Allan Alcorn for PBS in San Jose

Personally, it was a real treat for me to meet Al and spend a few hours with him.



Very similar to the structure of Guy Kawasaki's piece: there's an opening scene, a linear story of his life, then a return to the opening scene (which allows me to re-cap the story you were just told).

Graphically, it's based on the box of the Atari home version of PONG. Not an outright copy, but it uses the curved line and the bands of orange color. The rest of the graphics were a real egg hunt. Al provided a few pictures from the 1970s, but the rest came from trolling around on Atari tribute sites.

I was very sad to cut out an early section about the importance of his Berkeley years. He witnessed the tear gassing of rioters on Telegraph Avenue and considers it to be an important event in his life. It took about thirty seconds for Al to tell the story, and it was only cut because This Is Us had to fit it's running time.

End of Summer Highlight - Matt Mullenweg

As Bigge Crane was winding down, I started working on a profile of Matt Mullenweg for KTEH, the PBS affiliate in San Jose.



This is built around a sit-down interview with Matt. I talked to him for nearly an hour, beginning from his religious and social background to his philosophical influences as a young developer. We also covered the facts & figures surrounding the success of WordPress and Automattic.

The challenge was finding video to cover the thoughts. Luckily for me, Matt is a photography fanatic and there are web videos from WordPress's fans around the world. By using those assets, plus Photoshop and After Effects animations, we were able to turn abstract ideas into visual expression.

The reaction to the story was VERY positive. The folks at WordPress put it on their company blog and Matt himself posted it and recommended it as a good introduction to WP. It was re-tweeted and re-posted onto other blogs around the world and received many positive compliments.