Happy May Day everyone. I’m back in the office (for a little while anyway) after attending the Voices That Matter conference in San Francisco, and let me tell you, i’m Tired! Well.. i’m not just tired- I have a million ideas buzzing through my head – one of the great benefits of heading to a conference.

It’s funny.. the common elements that were talked about at the conference were the focus on experience and the leveraging of the social world – two things that I am recently involved with, what with my Twitter account and all. I think it has to do with being involved in the day to day grind of things, but to borrow a Marty Neumeier thought, i find myself thinking that I need to kind of fly out of my own head, soar a little above the day to day job, and look at what I am working on from a higher view. A view that will probably let me see all of the pieces a little bit clearer and let me come up with some really good ideas.

I love speaking at Conferences. There’s something about the live show that really gets me going. However, I thnk that it’s only second to actually attending a conference. When you listen to the right speakers – you’re just awash with ideas and inspiration – and I really think Barbara Gavin at Peachpit really did a wonderful job here assembling some great minds. Intimate, connected, jovial, and insightful – I can’t wait to go next year. Congrats to everyone there. Over the next few weeks, i’m going to spend some time looking over all of the books I got, and as I finish them, i’ll talk a little bit about them on here, or on Layers TV. So stay tuned!

New Layers TV Out: My NYC Pano is up for Grabs
Make sure that you check out the most recent version of Layers TV over there on the player to the right. Now, you’ll also notice on the player that there is a new HD version. This should really let you see a sharp Layers episode, and should help if you are trying to follow along on the tutorials. Now.. on this weeks episode of Layers TV, I am gushing over the work that Artistic Photo Canvas did on a 1′ by 5′ (yes.. 5 feet) panorama of a shot I did of NYC at dusk. These guys did such an amazing job of it, I wanted to share it with one of you, so I made that pano the prize giveaway! Make sure you go onto to the show and check out what you need to do to enter the contest!

Within The Frame: Almost Out
While we are on the subject of books, David Duchemin of The Pixelated Image, just informed us that he is in posession of some of the first copies of his new book Within The Frame. This is one book I am really looking forward to. Not only is David an amazingly talented shooter he’s one of those rare breed of people that can really take you on an intellectual journey through his writing. If you’ve been to The Pixelated Image, you know just how powerful and insightful he can be, and being able to go through that process in a book is going to be a great joy. Make sure you stop on in to your favorite bookstore and pick one up. You are going to be so glad you do.

Tutorial Of The Day
Tom Green goes over the new Camera Object in Flash CS4, and it promises to be a great tutorial. Tom’s one of my fav Flash instructors out there.. so i’m convinced you’re going to get something really good. Matter fact, you might be inspired to make a web cam based application, he makes it that simple:

Tom Green – Using the Camera Object in Flash CS4

Contest Winners
Finally, I wanted to thank Chris Scelza for winning this past weeks Layers TV contest, while Cameron Lumsden wins out the blog contest today. Congratulations to the both of you.

OK guys.. get out there and make something wonderful. Share it with me on Twitter if you’d like – and make sure you stop back in Monday morning!