SXSW 2008 – so far

So a full day in the books at SXSW so I thought I’d update.  Registered and picked up my badge and bag of goodies.  Not a lot in the bag other than a ton of magazines and printed matter, but hey it comes with the badge and they’re handing out a ton of them:

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Depending on your badge (Interactive, Gold, Platinum) you get one, two or three bags of “stuff”.  For us Interactives, only one.

After that, it was on to an introductory session on “How to Rawk SXSW”.  This one was considered the Basics, with the Advanced to follow the next day.  Good panel here with Matt Mullenweg (WordPress/Automattic), Tim Ferriss (4 Hour Work Week), MJ Kim (minjungkim.com), Ian Lloyd (accessify.com), Jason Toney (Disney Online) and Ranie Turingan (photojunkie.ca – Canada!).  They had an Accordion player (damn can’t remember his link) come out and get things started with an ACDC tune.  Then they cracked a 26’er of Bourbon (apparently traditional) and passed it back and forth during the discussion.  Yes, it was empty by the end and I’m pretty sure Tim had half ;).  Good overall info, nothing really earth-shattering.  Main message was get out and meet people, socialize socialize socialize.

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After that John and I took a walk and had lunch at Riley’s Pub where we had Guinness, Irish Stew and Deep Fried Pickles.  OK I know what you’re thinking but they were actually quite good… Took it pretty easy until the Mix at Six.  Six is a bar in downtown Austin and is going to be hosting a few events during the week.  This was a short walk from Riley’s but when we got there it was lined up out the door and around the block.  Eventually got in, however, and proceeded to the rooftop deck to hang out and meet folks.  Ran into 3 guys from Ottawa (can’t remember their names, which we joked about, so now they’re just Ottawa, Ottawa and Ottawa).  They were all iPhone hyped and very curious to know what John and I had done to get ours.  Got an invite from them for a Canadian Bacon breakfast the next day and we were pretty sure we’d see them with new iPhones (update: nope, not yet).  

Spent a couple of hours at Six then headed out with the Ottawas, Tod Maffin and John’s friend Colleen to Iron Cactus to have some food and even more drinks.  This is one of the hot spots, tons of people all around.  Of course mostly techies, including the Pownce crowd at their own table on the bottom floor. 

Eventually left Iron Cactus because we found out that Scales and crew were going to be heading to – you guessed it – Six.  So off we went and stood in line – again – to get into Six.  Super packed now, worse than before.  Bumped into Kevin Rose, though, and said hey.  Said hey back, so he’s normal in my books ;).  Again made our way up to the rooftop and met up with a few more friends (Roland, Chris Heuer).  Matt was there too with a pack of people swarming him.  Looked like he’d been there a while, maybe still feeling the bourbon from earlier …

So eventually made it back to the hotel and crashed fairly late.  Woke up pretty fuzzy the next morning to take on the first “full” day of SXSW.

Early start the next day, first to go have breakfast with the Ottawas.  Too early, I guess, because they were a no-show.  Did talk to the Canadian Consulate rep for a bit, though, but I think he was more trolling for Film people.  Headed over to the Convention Center afterwards for the day’s sessions.   

Filching Design was the first session, which was a discussion on stealing (filching) code and design from sites and what is considered fair game or not.  Got a bit dry at the end but a decent talk nonetheless.  Long and short of it is if something is defined by what it looks or acts like it’s probably not fair game to filch.  Things like color palettes, layouts etc. though are another story.  One of the panel compared it to music in that you “can’t copyright the blues”.

Next session for me was part 2 of how to Rawk SXSW.  This one was considered the “advanced” level but really it was more of the same.  Good panel, though, including Glenda Bautista (Agendacide), Ryan King (the ryan king), Casey McKinnon (8 Bit Brownies Inc. – Canadian!), Ariel Waldman (Social Media Insight) and Veronica Belmont (Mahalo).  More social discussion, no booze-passing though (wimps).  Humorous and not that useful, but easy to listen to. 

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Took off and met up with John at BarCamp Austin which was a cab ride away.  This is a coding “camp” that is held every year and we went with a single purpose (ok mixed purpose), get some scoop on the iPhone SDK – and the SDK – and get the t-shirts, lunch, free beer, etc. ;).  Succeeded in both cases and sat in a room with some uber-apple geeks for a while kind of soaking up the neurons.  Ended up heading out relatively quickly tho – this is something you either dive into for 10-12 hours or just drive by.  We chose the latter and took a cab back to the hotel for a bit – oh, I installed the iPhone SDK in the cab on the way back, gotta love the air ;).

Next on the list was the Flickr meet-up at a place called the Cathedral of Junk.  Really enjoyed this, even with the 15 minute cab ride to get there.  Vince, the owner/creator/artist, made something pretty amazing over the last 19 years, collecting (and receiving) a ton of just about everything, picking about 10% of it these days, and tacking it into a huge mishmash of a climbable tower and yard with concrete, welding and wire.  Yes, I said climbable.  Very interesting experience to be there and to take pictures.  It’s special enough to be cataloged by the Smithsonian.  A collection from my pictures are at Flickr, of course: 

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Other than the great photo op, the highlight was meeting up with the crew from Flickr.  George (Oates), Richard, Myles and Becky were all great to meet.  We ended up going for BBQ with all but Becky at some hole-in-the-wall restaurant on Congress that George happened to see on the way to the CoJ.  The cab driver was entertaining – almost killed us at one point but reassured her driving by saying she’d had a transfusion from Mario Andretti.  Um, OK.

End of the night came pretty quickly after dinner – took a Metro bus back down Congress close by the hotel, said seeya to the Flickr people and then walked, freezing my ass off, back to the Hotel.  Hung out in the room w/John posting photos and catching up with e-mails, etc.  Was good to take a night off, esp. since there is more to come.

Whew, that was a long one, sorry.  I’ll post again later or tomorrow to update on today, which includes the Trade Show, the Flickr party, the Moo/Etsy party and who knows what else. 

Social tagging: Austin > Conference > SXSW