Tag: sxswi

This day passed by too quickly, and began a little late. I walked in on the last half of Web Typography Sucks with Mark Boulton and Richard Rutter. Sadly, I missed the meat of it. Luckily, they released the notes and slides from it! I think the short of what they were saying is typography for the web is grossly misused and ugly. I agree wholeheartedly and I’m part of the problem. Time to change that!

Listening to Shaun Inman and John Gruber talk about their freelancing lives made me realize that I’m not sure that I’m ready for something like that with web design. I wonder if I an translate that with other areas in which I’m interested? It takes a very big dedication to what you’re doing and discipline that I sometimes lack (thanks to mainstream media and my lack of will to stop that medium from polluting my mind).

After a few sessions this afternoon, we make our way to to the airport for a long ride back home to LA. I shall be buying myself one little pint of Blue Bell Ice Cream before I go! Oh Blue Bell, how I shall me ye.

SXSW 2007 is an event I hope I can make an annual trip (assuming I don’t end up moving to Austin for some reason in the near future). Lots of great people I met, lots of great conversations and ideas discussed, and hopefully some great networking in the future.

By far the best day I’ve had here.

The first panel featured the ever so popular web designer Zeldman among others. It was cool hearing everyone’s ideas about how to get unstuck from being stuck in design. The next panel was all about online magazines, such as The Onion, Salon.com, and College Humor. Very entertaining and interesting to hear how they built their communities.

Probably one of the biggest events for yesterday was being able to see Dan Rather up close and personal. He spoke for about an hour and fifteen minutes about the state of journalism, the differences of journalists today, and how online media affects his job. I sat right behind Patrick Norton of dl.tv, formerly of TechTV as well as the guys who created chacha.com (very cool web search site if you haven’t checked it out).

Jason Santa Maria and Andy Clarke gave a very enlightening panel comparing a heist to design. It was one of the most packed rooms of any that I had been in the whole week.

I ended my proper day at a future of internet video panel featuring among others Kevin Rose from Diggnation. The panel looked a little tired and Kevin was probably hung-over, and yet he brought beers for all five of them to drink as they discussed what they see happening to video online.

We ended our day bar hopping amongst 4 different bars, talking to various people from various backgrounds. It was extremely cool and interesting to be able to have so many great conversations with so many talented people! Sadly, we had to end the night just after 1am since we were both worn out.

Day 3 was very unproductive. After completely missing the first session, I barely made any appearance at the 2nd session. We tried to get some business cards made up at Kinkos, but after just spending too much money on paper, we felt we had done nothing productive so we left.

My first real session was at 3:30pm, which is 4 sessions into the day. So I attended only 2 sessions and made quick appearances at 2 others.

After the awards ceremony last night, we both decided to call it a night. So I was asleep by 11pm. Kinda sad to realize, but I’m also kinda glad because a couple of hours later, it was pouring outside with a tornado warning in the county. I didn’t bother waking up to check the news so I feel sleep quickiy after waking up.

Day 4 is turning out to be much more productive already.

Daylight savings bit me in the arse. We’re now both late to our sessions for the day! D’oh!

After a very early start to the day to get our badges and bags full ‘o crap, we made it to 5 sessions yesterday. It started out with seeing 3 very prominent people in design, Molly Holzschlag, Eric Meyer, and Doug Bowman, and one Microsoft engineer for Internet Explorer, Chris Wilson. It was interesting to hear the decade of CSS and how each of them started with it. It goes to remind you that even if you are watching web celebrities we all come from the same place. Knowing that Meyer still gets confused by display: inline is comforting! This was probably my favorite session of the day.

The next session was with Jason Santa Maria and Rob Weychert talking about inspiration. It’s not that I didn’t know most of what they said, but I think going to get a review of things is a great way to refresh yourself and your mind. And they gave me a really cool idea for a party! : Make up a really wacky theme that everyone has the dress up for, do a lot of promotional items, market it correctly, then film it and have a blast. It’s really interesting to see how these people live there lives.

Texas barbeque for lunch was just what I needed.

The rest of the day was less design oriented as I listened about tags, such as those you do on flickr or del.icio.us, about video blogging, and then I jumped around for the last session of the day between three panels.

The video blogging panel featured most TechTV alum including Patrick Norton, as well as the CEO of Diggnation Jay Adelson. It was cool not only to see them but to hear them talk about where things should be headed with video blogging. I think there will probably coexist regular TV and online programming so that they’re more closely tied together.

After bar hopping all night and getting to see the infamous Ze Frank, we decided to call it an early night on account of daylight savings. Despite an earnest effort to get up in decent time, my phone clock decided to revert back to the wrong hour, forcing my alarm to be a phone call.

“Are you awake yet?”

No.

“It’s 9:30”

After more than three years of knowing about it, I have finally made it to one of the most revered events in web design: South By Southwest (SXSW). The conference I’m attending is technically the Interactive portion, geared towards interactive media that exists online, but it has turned out that a huge majority of the participants of Interactive are standards based web designers.

Delay after delay after delay has worn us out. After an hour plane delay in Houston, our luggage didn’t even make the delayed flight. So we picked up our late luggage to wait on our late shuttle to the hotel. An hour and a half later, we finally made it hours behind schedule to our rooms. I’m patient, but I don’t enjoy being behind on something I’d like to get the most out of.

After enjoying a nice, long dinner at one of my favorite Tex-Mex restaurants, Pappasitos, we headed down to Buffalo Billiards on 6th Street. The majority of its patrons, if not every patron, was a SXSWi participant! Sadly, we felt left out due to our late arrival and not having time to register for our badges. Still, it was really nice to be around great a lot of talented designers. I did recognize a few faces, met with old coworkers and met a few nice new people. I can’t wait to mingle more with others and it’s going to be wonderful listening to and being around such amazing talent.