SXSW Update  − 11 March, 2007

So I've been here in Austin already for a little over 24 hours. As I told a friend before I left, South By Southwest is my Woodstock. Since it happens every year, the analogy is imperfect, but the sentiment is the same. What I mean is that coming to Austin and participating in the SXSW Interactive festival is a truly formative experience. Each year I learn more about the web and why I am continually inspired to be an active creator in this industry. I don't go to conferences as a habit. I am a bit of an agoraphobic, to be honest. Thought I do not have an irrational fear of crowds, I do prefer intimate settings when given the choice. But SXSW makes crowds seem somehow more intimate. Like I said, it's my Woodstock. I love it here and will no doubt be talking about each experience for years to come.

Yesterday I flew in and got checked in. I made some calls to the people I told I would be meeting here. Then I went to the Beer tent in Brush Square Park. Then Dorkbot for a few minutes before Rafe Needleman and I had drinks and dinner together at the Iron Cactus. $12 fajita plates.

After that I met with Larry Smith from Smithmag for drinks. Larry is a whirlwind. We've spoken a few times on the phone and it turns out we share a lot in common. Well we share a lot of the same tastes, rather. Larry is a much better writer than I am though. He spent his pre-dot-com years as an editor and writer. Me? I have no pre-dot-com days.

Larry and I then met up with some of his colleagues and we opted out of the block-long line outside of the frog design welcome party. Instead we got started early at the 8-bit party which was at a bar just east of downtown called The Scoot Inn. Basically what you'd expect from a Texas bar - minus the sawdust floor. They had a PA set blasting 80's music, old school frogger, pacman, asteroids stand-up arcade games. Met crews from Adaptive Path, 30 Boxes, and Twitter.

I probably drank too much. I know because I woke up with a headache that wouldn't go away until my first beer tonight. I'm a lightweight all of the sudden. Or maybe it's those Texas brews. Anyway, there it is anyway. Tonight I laid low and hung with Mike Jones and Tami Zhu and Shane Hall and Derek from Userplane. Our first attempt to hang out at the Blogger party was just a pain because there were too many people cramped into too small a space. So we left and went to the Iron Cactus for my second bout with Veggie Fajitas in 24 hours.

------------

The panels today were great, as usual.  I went to  one on Spatial Reality featuring the guys as google earth.  The keynote today was on open source hardware which was unbelievably cool. It made me want to buy a $20,000 laser etcher in an odd sort-of geek fetish way. Then I went to a panel on Online Advertising, because as a publisher it's important that I know how to not do stupid things while mixing members with advertisers. It's a delicate balance and I want to make sure I'm respecting that balance. Let's see, what then? Oh, I ran into one of my advisors - Jeffrey Zeldman. He and I chatted a bit about my dandelife troubles. I don't have many, but he was able to parse some of them quickly and give me ideas. I must confess, it's great having advisers who can cut to the chase. In 20 minutes with Jeffrey I gained confidence. What were hunches before are certified beliefs now. So expect some more changes here reflecting those ideas soon. Let's see. I went to a panel on developing a site outside of the Bay Area. As someone in San Diego it's hard to find the local inspiration and connections to help move you forward. I found that my model for developing Dandelife is something that many other start-ups with limited local resources are having success with. Got the encouragement there, which was nice. The last panel I went to was the User Generation panel featuring JPG Magazine, Flickr, Lulu.com and JamGlue.com founders. I'm getting a little weary of listening to Derek and Heather talk - I mean it's been 5 years since my last SXSW and they are the first couple of the Internet and all - but I think it's time for other people to be invited to those talks, you know? Anyway, they are very knowledgeable and it's nice once again to hear people sharing similar experiences with social media. Not once did the panelists make a point of calling "User Generated Content" "Social Media" instead, which I thought would have been a nice distinction.

Alright, so the highlight of the day was getting a call from my mom and dad during lunch. She has been cleaning out my dad's archive of papers lately getting ready to donate them to the University. While doing that she found a lock of my hair from when I was in 5th grade. Was it 5th? Yeesh. It wasn't just any old lock of hair though. It was the rat tail I had. Which was long. Man, what a memory. We had a good laugh about that. It seems funnier today because I'm rocking the Andrew McCarthy preppy feathered look from "Pretty In Pink." I've been growing my hair out and when it's nice and clean, it's just plain old 80's cheese. To make matters worse, I was wearing a sports jacket all day and it just complements that look so well. Still, though, it might have been embarrassing for anyone else - but lately I've been prone to "own" most of my hair days. Good or bad, I'm just happy to not have a job where appearances really matter. So there you have it. Living the SXSW life to the max.

Comments:

Previous story  |  Next story