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I'm in the San Jose area, staying near The Pruneyard in Campbell. Although it's another busy work week, I'm carving out some evening time and weekend time to hang out with people and gabber! My mobility is pretty restricted so I am thinking of just hanging out at The Pruneyard, which is walkable for me. I understand that there's some stuff in downtown San Jose too, so I might be able to just take a cab someplace if I know where to go. I am not familiar with this area at all.
Weekday Evening Plans
For the evenings, Wednesday and Friday this week are available, so if anyone wants to hang out around 6:30PM or so and catch a bite, we can meet at The Pruneyard here in Campbell, perhaps at the Barnes and Noble Cafe (actually, I don't know if there's one there, but there is stuff to look at) or at The Coffee Society, since I know where that is now from the last hangout.
WEDNESDAY UPDATE: I met with Pradeep and Terry from around 630PM to 900PM, and I had a good time chatting with them about a variety of subjects ranging from the ethnic experience in America, Scott McCloud's most recent book Making Comics, our comic engineering backgrounds and how they've affected how we look at life, and a bit of story swapping about how we happened to get to where we are.
FRIDAY UPDATE: Looking forward to Friday's get-together, probably somewhere in downtown San Jose by the look of things right now, with Jakob, Karen, Kai, and whoever else might want to spend a few hours of hanging out. Stay tuned for location and time.
Weekend Plans
For Saturday or Sunday, I am mostly working, but will make some time free in the afternoon, perhaps lunch to early evening on Sunday. It really depends on transportation and who's interested. Unfortunately I can't spend the whole day out, so there's a 3-4 hour cap on total time. My mobility options are again limited. If this light rail option works out (it looks like it's about a 20 minute walk from where I am) then this frees things up considerably.
SUNDAY UPDATE: I'm hoping to meet up with Fred, an industrial designer, sometime in the afternoon.
Assemble the Fleet!
Anyway, if anyone is interested in hanging out on those particular days, let me know! Looking forward to meeting old friends and making new ones :-) No agenda, other than shooting the breeze, maybe collaborating on something quick and fun.
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Just a quick note: I'll be in San Jose, California (Campbell, to be more precise) from March 25 to March 31st for work. I'll be quite close to The Pruneyard (walking distance, even), where we had a small geeky gathering over coffee and food. If you're in the area and would like to hang out some evening, leave a comment or shoot me an email with your cell number. I'm not sure what day it will be; it sort of depends on how the work goes.
I had a pretty good time at SXSW Interactive this year, largely free of the self-consciousness and second-guessing I had put myself through the first two times around. I don't know about you, but when I'm around thousands of talented, motivated, and smart people, I wonder just how I stack up. I'm old, maybe washed up, but I still have The Dream. Some tiny part in the back of my mind whispers that it is too late for me to have such dreams; I should settle down and find a good, steady career with great health benefits. Fortunately for me, that part of my brain is speaking Chinese, which I don't understand very well, so it's relatively easy to ignore as I blithely continue down my path toward wherever it's going. SXSW has become my yearly pilgrimmage to stock-up on inspiration and find new stars to guide me.
This year's SXSW was also different because I've had to introduce myself to more strangers. The previous two years, I hung out with groups of people who already knew me from online groups. This year, I hung out with mostly new acquaintances and got to know them the old fashioned way: by talking to them in person. I met a lot of new people just by sitting in the hall flashing my OLPC XO, through the core conversations, and through acquaintances I've only talked to at previous SXSWs. The impromptu situations that arise through the sharing a power outlet lead to the exchanging of cards. As I handed out my cards, I silently kicked myself because I knew my website was a mess. It doesn't really convey who I am succinctly or rapidly. Because my categories are all broken, it's whatever happens to be on the home page that will feed that first impression.
I found it notable that I was so concerned about how my website reflected on me, so I gave the matter more thought. Conveying who I am has always been really important to me, I knew, and it has colored the way I've presented myself to prospective clients. In fact, I started the blog as a deliberate attempt to avoid putting up a regular design portfolio / services website, having developed a severe allergy to crap marketing writing; I wanted to speak my thoughts plainly, not hide behind empty superlatives and ambiguous references to excellence. I told myself that maybe I would lose out on clients seeking "professional" designers, but at that time in my life reclaiming my sense of identity was much more important.
I have a terrible memory for names and faces, so I tried to take as many short video clips as I could to help me remember. I edited the segments together into a 14-minute video to convey my SXSW experience. Next year I may have to actually bring a real video camera instead; this was shot with my Fuji FinePix F30d compact digital camera.
The video service I'm using, Viddler, allows people to annotate the video with tags and comments at specific places in the video stream, so have at it :-) I will tag the video with names when I get a bit more time, or you can tag yourself! :-) Viddler, unlike a lot of services, also retains the quality of the video; note that the graininess of this clip is because I shot at low resolution under low-light conditions with a digital camera, so that's my fault. The cool thing was that Viddler's servers didn't recompress the already bad video (like YouTube would), since I uploaded it as a Flash Video (.flv) file.
UPDATE: BTW, if you're on this video and don't want to be, let me know and I will re-edit. So far everyone has been very cool, thanks!
South By Southwest (SXSW) was, once again, an energizing experience that reminded me that there is a lot of crazy people doing crazy things out there that just might work. It is the best thing, ever. However, the experience also overstimulates me, so when I got back home last night I immediately vegged out in front of the TV, watching Eli Stone, Bones, and King of the Hill back-to-back.
This was the third year attending the festival, but it's the first one that I didn't feel particularly hurried. I took my time, and didn't go to every panel. I didn't worry about not meeting everyone, and I didn't worry that much about not being as social as I wanted to be. I essentially accepted my introverted nature while allowing myself to be drawn into other people's worlds. Last year I berated myself for not being more proactive, but this time around I didn't let it bother me that much.
Since this was my third year, I was looking forward to see what conclusion I would draw about SXSW, since it takes three experiences for me to form an opinion I can stand behind. It's related to the way I make observations: first time is just imprinting on what I find interesting; this is a continual process. The second time, I notice that I've felt this interest before, which makes me curious about the root cause. After that, I am in "collection" mode, looking for enough data points to support or discount my theories. It takes at least three data points for me to extrapolate a first set of assumptions; successive data points continue to refine or create new underlying models.
There is one definitive conclusion I can draw right off the cuff: SXSW keeps me in touch with sources positive creative energy, and it has so far renewed me every year. I didn't even realize I was running low on this until I boarded the plane back to New Hampshire and realized that the further away I was getting from Austin, the grayer I felt. My fellow passengers on the plane had different lives, probably quite stable and interesting in their own right, but very local. By the time I landed in Manchester, I was fully aware that now any such creative energy would have to be created by myself. At SXSW, there is so much of the stuff concentrated in one place that it takes no effort to tap into it. There is so much talent, so much creative diversity, and so much sheer possibility that you take it for granted. It is hard to explain. I imagine that some parts of the country are just like this with their close creative communities. If you've ever worked with a great product team, been in a really outstanding art department, or worked in a tight-knit research group you might know what I'm talking about. Back home, in my cluttered office, I'm cut off from that energy again. To get it back, I have to build my own sources of it.
It takes a certain mix of people to build that energy, and making it self-sustaining for an entire year will take a certain level of commitment to building that structure. We've seen over the past few years dozens of Barcamp and Refresh grassroots organizations take seed, which is awesome. I'm curious how to create a broader experience beyond technology and new media, though. It is an interesting puzzle that I'll be trying to crack with the other social-minded geeks in the area.
I also had an insight about personal branding and business cards, and it's probably not what you think. As I met and chatted with people around SXSW, what would typically happen is this:
With past SXSW acquaintances: "Dude! Good to see you again! What's up?" We exchange cards as memory tokens, a promise to our future self to keep in better contact throughout the year. We take note of what's changed since the last time we met: a new job, maybe a new venture or a positive contribution to whatever community they belong to.
With readers of the blog: "Hi Dave! I'm a fan of your blog and I just wanted to say hi!" To which I would respond with a sheepish smile and say, "Really? It's awesome to meet you! What do you do? Neat! Give me a card! Can you tell me, out of my own curiosity, what it is you like about the blog? I'm trying to figure out why people read it." I'd happily exchange business cards with them, and make a note to see what they were up to. I liked these interactions the most.
With people who have heard of my work: "Oh, Dave Seah, it's great to meet you. I've seen your work. Tried it for a while even, good stuff." This would happen often through an introduction by someone I knew. Since I am not one to readily mention work I've done (I know, bad bad bad), often the person I was with would say something like, "Dave's the guy who made The Printable CEO bubble thing". From here, a conversation would start based on the level of enthusiasm displayed. Cards are of course exchanged.
With complete strangers: "Nice to meet you, Dave. So what is it that you do?" Polite and friendly conversation ensue, and cards are exchanged to remember the encounter by.
With OLPC fans: "Is that one of those $100 laptops? I've never seen one. Wow, it is so small and cute. How do you like it?" I was one of the few people carrying these around and trying to use them. Carrying around an OLPC XO laptop at a conference like this is just like bringing a puppy to the park. The nicest people came up to me and asked about it. People who recognize this laptop are the generally ones that are socially conscious, sympathetic to the cause, and are really nice. If the conversation ended up being about more than the laptop, we'd exchange cards.
Business cards, at a conference/festival like SXSW, serve as access points to our websites more than anything, and that's because we can find out a lot more about the people we just met. And why does this matter? It's because we want to make a GOOD social/business contact; at SXSW, the chance that this will happen is many times higher than the typical networking event in your home town. The people at SXSW generally are passionate about what they do, or they want to be. These are people who I would like to have friendships with. Friendship matters.
My eureka moment was that I should be designing my website to make friendship that much easier to establish. As I look back at the evolution of this blog, one of the constants has been the way I tend to write as if I'm writing to my friends. And if you ARE reading this blog every day, we probably COULD be friends. Which leads me to the following blog and content design principle: I am not interested that interested in marketing my services on my website just for money. What I am doing is friend-focused marketing. Make it easy for people to see what I've done, what I'm interested in, and who else I'm talking to or working with on interesting project. Above all, practice good friendship by being generous with what I can give, being authentic, and showing instead of just saying. And to close the social networking loop, make it easy for my friends to introduce me to their friends.
There's a lot more to this than meets the eye, so I will probably write more about the design concept as I start looking at my site. Should be quite interesting.
Thank you for printing this article! Please note that all material on this website is copyrighted by either David Seah or individual comment contributors. To request permission for republication and distribution, please contact David Seah (http://davidseah.com/contact).
About Dave
I'm an investigative designer, and I write about design, development, and productivity tools.
