- Most Recent | Since 2004
- List View
- Archive
- March 8, 2007
For Myself, By Myself
March 8, 2007Read more
I’ve finally landed in Austin, Texas, for the 5 days of Web 2.0 community empowerment goodness that is South by South West Interactive. I had a few interesting thoughts on the flight over, while I was contemplating the nature of my bad airport meal (pictured left)…you know, anyone with a deep fat frier can create fast food and sell it. Hot grease covers a multitude of shortcuts, from the quality of the chicken in my “curry chicken egg roll” to the mediocre wrapping. Still, it wasn’t bad…if it had been baked, it would have been totally awful.
The thought that arose from this poor meal experience was that it doesn’t take much to credibly claim to offer a product or service or, in this case, an edible egg roll. This got me thinking to a conversation I’d had recently with Senia, during which I became re-aware that I was in fact embarassed by personal success, and that I’m rather bashful about wanting what I want. This was as much a surprise to me as it was to her; I’d thought I’d gotten over this years ago. What would it be like if I was totally not embarassed about what I wanted to achieve in my career life mix?
Hmm.
- March 7, 2007
SXSW Event Maps
March 7, 2007Read moreI like to know where things are, so I again made some maps for this year using a couple different styles.
The first shows the street numbers of venues around the Austin Convention Center. If you know the address of the party you’re going to, you can just look for the number on the map.
The second is a simplification that uses the streets as a coordinate grid. The way you would use this is to look up the name of the event, find the street, and trace along it until you find the address of your destination. This part of Austin is fairly regularly gridlike, so it works.
Each block isn’t that big, so you can also estimate time to get from one block to another (it’s probably something like 2 or 3 minutes). I figure if you’re walking, you just want to know how to get in the approximate vicinity of your destination, then you can start looking for other cues like street numbers. By making the order of street names obvious in the top and left columns, it’s also useful for figuring out where you are. It might be useful for my Friday morning exploration walk, when I’m planning on looking for interesting stores.
Here’s the excel spreadsheet if anyone wants to customize it.
Cowboy Hats!
A reader also wrote me about a place called Shepler’s which will fit you for a “real hat”. Leaving a note for myself: 6001 Middle Fiskville Rd, Austin, TX 78752 (At the corner of I-35 & Hwy 290E) (512) 454-3000. A friend of mine has been trying to get me into “Cowboy Action Shooting”, and you need an entire pseudonym—maybe “Deadeye Hong”, in honor of James Hong?—along with a kit of shootin’ irons and leatherwear.
- March 6, 2007
SXSW Events I’m Watching
March 6, 2007Read moreAnd here’s the list of events I’ve been monitoring on Upcoming.org. Other plans include finding a cowboy hat that fits my enormously-round head. Not sure what I’d DO with a cowboy hat, but I’ve always wanted one.
Date Event Name Status Mar 08 Super Happy Fun Monkey Bash Watch Mar 09+ Interactive Playpen @ South by Southwest Intera… Watch Mar 09+ SXSW Interactive Festival Attend Mar 09+ BarCampAustin II Watch Mar 09 SXSW Interactive 2007 – Higher Education Meetup… Watch Mar 09 Break Bread With Brad SXSW Eve 2007 Watch Mar 09 Geeks With Guns II: Electric Boogaloo Watch Mar 09 BlogHer SXSW/Austin Meetup Watch Mar 10 Dorkbot Watch Mar 10 frog design SXSW Opening Party Watch Mar 11 SXSW BlogNetworkCamp Watch Mar 11 Worldchanging at SXSW Interactive Watch Mar 11+ The 2nd Annual Avalonstar Bowling Extravaganza Attend Mar 12 20×2 v. 7.0: "What If?" Watch Mar 12 Godbit Dinner – SXSW 2007 Watch Mar 12+ Gawker/Lifehacker @ SXSW Watch Mar 12+ GOOD Magazine / Creative Commons Party Watch Mar 12+ South by Northwest Attend Mar 13 Media Temple Closing Party Watch There’s also been some rumors about a New Hampshire People dinner that I heard from Ian, but I haven’t heard where it’s going to be. Anyone know of anything else cool going on? I’m not a big drinker, so I’m looking for more relaxed venues where people can talk and show stuff.
- March 6, 2007
SXSW Panels I’m Thinking of Attending
March 6, 2007Read moreI just went through the panel list for SXSW and again have had a hard time picking just one panel to go to. In general, I’m being drawn to the panels about collaboration, identity (which includes branding), networking, and making things. To distill it down even more, these seem to be largely the panels about the psychology of our daily experience, and what people are doing to transform it.
I’m really behind on prepping for the festival, but I grow more and more excited!!!
Friday, 9 March 2007
05:00PM How to Rawk SXSW (9ABC)
Saturday, 10 March 2007
10:00AM World Domination Via Collaboration (10AB)
11:30AM ARG! The Attack of the Alternate Reality Games (9C)
11:30AM Bridging the Online Cultural Divide (9AB)
11:30AM Turning Projects Into Revenue Generating Businesses (Ballroom F)
02:00PM Kathy Sierra Opening Remarks (18ABCD)
02:00PM Everything’s Gone Douglas Coupland (Day Stage)
03:30PM Stop Designing Products (10AB)
03:30PM Your Web Application as a Text Adventure (9AB)
04:05PM Beautiful Algorithms: Design from Nature and Mathematics (10AB)
04:05PM Web 2.0 / 3.0 ArtsEntrepreneurship.com: Make Your Passion Your Profession (Ballroom F)
05:00PM Boss Lady (10AB)
05:00PM Web 2.0 and Semantic Web: The Impact on Scientific Publishing (8ABC)Sunday, 11 March 2007
10:00AM Every Breath You Take: Identity, Attention, Presence and Reputation (Ballroom F)
10:00AM Game Perverts: A Robot, a DS and a Dot Matrix Printer Menage a Trois (9C)
10:00AM Why We Should Ignore Users (18ABCD)
11:30AM Design Workflows at Work: How Top Designers Work Their Magic (18ABCD)
11:30AM Lonelygirl15 Case Study (12AB)
11:30AM Making Your Short Attention-Span Pay Big Dividends (19AB)
11:30AM Serious Games: Can Learning Be Hard Fun? (9AB)
02:00PM Keynote Conversation: Limor Fried / Phil Torrone (Hilton / Grand Ballroom)
03:30PM Deadlines, Clients and Cashflow: The Business Side of Web Design (18ABCD)
03:30PM Learning Interaction Design From Las Vegas (Ballroom F)
04:05PM Ten Ways to Run a Startup Like Genghis Khan (18ABCD)
04:05PM ValleySpeak for the Rest of Us: Developing Apps Outside InternetVille (9AB)
05:00PM Create a Campaign in an Hour (10AB)
05:00PM Distribution 2.0 (8ABC)
05:00PM “I’m Good, Really!”: Self-Marketing for the Freelance Web Geek (19AB)
05:00PM On the Edge of Independent User-Creation in Gamespace (9C)
05:00PM People-Powered Products (Ballroom F)Monday, 12 March 2007
10:00AM Barenaked App: The Figures Behind the Top Web Apps (Ballroom F)
10:00AM Getting Girls Into The Game: Designing and Marketing Games for Female Players (9AB)
10:00AM Revisiting Commercial Open Source Business Models (8ABC)
10:00AM User Generated Content and Original Editorial: Friend or Foe (10AB)
10:00AM The 4-Hour Workweek: Secrets of Doing More with Less in a Digital World (Day Stage)
11:30AM Being a Coppola in the “Brookers” Era (12AB)
11:30AM Convergence Culture: A Conversation with Henry Jenkins (8ABC)
11:30AM Scaling Your Community (18ABCD)
11:30AM The Digital Ethnorati (9AB)
11:30AM The Future of the Online Magazine (19AB)
02:00PM Dan Rather Keynote Interview (Hilton / Grand Ballroom)
02:00PM When Does User-Generated Video Become Independent Filmmaking? (12AB)
02:00PM Writing for the Next Generation of Games (Ballroom F)
03:30PM Bootstrap Your Startup! (10AB)
03:30PM Journalism in the Blogosphere: A Legal Guide to Internet “Press” (8ABC)
03:30PM Warren Spector Presentation: The Future of Storytelling (9C)
03:30PM Why Marketers Need To Work With People Media (18ABCD)
04:05PM Alternadad Live! (9AB)
04:05PM The Invisible Blogosphere (8ABC)
04:05PM Virtual Teaming: Collaborating Across Time and Space (10AB)
05:00PM How to Create A Kickass In-House Design Team (18ABCD)
05:00PM Advergames: Making Your Brand More Fun (Day Stage)Tuesday, 13 March 2007
10:00AM Customer Service is the New Marketing (Ballroom F)
10:00AM Open Knowledge vs. Controlled Knowledge (19AB)
10:00AM Pervasive Electronic Games (9C)
10:00AM Show Me The Money! Making Money From Independent Video Content? (12AB)
10:00AM The Future of the Book: Dead or Alive? (9AB)
10:00AM Web Typography Sucks (18ABCD)
10:00AM How to Make Your Ideas Stick (Day Stage)
11:30AM Design Aesthetic of the Indie Developer (Ballroom F)
11:30AM Preserving our Digital Legacy and the Individual Collector (8ABC)
02:00PM How to Easily Attract Your IDEAL Clients (Ballroom F)
02:00PM Music From the Masses: The Remix Revolution (12AB)
02:00PM Will Wright Keynote Speech (Hilton / Grand Ballroom)
03:30PM $100 Internet Businesses (Ballroom F)
03:30PM Girl Video Gamers Teach You the Facts About Successful Marketing (9C)
03:30PM Instructional Online Video – The Next Big Thing (10AB)
04:05PM Can Social Networking Build Your Brand? (8ABC)
04:05PM The New Business of Collectivism (Ballroom F)
05:00PM Bruce Sterling’s SXSW Rant (18ABCD)
05:00PM The Global Microbrand: Are Blogs, Suits and Wine the New Sex, Drugs and Rock & Roll? (10AB) - March 6, 2007
Summer Romance
March 6, 2007Read moreAs I get ready to return to Austin for my second SXSW, I’m struck by the feeling of nervous anticipation. Trying to explain this to a friend, I described the 2006 experience like having a summer romance while on vacation. So it’s vacation time again, and I’m returning to Austin wondering if things will be the same…surprising, delightful, and intimately satisfying in ways I could not have anticipated.
