Chris Pirillo

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Christopher Joseph Pirillo

Chris Pirillo, wearing the Gnomedex 2007 t-shirt
Born July 26, 1973 (1973-07-26) (age 34)
Des Moines, Iowa
Occupation Former TV host, software tester, computer technician
Children None
Website
http://www.pirillo.com http://chris.pirillo.com http://live.pirillo.com http://www.lockergnome.com

Chris Pirillo (born July 26, 1973(1973-07-26) in Des Moines, Iowa) is the founder and maintainer of Lockergnome. He spent two years hosting the TechTV television program Call for Help before parting ways with the company. He also hosted the first annual Call-for-Help-a-Thon on TechTV. He now hosts videos on several internet sites, including CNN.com, YouTube and his own website.

Contents

[edit] Biography

Pirillo majored in English education at the University of Northern Iowa. He married Gretchen Hundling on October 3, 1998. They divorced on December 19, 2003.[1] He later married Latthanapon "Ponzi" Indharasophang on December 9, 2006,[2] who is also his business partner. They live in Seattle with their two dogs Wicket and Pixie, who are the namesakes of the bots on the live.pirillo.com chat room.

Every year, Pirillo hosts Gnomedex, a technology conference tailored to the geek enthusiast.

Pirillo is passionate about blogging, RSS, and Google AdSense. His personal website is often ranked number one under the search term "Chris" on Google, Yahoo!, and Live Search. He is friends with several influential members of the blogging and podcasting communities such as Dave Winer, Adam Curry and Robert Scoble.

[edit] Live Video Streams and Community

Chris Pirillo hosts a live video stream on his website. He provides a chat room and tech support community, both tied into the live stream. Gnomedex can even be viewed from the site. For a time he was taking live calls during recording, but terminated that feature due to exorbitant cost.[citation needed] Some recorded clips from the video stream are also posted to Pirillo's YouTube channel.

When finished with a particular segment or show, he will usually end with his catchphrase "we'll 'E' ya later," which he first used while working on radio. Later, when working on television, he began to extend his index, middle and ring finger while holding up his hand, as a memorable hand gesture to go along with this catchphrase.

On March 1, 2008, Chris announced that he will begin to host live videos on the CNN website on Thursdays at 5:30 p.m. Eastern.[3] He said these videos will provide tech information for a general audience.

Although Chris is usually very busy with private work, he still finds time to talk to the community and help people with their Technology related problems.

[edit] Lockergnome

Chris Pirillo's alias is Lockergnome, which is also the name for his group of websites called "Lockergnome"

Lockergnome hosts a technical support forum called Lockergnome's Problem Solvers. The site also offers various tutorials, downloadable games, and blog hosting.

In recent years, the help sections of Lockergnome have moved towards the Bloggers, giving general guides on tasks/problems. There is still a Help Forum[4], but posts are on the constant decline.

The site also is a host of the Gnomedex conference.

[edit] Gnomedex

Gnomedex is an annual technical conference, coordinated by Lockergnome founder Chris Pirillo and his wife Ponzi Pirillo, that began in late 2001, and has so far been held seven times. It is not affiliated with the desktop environment GNOME. The conference is typically held during the summer on a weekend, and focuses on leading-edge social and technical trends, most recently including RSS aggregation and podcasting.

It has been traditionally held in Des Moines, Iowa, Pirillo's home town, but due to its size, moved to Lake Tahoe in 2004 and then Seattle in 2005, 2006 and 2007, where the Pirillos make their home.

The conference consists of parties, a keynote by Chris Pirillo, and presentations by various leaders in tech-centered fields. Notable speakers have included Jason Calacanis, Adam Curry, John C. Dvorak, politician John Edwards, Rob Malda of Slashdot fame, Tim O'Reilly, Dave Winer, and the Microsoft Internet Explorer development team, who at Gnomedex 2005 announced widespread RSS support in Windows Vista.

Started as "a tech conference for everyone else", what Gnomedex is exactly about is not really known. It is geared towards not only being fun, but informative. While the conference is run professionally at high-end venues, sponsorship from large companies including Microsoft, Yahoo!, and Google keeps registration fees unusually low. Another uncommon feature is a single "stream" of speeches in one room holding a few hundred people, rather than parallel series of talks and discussions as at other conventions.

The conferences have unusual themes. At 2004's Gnomedex 4.0, the theme was "Taking the 'con' out of Convention", while Gnomedex 5.0's taglines in June 2005 included "The Technology People Aggregator" and "Grassroots of RSS, Blogging, Podcasting, BitTorrent, Media!"

[edit] Print Media

Chris has authored three books: Poor Richard's Email Publishing, Online! The Book (with John C. Dvorak), and Lockergnome's Computer Tips Compendium.

He also writes a monthly column for CPU magazine (Sandhills Publishing).

[edit] References

  1. ^ Chris Pirillo - Biography
  2. ^ See Ponzi's Website
  3. ^ Tech Segments on CNN.com - Chris Pirillo's YouTube channel
  4. ^ Lockergnome Problem Solvers

[edit] External links

Languages