Getting ready to head out for the first day of SXSW Interactive! I’m not sure what to expect, but I’m psyching myself up to go surfing in an ocean of people. Will the waves be large and mellow, or choppy and shallow? I HAVE NO IDEA.

To make things a little easier for people to find me, I’m wearing the same shirt that I have in my online photo, the blue hawaiian shirt with pineapples sewn into it that my sis picked out when we went shopping together, for the first time ever, at The Gap. I’ve come to realize that this actually might be how people recognize me. I’m looking for Zach Inglis in the 10AM session; we’ve been IMing a lot about design and creativity and all that stuff, and I’m looking forward to meeting him. I figure the shirt will help, since it’ll help me stand out more from what seems to be the official color palette of SXSW Interactive: muted earth tones, faded-but-cool t-shirts, and denim.

It occurs to me that I’m actually trying to adjust my surface appearance to conform to some kind of expectation, which at first gave me the willies until I realized that it wasn’t The Man doing it to me, but ME. I’m the Man. I guess that makes it OK, just barely. I feel a little foolish, like I’m dressing up for Halloween or something, but heck…if it works I’ll have to build my future company around Hawaiian shirts. It’s funny that someone I was talking to online actually thought I was living in Hawaii, entirely based on that photo.