This will be a much shorter post than day 1. I did fewer things, but still am having a blast. Except for my blasted feet.
I slept until the clock went off at 10, and got out the door by about 10:30, taking the shuttle over to the Convention Center for my first session of the day, "Blog on Company Time and Get Promoted." This was an informal session in a relatively small room; perhaps about 30 people were there. Taught by consultant Daniel Hope, much of this was about how to convince numskulls at your company that they need a blog. Not a problem at the company where I work, which is getting more and more social-networking-savvy every day. Hope had a good suggestion called the "80/20" rule. 80 percent of a corporate blog should be relevant to the company or product(s) being promoted, 20 percent should be other stuff, such as links to interesting things, YouTube videos, photos from company parties, etc. I like that idea. He also listed a bunch of tools that he says can be helpful in blogging. I haven't checked them out in detail, but they were:
- Diigo, which allows you to highlight things and post annotations when linking to other web sites
- Posterous, which allows you to post items by emailing them
- Utterli, formerly called Utterz, another sharing tool
- Tumblr, yet another sharing tool
- Scribefire, a Firefox plug-in that integrates a blogging tool into the same window in which you're viewing the web, so you don't have to keep multiple tabs or windows open. This sounds useful to me.
After that session, I headed over to catch part of Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh's keynote. It sounded interesting, but I couldn't stay long. I had to go to Jeffrey Tambor's acting workshop. It was actually a seminar, in which he conducted a seminar with two actors he brought along, who already knew their lines. The way Tambor was able to guide them through breaking through barriers to get to the heart of the scene was amazing. I've got it all on video, and will post some clips "when I get around to it." Probably after the festival.
Next, I went to the movies, at the amazing Alamo Ritz. With a full menu of food and libations, I think this is a great theatre chain. I had some delicious green chilli macaroni and cheese. The film I viewed was "Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo," a fascinating documentary about Japan's obsession with insects. If you're at all interested in Japanese culture, try to find a way to see this movie.
After that, I headed to the party for "The 2 Bobs." It was damned noisy and crowded, but I got to spend some additional time with 3 of the cast members, including the lovely Tamara Jolaine, who greeted me warmly when she came in.
I skedaddled over to another movie, this time "The Last Beekeeper." There's an as-yet unexplained disease that is killing off bees in startling numbers. I knew that already. What I didn't know was the emotional toll that is taking on beekeepers. Dammit, the film brought a tear to my eye. See it if you can.
I have to say, AT&T is really falling down on the job with providing adequate data coverage. I could not pull up my schedule to save my life sometimes, which is why I missed the frog design SXSWi opening party. Frog design is one of the best industrial design firms on the planet, and I've read good things about their parties. Many of my twitter friends were shouting about the great fun at the Cog'aoke party. With no internet on my iPhone, it took a while to find out where it was. It was a 6 block walk, and I hemmed and hawed about whether my feet were to tired. But they carried me there and I enjoyed some enthusiastic karaoke performances by exceedingly drunk people. I found my Chicago friends Amy and Mary, and another friend of theirs who's name now escapes me, and we headed back to the hotel. And now I can't wait to go to sleep!
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