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TGP: Give us some background on the Summit?  I’ve heard nothing but favorable comments.  What was your experience there?

Kostas Mallios: I started the Rich Media Group with one person three years ago, and we have a lot more than that now.  We like the idea of the Summit getting the community together on the Microsoft campus and providing a platform of social interaction and idea sharing.  It was very satisfying to me personally and to the company. 

It was also nerve-wracking because we wanted to make sure we did the right things to bring industry together.  For a lot of people, it was their first experience with Microsoft, especially on campus, and we wanted to make it a good experience.  We needed to demonstrate to the industry that we get it, that we’re a part of industry, not outsiders trying to force our way in, that we get the issues and have something to add in terms of making photography more essential; in terms of adding value to printing or to organizing photos or to digital cameras.  It all came together very nicely in the Summit.

Many of the attendees were from companies that traditionally Microsoft has not worked with.  For example, we had Thomas Knoll in attendance.  Thomas is the number one guy on Photoshop, and he doesn’t do any public speaking.  But he showed up with his whole family.  Competition is interesting but this was really a gathering of people with a common interest around photography.  Thomas being there was a huge coup.  It added a lot of credibility for us.  

We’re delighted by the positive feedback but it has a lot to do with the preparation we put into the event and even more with the fact that Microsoft gets it and is devoting the right amount of resources and people to being part of this broad worldwide industry.

TGP: What will Vista do for photographers?

Kostas Mallios: We’re democratizing photography for everyone who has a Windows PC, and that’s a lot of people.  If we’re successful, we’ll open up photography all over again to be this amazingly cool hobby for some and an irreplaceable passion and tool for others.  We’re also enabling the industry by making it easier for people to do things with Vista so they don’t have to be afraid of digital cameras or computers and so that they can take advantage of all the things that Vista provides in terms of storing memories, creating special videos from photographs, doing the kind of editing that people only dreamt of previously. 

People can also go out and buy additional applications like Photoshop or Iview or Phase One, a wide variety of tools built on top of Vista that take advantage of the operating system for those who want to go deeper.  We’re trying to take the scare factor out of digital photography. 

TGP: How important is agreement on standards to the growth of digital photography?

Kostas Mallios: The issue of standards is something you can think of in a lot of different ways.  There’s a lot of technical mumbo jumbo surrounding it but to the consumer, the question of standards comes down to: can I buy something and have it work right off the bat?  It’s not about whose standard is it and who’s pushing it and who’s making money.  But does it work from the consumer perspective? 

Recently, I read an article about digital picture frames.  It compared Philips to other frames, in terms of the experience of connecting them to a Windows PC.  And the experience was flawless, amazing—just plug it into the PC, and boom! Immediately, you get pictures on a frame you can transport anywhere.  In a month, I’m going to load up a picture frame for my mother who does not yet have computer and ship it to her in on an island in Greece.  The frame will be her digital photo album.  I can upload new pictures to my Microsoft Spaces and that automatically syncs with her picture frame.  The scenarios around Windows and photography are so vast that every time I talk about them, it amazes me.

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