Three Night Stand

Rich

Monday Mar 17

Sixty-three degrees and sunny

My apologies for not writing the last entry sooner. I’ve come down with a cough, sore throat and runny nose since returning from Austin. Take note: You meet a lot of people at SXSW and there are a lot of germs floating around, in addition to the usual crop of STDs.

My last day at SXSW on Wednesday was a first goodbye to Rachel.

We promised to keep talking. She climbed into one of two taxis. And she left wearing the same wool coat she came in wearing.

I took the taxi for the convention center to meet with Daniel for lunch at Stubb’s Bar-B-Q, where on the way I saw an expired parking meter whose LCD display was encoded to “FAIL.” Only in Austin. And during lunch:

Me: “Are you hungry?”

Daniel: “No, are you?”

Me: “Not really.”

Overheard during lunch from another table, apparently, the SXSW Facebook party at Pangaea wasn’t such a great hit with the cash bar. Cash bar? For a company estimated (by some crazies) to be worth $15 billion? Maybe they were trying to keep Sarah Lacy from showing up. Oh, wait, she was there.

After lunch, two girls from a public relations agency stopped us for a “vlog” interview. On camera, they asked us what we were hoping to get out of SXSW (free booze), what websites we couldn’t live without (Daniel said Pownce and Digg; he literally couldn’t live without the latter), and what we thought about social networks.

Huh.

Y’know. Because Daniel actually spoke on a panel about that very topic. Not that that makes a difference, right? The two said the interview would appear on the company’s blog; I’m not going to hold my breath, but it would be fun to see it.

Update: Wow, it got up, but it’s only a short clip. It’s around 2:10 in, and I’m smiling like a silly bastard.

I met Todd Sieling, a Ma.gnolia developer, and Mel Kirk, of o’, humble Internet fame. I didn’t recognize her at first (“What was her name? Melody? Molly? Ohhhh…now I remember.”) And so I sat, hands on chair and feet a’ swinging, waiting for an introduction. I doubt she would have remembered a word with me but — sometimes — people react to name dropping, and I think she’ll remember me the next time, be it a good or bad thing.

Daniel and I caught the Considerations for Scalabale Web Ventures panel, which truly reinforced the notion that I am an Internet noob, and that I am going to continue fiddling with rounded corners and gradients. Did you know that during some traffic peaks, Flickr serves 32,000 images per second?

And when the panel finished, I said goodbye to Daniel. Leah gave me her chicken wrap. I paid $35.07 to a taxi driver and flew 195 miles in 170 minutes at 36,000 feet. I watched the last half of Carson Daly. And I missed Moby.

The lines were long. The panels were short on knowledge. Yet South by Southwest was easily the best part of my year and most of last, too.

Next time, I’ll book a hotel a little closer. I’ll register a little earlier. And maybe then I’ll make a website worthy of the experience.

9:11 p.m. • permalink • 0 comments

Thursday Mar 13

The one where boning is socially acceptable

The next day at SXSW was actually a bit rainy and overcast. So, naturally Rachel spent an extra 15 minutes straightening her hair and getting glammed up for the 2008 Bloggies for her nomination as a “Best-kept Secret Weblog.”

She was super nervous as the video at the end of this post will show you.

I never told her, but in my blogging hey-day (good Lord, I sound old), I wanted to win a Bloggie pretty badly back in 2004. So to go with her simply, I was impressed and content just to be there. So I’m arm candy. I’m OK with that! (In fact, I think it’s pretty freaking awesome.)

The awards had its own live chat in #Bloggies on irc.freenode.net on IRC. Naturally, only about 3 people (myself included) probably knew how to use IRC, so it was there that I smack talked like a petty troll on Rachel’s behalf where it was projected onto a large wall adjacent to the stage.

Unfortunately, the person from So Very Alone won the “Best-kept Secret Weblog” award. I don’t think it’s right for me to give my opinion on this matter, but I’ll leave you with this select quotation from his (her?) About page:

I’m ordinary-looking, and I’m rarely — if ever — rude. I guess, in a lot of ways, I’m pretty normal.

So why do I feel like I’m drowning?

Yikes. Nice design, too.

I went to the Browser Wars: Deja Vu All Over Again? panel, which wasn’t so great. A representative from Apple’s Webkit team didn’t show up, which took away a big chunk of what could have made the time spent valuable. I believe the room filled to capacity; but for what? I mostly checked out mentally when they started bickering over what “open” really meant and the “limitations” of Apple’s iPhone.

While I’m sitting in a stuffy room full of nerds and bad fluorescent lighting, I get notified that someone proposed to a girl to marry him at the keynote of Frank Warren, creator of PostSecret. I miss all of the good stuff, argh!

But the next panel was the one I was looking forward to the most: Design Eye for South By, the one with, y’know, actual design work behind it. Just to clarify any confusion on what happened to Jeff at the panel, the panelists were talking about what people do at SXSW and what’s important to them and how the website could realign to those ends.

Things like talking, socializing, partying, and…that’s when one panelist said, “Unless you’re Jeff Croft, then you’re boning.” Wow, that was pretty awesome. That’s OK. I think Jeff liked it.

We caught dinner at P.F. Chang’s with Andrei, Bronwyn, Ryan, Mike and to a lesser degree Keith and Wilson (sitting at other tables). As someone who had been reading their blogs and articles for the past four or five years, I was stunned at how cool and relaxed and friendly everyone was.

I wish I could say I lived it up my last night in Austin, but I spent it, um, doing homework, and going to the Blue Flavor’s party at the Iron Cactus for not even a couple of hours. It was a slow and short night, but easily my favorite and most memorable.

4:59 p.m. • permalink • 1 comment

Tuesday Mar 11

A woman digging through wedding cake for diamonds is forever

The last two “events” I attended yesterday were very Rachel-esque, and I was happy that I got to be there with her.

Heather Armstrong and Maggie Mason spoke at the Content Boundaries, a 12-step program panel, and really, who would be better at talking about what content is appropriate or inappropriate for your blog than Heather?

I won’t go over what Heather said (because Rachel so seriously and intently scribbled notes from her mentor), but I can speak with first-hand experience that what you say on your blog can come back to bite you in the ass, and deciding on what is ripe for public criticism and what is not (at least by your own resources) is something with which I’ve struggled to no end, and is why I don’t blog so much anymore.

When the means by which you earn a living are at stake for a silly blog entry, you quickly decide what’s important to you, what you can get away with and what should be walked away from.

I met Jon Armstrong, who was incredibly nice, which means I had fun grilling him on why he chose Drupal instead of Django to power Dooce.com. (His answer, which is largely subjective and interpretive was that Django wasn’t mature enough, which can be true depending on what your needs are.)

Rachel and I missed the LOLWUT? Why Do I Keep Coming Back to This Website? panel (oh, c’mon, you would’ve totally gone to that, too!) and SXSW Bowling to meet her blogging partner-in-crime, Leah. She’s a part-time wedding photographer and was (wo)manning a booth at the convention center, fourtunately at the same time SXSW was going on, for Austin Wedding Day.

The experience was rather surreal for me because Leah looked and acted like one of my friends from back home (with a good dose of Tina Fey in there), but naturally I didn’t say anything, otherwise you get the “What?? How does she act like meeee?!”

One event of note: Austin Wedding Day apparently allows grown women to dig through wedding cake in search for — no joke — diamonds. Because, you know, that’s completely rational behavior for women who want to get married.

Some of the photos from our “shoot” at the end of the day:

• IMG_0350
• IMG_0355
• IMG_0357
• IMG_0358

And video of Heather and Maggie speaking at the panel.

6:41 p.m. • permalink • 1 comment

Monday Mar 10

It’s not often that you see a billionaire heckled

I’m not going to hide that I’m not a huge Facebook fan.

I think it’s a wonderful product for a very big population out there. It reconnects you with people. It reminds you of birthdays. It broadcasts every break-up and alcohol-driven mistake that you’ll ever make (and probably secretly archives it forever, too).

But when you place a flirtatious journalist and the CEO of not just the most popular social website, but also the “most closed” API relative to other services, in a room full of Web developers, designers and more, the temperature is going to get hot.

I won’t repeat what was said (more because I wasn’t taking detailed notes, and I don’t feel that it’s right for me to try to quote someone a day later), but there’s plenty of other places you can catch up on the keynote.

• Journalist becomes the story at Mark Zuckerberg SXSWi keynote
• Crowd totally hates on Mark Zuckerberg’s interviewer at SXSW
• Twitterati lashes out at interviewer after Zuckerberg keynote
• Live coverage: Mark Zuckerberg SXSW keynote
• SXSWi ‘08: Zuckerberg Reacts to Own Interview Trainwreck
• Live From SXSW: Zuckerberg Keynote Crumbles Into Chaos
• Facebook founder heckled at web conference

But if you thought I wouldn’t capture at least some video, you’d be crazy.

2:44 p.m. • permalink • 1 comment

How to become an emotional wreck over software

The rundown from a few of yesterday’s SXSW panels:

Social Design Strategies

I was a few minutes late to Social Design Strategies, led by Digg designer Daniel Burka, about how to encourage participation in online communities through techniques such as privacy and control. Much of it was “common sense” to people who read blogs or keep up with online trends, but I think it’s refreshing to hear it in person.

However, I’m not so sure how genuinely practical these practices are for my own individual projects — I’m not about to go create my own social network, and if I did, it would probably resemble the last time I went to a Bar Mitzvah, a dozen 13-year-olds inhaling helium from the restaurant table balloons.

From Frustration to Elation: Getting Emotional by Design

I didn’t plan on going to this panel, but Rachel saw what a SXSW “Core Conversation” panel entails (talking to one another, enjoying each other’s company, contact with human race members), and skirted out of there. So instead we caught From Frustration to Elation: Getting Emotional by Design, which was pretty full, but we found some nice spots on the floor.

I could see a lot of other people not enjoying this, but I found it very interesting. The panelists talked about how our expectations of people are very different than that of software; we expect software to work but not so much on people. Our expectations are higher when not dealing with people. The software we build should anticipate users’ mistakes, forgive them and give second chances. Web design and development aside, I love discussing these topics. I think they are the glue that holds us together. The decisions we make around the people either bind one another closer together or drive one another apart. To hear these topics discussed at a panel was an unexpected but pleasant surprise.

So was Jeff‘s question when, in reply to Dan Rubin remarking that certain fragrances remind him of former girlfriends, Jeff asked “Which perfumes were those exactly that reminded you of your ex-girlfriends?”

1:59 p.m. • permalink • 0 comments

Sunday Mar 9

Where a $5 Guinness flows like…not something flowey

Rachel and I caught dinner at Spaghetti Warehouse where apparently they have a bat infestation problem. An in-house magician actually entertained us at our table (video coming). It was probably the most fun I had so far.

We hit up Moonshine, the Frog design party (missed the firebreather and girls with bikini chains?!). Oh, my, what a busy, busy party.

From there, we walked a mile to Buffalo Billiards, where I met Dave Shea. I didn’t even know what to really say to him; if it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t be doing Web design probably. Oh, and sorry, 16bit, maybe next year.

I was impressed by Rachel’s not-complaining in the heels, trying to catch up with Mr. Croft. That repressive Catholic upbringing did some good after all.

1:11 a.m. • permalink • 0 comments

How to break every 2257 federal regulation ever

I caught the last half of the Quit Your Day Job and Vlog panel, so I had to stand in the back like a schlup. From what I could catch, it seemed OK; nothing new or groundbreaking. In fact, there was a mild air of self-congratulatory back patting, like “We are online, so we got here first and we’re waiting for mainstream to catch up.”

I was planning on going to the Dooce Meet-up, but I got yakned into the How to Rawk SXSW: Achieving Geekgasm panel, which was all right. A lot of it was common knowledge (like how to wear a backpack at a party…it’s like c’mon!), but the links mentioned:

• Official website
• Tweet Scan’s SXSW Twitter mash-up
• Twitter “R.V.I.P.” lounge
• Pownce’s SXSW profile
• Ning’s SXSW network
• Meebo’s SXSW chat
• Upcoming’s SXSW events
• Sched.org

On event attending, apparently you need to bring your badge with you to get into the parties, not just the panels at the convention center. Good to know.

I caught lunch at the Taco Shack, which was pretty fricking good food. It was greasy enough to kill a small child, but different enough to be good. With two “just OK” panels, I wasn’t itching to catch Getting Unstuck: From Desktop to Device panel.

That’s when I passed by the Lego corner in the convention center.

Honestly, I hadn’t had this much fun in years. The airplane I made is actually a poor replica from the TaleSpin cartoon show from way back in the day. I had made a much better replica back then, the outcome of which I don’t remember, but I hold fond memories of the show. I guess when you get so old to be going to conferences, you kind of wish for some of the old days, when things were a lot simpler.

Oddly enough, my photograph was taken six or seven times: People were more interested in observing and trying to capture the event rather than living for it themselves. Only journalists and some bloggers realize that they would much rather live their subjects’ lives rather than trying to report or blog about them, and such is one reason why I didn’t fully commit myself to being a journalist.

By the time I had finished building my plane, the time was 3:31 p.m., and I was late to John Gruber’s panel, Blood, Sweat, and Fear: Great Design Hurts. By the time I found Ballroom E, about 15 minutes had passed; yes, it took me 15 minutes to hurriedly walk to the panel from the Lego pit, and by the time I had gotten there, one of the conference workers wouldn’t let anyone else in because the room was full. Awesome.

I briefly caught a few minutes of Breakup 2.0, which was a very heart-on-your-sleeve kind of discussion, and frankly, I preferred to be somewhere else, which was fortunate because that’s when Rachel called me and we met up finally! Wow, she’s super sweet and funny. So, nothing like her blog, basically. All lies! ;) So, when is that wedding ring getting repaired again?

Check out Rachel getting her freak on at the Porn panel.

12:59 a.m. • permalink • 0 comments

Saturday Mar 8

J. Croft, master of ceremonies and his own domain

Last night I met up with my old colleague, Mr. Croft, at the Iron Cactus in downtown Austin. Swanky joint, although we headed for the Ginger Man after that, which was a pretty relaxed place with a great beer garden. Wow, so much nicer than a college bar.

I escaped to Fadó with Lea and Jason and caught Mysterious Ways, a U2 cover band. I know what you’re going to say: Rich, you craptacular sell-out, how could you see a cover band? I have to say, they were actually pretty good. The singer actually sounded like Bono. I wanted to touch him.

After the first set, I headed back and tried to get a decent night’s sleep. Apparently Rachel is really bad at packing a suitcase.

P.S. One lesson learned: Have the hotel front desk call your taxis; I called Yellow Cab, was told to wait 15 or 20 minutes and never heard back. Front desk called, and it was out in less than 10 minutes.

Oh, yeah. And bring your camera charger. Sure, I remembered my laptop charge, phone charger, iPod charger and even external hard drive power supply. But what you use to power up that thing that captures memories? Yeah, totally forgot it.

8:45 a.m. • permalink • 0 comments

Friday Mar 7

Three hours and one chicken salad sandwich later

I made it to my hotel just a few minutes ago, squashing a few more bugs out of the site. It’s finally coming together at an acceptable level for me.

I was happy to leave behind the wintry mix of Kansas and Missouri behind, even if it was only about 60 degrees when I stepped off of the plane. Austin is nice, nicer than what I had expected. It seems clean and new, and even the things that aren’t still seem pretty nice. I checked in a little bit earlier, and even though the hotel is a bit small, I’m thankful that the hotel I’ll be checking into tomorrow is within walking distance.

I’m about ready to grab some dinner and explore the city a bit, but before I do that, I remembered one of Ze Frank’s last shows from last year (this one is good, too), and it reminds me why I wanted to come to SXSW so badly since last year. I’m tired but excited, headachey but happy.

7 p.m. • permalink • 0 comments

Thursday Mar 6

Caution: This side up

It’s the night before I leave for South by Southwest Interactive for the first time.

I’m nervous, but more tired than anything. I slapped this website together in four days, and it’s easily the most in-depth website I’ve made per, um, unit of time? It was a lotta website in not a lotta time. I made the whole thing with Django, and even I’m kind of amazed at how quickly I deployed this website from buying the domain this past Monday to cleaning up most of the last parts of it on Thursday night.

Like it? Leave me a lovely note. I’ll write more tomorrow when I head to Austin. If you’re going, I hope to see you there!

11:16 p.m. • permalink • 1 comment