that's for sure.
Okay, number six, if you had to start from the beginning,
what advice would you give your former self?
I remember what I said to you last time
and it's something I wanna talk about,
which I do get a chance to talk about technology
and all that kind of stuff,
but I also get a chance to talk about
(21:51):
my own sobriety journey
and about some of my mental health journey stuff.
I would hop in a time machine
and fly back into the future
and run from the future
and I grab myself and I'd talk about,
it's okay to reach out to people for help.
I could start with a counselor or a small community.
I just started therapy like a year and a half ago.
(22:12):
I was sober from a big chunk of that
while I was doing that, right?
In that, I found that there was some stuff
I wanted to work through and it's helped me
have better relationships with people
and love myself more and stuff.
I think a lot of the stuff that I would go back
and tell myself would be around that.
And then the other one would be like,
there's different cliches, ways of saying this,
whether free flight, fly or whatever,
(22:34):
but or like I said a minute ago,
you're unique, van dyke, your name is really important,
but it's trust yourself.
Your taste is valuable.
Your perspective, your critique and your objectives
is worthwhile and it's unique and it's valuable and stuff.
And so just reaming into my own opinions
and perspectives earlier,
(22:54):
I think I would encourage myself to do that.
It's all coming to the mainstream.
Like Selena Gomez kind of releasing all this information
about mental health.
I watched the video and found it excruciating,
but love what she's doing about putting this out there
in a mainstream kind of way.
We're all talking about it now, aren't we?
So that she was lying in a mental health
more important than much to her
(23:14):
and she canceled some days,
even though she wasn't fully struggling,
she was just trying to keep things on the up and up.
And she has this documentary about the whole thing too.
Yeah, I think I remember that being one of the first times
I stood up like that and now it's a lot more common.
Yeah.
Okay, tools, what tools do you use?
Are you digital and analog?
Photography, I use the basics.
I use the Canon system.
(23:37):
I already tell people to get whatever camera system
their friends have so you can share lenses and gear
and expensive things like that.
So when I first got into photography,
we were all shooting there and then went towards Sony
for a while, but I stuck with Canon
and now it's coming back to Canon again.
So I'm pretty stoked about that.
Are you doing mirrorless or art series?
I'm not doing the mirrorless yet.
(23:57):
I'm still on a 5D Mark IV.
I got a lot of L-series glass, so I got like nice stuff
and I'm comfortable with it.
I did get a, oh, tell me what the new mirrorless one is.
RF5?
Yeah, maybe.
I have an RF5 in my hand.
Jason Preston one of me is at Dent.
Sweet.
It's awesome, but it's not quite as,
I'm not as reflexive with it yet, man.
I can control most of the deep settings on my camera
(24:20):
without looking at it just by muscle memory.
So doing event photography is,
you're in and out of different lighting environments,
stage lighting, different situations all the time.
So you're constantly having to make adjustments or whatever.
So I'm pretty proficient at that.
Software tools are really,
they're an interesting thing right now.
There's just so many amazing things coming out.
I think I told you about Po last time I was here.
(24:42):
It's a dashboard for all the different AIs.
It's got Google's Po and Facebook's Llama
and Anthropix's Clode and all of Mid Journey
and all these things in one interface.
So you can ask the same questions
to multiple different AI bots,
which I found a useful way of understanding
what they're good at and what they're not good at.
And what about chat GBT?
(25:03):
Is that like old school now?
It did.
Okay.
My understanding is constantly evolving.
I just spent the whole last weekend making sweet love
to chat GBT and I wanted to share that with you.
So it's like, I was about to maybe cancel my GBT pro
since trip seven, but like when we talked about Po,
I was like, no, I wanna try Po, maybe I'll cancel GBT.
(25:23):
And I didn't because of the code interpreter,
which is now called advanced data analysis.
So I was still using the code interpreter
because you can upload files to it.
So I can stick a PDF or a text file in
and I can take a look at this PDF.
And so instead of using the normal character,
we'll admit the GBT as we can deploy it in a whole document.
And I started to use it to do some coding
(25:44):
and some development where I was taking other people's code
and I was making some modifications to it
in advanced code, an analyzer.
And then I was publishing that.
But I was at this hackathon, I was the photographer
and I was a mentor, it was called HackCT.
It was an open source transportation focused hackathon
in Connecticut.
And I was also a mentor, I was helping the teens
(26:05):
with the social and community aspects of their projects.
But I got super inspired, man.
The founders of GitHub were there,
they talked about how the CEO and the COO
of GitHub Thomas and Kyle were at this thing.
And I did a little interview with them,
but they got me thinking they were talking
about their co-pilot inside of GitHub
and how 80% of the code of the future
is gonna be written by these AI's.
(26:26):
I've always known that your ability to write software
is only as good as your ability to describe
to software engineers specifically what you wanted to build.
And I practiced at that.
I have developed requirements,
I have been like user stories and that.
So I decided to join the hackathon.
I decided to write an AI powered chatbot
(26:47):
focused on transportation.
And I'm a coder, but I have learned how to set up
a virtual environment on machine.
And I have learned how Python works.
I knew HTML, CSS, JavaScript from before, but.
Dude, I wrote in a real life.
I did the whole software development process this weekend
on a app that I've now released on GitHub
being like a non-coder.
(27:07):
I even like got stuck in the middle
when I was trying to take the application that I wrote
and forward it to this thing
that serves up the mobile webpages.
I was getting stuck.
And so I called someone over for help
and they said to me, oh, you chose Dart.
I don't really know Dart, but what I do know about it
is it's really tough to trouble you.
I probably would have chosen React Native and socket IO
(27:34):
because it's all in JavaScript.
So I was like, all right, okay.
They were like, I can help you if it wasn't React Native
or if it was in socket IO.
So I used chatbot's advanced code analysis
to take the Python, HTML, CSS, JavaScript that I wrote
and port the Dart mobile app server
over to the new React Native and socket IO.
(27:58):
And I did it successfully.
And then I didn't have to leave any need there
out of that point because I was able to troubleshoot it myself.
And so it's literally, I like re-factored the code base
from the ground up in the middle of the process.
I used advanced code analyzer to write all the documentation,
teach me how to use GitHub, publish my source code.
It was incredible, man.
(28:19):
I don't think chat GPT is old news.
I used it to write software this weekend, man.
Yeah, everybody.
John told me about attaching PDFs
and reading web searches and putting links in.
And I just haven't slept in a while
just because I've been doing that all the time.
It's been great.
(28:39):
Finally, what you mean, that was one thing I bumped into
is I bumped into some of the finite limitations
of chat GPT.
A couple things.
One is I thought they took away
to like 35 queries per every three hours,
but 50 now.
Okay, I'm 50 several times.
There were several times when I-
Me too.
Software development process was only inhibited
by me capping out at 50.
And then I don't know if you've noticed this or not,
(29:02):
or I'm pretty sure this is accurate.
Please fact check me internet.
When it talks about the tokens and the memory
inside a particular chat, on the chat GPT window,
there's a point at which new information
seems to make the information you fed
at the beginning fall off.
It's like, yeah, you can read 100,000 things
or when it gets to 100,000, it keeps moving down
to 100,000, but the other ones spill off the bottom.
(29:24):
Some point long chat GPT conversations
can get a little gobbly gook because it's,
it's trying to hold too much in its memory.
So it's somewhat, sometimes that way,
I create an executive summary, like a chat so far,
and then copy it into a new window or something like that,
and then start from that so it doesn't get too messed up.
You guys check out the John Bondoc episode
(29:45):
from a couple of in-person episodes ago.
It's also about AI, but it's, we're going so fast
that this is like way more relevant, I think.
I can't wait to check that one out.
Yeah, it seems to be.
Okay, so what's the day in your life like?
Those two days are really alike.
As I told you, I was just on the road.
I went to New Mexico, Santa Fe, and I went to New York.
Now I'm in Connecticut for the hackathon.
(30:07):
Now I'm back in Vancouver, but yeah, I'm lucky, man.
I get to do some days I'm doing audio editing,
some days I'm doing videos and photos.
I do a lot of like community and hanging out
and talking online,
and shooting other people's projects and stuff.
I work for the Future and Review.
It's like a day job.
It's a part-time day job, but I do like a podcast for them
and I run their social media channels and stuff.
(30:28):
So I spend a lot of time online.
Baby Jesus keeps me grounded.
I've got a big 110 pound white sheepdog
that needs to get out and bounce and we're cool everyday.
So he gets me out of the house.
But yeah, I spend a lot of time online,
a lot of time connecting with people out there in the world.
Yeah.
Nice, sounds good.
Okay, and number eight, lifelong learning is a popular topic.
(30:49):
How do you stay up to date?
I've mentioned a couple things in this talk.
One is like when it appeared to me
around the AI discord mid-jury stuff,
then this was something I needed to learn.
I decided to learn it with my friends
and create a space where we can learn it together.
So one is just like sharing what I'm learning,
documenting what I'm learning,
and trying to like cross-pollinate that with other people
(31:10):
who are on the same trajectory or whatever.
And then the other one is the thing I just told you is,
fucking AI can teach you anything, man.
There's even one of the plugins,
I forgot which one it is, we can update this thing later,
but like one of the plugins builds you curriculum
based on all the coursework that's in the world,
including MIT and Harvard and all this stuff.
So you're like, teach me a two hour lesson about Spanish.
(31:32):
And it goes, and grabs all the shit and figures it out
and adapts you a two hour Spanish lesson.
It can teach you anything.
That's rad.
Yeah.
Which tools do you use?
No, we did that.
If you weren't doing what you do now,
what would you be doing?
I really did enjoy having my fingers in the dirt
on Hornby and Galiano Apple and stuff.
I would love to build like a solar punk off the grid
(31:56):
or treat center or regenerative agriculture
and stuff like that.
Living close to the land, but in view technology
and other things into that process and stuff.
You can go all the way back, man.
I think, yeah, I've always been intrigued by linguistics.
I think I love to study language and how we talk and speak
and code meaning our words and stuff.
(32:17):
Hypothetically, AI could open up a bunch of free time
for a lot of us, because it just makes that work go quicker.
Perhaps we have time for gardening and stuff like that
when we didn't before.
It does seem AI is good at crunch numbers
and it's good at sorting things and it's good at remembering
stuff and it's getting our lists and synthesizing information.
It's going to keep pushing us towards the boundaries
(32:39):
of what it truly means to be human.
We used to say creativity was the defining thing
maybe for that language or something,
but it's got language, it's got creativity.
So what is it now?
I mean, it's something around maybe community or meaning making,
the ability to make significance and meaning
and purpose in one's life.
Maybe that's what it means to be human,
not so much the creativity anymore.
(33:01):
But anyway, I think AI is going to continue to push us
to define and explore and expand on our definition
of what it means to be human.
And it's a radical kind of concept because,
I mean, I was thinking the same thing the other day.
I finished a bunch of work that I was doing
because Chachi Biki was doing it so quickly
and I was just relaxing and I was like,
what are the good moral, ethical things
(33:23):
that I could do with my life if I push my life
in that direction specifically?
What are the best things that I could possibly do?
I ended up asking Chachi Biki what it was.
I forget what it said, but definitely thinking
about those things.
The intent behind that is pretty beautiful, man.
Like, okay, this thing's gonna make me more efficient.
I don't want it to just suck up all the efficiency
(33:43):
that it's created with more productivity.
So how do I dedicate intentionally a percentage
of the time that it frees up towards things
that I wouldn't have been able to do otherwise?
That's a beautiful notion, man.
I'm gonna ask myself that and I'm gonna try to set aside
5% AI efficiency time for other things
that it's covered back in Melon or something like that.
(34:04):
Ethics is coming back.
Good idea.
It's a really good idea.
What do you not wanna do with your career?
What do I not want to do with my career?
Well, I'm grateful for the time I spent
inside corporations because it allowed me to learn
the ins and outs of like, finance
and how marketing departments work and stuff.
I definitely don't want to be stuck in a cube again
or anything like that.
(34:24):
I have a dress code, that kind of thing.
And so that was pretty soul sucking.
I got fat and unhappy and drank too much and stuff.
I don't want to be limited to any one particular thing.
I wanna be able to be free to pursue my creative interests
and passions and the things that I'm good at and stuff.
So I just want to be able to play and experiment
(34:46):
and report back.
So I forget what you said for 13.
It's a favorite word, quote or sentence.
Oh, shit.
Could be a word.
Could be a word, excuse me.
Yeah.
Okay, so this thing I've been talking about,
like your unique Venn diagram and the thing that makes you
you and your A&E perspective.
I think of this quote, I think it's from the doubted chain.
(35:09):
And it's something like he who without competing
has no competition in the world or something like that.
And so you realize that you are special,
that what you have to offer is unique and valuable.
Who are you really competing against anyway?
There's only one you man and you only had so many hours
in a day and so much light on this planet.
(35:30):
So no one else can be you.
So there's like a little bit of sense in competing
and then competing to be your best self
to be the most awesome you could possibly be
or something like that.
But yeah, I find that one is fine.
I wish I had something funny instead.
No, it's great.
Cause a lot of our listeners are designers
or design education people
and in the startup world and entrepreneurship as well.
(35:50):
And they probably think of the strategize their books
like value proposition design and business model campus
and like building a system where you can understand
where you're talking about it, I think.
Yeah.
Yeah, so I don't know.
Oh, I heard a clue in close this weekend.
I'm just gonna butcher it.
He's something about one foot rooted into model.
One foot looking into tomorrow
and while our vision looking into tomorrow land
(36:12):
while our feet are rooted in a banana land or whatever.
And you were just talking about like our
eliminated abilities somewhat to conceive
of what the future holds because of our boundness
to where we're at and how things are right now.
And so we bumble through things from our perspective now
that in the future probably will be a lot different.
We'll be a lot more tomorrow.
(36:32):
What's the opposite of that?
What's the least favorite word quote or sentence?
Oh man, what's my least favorite quote?
Hey, I don't like when people talking about me
and outside the box.
I don't know.
I don't know it all.
I really like when people just like, you know,
happen to just know everything
and they're really unsure about it and inflexible
(36:52):
and they're thinking I love to see both sides of the issue
and banter about it and figure it out together and stuff.
Bye bye.
15, if you have to pick one word to describe yourself
what would you choose?
Iconoclastic.
Sweet, what keeps you up at night?
Oh man, I sleep pretty good.
The only thing that keeps me up lately
has been the creative brainstorm searches
(37:14):
and stuff like that.
I'm optimized around like six hours a day.
I'm bed-by-night pretty much up to my six.
Though it's been getting a little bit harder.
The sunrise time changes pretty significantly
in Vancouver and it's after 6 a.m.
for the first time in a while.
So I'm starting to sleep in again.
Yeah, a dream you're chasing.
I guess I told you last podcast
(37:35):
that I might as well say it again now
on the video camera too.
I'm gonna try to make a million bucks each year.
Putting all the pieces in place to really grow
this creative endeavor that I'm working on
and I believe that calling in the abundance theory
type stuff, I believe that there's enough to go around
and that I can find mine and I'm gonna go off and do that.
And what happened?
(37:55):
Because I'm older and what I was growing up with
was about a million bucks but I feel like now
it's about a billion bucks.
So when did that shift happen?
You're right in some ways but I think also my saying
a million dollars represents one of my headzacks.
I've never really been about money too much.
I've spent a lot of time doing cool things
with people that I love or there's money in it or not.
This hackathon that I was at was a nonprofit event.
(38:18):
The dead thing, they give me room and board
in exchange for my photography.
I'm just always trying to build things better than myself
whether there's cash there or not and I spent a lot of time
consulting other people who made a lot of money
with my ideas so I just think that now's a great time
for me to put some of those things into place
for my own self and I'm not living to be a bazillionaire
(38:40):
or have 10 houses and I like that.
I'm 45, I'd like to have a little more housing security
in my life, I'd like to give my kids some nice stuff too.
Yeah, I don't need a billion but things sure have changed.
Weren't you 30 bucks today?
Why are you inspired?
I'm super inspired when I see other people
doing creative stuff.
I'm inspired right now by some of the principles
(39:02):
of the burning man community, particularly the one
as I think about this conference that I wanna put on
around no-attentive-only participants.
We all bring something special to any group
that we're a part of and asking yourself,
what do I bring to the table, what do I have to give?
Am I willing to give it in terms of your creative
and spiritual gifts and stuff like that?
(39:24):
I'm pretty inspired by that ethos right now.
It's interesting times tangential.
Chris Doe is a great example, if you go to his website,
it's all high-ticket items now, so it's not like
you can buy my book for 20 bucks.
Now it's like you buy this and you get the books
but you pay this premium price for all this other stuff
as well.
What's the thing with the high-ticket item you're buying?
Courses or part of his pro group.
(39:45):
Yeah, super smart.
Yeah, it's good.
Yeah, okay, number 19, any advice you'd like to share?
I've shared everywhere I'm coming from so far.
I don't really think I have anything to give
in terms of advice other than figure this stuff out
for yourself, run alongside it.
Your concerns and fears are valid
(40:06):
but they shouldn't be obstacles necessarily to you exploring.
There's a revolution taking place,
a renaissance possibly even.
And the people that are harsh about it are like,
don't change, it's gonna change you
whether you like it or not.
And I don't exactly wanna go that far
because I think that there's room for all different people
and world perspectives in terms of how we interact
(40:28):
with technology but it's gonna be the dominant cultural form
of interaction, that's for sure.
And so if you're choosing a place in opposition to that,
you need to understand potentially what that means.
And number 20, so we're in the bonus episode
and we're on the video podcast, so there's the real deal.
So number 20, what's our call to action?
(40:48):
What do we do to find that real KK
and where should we go with it?
Oh, cool man, well I mean not hard to track down
but so start by going to chriscrew.co, K-R-I-S-K-R-E-U-G.co.
Subscribe to my newsletter,
I'm trying to grow that right now.
From there you'll find I get monthly updates
with like my video blog and my podcast and stuff like that.
(41:09):
I'd love to invite you to the Crew Fest,
whatever it is that's being called.
I'm going in, that's also been one 49 to go.
Maybe you'll help me think of where exactly it should be
and it opens up all sorts of interesting possibilities.
You guys, Crew Fest is coming.
Yeah man, and if you want to explore this stuff
alongside me, you can join the Discord server, it's free.
It's just a place to hang out and chat
(41:29):
and share and stuff like that.
Yeah, okay, thanks so much for being on.
It's such a pleasure, I love, I can't get it out of my head.
The pictures you have with those people
and the kinds of conversations you must have had
around with those people is just mind boggling
and I definitely appreciate a lot of the episodes
that I've had as well with people that really impacted me.
So cool to see that you have that as well.
(41:51):
I'm just tickled to meet you too.
I just recently come back to Vancouver
and you're a bit of an icon here on the art and design scene
and I appreciate you getting me on the pod.
And like, in your own way, you've encouraged me
because like I started putting myself out there
and then you already shower like,
hey, you want to talk about this stuff more?
I felt like that was like the road rising up to me
(42:11):
on my journey, so I really appreciate it.
And thank you to the algorithm.
Yeah, okay, thanks guys.
Over and out.
Welcome to unique ways with Thomas Stewart.
(00:02):
We're here in the Vancouver studio
with that super awesome guest.
He's additional pioneer, a photographer,
a creative technologist, an author, and an educator.
His mantra is technology is best
when it brings people together.
Please join me in welcoming Chris Krug.
Welcome.
Thanks a lot, Thomas.
What's up, Benjyday?
Yo, ready for dream lessons?
(00:23):
I survived in the audio podcast.
I woke up this morning, man,
and you can have a walk in here with a clipboard with my own 20 questions on it
and ask him this guy that's made it.
There'll be an honest episode where I come back
and subject you to this type of interrogation.
We can definitely do that.
Number one, what do you do?
I'm an artist.
I'm a photographer.
(00:44):
I'm a web developer.
I'm writing a couple of books.
I have a creative platform through my video blog,
I'm a podcast where I'm exploring future technology
with other artists and creatives.
I've been following Chris's work for a while now.
And then I went up to look at your profile
and you've got the photos with amazing people from around the world,
and it's absolutely fantastic.
(01:05):
My camera was like a Willy Wonka golden ticket, man.
It took me in through so many side doors and back doors.
I got to sit at the feet of some of the just most interesting people on the world.
Me and Mikhail Andorovichev, we were at We Day at GM Blades,
and I was the photographer, and it was a lineup of people.
It was standard.
I took a picture taking with him, and he noticed me.
(01:27):
I sent this big security guy over to tap me on the shoulder
and be like, please come with me.
I had this crazy mustache at the time.
I had just joined the fire department on Galeano Island.
You have to have like a clean little jawline
so you can put the breather on your mouth.
I had this crazy mustache, and he was just tickled by it.
He wanted his picture taken with me.
He picked on me over, took this picture.
(01:48):
There's also some crazy stuff.
On the mountain Gladwell, there was a key-end speaker
at a conference I was at in Seattle, and I got a chance to catch up with him.
I smoked a joint with Richard Branson.
I think there's a picture of that up there.
I was at the Grammy Awards with Roy Henry Vickers.
He's an Indigenous artist from northern BC.
He runs Eagle Area Gallery out in Latino.
(02:09):
He was up for a Grammy Award for best packaging design for a box set
for the Grateful Dead's 1973 and 1974 Vancouver and Seattle Northwest tour.
It was so cool.
He had to do this full Indigenous cedar box thing that he took out.
So he was up for a Grammy against Weird Al Lankovich.
And he brought me down there with him to make photos and videos along the way
(02:32):
and tell the story.
We're about to go in.
We had just walked through Red Farb.
It came in full regalia with his chief, Ted Walkus.
They both walked the carpet in full regalia.
These are people in the fanciest attire known to mankind.
And these two stood out.
Everyone wanted their photos taken with them.
We get through to the end and taken off the regalia to go inside
and up roll this guy in a full pink leather onesie with studs.
(02:59):
And it was Post Malone.
And he asked me if I wanted to smoke a joint, dude.
And so I did.
And I took a picture with him.
And that one's up there, too.
I remember seeing a clip of you with Dr. Ron Bernan.
Yeah, man.
I'm 45 years old.
I've been around the Vancouver technology scene
for almost 20 years.
I knew Ron a long time ago, early in the early part days.
And then when I was doing work with New Media BC, which
(03:21):
later became DigiBC.
And this is before the Great Northern Way campus
and the Masters of Digital Media program.
Those things came out of that work
that we did with Ron Bernan back then.
Yeah, unbelievable.
Yeah.
Yeah.
OK, number two, what's the key piece of knowledge
that makes you different?
That's really interesting.
Lately, I've been thinking that, very practically speaking,
(03:41):
I've lived and worked through all three, let's call them,
of the internet revolutions, like the graphical web browser
kind of thing, where we started building web pages for people
and stuff.
And then later, the mobile social revolution,
let's call them, 2.0 or whatever, blogging, Twitter,
YouTube.
I was messing around with those tools right from the get-go.
And then now here, with, I guess we're calling it Web 3,
(04:03):
but AI and some of the blockchain crypto stuff.
And I've been just running alongside of it
and trying to figure it out and make sense of it
and share that with my community and stuff.
So maybe that's one thing that makes me unique.
I've been interested and involved in all three
of these big waves of the internet.
I'll never forget the story about how
you were going to school for the first time
(04:24):
and found this group of Korean coders
who were building stuff with Netscape, Navigator, Gold.
I was really on to that, too, but I never
heard of Netscape, Navigator, Gold, so that's pretty cool.
The revolution for that one was you just saved the web page
that you were on and it had an edit tab on it.
So it was the first thing I'd ever seen where you could just
clone what you were looking at, make some modifications,
(04:46):
and post it and call it your honor or whatever.
Yeah, I feel, in general, very lucky.
I feel like I've been at the right place at the right time
and then just try to make the most of it or whatever.
So those ESL guys in my dorm taught me
all the web pages and stuff.
And then I was one of the first users of Flickr and Twitter.
My username for Flickr is KK.
(05:08):
And my username for Twitter was KK for a long time
until I stole it.
And I just was the right head at the beginning.
So my photography career exploded as Flickr exploded.
We did that at the same time together,
me on the backs of this wave of sharing and building
audience and community and stuff.
So I just feel like I've been at the right place
at the right time.
(05:28):
And now with AI, I feel like you're right exactly there
again, right?
It captivated my attention like six months ago.
And I started tinkering with it.
And it was clear it was like big thing.
So I started, I don't know, for lack of a better word,
like convening my community around me using the new tools.
So I started the Discord that I got a bunch of folks on
where we chat and hang out about this stuff
and support each other's learning process.
(05:50):
That's the whole learning out loud thing
I've been liking to talk about.
Yeah, I hope so.
Okay, through why this, of all things,
why do you do what you do?
Yeah, I didn't exactly always do this.
Like when I was in my 20s,
I was living a bit of a different life.
I was in a marketing department.
I didn't even really know that photographer was like a career.
(06:10):
I hadn't even really clued into that.
That was something you could do.
You could make portraits and photos of people and things
and travel around the world doing that, whatever.
And so as I like opened myself to that
and leaned into it, I've gotten to this place where I,
I don't know that I can do anything else, man.
I've like fully embraced this kind of like
alternative creative path and just the weaving together
(06:33):
multiple mediums, but also like revenue streams and stuff
to make like a patchwork quilt of creative awesomeness.
And it is about photography,
but also it's about the kind of tangential aspects
of photography, the community building, the technologies,
staying, being in the right place at the right time,
as you say, right?
Yeah, okay, so my bread and butter is photography
in that it's a line item in marketing people's budgets.
(06:56):
It says photographer with a number next to it.
And I try to work into that space,
but I don't do it as an end in itself.
It's not for, I'm not precious about my photos.
I want to get them out into the world
with credit or without credit.
I want to use them as a community building activity
where like, when I go to these events,
I just got back from Dent.
(07:17):
And when I'm at Dent or these other events,
the perspective that I try to shoot from is,
I want each attendee to be able to go to this big set
of 1,000 photos I publish at home
and see themselves in multiple locations,
like maybe at the opening party
and maybe once in the audience,
and maybe they gave a speech
and there's five stage shots of them.
And I also try to think about the other,
(07:37):
just the event itself and the partners of the event
or the sponsors, even though I don't necessarily
owe them anything, but in so much as they're telling
an interesting story, I try to document the event
from their perspective as well.
And then just get that out there as a means to share
and connect.
Tagging people in albums of photos is such a great way
for communities to interconnect with each other.
(07:59):
Because at the end of the event, if I do a group shot
and I tag everybody on it, Facebook,
all those people start to interconnect with one another.
And that's a great place to talk to them,
invite them into other places like a discourse server
or other things and stuff.
Yeah, I love photos, I love photography,
I've really elevated my game in terms of my craft,
but it's not like my own itself,
(08:19):
it's the first step towards building awesome internet shit.
Cool.
So at the time of this recording, we're talking about AI,
we're talking about the looming end of the metaverse
we're talking about, the AR headset from Apple
coming out at some point.
So that ties into this question,
what does your future look like?
Man, I'd like to know a lot about those.
(08:40):
What do you mean by the looming end of the metaverse?
I don't know, I feel like people are like,
yeah, the metaverse was cool, but then it didn't work out
and it was a failed plan or something.
I think that they've been aggressively spending on it
and maybe we're hoping that it would come
to financial fruition before it has or whatever.
The Apple thing's not quite out yet, right?
(09:00):
No, it's not.
I'd be hesitant to call the game over there,
predicting the world before the Apple thing
has entered the market.
It's a little slower, but obviously I think that,
I don't know, some of these dystopian futures of us
spending a lot more time in the virtual world
does seem inevitable.
So yeah, I wouldn't count that one quite out yet.
Yeah, you guys are in my feed, get out of my feed.
(09:22):
The metaverse is coming, it's real.
It's like, you know what I mean,
I'm not a big metaverse proponent,
but I definitely, if you're calling out us
inhabiting a somewhat digital space,
you should reconnect with one another
and do real commerce and shit like that.
It might not look exactly like they think
it's gonna look today, but I think that's probably coming.
Yeah, yeah.
(09:42):
My future, I've had a bit of an affinity
in the last couple of weeks since I talked to you on the audio.
I was at this conference, Dan, the future,
and I just found a Steve Jobs quote.
It's really awesome, man.
I call it like an idea as an inspiration festival.
And I've been doing it for 10 years
and playing a big role in the community
through doing the photos and stuff,
and leading photo walks.
And I've watched the event grow up.
(10:04):
I was sitting down at one of the parties
and I had a, I don't know, 100 point glass of wine
in my hand from the community Somalia
and it made us share his fancy one of the best.
And I was looking at Jason Preston and Steve Brovac,
who were like the organizers, and I was like,
this event is amazing right now.
This isn't as good as it gets.
And I was like, and thinking,
it hasn't always been like that.
(10:25):
We've grown into this type of thing or whatever.
This community is rich.
I would stand there talking to someone
who I don't talk to at every event,
but I know her really well.
I feel a sense of like community with her,
even though I don't know her like date and like,
have you been going to this event?
Yeah, well for a long time.
And I was just realizing that the depth of the community
in the damn world is really rich.
It's grown over time.
I was like, yo, if you don't put your stake in the ground now,
(10:49):
it can never grow into something awesome.
Like the only thing holding me back
between having an event like this right now
is that I didn't start it 10 years ago or something like that.
So I declared to myself and to my buddies,
Jason and Steve, I'm like, this is really inspiring me.
I wanna do something similar.
I wanna convene my unique networks of creative technologists,
(11:12):
startup entrepreneurs, people like you in the design world,
architects, like musicians.
And I wanna have my own kind of ideas and art festival.
And I'd like to travel to somewhere with these people
and have a mix of like activities and talks
and like art that we experience.
(11:32):
But I'd also like to blend in an element
of like a hackathon or something too,
where like this dance community is awesome and powerful.
And I would wish that we would build something together,
spend like half a day or day building something together.
The hackathon I went to was just so cool,
watching people come together and add coding
with design, with marketing, with all these different things
and build like a product in a weekend that actually worked.
(11:54):
Like that's a really cool prospect.
It's not going to be called Krugfest
and it's not gonna be centered around me in my face,
but I am working the Krugfest envisioning a future
in the next 12 months.
Yeah, maybe I'll be able to get 50 people out the first year.
I think that would be a really big success,
but I'd love to grow it over time
and have it be like a mini artistic creative tent talks
(12:18):
in the early days or like a dance or an element
of South by Southwest and stuff like that.
Anyway, I hope that is part of my future as well.
Because I feel like that happened with NFT
is a lot of people were like onto NFT at the beginning
and then it propelled into this mature face
and everyone is like, I missed out.
We're talking about some of them you can miss out on
when we're talking about your...
Well, okay, so I hear what you're talking about
(12:41):
and I have some thoughts about that in relation to AI.
When I'm talking about missing out in this case,
I'm only talking about in terms of my own lifespan.
I'm 45, I'd love to have an event like this.
It takes time to build it.
These guys have been, it took them a decade
to get where they're at, but I was like,
I should do this now or before they pass them by
or I'll never get it to the point where I want it to be.
(13:02):
In terms of the AI stuff and like missing the boat.
All right, I'm of two minds about this as I offer them.
On one hand, I think it's very important to,
as I said, run alongside it, get up to speed,
learn about this stuff.
And I think that will help you,
give you an advantage over people who don't.
(13:24):
I think it will help you.
The most important thing is it's gonna help you
develop this like AI mindset.
Like thinking about how we interact with AI
and how it can be the most useful to you
because some of the ways people use it at first
on the surface to do writing or different things,
they are very like superficial relationship
to this amazing tool, right?
(13:46):
So I think developing an AI mindset is more important
than getting on the bandwagon
and getting all hyped up about it or whatever.
And so I both think it's critically important
that people start figuring this stuff out now
and figure out how they want to relate to it,
how it relates to their career and their communications
and all that kind of stuff.
But the flip side is this stuff just keeps getting easier
(14:09):
integrated into more and more stuff.
So like Microsoft today, who's a huge investor in AI
through their Azure platform,
like they're really the main investors in OpenAI,
the company and Chash-Upt.
It all runs on Azure, on Microsoft or whatever.
So Microsoft today, and it's really taken the tech world
by storm, has relaunched everything, Bing,
(14:29):
and Microsoft 360 and all this stuff under this AI,
everything all the time brand,
literally one big media app to rule them all.
He talks to the AI, talks to all the things and whatever.
And so long way of saying people who don't jump at it
with enthusiasm like we have won't necessarily
get left behind because there's gonna be,
(14:51):
in Gmail right now, there's a button
where it's starting to email.
And it just, AI populates the email
based on who you need to talk to and what you need to say.
It's gonna keep being pushed down to the,
all the ways that everyone has access to it.
But I do think in terms of developing a strategic mind
about it is important.
You'll benefit from, you'll benefit from that.
I have one more thing.
(15:12):
I made a video a couple months ago
about AI agents and stuff like that.
And the competitive advantage you gain through using AI.
And I do still think there is something there.
I do think that people who develop this AI mindset
sooner rather than later or sooner vis-a-vis their peers
will have potentially an unsurmountable
potentially created advantage where they like,
(15:34):
you know, have become superhuman intellectually speaking
on the internet a year before their peers.
And what does that allow them to do?
I'm building software now.
I'm building my own tools.
I'm really expanding my footprint in the last six months.
A lot of it on the back of AI stuff.
Will that put me into a position
by people who decide to do that 12 months from now
(15:55):
or two years from now?
I'll always be playing ketchup.
I don't know, but.
Yeah, not to overstate it.
We had Mayor Saeed on the show on the audio podcast
who has his own podcast and started pretty early on.
We had Debbie Millman on the show
who started really early on with the podcasting.
And now everybody's, everybody can have a podcast.
Everybody podcasts now, but we wonder if it's too late.
(16:16):
Very much feel that way about a lot
of the kinds of issues these days.
I know.
Hey, in some ways it's flooded and it's late
and all those things like you said.
You're starting a podcast on one hand, that's true.
On the other hand, okay.
I've come to learn that like our unique Venn diagram
that makes us us is more valuable to the world
(16:38):
than it's ever been.
Like you're in the intersection of like Desire and AI
and Douglas Copeland and Vancouver is very unique.
Every time you talk or synthesize ideas
that you've been exposed to,
you're producing original content, right?
Things the AI can't necessarily do
and that you're synthesizing your unique experience
(16:59):
and putting it into the world.
And that's what AI then later like trains itself.
So yeah, I don't think it's too late
to put yourself out there.
And I think there's this side benefit anyway,
and this is actually what got me into
the whole podcasting thing and the video blog.
I wanted to build this digital avatar of myself,
like they're calling my clones or whatever, right?
(17:21):
I wanted to build an AI generated video or 3D production
of me that had an intelligent AI in it
that had been trained on everything I've ever read,
everything I've ever seen.
And then not the things I haven't,
like my unique media and academic consumption,
(17:42):
my unique voice, my unique ideas.
And I thought the way I did that out there
was like the audio and video, right?
Anytime you're talking to this microphone,
Tom, you're potentially training the AI
on your unique Venn diagram of perspective
and thoughts and stuff.
And I believe, you've probably heard me tell people
that I think they should use their audio recorder
(18:04):
to record ideas and jot them down
and feed them to the AI later and stuff.
So I think that even if you never grow a Joe Rodin style,
monumental audience, the head of the AI stuff,
it's still valuable.
You're capturing your unique thoughts and ideas
and you're putting them out there in the world.
You're finding your own voice in your own place.
You're building an audience around yourself
(18:24):
and you're figuring out what to do about that.
Now that you've got your voice
and your audience and your channel,
what do you wanna do now that you've got this power?
So I think that's valuable.
I think it's valuable.
It's not just about winning, it's about learning
and having a good time.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Okay, number five, we're in Vancouver.
We're here in the studio.
(18:45):
And the question's about location and place.
How do location and place play a role with what you do?
Yeah, it's interesting.
I'm answering some of these questions
different this time than the last time.
I was really place rooted over the pandemic.
I was out on Galeano Island and Hornby Island
and ran into a farm and an animal, big Jesus,
I was growing veggies and ganja and stuff.
(19:08):
And my world was very much very local,
the local community and stuff.
I was also recovering from a big hack in 2017.
I lost everything in 2017, my main domain name,
my main Gmail addresses,
also my PayPal account and stuff got drained,
but ended up getting restored.
The only thing I had was the email in my domain name,
but it was devastating, man.
(19:28):
It brought me to my knees.
After living open and out loud in public
for the whole internet,
it really made me second guess a lot of that stuff.
And so I hung through down in Galeano Island
between traveling to Africa and doing some other things,
I was laying somewhat low.
So now though, I think I'm taking back off
and I would say that on a longer arc,
(19:49):
I'm an American, I'm a land immigrant here in Canada,
I've been living for 25 years.
I don't feel the strong, normal American patriotism
or I feel more connected, I would say,
in some ways to Canada and Canadians than the States.
And even more than that,
I feel part of this bigger digital community,
this tribe of internet people,
(20:09):
these folks that I met both online,
but the internet has brought me together with
in real life as well.
I really feel I won't be too radical,
but the internet allows me to see the true connections
between people and all of a sudden,
national boundaries and other things make a lot less sense.
And in fact, as we face climate change and AI,
the threats of AI,
(20:30):
we can't just solve this on a nation by nation basis.
Climate change affects everybody equally,
the bigger polluters and the not polluters.
And so there has to be a way that we all get a voice together
some international referendum or consortium
in which we talk about these things and like,
what good is it if 99% of the countries
(20:51):
have responsibilities of AI and that one of those ones doesn't
and then something gets out
and we have to build free theater tools
to contain the one from the rogue nation
that got out or whatever.
I don't know, I can see some of this tech lead us
to our future where hopefully,
we see less of our differences,
maybe that boost nations.
(21:11):
We realize with all one people on the earth
that we try to make some decisions
around our future together in that way.
Yeah, and to add to that,
pandemic had a certain kind of place
that we have to deal with
and then post pandemic has been at a certain kind of place
as well, especially with the in-person events
and high ticket items for in-person events
with Taylor Swift concert prices going nuts.
(21:31):
We're in this kind of new version
of what real life place is, right?
Yeah, man, that's for sure.
Okay, number six, if you had to start from the beginning,
what advice would you give your former self?
I remember what I said to you last time
and it's something I wanna talk about,
which I do get a chance to talk about technology
and all that kind of stuff,
but I also get a chance to talk about
(21:51):
my own sobriety journey
and about some of my mental health journey stuff.
I would hop in a time machine
and fly back into the future
and run from the future
and I grab myself and I'd talk about,
it's okay to reach out to people for help.
I could start with a counselor or a small community.
I just started therapy like a year and a half ago.
(22:12):
I was sober from a big chunk of that
while I was doing that, right?
In that, I found that there was some stuff
I wanted to work through and it's helped me
have better relationships with people
and love myself more and stuff.
I think a lot of the stuff that I would go back
and tell myself would be around that.
And then the other one would be like,
there's different cliches, ways of saying this,
whether free flight, fly or whatever,
(22:34):
but or like I said a minute ago,
you're unique, van dyke, your name is really important,
but it's trust yourself.
Your taste is valuable.
Your perspective, your critique and your objectives
is worthwhile and it's unique and it's valuable and stuff.
And so just reaming into my own opinions
and perspectives earlier,
(22:54):
I think I would encourage myself to do that.
It's all coming to the mainstream.
Like Selena Gomez kind of releasing all this information
about mental health.
I watched the video and found it excruciating,
but love what she's doing about putting this out there
in a mainstream kind of way.
We're all talking about it now, aren't we?
So that she was lying in a mental health
more important than much to her
(23:14):
and she canceled some days,
even though she wasn't fully struggling,
she was just trying to keep things on the up and up.
And she has this documentary about the whole thing too.
Yeah, I think I remember that being one of the first times
I stood up like that and now it's a lot more common.
Yeah.
Okay, tools, what tools do you use?
Are you digital and analog?
Photography, I use the basics.
I use the Canon system.
(23:37):
I already tell people to get whatever camera system
their friends have so you can share lenses and gear
and expensive things like that.
So when I first got into photography,
we were all shooting there and then went towards Sony
for a while, but I stuck with Canon
and now it's coming back to Canon again.
So I'm pretty stoked about that.
Are you doing mirrorless or art series?
I'm not doing the mirrorless yet.
(23:57):
I'm still on a 5D Mark IV.
I got a lot of L-series glass, so I got like nice stuff
and I'm comfortable with it.
I did get a, oh, tell me what the new mirrorless one is.
RF5?
Yeah, maybe.
I have an RF5 in my hand.
Jason Preston one of me is at Dent.
Sweet.
It's awesome, but it's not quite as,
I'm not as reflexive with it yet, man.
I can control most of the deep settings on my camera
(24:20):
without looking at it just by muscle memory.
So doing event photography is,
you're in and out of different lighting environments,
stage lighting, different situations all the time.
So you're constantly having to make adjustments or whatever.
So I'm pretty proficient at that.
Software tools are really,
they're an interesting thing right now.
There's just so many amazing things coming out.
I think I told you about Po last time I was here.
(24:42):
It's a dashboard for all the different AIs.
It's got Google's Po and Facebook's Llama
and Anthropix's Clode and all of Mid Journey
and all these things in one interface.
So you can ask the same questions
to multiple different AI bots,
which I found a useful way of understanding
what they're good at and what they're not good at.
And what about chat GBT?
(25:03):
Is that like old school now?
It did.
Okay.
My understanding is constantly evolving.
I just spent the whole last weekend making sweet love
to chat GBT and I wanted to share that with you.
So it's like, I was about to maybe cancel my GBT pro
since trip seven, but like when we talked about Po,
I was like, no, I wanna try Po, maybe I'll cancel GBT.
(25:23):
And I didn't because of the code interpreter,
which is now called advanced data analysis.
So I was still using the code interpreter
because you can upload files to it.
So I can stick a PDF or a text file in
and I can take a look at this PDF.
And so instead of using the normal character,
we'll admit the GBT as we can deploy it in a whole document.
And I started to use it to do some coding
(25:44):
and some development where I was taking other people's code
and I was making some modifications to it
in advanced code, an analyzer.
And then I was publishing that.
But I was at this hackathon, I was the photographer
and I was a mentor, it was called HackCT.
It was an open source transportation focused hackathon
in Connecticut.
And I was also a mentor, I was helping the teens
(26:05):
with the social and community aspects of their projects.
But I got super inspired, man.
The founders of GitHub were there,
they talked about how the CEO and the COO
of GitHub Thomas and Kyle were at this thing.
And I did a little interview with them,
but they got me thinking they were talking
about their co-pilot inside of GitHub
and how 80% of the code of the future
is gonna be written by these AI's.
(26:26):
I've always known that your ability to write software
is only as good as your ability to describe
to software engineers specifically what you wanted to build.
And I practiced at that.
I have developed requirements,
I have been like user stories and that.
So I decided to join the hackathon.
I decided to write an AI powered chatbot
(26:47):
focused on transportation.
And I'm a coder, but I have learned how to set up
a virtual environment on machine.
And I have learned how Python works.
I knew HTML, CSS, JavaScript from before, but.
Dude, I wrote in a real life.
I did the whole software development process this weekend
on a app that I've now released on GitHub
being like a non-coder.
(27:07):
I even like got stuck in the middle
when I was trying to take the application that I wrote
and forward it to this thing
that serves up the mobile webpages.
I was getting stuck.
And so I called someone over for help
and they said to me, oh, you chose Dart.
I don't really know Dart, but what I do know about it
is it's really tough to trouble you.
I probably would have chosen React Native and socket IO
(27:34):
because it's all in JavaScript.
So I was like, all right, okay.
They were like, I can help you if it wasn't React Native
or if it was in socket IO.
So I used chatbot's advanced code analysis
to take the Python, HTML, CSS, JavaScript that I wrote
and port the Dart mobile app server
over to the new React Native and socket IO.
(27:58):
And I did it successfully.
And then I didn't have to leave any need there
out of that point because I was able to troubleshoot it myself.
And so it's literally, I like re-factored the code base
from the ground up in the middle of the process.
I used advanced code analyzer to write all the documentation,
teach me how to use GitHub, publish my source code.
It was incredible, man.
(28:19):
I don't think chat GPT is old news.
I used it to write software this weekend, man.
Yeah, everybody.
John told me about attaching PDFs
and reading web searches and putting links in.
And I just haven't slept in a while
just because I've been doing that all the time.
It's been great.
(28:39):
Finally, what you mean, that was one thing I bumped into
is I bumped into some of the finite limitations
of chat GPT.
A couple things.
One is I thought they took away
to like 35 queries per every three hours,
but 50 now.
Okay, I'm 50 several times.
There were several times when I-
Me too.
Software development process was only inhibited
by me capping out at 50.
And then I don't know if you've noticed this or not,
(29:02):
or I'm pretty sure this is accurate.
Please fact check me internet.
When it talks about the tokens and the memory
inside a particular chat, on the chat GPT window,
there's a point at which new information
seems to make the information you fed
at the beginning fall off.
It's like, yeah, you can read 100,000 things
or when it gets to 100,000, it keeps moving down
to 100,000, but the other ones spill off the bottom.
(29:24):
Some point long chat GPT conversations
can get a little gobbly gook because it's,
it's trying to hold too much in its memory.
So it's somewhat, sometimes that way,
I create an executive summary, like a chat so far,
and then copy it into a new window or something like that,
and then start from that so it doesn't get too messed up.
You guys check out the John Bondoc episode
(29:45):
from a couple of in-person episodes ago.
It's also about AI, but it's, we're going so fast
that this is like way more relevant, I think.
I can't wait to check that one out.
Yeah, it seems to be.
Okay, so what's the day in your life like?
Those two days are really alike.
As I told you, I was just on the road.
I went to New Mexico, Santa Fe, and I went to New York.
Now I'm in Connecticut for the hackathon.
(30:07):
Now I'm back in Vancouver, but yeah, I'm lucky, man.
I get to do some days I'm doing audio editing,
some days I'm doing videos and photos.
I do a lot of like community and hanging out
and talking online,
and shooting other people's projects and stuff.
I work for the Future and Review.
It's like a day job.
It's a part-time day job, but I do like a podcast for them
and I run their social media channels and stuff.
(30:28):
So I spend a lot of time online.
Baby Jesus keeps me grounded.
I've got a big 110 pound white sheepdog
that needs to get out and bounce and we're cool everyday.
So he gets me out of the house.
But yeah, I spend a lot of time online,
a lot of time connecting with people out there in the world.
Yeah.
Nice, sounds good.
Okay, and number eight, lifelong learning is a popular topic.
(30:49):
How do you stay up to date?
I've mentioned a couple things in this talk.
One is like when it appeared to me
around the AI discord mid-jury stuff,
then this was something I needed to learn.
I decided to learn it with my friends
and create a space where we can learn it together.
So one is just like sharing what I'm learning,
documenting what I'm learning,
and trying to like cross-pollinate that with other people
(31:10):
who are on the same trajectory or whatever.
And then the other one is the thing I just told you is,
fucking AI can teach you anything, man.
There's even one of the plugins,
I forgot which one it is, we can update this thing later,
but like one of the plugins builds you curriculum
based on all the coursework that's in the world,
including MIT and Harvard and all this stuff.
So you're like, teach me a two hour lesson about Spanish.
(31:32):
And it goes, and grabs all the shit and figures it out
and adapts you a two hour Spanish lesson.
It can teach you anything.
That's rad.
Yeah.
Which tools do you use?
No, we did that.
If you weren't doing what you do now,
what would you be doing?
I really did enjoy having my fingers in the dirt
on Hornby and Galiano Apple and stuff.
I would love to build like a solar punk off the grid
(31:56):
or treat center or regenerative agriculture
and stuff like that.
Living close to the land, but in view technology
and other things into that process and stuff.
You can go all the way back, man.
I think, yeah, I've always been intrigued by linguistics.
I think I love to study language and how we talk and speak
and code meaning our words and stuff.
(32:17):
Hypothetically, AI could open up a bunch of free time
for a lot of us, because it just makes that work go quicker.
Perhaps we have time for gardening and stuff like that
when we didn't before.
It does seem AI is good at crunch numbers
and it's good at sorting things and it's good at remembering
stuff and it's getting our lists and synthesizing information.
It's going to keep pushing us towards the boundaries
(32:39):
of what it truly means to be human.
We used to say creativity was the defining thing
maybe for that language or something,
but it's got language, it's got creativity.
So what is it now?
I mean, it's something around maybe community or meaning making,
the ability to make significance and meaning
and purpose in one's life.
Maybe that's what it means to be human,
not so much the creativity anymore.
(33:01):
But anyway, I think AI is going to continue to push us
to define and explore and expand on our definition
of what it means to be human.
And it's a radical kind of concept because,
I mean, I was thinking the same thing the other day.
I finished a bunch of work that I was doing
because Chachi Biki was doing it so quickly
and I was just relaxing and I was like,
what are the good moral, ethical things
(33:23):
that I could do with my life if I push my life
in that direction specifically?
What are the best things that I could possibly do?
I ended up asking Chachi Biki what it was.
I forget what it said, but definitely thinking
about those things.
The intent behind that is pretty beautiful, man.
Like, okay, this thing's gonna make me more efficient.
I don't want it to just suck up all the efficiency
(33:43):
that it's created with more productivity.
So how do I dedicate intentionally a percentage
of the time that it frees up towards things
that I wouldn't have been able to do otherwise?
That's a beautiful notion, man.
I'm gonna ask myself that and I'm gonna try to set aside
5% AI efficiency time for other things
that it's covered back in Melon or something like that.
(34:04):
Ethics is coming back.
Good idea.
It's a really good idea.
What do you not wanna do with your career?
What do I not want to do with my career?
Well, I'm grateful for the time I spent
inside corporations because it allowed me to learn
the ins and outs of like, finance
and how marketing departments work and stuff.
I definitely don't want to be stuck in a cube again
or anything like that.
(34:24):
I have a dress code, that kind of thing.
And so that was pretty soul sucking.
I got fat and unhappy and drank too much and stuff.
I don't want to be limited to any one particular thing.
I wanna be able to be free to pursue my creative interests
and passions and the things that I'm good at and stuff.
So I just want to be able to play and experiment
(34:46):
and report back.
So I forget what you said for 13.
It's a favorite word, quote or sentence.
Oh, shit.
Could be a word.
Could be a word, excuse me.
Yeah.
Okay, so this thing I've been talking about,
like your unique Venn diagram and the thing that makes you
you and your A&E perspective.
I think of this quote, I think it's from the doubted chain.
(35:09):
And it's something like he who without competing
has no competition in the world or something like that.
And so you realize that you are special,
that what you have to offer is unique and valuable.
Who are you really competing against anyway?
There's only one you man and you only had so many hours
in a day and so much light on this planet.
(35:30):
So no one else can be you.
So there's like a little bit of sense in competing
and then competing to be your best self
to be the most awesome you could possibly be
or something like that.
But yeah, I find that one is fine.
I wish I had something funny instead.
No, it's great.
Cause a lot of our listeners are designers
or design education people
and in the startup world and entrepreneurship as well.
(35:50):
And they probably think of the strategize their books
like value proposition design and business model campus
and like building a system where you can understand
where you're talking about it, I think.
Yeah.
Yeah, so I don't know.
Oh, I heard a clue in close this weekend.
I'm just gonna butcher it.
He's something about one foot rooted into model.
One foot looking into tomorrow
and while our vision looking into tomorrow land
(36:12):
while our feet are rooted in a banana land or whatever.
And you were just talking about like our
eliminated abilities somewhat to conceive
of what the future holds because of our boundness
to where we're at and how things are right now.
And so we bumble through things from our perspective now
that in the future probably will be a lot different.
We'll be a lot more tomorrow.
(36:32):
What's the opposite of that?
What's the least favorite word quote or sentence?
Oh man, what's my least favorite quote?
Hey, I don't like when people talking about me
and outside the box.
I don't know.
I don't know it all.
I really like when people just like, you know,
happen to just know everything
and they're really unsure about it and inflexible
(36:52):
and they're thinking I love to see both sides of the issue
and banter about it and figure it out together and stuff.
Bye bye.
15, if you have to pick one word to describe yourself
what would you choose?
Iconoclastic.
Sweet, what keeps you up at night?
Oh man, I sleep pretty good.
The only thing that keeps me up lately
has been the creative brainstorm searches
(37:14):
and stuff like that.
I'm optimized around like six hours a day.
I'm bed-by-night pretty much up to my six.
Though it's been getting a little bit harder.
The sunrise time changes pretty significantly
in Vancouver and it's after 6 a.m.
for the first time in a while.
So I'm starting to sleep in again.
Yeah, a dream you're chasing.
I guess I told you last podcast
(37:35):
that I might as well say it again now
on the video camera too.
I'm gonna try to make a million bucks each year.
Putting all the pieces in place to really grow
this creative endeavor that I'm working on
and I believe that calling in the abundance theory
type stuff, I believe that there's enough to go around
and that I can find mine and I'm gonna go off and do that.
And what happened?
(37:55):
Because I'm older and what I was growing up with
was about a million bucks but I feel like now
it's about a billion bucks.
So when did that shift happen?
You're right in some ways but I think also my saying
a million dollars represents one of my headzacks.
I've never really been about money too much.
I've spent a lot of time doing cool things
with people that I love or there's money in it or not.
This hackathon that I was at was a nonprofit event.
(38:18):
The dead thing, they give me room and board
in exchange for my photography.
I'm just always trying to build things better than myself
whether there's cash there or not and I spent a lot of time
consulting other people who made a lot of money
with my ideas so I just think that now's a great time
for me to put some of those things into place
for my own self and I'm not living to be a bazillionaire
(38:40):
or have 10 houses and I like that.
I'm 45, I'd like to have a little more housing security
in my life, I'd like to give my kids some nice stuff too.
Yeah, I don't need a billion but things sure have changed.
Weren't you 30 bucks today?
Why are you inspired?
I'm super inspired when I see other people
doing creative stuff.
I'm inspired right now by some of the principles
(39:02):
of the burning man community, particularly the one
as I think about this conference that I wanna put on
around no-attentive-only participants.
We all bring something special to any group
that we're a part of and asking yourself,
what do I bring to the table, what do I have to give?
Am I willing to give it in terms of your creative
and spiritual gifts and stuff like that?
(39:24):
I'm pretty inspired by that ethos right now.
It's interesting times tangential.
Chris Doe is a great example, if you go to his website,
it's all high-ticket items now, so it's not like
you can buy my book for 20 bucks.
Now it's like you buy this and you get the books
but you pay this premium price for all this other stuff
as well.
What's the thing with the high-ticket item you're buying?
Courses or part of his pro group.
(39:45):
Yeah, super smart.
Yeah, it's good.
Yeah, okay, number 19, any advice you'd like to share?
I've shared everywhere I'm coming from so far.
I don't really think I have anything to give
in terms of advice other than figure this stuff out
for yourself, run alongside it.
Your concerns and fears are valid
(40:06):
but they shouldn't be obstacles necessarily to you exploring.
There's a revolution taking place,
a renaissance possibly even.
And the people that are harsh about it are like,
don't change, it's gonna change you
whether you like it or not.
And I don't exactly wanna go that far
because I think that there's room for all different people
and world perspectives in terms of how we interact
(40:28):
with technology but it's gonna be the dominant cultural form
of interaction, that's for sure.
And so if you're choosing a place in opposition to that,
you need to understand potentially what that means.
And number 20, so we're in the bonus episode
and we're on the video podcast, so there's the real deal.
So number 20, what's our call to action?
(40:48):
What do we do to find that real KK
and where should we go with it?
Oh, cool man, well I mean not hard to track down
but so start by going to chriscrew.co, K-R-I-S-K-R-E-U-G.co.
Subscribe to my newsletter,
I'm trying to grow that right now.
From there you'll find I get monthly updates
with like my video blog and my podcast and stuff like that.
(41:09):
I'd love to invite you to the Crew Fest,
whatever it is that's being called.
I'm going in, that's also been one 49 to go.
Maybe you'll help me think of where exactly it should be
and it opens up all sorts of interesting possibilities.
You guys, Crew Fest is coming.
Yeah man, and if you want to explore this stuff
alongside me, you can join the Discord server, it's free.
It's just a place to hang out and chat
(41:29):
and share and stuff like that.
Yeah, okay, thanks so much for being on.
It's such a pleasure, I love, I can't get it out of my head.
The pictures you have with those people
and the kinds of conversations you must have had
around with those people is just mind boggling
and I definitely appreciate a lot of the episodes
that I've had as well with people that really impacted me.
So cool to see that you have that as well.
(41:51):
I'm just tickled to meet you too.
I just recently come back to Vancouver
and you're a bit of an icon here on the art and design scene
and I appreciate you getting me on the pod.
And like, in your own way, you've encouraged me
because like I started putting myself out there
and then you already shower like,
hey, you want to talk about this stuff more?
I felt like that was like the road rising up to me
(42:11):
on my journey, so I really appreciate it.
And thank you to the algorithm.
Yeah, okay, thanks guys.
Over and out.
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