blog.eliduke.com

this post is a conglomeration of the days that i spent at the South by Southwest interactive (SXSWi) festival (may 11 – 16). i had originally thought that i was going to be posting something each day, but i realized that would get too annoying and just not worth it.

day one (march 11)

the morning began around 9:30am when shane and i finally got up and started getting ready to head down to the convention center. the first round of “panels” started at 10am, but we cut our losses and went to officemax instead to get memory cards for our cameras.

we went to a few panels that were alright, but one of them had a speaker that was crazy. she was very nervous and kept pausing awkwardly, and then at one point she went on this rant about all the types of people (suits, geeks, no-it-alls) that she “hates” in the web design world. it was very weird.

then we headed over to Buffalo Billiards for the “Austin on Rails” happy hour, sponsored by the local Ruby on Rails group. picture your normal bar atmosphere with somewhat normal looking people, but just about every conversation going on is about web design, coding, ruby on rails, etc. at one point i sat down at a table with a few guys and was asked for some help on zinedistro so homeboy to my left pulls out his laptop and then i pull out mine, and we totally worked on some code right then and there. AND IT WASN’T WEIRD! THAT is the amazing part. we weren’t the only ones with our laptops out.

also while we were at this bar we played a game of shuffleboard, but it was the table top version. like ping-pong to tennis. and part of the table top version included this weird like silicon sand that you poured all over the table to help the things slide along. it was cool.

from there we wandered the streets a little until we got tired. we came home, did some handstands, made some curry, and tried watched Good Will Hunting but didn’t. sleep.

day two (march 12)

this morning, i slept in on accident. i didn’t wake up until about 11am and didn’t get down to the convention center until about noon: just in time for lunch. i’m writing this post a little after the fact and can’t quite remember where we had lunch that day. oh well, moving on.

the two really cool posts during this day were about blogs and diy web services.

the speakers during the blogs panel were Jason Kottke (kottke.org) and Heather Armstrong (dooce.org). both of these bloggers have been doing it for over 5 years each (jason for 8 years) and are some of the most famous and well known in this field. both of them blog for a living. jason makes money by having a subscription service, where readers donate money to keep him blogging, so he doesn’t have advertisements of his site. and heather has ads. that was a big part of their discussion: to have ads or not to have ads. jason’s most recent subscrition fund drive lasting about 3 weeks raised him just shy of $40,000 from about 1,700 readers. THAT is amazing if you ask me. what a high you’d be on after that 3 weeks is up having made 40 grand. amazing.

there were a few other panels that day, but nothing spectacular until the Yahoo party that night. it was at the Iron Cactus and was really put on by Yahoo to celebrate their acquisition of 3 really kickin’ web companies that they bought this past year: flickr.com, upcoming.org, and del.icio.us. they rented out the entire bar (all 3 stories of it) had free food, free tshirts, and an open bar.

shane and i ended up at a table with the creators of dodgeball.com (who were recently bought by google), a kid from denver who also does mobile technology, and about 5 or 6 others. there were a total of 12 people at our table, or at least that was the number of shots of Patron that were being ordered in rounds, and we definitely became part of the life of the party. at the end of the night 2 individual waitresses came up to our table with about 5 or 6 unclaimed drinks and were like, “hey guys, we have these unclaimed drinks and we figured that you could use them.”

near the end of the evening shane and i decided that we needed to round up a pool party at some point during our stay there. so we talked to these guys about doing it at the hilton, they seemed into it, so we said ok.

most of the kids at that table that night turned out to be some of our friends throughout the rest of the festival, and that was one of the weird things about this trip: you will run into the same people all the time. it’s sorta like high school because all of the panels and sessions are in the same area of the convention center and everyone is there from about 10am to 5pm. like, a guy i was talking to at the airport on the way to austin said as we were parting ways, “well, i’ll see you there.” i was thinking, “you’re not going to see me there, what are you thinking?” and sure enough i ran into him a couple times every day.

day three (march 13)

today we woke up and went down to the convention center as usual. bookis and i went to a panel about “creating buzz” and shane went to one about “microformats.” the buzz one was pretty cool, but they didn’t reall have a whole lot in it that i hadn’t already heard with my experience with bands and music and stuff. it was a little different, but a whole lot.

after that panel, we paired off again, and shane and i went with some new friends out to a bbq restaurant. it was mainly for the company we’d have, but they had rice and beans that were pretty kickin’, so we weren’t left hungry. one of the guys at the meal worked for google in new york, two of the guys worked for VISA, one of the guys had his own text messaging business, and we were like little babies. hilarious.

after lunch we went back to hear craig newmark (craigslist) and the guy behind wikipedia talk about free services. it was pretty interesting and weird to hear them talk and think, “that’s craig, and that’s Mr. Wikipedia.”

during the next panel shane designed a flyer for the pool party that we wanted to throw that night at the Hilton. we went to kinkos, printed them out, and came back to pass them out. mainly we were giving them to people we had already met or that we had some connection to, but we did hand them out to few randoms. most people were very happy to hear about a pool party at the Hilton, but we all know how people are when it comes to parties or shows or really anything when there isn’t (free) alcohol involved.

around 7:30 or so we headed over to the Hilton, which was right across the street from the convention center. we printed out some crappy signs in their business center that said:

zinedistro
pool party
8th floor

we asked one of the bell boys if they had an easle to put the signs on, and he went right off and came back with two of them. we set them up in front of two of the entrances and tapped our signs to them, and no one even cared. at one point one of the front desk workers came over to us and i totally thought she was gonna shut us down, but instead she said, “wow, a pool party!? i wanna come.” only in austin, during sxsw, could two total nerds get away with this.

the party went well. there were about 20 people that showed up, but we mostly spent our time in hot tub than in the pool. it lasted from 8 to 10 and then we all went out to eat. after dinner we went back to the house, had some cake that bookis made earlier, and then went to sleep.

day four (march 14)

today was a lazy day. we slept late and went in late for the 2nd of 2 morning panels. i’m not sure if this is the case for everyone, but there is most definitely a breaking point when it comes to panels. one person can only take so much!

this morning we went to one about the future of web apps. they showed some of the new ideas that are coming out, and it was pretty cool.

after that we ate lunch at a delicious vegantarian (get it?) place called “Mothers.” i got the bueño burger, and it kicked ass. we got back just in time for one of my most favorite panels so far. it was such a crazy panel. there was a band playing, and then the guy would talk about coding and then tell a story about Oprah and then more music and then weird videos and more music (lots of banjo!) and then more crazy. very weird, but very entertaining. at one point he had everyone take out their laptops, go to the IP address of his computer, and work on this group poem with together. everyone with a laptop could type in sample code and add to the poem. it was sorta cool.

after that was the last panel of the entire sxsw interactive festival. it was basically a speak by Bruce Sterling, whom i’d never heard of before now, but apparently is pretty big in this world for coining the term “cyberpunk.” he gave a very impressive speech about all kinds of crazy crap, and then in his final remarks he broke down and started to cry. i couldn’t tell if this was just part of his performance or that he was just really sad. either way, they were good closing remarks.

so, it’s all over! and what have i learned? i have no idea.

we came home and hung and made some food. brookis (brooke and bookis) went to the store and got supplies for bookis’ cookies (bookies) and shane and emily and i worked on zinedistro. we are definitely getting closer to understanding what we are actually doing in this whole thing, and a lot of that has come from this festival.

at around 9:30pm tonight the 6 netherlanders arrived from the airport. i forget all their names right now, but i will be making a roster of the 22 people that are staying at the house i’m at right now. i’m the only one awake, surrounded by 21 sleeping bodies. hilarious!

i have one more day tomorrow, a free day to do whatever, and then i board a plane tomorrow at 8:30am and will be back in seattle by 3pm. what will tomorrow bring?

day five (march 15)

we all woke up at a reasonable hour, around 11 or so, and just started walking. our plan was to head over to the IMAX theater and see Deep Sea 3D! the imax theater is in the history museum, so we went ahead and bought tickets for the exhibits as well. even for the “adults” in the group (shane and i) it was only $10 for both, and that’s a steal.

but we had about 2.5 hours until the movie started and there sure as hell wasn’t 2.5 hours of museum available, so went back outside to find something fun to do. brookis (brooke + bookis) decided to hang out in the grass under a tree and cuddle (hippies) while shane, emily, and i went down to the capital building. yeah, the capital building. did you know that austin was the capital of texas? well i sure didn’t.

the capital building was very impressive on the inside. you know how most of those types of buildings look: they’ve got that dome thing with a point sticking out the top. well, this particular capital building was completely open from the floor to the very top of the inside of that dome, probably 10 stories tall at least, and you could see all the way to the top. it was great. we headed back to the theater and found the other 2 and went into the museum for a bit.

there were two exhibits: one about a slave ship that crashed and another about texas history. we started with exhibit one. there really wasn’t much to see, just a bunch of old stuff found in the ocean that belonged to a slave ship. i did see one interesting thing though in a section that was explaining racism. there were little things on the wall that asked a question and when you lifted them up they would answer. this one was my favorite (and i’m quoting this verbatim because i took a picture just to make sure i’d get it right):

what is racism?
At one time many white people thought black people were not equal to them. This feeling may have come from the fact that black people had been slaves to white people for so many years. Today we know that skin color is not as important as individual behavior.

did you catch that? “skin color is not as important as individual behavior.” so, according to the austin history museum, skin color is still important, but just NOT AS important as individual behavior. i was speechless.

next up was the IMAX movie, and let me tell you. Deep Sea 3D was the best IMAX movie i have ever seen. the 3D parts were amazing, and at one point a little jellyfish was so close to my face that i thought it was going to brush my nose. if you get a chance to see this film, do it. it’s great.

after the movie we came home, hung out for a bit, and then went back to Mothers for some dinner. for some reason we were all incredibly tired (we are assuming because of the pressures of the festival), and we thought we’d end the whole thing with another fine dinner out. it was great. emily walked home that night (which is totally cool), but the rest of us drove back. we put in Good Will Hunting to end the night, and man was that a good movie.

day six (march 16)

shane and emily had gone to bed around midnight the night before, but brookis and i stayed up watching the movie, so we didn’t get to bed until about 2:30am. my flight left at 8:30am, so we got up at 6:30am… giving us about 4 hours of sleep. they were incredibly sweet to drive me to the airport, and it was sorta hard to say goodbye. i’d only met the two of them 7 days earlier and i already felt like i’d known them forever. hopefully i’ll see them again soon.

the flight back was much more comfortable for me in the ear department, but much worse in the motion sick department. all that jipping and jiving on the way down messes with my head, but i didn’t throw up. i caught the bus from the airport home, which is such a good deal: $1.25 all way home.

Well, I’m back.