You know, I’ve never understood the concept of live-blogging. It seems to me that WP (or any blogging platform (aside from micro)) is not good at real-time updates. In any case, I’ve never live-blogged anything so this seems like an excellent opportunity to try it.

I am currently in Austin, Texas. The weather is hovering somewhere between 20-25C and the sun is shining. I am taking in the Interactive portion SXSW (South by Southwest).

Friday, March 12

This part isn’t technically live, as it’s actually the 13th currently, but I figured I ought to catch up. Friday was one crazy-ass day.

I did a presentation, in Calgary, at the Alberta Magazine Publishers Assocation (AMPA) Conference called “Working the Web” with my friend David Gluzman. That started at, roughly, 8:41 AM. It was an early morning. Overall, it seemed like our presentation went well. It was a slightly difficult to prepare for as we had no idea the level of experience of the audience. I was a little nervous at first, but once I got the jitters out I felt pretty good with how the presentation went. Thanks AMPA, for the invitation to present.

That went alright and I was back at the house to pickup Leah (to drive me, no Austin for her) and my luggage around 11. My flight to Houston left, on time, at 1:10 PM. I have to say that Continental really packs their fliers into the plane. Pretty sure my knees were in my chin for 3.5 hours of flight. Luckily, I had Harry Potter to entertain me (audio book).

I arrived in Houston a half hour early, which was excellent because I was only supposed to have an hour to make my connecting flight to Austin. As you may know (or assume), George Bush International Airport is huge. However, my next flight was delayed by an hour. So I spent an extra hour in Houston, but still listening to Harry Potter.

Finally, at 10:30, I arrived in my hotel room in downtown Austin. Connor, who I’m bunking with, left a sweet note (and a chocolate kiss) on my pillow (just kidding about the chocolate kiss). I texted him, grabbed a map in the lobby and headed out to explore. I walked around Austin for a bit and then decided to pack it in, after stopping in at TGIFs and consuming about 8 pounds of cheese.

Saturday, March 13

I’ve sat through a number of panels so far today. I started by getting my badge. No wait, I started by getting my breakfast wrapped in a burrito. My eyes have been opened to the awesomeness of burritos.

We F*cked Up

This was my first panel. It was pretty good. It was good to hear successful people talking about the ways that they screwed up. I think my take-away was that “Failure drives change and success drives repetition.”

Ze Frank

Ze was really, really interesting. I’ve seen his videos and he’s a funny guy, but ultimately I thought that would be it. But he really explored the emotional nature of the net. Really good stuff. I often say that the “internet is devoid of humanity so you need to bring humanity in”, but this made me think that there needs to be a, for lack of a better phrase, “emotional strategy” behind each website.

Night, night

My last panel of the day was awful. I was hoping to learn about advertising in video, but the guys leading the panel just pitched their own platform and so I walked out. After that, I met up with David (a fellow Calgarian) and we went to the RazorFish party. We had a couple (free) beers and went off from there.

We went to a several different pubs and bars and different parties. The “LameBook” party was interesting except it took us to the other side of the interstate. We went and stood in line at another party and that was across a set of tracks. What I’m saying here is that… I was terrified for my life. But Connor and David thought we’d be fine. We were fine, but my shorts will never smell the same.

Sunday, March 14

The time changed. My head is aching. And everyone in the Starbucks line made fun of me because I don’t know the stupid size names. Venti, grande… sharkfarks.

Offering Your Content in 100 Languages

This is based around open source projects and not businesses really. So not that helpful. They all work with volunteers. I would imagine it would be difficult for a business to get volunteers to do free translations.

Why Words Won’t Work

I am only here out of morbid curiousity.

Alright, that was an excellent presentation. Really interesting ideas on how to display (in that, you need both pictures and text) ideas. Still need to take this in a bit more, but Dan Roam really had great ideas and I want to read more of his thoughts.

Online Advertising: Losing the Race to the Bottom

That was a useless panel and I left halfway through and judging by the amount of people leaving I wasn’t the only one.

Tonight

I’m going to experience some infamous Austin BBQ. I’ll let you know how that goes.

So this is turning into less and less of a live blog and more and more of a trying to remember, after all those beers, what I did yesterday. Alright, so last night.

More to come…