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Christopher Joseph Pirillo
Pirillo speaking at Gnomedex in 2007
Born	(1973-07-26) July 26, 1973 (age 38) Des Moines, Iowa
Occupation	YouTube Partner, Magazine columnist, tech expert for CNN.com,[1] book author, conference organizer, public speaker, owner of a blogging network, runs a social community, provider of video content
Years active	1996–present
Board member of	Ustream, Inc.
Spouse	Gretchen Hundling (m.1998-2004) Ponzi Black-Pirillo (m.2006-2009) Diana Morales (m.2012-present)
Website
chris.pirillo.com lockergnome.com gnomies.com geekwith.com

Christopher Joseph Pirillo (born (1973-07-26)July 26, 1973) is the founder and maintainer of Lockergnome, which is a network of blogs, web forums, mailing lists, and online communities. Lockergnome was the first website Chris registered back in 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.^[2]

Biography[link]

Chris Pirillo was born on July 26, 1973 in Des Moines, Iowa to Judy and Joe Pirillo. Chris has two brothers, Benjamin and Adam. He studied at the University of Northern Iowa, where he majored in English education, eventually graduating with an English degree. For a short time, he was a 7th grade English student teacher at Coke R. Stevenson Middle School in San Antonio, Texas.

He currently lives in Seattle, Washington^[3] with his wife, Diana.^[4]

Pirillo streams a live video of his home office out via ustream.tv and frequently records videos on various tech-based and non-tech-based topics. During the course of 2011, Pirillo achieved 200,000 subscribers on YouTube and over 100,000 dedicated Twitter followers. His current video views of all time stand at just over 127 million. Chris used to host, 'TLDR' (The Lockergnome Daily Report) on weekdays, streamed it live from his home office. He now hosts a shortor verison of TLDR called 'Geekout'. Pirillo has been married twice before to Gretchen Hundling and Ponzi Black-Pirillo.

Projects[link]

Since 2001, Pirillo has hosted Gnomedex, which is a yearly conference covering art, science, social media, blogs, and new and emerging technologies and concepts, such as Web 2.0. Gnomedex 10 was held in August 2010 in Seattle, Washington.^[5] He streams Gnomedex live so his community can participate via chat.

Pirillo streams video live from his home office on Ustream, and his stream at http://live.pirillo.com is one of the more popular, with over 5,000 regular watchers.^{[citation needed]} His streams, also broadcast on YouTube, focus on software, hardware, news, reviews, computers, iPhone applications, operating systems, gaming, and other technology-related topics and events. As of 12 March 2012 (2012 -03-12)^[update], Pirillo has had over 131,000,000 video views.^[2] As of 17 November 2011 (2011 -11-17)^[update], he reached over 200,000 subscribers on his YouTube channel.^[6]

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.^[7] 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.^[8] Several mailing lists are now provided, offering technology advice and tips^[9] and other content syndicated from Lockergnome's blogs and web forums, including IT Professionals^[10] and problem solvers.^[11]

Pirillo's advocacy of new technology went as far as setting up, with Jake Ludington, a BitTorrent server at vistatorrent.com "to help Microsoft get [Windows Vista] Beta 2 in users' hands" in 2006.^[12] 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".^[12] Microsoft sent a cease and desist e-mail, and the pair complied.^[12][13]

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.^[14] 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".^[15]

In 2012, Pirillo started a subscription-based service called Gnomies^[16] 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 runs over the live video feed at url=http://www.live.pirillo.com/, giving insight in to what the Gnomies are up to. He also started daily vlogs about his life called Pirillo Vlogs which his wife Diana edits 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.^[17][18]

References[link]

External links[link]

Find more about Chris Pirillo on Wikipedia's sister projects:
	Images and media from Commons

• 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
• Lockergnome.com
• Lockergnome.net Questions and Answers
• Geeks Social Network
• Chris Pirillo's current list of best, most wanted, and worst tech products