Chris Pirillo

Christopher Joseph Pirillo
Pirillo speaking at Gnomedex in 2007
Born	(1973-07-26) July 26, 1973 Des Moines, Iowa
Occupation	YouTube partner, magazine columnist, tech expert for CNN, book author, conference organizer, public speaker, owner of a blogging network and social community, provider of video content, vlogger
Years active	1996–present
Spouse(s)	Gretchen Hundling (1998-2004) Ponzi Black (2006–2009) Diana Morales (2012-present)
Website
chris.pirillo.com lockergnome.com gnomies.com geekwith.com vloggerfair.com

Christopher Joseph Pirillo (born (1973-07-26)July 26, 1973) is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of LockerGnome, Inc, a network of blogs, web forums, mailing lists, and online communities. LockerGnome was the first website that Pirillo registered, in October 1996. However, he states that only the real beginning of LockerGnome is now, since the community has rapidly grown since 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. Every weekday, Pirillo releases a new installment of TLDR, The LockerGnome Daily Report, which was previously recorded live. In addition, he and his wife, Diana, began releasing a daily installment of "Pirillo Vlogs", a 10-minute vlog, or video blog, recording their day-to-day lives, in April 2012.

Biography

Chris Pirillo was born on July 26, 1973 in Des Moines, Iowa to Joseph and Judy Pirillo. He studied at the University of Northern Iowa, where he majored in English education, eventually graduating with an English degree.

Chris Pirillo frequently records videos on various tech-based and non-tech-based topics. As of 19 May 2013 (2013-05-19), he has over 283 thousand YouTube subscribers, over 164 million total video views, and over 125 thousand Twitter followers. He currently lives in Issaquah, Washington, with his third wife, Diana.

Projects

Pirillo streams a 24/7 live feed from his home office via ustream; it is one of his more popular feeds, with over 5,000 regular watchers. His streams, also broadcasted live on YouTube, focus on software, hardware, news, reviews, computers, iOS applications, operating systems, gaming, and other technology-related topics and events. Pirillo is currently hoping to find a new macintosh to replace his old mac mini which he used to broadcast his home office to ustream.

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. 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. Several mailing lists are now provided, offering technology advice and tips and other content syndicated from Lockergnome's blogs and web forums, including IT Professionals and problem solvers.

Pirillo's advocacy of new technology went as far as the creation, along with Jake Ludington, of a BitTorrent server at vistatorrent.com "to help Microsoft get [Windows Vista] Beta 2 in users' hands" in 2006. 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". Microsoft sent a cease and desist e-mail, and the pair complied.

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. 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".

His most recent and one of his most successful projects is his "Pirillo Vlogs" that both his wife Diana and himself upload daily to the Lockergnome YouTube channel. These daily vlogs are made to give insight to his personal life and social connections. Pirillo Vlogs The vlogs are edited into 10 minute segments before they are uploaded to his YouTube account.

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 which can be purchased at GnomeTomes.

Gnomedex

Beginning in 2001, Pirillo hosted Gnomedex, which was a yearly conference covering art, science, social media, blogs, and new and emerging technologies and concepts, such as Web 2.0. Gnomedex was held originally in Iowa, but moved to Seattle as of Gnomedex 5. Gnomedex 10 was considered to be the last major conference, which was held from August 19 to the 21st of 2010, but in November 2011 it was rebooted for one more year. It was held in conjunction with the Seattle Interactive Conference. Pirillo then went on to announce that Gnomedex 10 would indeed be the last major conference he would host.

Gnomies

In 2012, Pirillo started a subscription-based service called Gnomies (Costs $100 per year) to offer entrepreneurial advice, coaching and consulting service to members. On top of that, extra services were created for the Gnomies such as a private Minecraft and TeamSpeak server. The TeamSpeak server used to run over the live video feed at http://live.pirillo.com/ , giving insight into what the Gnomies are up to.

YouTube

As of 8 June 2013 (2013-06-08) at 21:00 GMT, he has 287,454 subscribers on his YouTube channel and his total video views stand at over 166,606,412. On the average day, Pirillo uploads two videos: the daily Vlog (of which, he has uploaded over a year of), and an installment of TLDR (on weekdays only).

VloggerFair

VloggerFair is a meetup event where vloggers and viewers can get together and be part of YouTube's vlogging community. VloggerFair, which premiered June 8-9, 2013 in Seattle, WA, is an attempt to spark valuable interaction between vloggers and vlog supporters around the role of vlogging in entertainment - helping put a finer point on the way each party connects with one another.

This will be the first major conference Pirillo will have hosted since ending Gnomedex's 10 year reign in 2011.

Pirillo came up with the idea of starting an event for vloggers in late 2012, yet he was unsure of how such an event would be perceived or find any popularity. His suggestion for the original name for the event was "Vloggertainment", but after further consideration the name has been changed to "VloggerFair". YouTube is officially involved with "VloggerFair" by being one of its few sponsors, as is Intel. It is being held June 8-9 in Seattle, Washington. Pirillo will be both hosting and vlogging at the fair.

More information can be found at VloggerFair.com.

Marriage

Chris Pirillo has been married 3 times:

• Gretchen Hundling (1998-2004)
• Ponzi Black (2006-2009)
• Diana Morales (2012–present)

External links

• Chris Pirillo at the Internet Movie Database
• Chris Pirillo's official blog
• Chris Pirillo on Twitter
• Chris Pirillo on Facebook
• Chris Pirillo on Google+
• Chris Pirillo's channel on YouTube
• Chris' Dad's (Joe Pirillo) YouTube's channel on YouTube
• LockerGnome.com
• LockerGnome.net Questions and Answers
• Geeks Social Network
• Gnomies.com
• Chris Pirillo's current list of best, most wanted, and worst tech products
• VloggerFair