Display by Label: sxsw

Re-reading my last post, I realized it sounded a bit negative there at the end. So I'm here to report that, after the last several days of panels and evening activities, I feel back in the full spirit of SXSW. I've seen some really great panels, and despite my initial torpor, I had fun at the various evening activities. The Austin Fray Cafe was definitely a highlight. Great stories, set to pouring rain. Monday night was a little 20x2 at the Parish followed by two-for-one veggie burgers with Alan, Chris, and Patrick, followed by beer at Lovejoy's and a pretty fun party at Iron Cactus, at which I met the only person who got fired from Google for blogging about work. I also met two more people from Toronto. So, including Patrick and Michele, that makes four at the conference in all. I seem to have a strange gravitational pull toward people from Canada.

Home to DC - and a near-complete bathroom - tomorrow.

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I took the 5A bus to Dulles to catch my flight to Austin. The 5A is probably the best way to get to IAD from downtown. I think I might even like it better than driving myself. It's on time. The ride is comfortable. You can zone out. Relax. I highly recommend it. It was cold in DC when I left. In the 30s. Sweater, coat, scarf, gloves. You needed it all. Things were a little different in Austin. Fifty degrees different, actually. It's in the 80s here. It's pleasant in the mornings and evenings. But in the high afternoon it's a little on the hot side. So, for me, walking involve sweat. Because I do. I sweat.

I'm renting a PT Cruiser. I've never had an urge to drive a PT Cruiser. I got it because Enterprise had run out of 'economy' cars, which is what I had reserved. So they bumped me up to the Cruiser. The P-T. I told them I wasn't really keen on the PT Cruiser. I told them it really wasn't my cup of tea. But the next model up was a Grand Am, which wasn't any better. And I would have had to pay a bit more for it. So I took the Cruiser. The problem is I sit rather high in the car, and the top of the windshield is in my line of sight, which is annoying. I know you don't need to see the sky when you drive, but I like it like that. It makes me feel more comfortable. In Hoshi, you can sit low. You can see the sky.

There are more people at SXSWi this year than last year. Apparently, a couple thousand more. This thing just grows and grows. And I guess I feel a little jaded this year. When you're here, you're supposed to get out and meet people. That's the cool thing to do. And last year I was feeling that vibe. This year feels different. I'm here, and that's all good. And I'm excited about seeing people I know who live in town, like Bill, Jay and Yancy, JP and Liz, Alan, and Chris. And also people I met at last year's conference, like Patrick. But going to the parties just doesn't interest me. I gave it a try last night, and there just seems to be a lot of 'hero worship' going on. It's about seeing and being seen. It's like Hollywood for Geeks.

Here's a recap of the SXSW Interactive panels I attended on Saturday:

Emerging Social and Technology Trends
Interesting remarks on negotiating the public and private self, and having a sense of 'place.'

After the Brief: A Field Guide to Design Inspiration
Good quotation: "Inspiration is the sum total of your experiences reacting to new stimuli." While I'm not a graphic designer, there were some good gems in here to apply to other arts.

Kathy Sierra Opening Remarks
Her presentation was basically on how application FAQs pages are usually completely ineffective and unhelpful. It came with plenty of cute puppy photos. We don't need FAQs. We need 'WTF?' buttons.

From Blog to Book
A good discussion on non-traditional publishing routes.

Ruining the User Experience: When JavaScript and Ajax Go Bad
This one seemed promising, but was a little disappointing.

From Tags to Riches: Life After Code
DC-area's Cyndi Li was a panelist on this one. Good discussion on career tracks for Web Developers, or lack thereof.

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We live out of duffel bags. The trunk of our car. Sometimes we spend the night at home. Sometimes with friends. Sometimes with family. Thank God for them. Because it gets old leaving your apartment to use the bathroom. It gets old closing the doors tight behind you and pushing a towel up against the crack underneath to try and contain the dust - keep it from spreading.

For the past couple of weeks, we have been nomads.

And this existence will continue through next week and beyond. There is still work to be done on the bathroom. Pipes to install. Tile to lay. So for C, it's have duffel will travel. To Olney. To Baltimore. To anywhere that'll take in a girl in need of a little running water.

As for me, I'm escaping for a bit. To do my nomadic car dance in another land. I'm heading to Austin on Friday for SXSWi. I will drive a rental car and carry bags of stuff around with me. I will rest my head for brief intervals at JP and Liz's place. Will wake early and attend workshops by day. Will see friends and go to parties by night. At the parties, the booze will be mostly free because they will be sponsored by some fancy Austin web design shop with marketing money to burn. It's going to be rough. I just hope I'm up to the task. Web celebrities will be seen. Ideas will be spread. Friends will be made. And I will come home tired but energized. Full of new thoughts. Ready to do good.

And I plan to blog while I'm there. More than I have been. I plan to post. But we shall see. Some people apologize when they have not posted for a while. I don't. I think it's self-aggrandizing to presume people give a shit. Sometimes I post. Sometimes I don't. That is all. The way I see it, there's plenty else to read out there. Just ask my Google Reader - it's constantly backlogged with over 300 posts from various blogs. And frankly, I appreciate it when people don't post every day. It means they realize that there's a thing called reader burnout. It means they take time with their words.

But back to the nomadic quality of life these days - there's really no end in site. After Austin, after the bathroom, we will carry our nomadic existence to Japan. We will take trains to different cities for over a week before landing at Mitch's place for a few nights. Japan will be crazy and new, like childhood. We will eat lots of raw fish and there will be no shortage of running water. The posts I make from Japan will be written in English because, despite my good intentions, I haven't learned a lick of Japanese. But C has. She'd done a little studying up. And so has JP. And Mitch, well he's a Japanese-language master. So I feel good. And who knows, maybe we'll see cherry blossoms while we're there. If not, we can probably catch them when we get back to DC.

And then it will be April. And a move will be in order. We're not sure exactly where or when it's going to take place. But it's coming. Another move is coming.

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JF of 37signals thinks I should put a 'higher value on my success,' which apparently means spending $19 on his downloadable book full of his ideas (many of which I've heard already) and printing it out on a hundred some-odd pages of my own paper.

I'm all for self-publishing (obviously) and I'm even for charging for content, but as the face of publishing changes, people should be careful not to supplant the arbitrary prices set by 'big publishing' with their own over-inflated prices that seem justified because of a belief in one's own hype.

(Thanks, Virginia for the original post.)

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Here are a few more tidbits from SXSW that I wanted to get out there while they were still fresh in my mind. Each of these topics could probably be their own blog post. Strike that. Each of these topics could be, and in some cases are, their own books. So I'm obviously not doing any of them justice here, but I still wanted to jot down a few impressions and point to some other places where the conversations continue. Also, there is some video footage of the conference up, for anybody who is interested.

From the presentation given by Daniel Gilbert, How to Do Precisely the Right Thing at All Possible Times: "Expected happiness = odds of gain x value of gain." Gilbert went on to suggest that most of the time we do not meet our 'expected happiness' due to errors in calculating either the odds or value. For instance, the odds can seem multiplied by how memorable something is. We all remember standing in the 'wrong line' at the grocery store, which heightens our perceived odds of it happening again. It was a good presentation. I'm not sure we ever got to the 'do the right thing at all possible times' secret (which I think was intentional), but we definitely got closer to understanding the fallacies in reason that make us think that such a feat is possible. I think I may get his book when it comes out in soft cover. In case you're interested, LukeW gives a more detailed synopsis of the talk on his site.

In the Saturday keynote, Jason Fried from 37signals had some great comments about how 'less is more' when working on a new idea or project. In reaction to the age-old problem of 'not having enough time' one thing he suggested was that less time can actually work in your favor. Basically, he reasoned that people are going to waste time anyway, so why not 'procrastinate creatively.' I love this idea, and it touches upon something I had posted about once before. Some other jewels from Fried's talk: If you have too much money, you're going to build stuff you don't need into your product. Less money can be a good thing. It will help to simplify your product. Most importantly . . . CHARGE for your product! People will pay for things they find valuable.

Charles MacInerney gave an interesting talk on Increasing Creativity at Work. The discussion began with some rather abstract concepts of states of mind: beta, alpha, and theta. Beta is this crazy place where I unfortunately spend most of my time. It is a place where the world seems to be menacing and chaotic. Alpha, now this is the goal - it's where things are more calm and relaxed. Theta is good too, but it's kind of this dream-like state where it's hard to actually get anything accomplished. Still, this is the state of mind where big break-throughs occur, so it's good to be here at least part of the time. A pretty good run-down of the different states of mind can be found here. MacInerney also talked about mind mapping, which I'd actually like to read up on more. Anyway, the whole thing made me want to take yoga classes. I think it might do me some good. Might help me reach the alpha and theta brain states more often.

There was a really interesting discussion on 'Tagging 2.0.' Christian Crumlish has some great notes on the talk here. And Prentiss Riddle summarizes the anti-tagging stance he took for the panel here. The cool thing about this panel, in my opinion, was it seemed more like a philosophy class than a tech panel. A lot of open-ended questions concerning language and meaning in relation to the Web. There was a lingering question of whether or not tagging, as a system of organizing information, really worked. Before the discussion, I was a bit skeptical about the use of tags. And I also happened to agree with Prentiss on the points he raised against tagging, specifically in regard to their practical use and their interoperability with each other. However, despite all that, I do think tags show promise in helping to organize information online. They help give meaning to an object, based on aspects of identity, culture, community, and shared vocabulary. The meaning of the object is not just a 'definition' of the object itself. It is also the identity of the person who linked to the object, the vocabulary used to identify the object, and the culture and community in which the object is identified. As an example, my tagging a photo can mean something different than when that same photo is tagged using the same vocabulary by another person. These relationships in meaning were referred to as the "folksonomy triad" by one of the speakers, Thomas Vander Wal. Interesting stuff.

Finally, while I did not attend the panel, Chat, who I met at the conference said the microformats talk was really good. I intend to read up on microformats some more.

So that's about the extent of my brain-dump from SXSW. I could go on. For instance, there was a good panel on CSS trouble-shooting. But if I talk about this conference any more, I'm surely going to bore you. I'm already beginning to bore myself. Re-telling this stuff isn't the same as listening to it first-hand.

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Since last Friday, my days have been 18-hours of non-stop Austin craziness. I've slept little, spent my days in panel discussions and my nights with new and old friends. I've been wanting to write about the conference as it was going on, and many people around me were doing just that. But I'm one of those people who needs to have a little time to absorb and reflect before I can piece together anything that makes any sense. One of the reasons I will never be an 'A-List blogger,' I suppose, is that I lack the ability to live life and blog about life at the same time. I need a little distance between the two. I need time to sort out meaning.

So I'll leave meaning for later, as I'm still traveling in Texas and won't be home for another couple of days. For now, let me stick to the facts:

First, I met a lot of great people, and had some great conversations. You all know who you are - I will be in touch soon! Also, I caught up with old friends from high school, Alan and Chris, which was great. I had lunch with Holly, who helped me design my work logo. And I met up with friends Bill and Joanie for drinks and burgers at Casino El Camino. Though I didn't get much time to see him because of our strange schedules, I spent nights at my brother-in-law's place. Thanks again, JP! Other noteworthy items include going to the Red Bull party, having two-for-one veggie burgers at Huts, and observing an authentic game of dominos between some old men at the Elk's lodge, where the EFF/Creative Commons party was held. (Pictures to follow).

Second, the panel discussions, for the most part, were really good. There were some that kind of fell short, but mostly they were stimulating and well put together. Here are the ones I attended. I put an asterisks next to the ones I most enjoyed.

• Better Blogging Brainstorming*
• How to Do Precisely the Right Thing at All Possible Times*
• Increase Creativity at Work*
• Designing for Global and Local Social Play
• How (and Why) to podCast an Event
• DIY Now More Than Ever
• Blogging While Black Revisited*
• CSS Problem Solving*
• Web Standards and SEO: Searching for Common Ground, Part 2*
• WTF: WaSP Task Force Panel: Getting the Job Done Right
• Design Eye for the List Guy*
• Behind the Scenes: Developing OS X and Longhorn
• Commons-Based Business Models
• Consumer is the Producer: DIY Media*
• Bruce Sterling Presentation: The State of the World*

Now I'm in Dallas. Last night I had dinner with my mom and sister. Today, I'm having lunch and an afternoon work meeting with James. And tonight, I'm having dinner with my dad and bro. I'm hoping to see other Dallas buds either tonight or tomorrow, but need to get in touch with them and sort that out! As for sleep, there will be plenty of time to do that back in DC.

Oh, I almost forgot one of the best parts of the conference: Sunday, after her keynote with Jason Kottke, I met Heather B. Armstrong, of Dooce! So friggin' cool! I asked her a question about writing and told her I thought her blog was helping to shape a new literary medium (which I believe), and then snapped this photo of me with her and her husband, Jon. They were both really nice and I enjoyed meeting them.

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The last couple of weeks have been kind of crazy. I'm trying to reach a stopping point on a fairly large project for a client and it's got me feeling a bit distracted. At the same time, SXSWi is sneaking up on me and I'm starting to realize that I've got to get things in order for that. I'm really excited about heading to Austin for SXSWi this year. I think part of the appeal is I no longer live in Texas, so traveling there seems like more of a 'get-a-way.' And on top of the conference, I get to hang out with friends and family that I haven't seen in a while. Nice.

So in addition to a wealth of interesting panels, there are lots of evening social events that go on during SXSWi where various and sundry Web geeks and technorati drink way too much, hob-nob, and generally try to out-cool one another. I used to be somewhat shy about this sort of thing, but this year I plan to partake whole-heartedly in this ritual. Though I doubt I'll be able to out-cool anybody (unless it's suddenly become cool to spend your Friday nights watching Battlestar Galactica). Anyway, take a look at my Upcoming.org schedule. Chock-full of social goodness, right? When I went to SXSWi in 2003, I found some of this socializing to be a little clique-y and difficult to penetrate. But SXSWi was, in general, a lot smaller then, which I think sort of fostered this insular feel. Apparently, the attendance has grown to several times what it was in 2003, so I'm expecting a slightly different vibe.

Indeed, this year I'm planning to break down any weird social barriers through a steady intake of tequila. I figure the words will begin to flow right around shot number four or five. After that, I'll have a thin window of opportunity to meet as many people as possible before I begin spewing gibberish about the fine art of mixing different dry cereals to form the perfect hybrid brand. As soon as that happens, I'll have to get the hell away from any public place or I'll eventually be referred to as 'that tall sweaty guy dancing in his underwear at the Iron Cactus.' Unfortunately, they don't give awards for that.

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