Intro
The Piksel event has expanded considerably since last year, both in terms of days, participants, workshops and performance/presentations at Landmark every evening. More than 13 nationalities represented this time, for those who believe in that stuff. A major upgrade - just outta beta!! The core gang of last years pioneers are mostly here again, although at the time of writing this we are missing some (you know who you are :).

Even if Piksel is now a rapid growing organization of programmers, activists, artists and developing platforms, the core activities are still mainly the same:
- interoperability (between applications)
- livido development (common framwork for plugins)
- mailinglists (piksel and piksel-dev)
- general discussions and workshops between some of the most outstanding developers of realtime audio/video software for open source platforms.
- public performances and presentations
- eating, drinking and sleeping together :)

Because of alle the peer-to-peer social activities, this period in Bergen is essential for the community. BEK has again done a great job in curating, producing and activating local and remote sources.

However growing in size and ambitions also creates a few new problems:
- Logistics (machines, monitors, videocards, chairs, space, food, server/ports etc., transport, time allotment)
- Split focus - too much going on?

My impression after three days and nights is that the sessions at BEK in the daytime are working really well. Even with so many people crammed into only a few rooms, the discussions seem focused and productive. Developers are alloted several hours every day in the seminar room at the 3rd floor to discuss and present applications, frameworks and plugin APIs in, while the main room upstairs is the "hub" where different people are working on their various projects, but it is always possible to peep over each others shoulders.

The Landmark evening program impose some new challenges, the main one being the ability to communicate what Piksel is all about to a wider public. While all of us inside the community realize all the difficulties that comes with working on the technological frontier, this isn't really something a general audience want or need to know about. It could even just work against the intended purpose, and brand us as a bunch of nerds with our heads in the cpu and our nose in the videobuffer, or the other way round. I feel that a moderator, curator or "circus director" would be in place at Landmark to explain and communicate the general ideas of Piksel to the wider audience.

We haven't received any local press (yet), and even the local audience seem to leave quietly and quickly when they fall out of the (jargon loaded) presentations. This fact raises a central question: Are the artworks themselves to be presented as "just video art" (thus perceived mainly on an aesthetic level), or should they be contextualized within a "Free Software Developer" mode, meaning it is the process behind the audio and video that is what should be looked at? Is this maybe a classical product/process discussion??? And regarding the project presentations: While mumbling and fumbling can be quite charming I personally think it would sometimes be better to present the works themselves (or representations, whatever) - then open for general or p2p questions..

I am an avid follower of micro-events myself, and still think that less = more when it comes to actually reaching an audience. This goes for not only seminars and talks, but also art presentations and shows. Which is why we shouldn't really be unhappy about lack of audience or press - lets welcome those who are actually there and embrace them for their good taste!

OK I'll stop rambling; here are some general impressions and rough notes day by day. Hopefully Piksel