| Christopher Joseph Pirillo | |
|---|---|
Pirillo speaking at Gnomedex in 2007 |
|
| Born | July 26, 1973 Des Moines, Iowa |
| Occupation | YouTube Partner, Magazine columnist, tech expert for CNN.com,[1] book author, conference organizer, public speaker, owner of a blogging network, runs a social community, provider of video content |
| Board member of | Ustream, Inc. |
| Religion | Agnostic [2] |
| Website | |
| chris.pirillo.com | |
Christopher Joseph Pirillo (born July 26, 1973) is the founder and maintainer of Lockergnome, which is a network of blogs, web forums, mailing lists, and online communities. Lockergnome was the first website Chris registered back in 1996. He spent two years hosting the TechTV television program Call for Help, where he also hosted the first annual Call-for-Help-a-Thon. He now hosts videos on several Internet sites, including CNN, YouTube, ustream.tv, CBC and his own website.[3]
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Pirillo was born on July 26, 1973 in Des Moines, Iowa to Judy and Joe Pirillo. Chris is one of three boys, Benjamin, Adam, and himself. He studied at the University of Northern Iowa, where he majored in English education, eventually graduating with an English degree. For a short time, he was a 7th grade English student teacher at Coke R. Stevenson Middle School in San Antonio, Texas. He currently lives in Seattle, Washington[4] with his two dogs, Wicket and Pixie, and long term girlfriend, Diana. The dogs after whom are the names of the bots on his IRC chatroom, which he started up in 2007 on the WyldRyde IRC Network, and ended up switching to GeekShed in October, 2009.[5]
Pirillo streams a live video of his home office out via ustream.tv and is followed by a large community of dedicated supporters that watch his frequently recorded videos on various tech-based and non-tech-based topics. During the course of 2011, Pirillo achieved 200,000 subscribers on YouTube and over 100,000 dedicated Twitter followers. His current video views of all time stand at just over 127 million. Chris now hosts, 'TLDR' (The LockerGnome Daily Report) on weekdays, streaming it live from his home office. Chris has regular discussions and conversations with his community by the community being able to reach him via his own personalized email. Chris' community has been impacted by audiences from networks such as CNN. Pirillo has been married twice before.
Since 2001, Pirillo has hosted Gnomedex, which is a yearly conference covering art, science, social media, blogs, and new and emerging technologies and concepts, such as Web 2.0. Gnomedex 10 was held in August 2010 in Seattle, Washington.[6] He streams Gnomedex live so his community can participate via chat.
Pirillo streams video live from his home office on Ustream, and his stream at http://live.pirillo.com is one of the more popular, with over 5,000 regular watchers. His streams, also broadcast on YouTube, focus on software, hardware, news, reviews, computers, iPhone applications, operating systems, gaming, and other technology-related topics and events. As of 1 January 2012[update], Pirillo has had over 127,000,000 video views.[3] As of 17 November 2011[update], he reached over 200k subscribers on his YouTube channel.[7]
Pirillo runs several online communities. His Lockergnome blogging network has over 100,000 members. Geeks, his Ning-based social network, has over 24,000 users.[8] Lockergnome began as a technology mailing list in 1996, offering tricks and tips for operating systems and applications, software suggestions (with an emphasis on public domain and shareware software), and web site recommendations.[9] Several mailing lists are now provided, offering technology advice and tips[10] and other content syndicated from Lockergnome's blogs and web forums, including IT Professionals[11] and problem solvers.[12]
Pirillo's advocacy of new technology went as far as setting up, with Jake Ludington, a BitTorrent server at vistatorrent.com "to help Microsoft get [Windows Vista] Beta 2 in users' hands" in 2003.[13] According to Information Week, Microsoft had "reported problems in delivering Beta 2 electronically ... recommending on its own Web site that users order the DVD rather than download the 3.5-4.4GB file".[13] Microsoft sent a cease and desist e-mail, and the pair complied.[13][14]
Pirillo is the author of several books, including Poor Richard's E-mail Publishing, Online! The Book with John C. Dvorak and Wendy Taylor, and several ebooks.[15][16] In January 2010, he began hosting "Help Desk with Chris Pirillo", a weekly live video call-in show on Microsoft's Channel 9 web site.[17] The show is at the pilot stage. Since early 2011, Pirillo has been one of the featured "CoolHotNot Tech Xperts," along with John C. Dvorak, Jim Louderback, Dave Graveline, Robin Raskin, Dave Whittle, Steve Bass, and Cheryl Currid. At CoolHotNot's web site, he shares his "Loved List" of favorite consumer tech products, along with a "Wanted List" and a "Letdown List".[18]