It was a rather good day. I started the day out by eating a meat-laden buffet breakfast so I could go with a light lunch. I ended up skipping it entirely, saving myself some money, but this was made up with a nice dinner at a French restaurant later. I ate a snail! But more on that later. Let me recap the panels.
On the flight, I had taken some notes about "who I am" so I could better figure out how to describe myself, and had a slight shift in perspective: my blog tagline isn't really accurate. If you go to the home page and look at the title, you'll see it says David Seah: Design, Productivity, Empowerment, Inspiration. Categorically speaking, these are all topics I write about fairly consistently, but the implication is that this is the "purpose" behind my writing. That and the current structure of the website has me feeling boxed in, until I realized that it wasn't that big a deal and I should just start writing again regardless of my worry of further confusing visitors stumbling across the site. Anyway, here's the shift in perspective I experienced: while I do write about those topics, the purpose of this website all along has been to have conversations. This may have been apparent all along, because the way I write tends to be conversational in the first place. One of the first comments I ever got, back when only a few people knew about my tentative steps onto the web, was from Ged, who I hadn't talked to in years. He said something to the effect that it was fun to follow my ramblings because it was like I was "right there". A few readers who have met me in person have commented (favorably, I think) that the way I write on the blog and the way I am in person are practically the same. At the time I took that as a sign that I had finally gotten comfortable with my writing, but in hindsight it might mean that I just like having conversations with people no matter what the medium.
I've never felt 100% sure about the focus of this blog, but I think I'm on the right track to say that I am pursuing conversations on topics that I find interesting, and it is the conversation itself that I enjoy. This dovetails nicely with the other shifts in perspective I've had lately:
and now:
So I've flipped a few things around for me, and it's starting to feel right. I have no idea how I'm going to boil this down into a 30-second hallway introduction, so I'll probably just go with my strengths: "I'm a productivity tool designer and blogger". Not 100% accurate or comprehensive, but enough to get a conversation rolling.
I'm here at the Manchester, New Hampshire airport, waiting for my flight to board. Up until now I was kind of not in the SXSW spirit, but perhaps that's not surprising because I feel different every year about the pending experience:
SXSW (and just about every social event I go to) tends to put me in a mode of self-reflection because I wonder how I'll present myself. I think the reason for this is that I want to optimize the meeting experience so it's a good one, and there is probably a bit of self-doubt whether people will judge me "worthy" of talking to...shadows of childhood insecurity, perhaps. What's helped me in the past is adopting a role or having a mission. A good role for me is as a host: I've always been appreciative of people who have taken the time to show me the ropes or help me get oriented. I've been less successful at defining the mission in a way that snaps me to attention. Last year I tried "being outgoing" and it freaked me out so much that I decided that withdrawing a bit was OK.
Being more specific about the operational elements of the mission would probably be more helpful. Let's start with why I go to SXSW every year: I love the energy I get from being in a crowd of creative, entrepreneurial people. I love hearing how people have taken their ideas and dreams, discussing candidly what went right and what went wrong. I get to see a broad spectrum of personalities and interests aligned toward creative enterprise in an atmosphere of sharing and conversation. I'm not really one for partying, as I don't drink and my hearing is not good in noisy environments. I also realized recently that I'm somewhat out of practice hanging out with groups of people; as my friends have started families or moved away over the years, I've only really interacted with people one-on-one. It's probably been this way for the past 10 years, and I never really noticed anything other than I've been feeling isolated.
With this in mind, it's pretty easy to just make the call to contribute to the energy that I love.
SXSW is a social conference full of people who love being social but maybe don't know how to break the ice. There's also a celebrity factor, because there are a lot of famous bloggers and authors wandering around, and this can lead to a kind of social paralysis. I was spared this my first year because I didn't realize that there were famous people there in the web development world. My buddy Zach kept gaping at me when I failed to recognize the names of people. My second year, more fully briefed on who was who, I was much more conscious of circles of fame moving around me. This year, I am really just looking to meet interesting people that have that spark of curiosity and openness in their eye. At a festival like SXSW, that should happen often...the bottleneck is my own confidence.
Tactically, there are two tricks that may help me approach people:
Relax my face. I have a tendency to be tense up in social situations, and this makes me look kind of mean. I've tried doing the face relaxation thing and it has made a difference according to a few friends of mine. I have not yet applied this in the field, though. Thank you, America's Next Top Model, for this tip :-)
Look people in the eye and smile. If they look back and smile, then that's enough of a reason to strike up a conversation, moving from the immediate context to swapping information to telling stories. This is what I learned from a year of going to Starbucks every morning; it takes surprisingly little to just make small talk, and move on feeling good at having contributed a tiny bit of positivity to someone's day.
It's almost time to board the plane. Looking forward to taking a nap. I should be at the Radisson by 6PM, then I'll head over to the Convention Center and pick up my registration stuff. If you're at SXSW, come up and say hi! :-)
Again I'm way behind on preparing for this trip to South By Southwest Interactive (SXSW), which is a sprightly mix of web and interactive design, social media, tech culture, and entrepreneurial spirit that happens every year in Austin, Texas alongside the Film and much-better known Music festival. I'd originally found out about SXSW through the web developer crowd on the 9rules Network way back in 2005 or 2006, and though SXSW seemed far to hip for the likes of me, I thought I should go because I had written an article about continually being mistaken for Dave "CSS Zen Garden" Shea due to our similar last names. As a result, a few people in the web development community were actually familiar with my name. I rationalized that if I was going to do any kind of networking to get my shingle out there, this would be the time to do it. I had mixed feelings about being recognized for not being someone, but I went anyway. And I'm super glad I did. My first year's experience was energizing, thought-provoking, and even spiritual, as I collided with about 4000 people with the same desire to make cool stuff happen. I'd found my tribe.
For 2007, I spent a lot more energy trying to get everything straight with maps and other pre-printed geeky preparation because I didn't want to miss as much as I did before. This year, I'm resigned to let things happen as they happen and go with the flow. Trying to experience everything at SXSW is like taking a sip from a fire hose, and I'm just too old and cranky to do that. So I'm going to just check into the hotel tomorrow night and just start letting it happen. I have no idea who is even speaking this year; I just know it's going to be interesting.
What is on my mind right now is what to bring with me. So I'm writing this blog post as a kind of To-Do list while fulfilling the desire to put something up. I'll likely be updating this as the day goes on.
I'm an investigative designer, and I write about design, development, and productivity tools.
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