Personal Reflections on 2012

Now that the year is coming to a close I've been reflecting upon the past year and what to focus on in the following year. This year has had a lot happen, I've made connections with people from all over the world thanks to Google+, gained a larger audience than ever, started a weekly variety show, created a blog, and developed myself quite a bit.

My Work and its Audience

This year my audience has exploded (Around 1.3M) and that has made me consider what my audience wants even more. I want to know that I'm giving great content to the people who follow me. I know that you shouldn't feel pressured to change who you are and not worry about what other people think, but one of the great things that I've found online is that I feel like I'm part of something since I've had a number of problems socializing in real life. I want to listen to those following me and be part of a dynamic with them.

Fine, Be That Way

The photo above I did for Halloween 2012, it's a stand alone image part of a concept surrounding not fitting 

in and being left out. (It also creeps the hell out of some people :) ) 

Wanting to be part of this dynamic means that I want to connect with people in a personal way. I'm sometimes insecure about how much I'm able to relate on an emotional level. My outwards appearance by some I've heard described as cold, but the truth is I'm a bit shy. I also come from a science background that has kind of effected my personality in that I try to take a more rational approach. I do come out more in some of my work as shown below by the craziness. I feel that I'm able to rationally deliver information to people but I've been thinking lately about how to affect them more emotionally. So one of the things I aim to do in the new year is learn how to better express myself emotionally. 

It's Party Time!

This is a photo from my "Scientist Series" that depicted stereotypes of the science world. This one points fun at the thought that people in this area can't have any fun. 

All in all I want to maintain originality and character in my work that stays true to what I want to do. This is a hard thing to balance when you are trying to listen to an audience and work off of inspirations at the same time. I also find it difficult to stick to one conventional thing, but I feel that my work has developed a particular character. I still love landscapes, architecture, and dramatic self portraiture and putting them all together and creating a conceptual series. I feel that instead of being able to conform to a trend I've kind of made up an entirely new thing. I'm kind of proud in one way, but I feel  it's harder to build an audience off of than something that people are familiar with. 

Run Like Hell

Part of the "Run! Series" that depicted the journey through life and how people need to pause for reflection before they've run through their entire life without even stopping to think.

During this year +Ron Clifford bestowed upon me a credit for a train ride for 2 people from my city of Sault Ste. Marie 114 miles north into the Algoma wilderness all the way up to the Agawa Canyon. It was the first time I had ever experienced such an adventure and I brought my mother along with me. It was a lot of fun and I ended up taking many pictures. If it hadn't been for Google+ this would never have happened. 

Morning

Above is a photo taken during the beginning of the train tour crossing the Bellevue Trestle in the morning. There were pretty clouds floating around the hills.

One of the new things I took up this year was drawing of architecture. I drew my own building designs from scratch using a pen, ruler, calculator, compass, protractor, paper, whiteout, and a lot of time. I've also been working on ideas for a book surrounding my observations and findings surrounding art, architecture, design, and trends in society. 

Empire Cottage

A design by me inspired by Victorian Second Empire worker's cottages in Toronto and some architectural elements found in Colmar, France. The house is designed to have a working class charm with a bit of ambition wrapped in a small package. New Drawing Print Gallery

That Show with Billy Wilson (TSBW)

I'm absolutely amazed that I've started a show. I'm used to shying away from people, interaction, and public speaking, but somehow I decided to start a show and I will have done 39 episodes before this year is over! It all started with regular hangouts and finally getting enough courage to hop into one. Eventually Google got the idea to make it so we could be broadcast hangouts and record them to Youtube afterwards. I believe I was the first person in Canada to officially be given the ability while it was still only available to a small group of beta testers. Since then I've had 200 different people who have been on the show. I've had all kinds of people from the Youtube a cappella sensation +Peter Hollens to astronomer and publisher of Universe Today +Fraser Cain! The show occurs weekly on Fridays at 10:00pm ET (NYC) on my personal profile and is an hour in duration featuring a live musical performance!

TSBW Banner 

The banner used to promote my show featuring screenshots of guests taken during the show.

It has been amazing to watch myself and my show grow over time and I can't wait to see where it will take me in the new year. I'm looking towards getting more and more fun and interesting creative people in art, film, and music in the new year.

The People

During this year I've been able to meet so many new people and strengthen connections with them. I organized my first ever photowalk, HIRLed (Hangout In Real Life) with someone that I had met on G+, and stayed up until the sun came up talking to people from around the world.

Jordan Oram & I 

A photo snapped of myself and +Jordan Oram meeting in person in a HIRL for the first time. He happened to have a brief bus layover while passing through.

 Meet Doug

Here's a photo from the photowalk I organized in my city for the Worldwide G+ 1 Year Anniversary Photowalk. 

Connections in Hangouts

+Amanda Blain and everyone else during the after show for the fourth episode of TSBW.

Other people have also started shows on G+. +John Voshell recently did a Music Festival where he stayed up for 32 hours doing a series of broadcast hangouts on air featuring 64 musicians from all around the world! It was even featured in the Google+ Weekly Newsletter along with +Tyra Banks' latest hangout. It was one of the most awesome experiences I've had yet with hangouts! 

Music Festival 

+Julia Price playing with +Danni Rosner in the background during the +Artists In The Plus (AITP) Music Festival. 

Flo from Progressive Insurance

Larger entities have been making a splash onto G+. In the image above I was lucky enough to be in +Progressive Insurance's first ever hangout on air!

Tibby!

+Tibby got his very own page this year as well and starred in 2 episodes of "That Show with Tibby (TST)" so far! There are other plans for more Tibby shows!

I'm really excited for what the new year has in store for me. I hope to develop myself further and to make a deeper emotional connection with my audience and friends, "Billy Wilson" is becoming clearer. I'm also excited to see what kinds of amazing guests I'll be getting on the show. I have a number of fun episodes already planned out for 2013! I want to thank everyone who's reading this for being part of this journey with me and for your support, I wish you all a happy 2013!

Billy
about Billy

My Online Journey

From Panoramio to Flickr to Google+

I haven't always been big on using the internet. When I really get into anything I tend to become obsessed with it. I have an internet track record of breaking things, tripping wires, and grabbing people's attention not always in the best way. I've also had some problems with interacting with people in real life. Below are the main networks I've used over the time I've been actively producing content online.

The Pamoramio Days:
My family has traditionally been behind the curve of technology and we didn't even have a computer in the house until 2003 and we started out with dial up. I mainly used it to play a few games and type things up. Eventually my mother saved up to buy a laptop that I began using when she wasn't using it. It wasn't until 2007 on a laptop passed down to me by my mother that I started to contribute content to the internet. For a little while I had been obsessed with the desktop version of Google Earth. I loved using it to explore areas around my city of Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Canada. I had an obsession with finding new waterfalls and brook trout fishing spots and I'd ride my pedal bike out into the forest down old bush roads and bull my way through thick forest to find these places and take pictures. I discovered that on Google Earth you could embed photos as a layer through a site called Panoramio, so I signed up and started to put my photos up on there.

A screenshot of Google Earth overlooking the upper reaches of the Little Carp River with descriptions. The following photos correspond to the numbered locations.

1. These beaver ponds were up on the flat height of land. This was early in the spring and finding such ponds excites trout fishermen, at least me anyway. 

2. Further downstream just above the waterfalls the river looks nice and peaceful. 

3. Then BAM! it goes over a plunge into a gorge full of waterfalls. 

4. And along these journeys I'd come across the Salvelinus fontinalis better known as brook trout or speckled trout. These guys are prized fish for eating and carry a kind of prestige and air about them for being a fish that needs an extremely high quality habitat, hence they are an indicator species. 

The Flickr Days:

I soon became bored with Panoramio, I was getting a lot of views but there just wasn't a community to be found on the site at the time. So I went looking for a new site to display my photos so I researched which site was the world's most used photo sharing site and I found Flickr. I started posting on Flickr in 2008 and I started to get some interaction with people, I discovered groups, and made some new contacts. I found it to be a great place to see other people's work and I soon started to fave a lot of images. I became obsessed with faving, I liked looking at people's photos and it was a way for me to escape chemistry and biology that I was studying in university. Through all of my time faving, seeing photos, and shooting I quickly developed my skills in taking photos. I soon became renowned for faving images and I showed no sign of slowing down. On Flickr Thomas Hawk claimed to have the most faves of anyone and I soon passed him and hit a quarter of a million before Flickr stopped me thinking I was an automated script and suspended my account in 2010. Flickr's freezing of my account caused a lot of commotion and soon threads and blog posts started popping up about it and I disputed Flickr's claim and they unfroze my account. Since that time I slowed down on Flickr in fear of tripping another spam wire.

Above is Thomas Hawk's blog post about my Flickr account being suspended. 

The Google+ Days:
A few months after I had finished my university degree in Biology and Chemistry Thomas Hawk invited me to Google+ on August 19th of 2011. At first I was afraid of joining and being active on something referred to as a "social network" since I hadn't done well interacting with people in real life. I gave it a try and I felt like there was an accepting community on there. Within 5 days I had 1,416 followers, within 36 days I had more than 6,000 followers which is around what I had amassed on Flickr. By June 15th of 2012 I had hit 50,000 followers and now by November 30th I estimate I'll hit 1 million followers. The massive amount of followers means nothing though in comparison to the meaningful relationships I've made with people on G+. I had met Thomas Hawk on Flickr years ago, but it wasn't until G+ that I really felt like I knew him through G+ hangouts which are a live video chat of up to 10 people. Google+ helped me further open up and overcome some of my social problems to the point where I actually felt confident enough to host an on air variety show using G+ Hangouts On Air. The show has gone on to become one of the longest running shows on G+. Producing shows meant that I was producing video content so now I'm more active on Youtube, a site where I was too afraid to comment on for years. Making a lot of new great connections on G+ spilled over to Facebook where I've gone from only having a handful of school friends to having hundreds of friends and many subscribers. During this time I've also gotten interested in Pinterest where I'm enjoying collecting images related to my interests.

A screenshot from the 33rd episode of my on air G+ variety show "That Show with Billy Wilson (TSBW)".

This now brings me to this place, this blog, that I've just started mostly based on the buzz and recommendations I've heard from people on G+. So far I'm enjoying this and I'm excited to see where it will go. Let me know what you guys think!

Billy

about Billy