An early adopter on the virtues of three-year-old cell phones

On his resume, Travis Smith describes himself as “an experienced blend of technology, editorial and management skills in a personable package.” Not a bad thing to be at this moment in history. A former editor at Variety.com and LATimes.com, Travis is now a partner (and blogger) at Hop Studios, a web design and consulting firm with locations in Vancouver and Palo Alto. He’s also a self-described photography geek, a lecturer in online journalism at USC, and Mac-using gadget lover. So what’s this cutting-edge guy doing with a three-year-old cell phone? Travis answers that question here and tells what he’s bringing to We Media Miami and what he hopes to get out of it:

 

 

I know it’s trendy to say that Facebook or Twitter or the iPhone or Kindle is one’s favorite tool right, but actually, I’m finding that my good, old-fashioned, three-year-old cell phone is my favorite tool these days. Here’s why:

 

 

It’s got a camera, and I’m using that camera in really quotidian but interesting ways, like using it to pay parking meters, or MMS-ing photos while I’m shopping to show the people I’m shopping for what I’m thinking of getting.

• It gets and sends text messages. Getting Facebook messages while I’m out (okay, there’s the Facebook reference) has really changed my patterns of meeting and interacting with folks in my friend-circle.
• It plays media. Music and video are always with me. When I’m off the cell network, I play little games on it like Tetris and Bejeweled.

 

I’m always able to talk to anyone, with long distance rates so low. I talk to my sister every day, though she lives in Calgary. The cost is the same as though she lived next door.

 

 

 

For me, it’s not so much about a single device or service. It’s about how I’m really starting to carry, and publish, information from a device that’s always, always with me. It’s my favorite device because of what it lets me do, not because of what’s on its feature list.

When I drop this phone one too many times, I’ll get a newer one that does even more (geotagging? web browsing?) but my cell phone for now is already doing things that startle (and somehow also fail to startle) me.

 

I realize that I’m fortunate and an early adopter. Not everyone has a device, or the time or money, to do all these things. Even if everyone had such a tool, not everyone would want to use it like I do. But I do believe that the benefits of a connected society outweigh the detriments, and due the network effect, as more and more people join, the benefits accumulate. I feel like I’m already helping to encourage this – I’m on the organizing board of a conference in Vancouver called Northern Voice that addresses these issues – but I could be doing more, better.

 

 

By attending We Media 08, I hope to learn better ways to increase participation on the media sites I maintain, and I also hope that by bringing back what I learn to Canada and Vancouver, I’ll be able to spark some of the people here to extend what I’ve learned into their own site development and community outreach. Vancouver has a significant population of social activists and technology developers — it’s no coincidence that Flickr started here. I’d like to be able to help this network of people do even better than they’re already doing. I’m particularly interested in the patterns of growth of network sites like Wikipedia and Urban Dictionary – how participation in group-built sites can snowball or fizzle.