Andy Baio is an American technologist and blogger. He is the co-founder of the XOXO Festival, founder of

Upcoming.org Upcoming (formerly Upcoming.org) is a social event calendar website that launched in 2003, founded by Andy Baio. Features Upcoming combines features of an event calendar and a social networking site. Primarily, the site is a searchable, brows ...

, a former CTO of

Kickstarter Kickstarter is an American public benefit corporation based in Brooklyn, New York, that maintains a global crowdfunding platform focused on creativity. The company's stated mission is to "help bring creative projects to life". As of July 2021, ...

and the author of the Waxy.org blog.

Career

In 2003, Baio launched Upcoming, a collaborative event calendar. The site was acquired by Yahoo for an undisclosed sum in 2005 and Baio joined the company as the site's Technical Director. In 2007, Baio announced his departure from Yahoo. In September 2008, Baio joined the board of directors of

, a crowdfunding website that helps people with project ideas to connect with potential funders. Baio later joined the staff as Chief Technical Officer in July 2009, stepping down in November 2010 to join

Expert Labs Expert Labs is a non-profit technology incubator intended to aid government access expertise from interested members of the public. Part of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, it was formed in November 2009, following discussion ...

. In June 2017, Baio joined Fuzzco as Technology Director. After Yahoo offered to sell the Upcoming domain back to Baio, he launched a Kickstarter campaign that hit its $30,000 goal in May 2014 to revive the site.

Media

Baio was involved in the dissemination of the

Star Wars Kid ''Star Wars Kid'' is a viral video made in 2002 by Ghyslain RazaI ...

video, which depicted teenager Ghyslain Raza clumsily emulating martial arts moves for the camera. In response to the negative attention the boy received, Baio and another blogger, Jish Mukerji, organized a fundraiser which gathered up $1,000 from about 100 donors. In March 2022, Baio met Raza and apologised to him for posting the video. Raza accepted his apology. When the parody cartoon '' House of Cosbys'' was taken down from its original site due to a cease and desist letter from Bill Cosby's attorney, Baio placed the videos on his own website. Baio later received a similar cease and desist letter but refused to comply, citing fair use and decrying what he termed "a special kind of discrimination against amateur creators on the Internet", since Cosby had often been parodied in the mainstream media. In 2009, he produced ''Kind of Bloop'', a

chiptune Chiptune, also known as chip music or 8-bit music, is a style of synthesized electronic music made using the programmable sound generator (PSG) sound chips or synthesizers in vintage arcade machines, computers and video game consoles. The t ...

tribute album commemorating the 50th anniversary of Miles Davis' ''

Kind of Blue ''Kind of Blue'' is a studio album by American jazz trumpeter, composer, and bandleader Miles Davis. It was recorded on March 2 and April 22, 1959, at Columbia's 30th Street Studio in New York City, and released on August 17 of that year by Co ...

''. The album's cover was a pixel art version of the original album's cover, which consisted of a photograph taken by Jay Maisel. Attorneys representing Maisel demanded damages and that the resulting image be removed from the chiptune album, resulting in a settlement of $32,500 from Baio. Baio has also written for '' Wired'' magazine and '' The New York Times'', and was a staffer on

R. U. Sirius R. U. Sirius (born Ken Goffman in 1952) is an American writer, editor, talk show host, musician and cyberculture celebrity. He is best known as co-founder and original editor-in-chief of ''Mondo 2000'' magazine from 1989 to 1993. Before that he f ...

' online magazine GettingIt.com. Baio coined the term

supercut A supercut is a genre of video editing consisting of a montage of short clips with the same theme. The theme may be an action, a scene, a word or phrase, an object, a gesture, or a cliché or trope. The technique has its roots in film and televis ...

in 2008, which in 2017 became known through the song "Supercut" by singer

Lorde Ella Marija Lani Yelich-O'Connor (born 7 November 1996), known professionally as Lorde ( ), is a New Zealand singer-songwriter. Taking inspiration from aristocracy for her stage name, she is known for her unconventional musical styles and i ...

. In early 2012, Baio and Andy McMillan co-founded the XOXO Festival, celebrating independent artists and technologists. The conference has been held in Portland, Oregon, since 2012. The conferences have been largely funded via prepaid tickets and other contributions, including via Kickstarter.

References

External links

Official site
– main blog
Kind of Bloop
{{DEFAULTSORT:Baio, Andy American bloggers 1977 births Living people