The music portion of the SXSW festival began Wednesday, March 17, and just after midnight, at St. David's Historic Sanctuary, Suzanne Vega performed. She has been a favorite of mine since she first hit the scene about 25 years ago. She's putting out a new series of CDs under the banner "Close Up," acoustic solo versions of some of her best work. The first volume is Love Songs, which Ms. Vega kindly autographed for me. I had the chance to tell her that her album 99.9Fº is one of my all-time favorites. SXSW seems to have inconsistent policies about videotaping, sometimes they stop you, sometimes they don't. They didn't during Ms Vega's performance, so I'm happy to be able to present you with a song from that 99.9Fº album, Blood Makes Noise.
March 2010 Archives
Sunday was a very, very good day to eat. It started with a free bacon brunch courtesy Adobe. I got to hear an Adobe guy whine about how their relationship with Apple used to be soooo good, and now, not so much, because of Steve Jobs' opposition to Flash on the iPhone and iPad.
Saturday night was the SXSW Interactive Opening Party Hosted by frog design, at the Center for Mexican-American Cultural Arts. This was a pretty cool scene, with RFID tags and lots of interactive stuff going on. My introvert self asserted itself, which means I did not. It was outside, and night, so I couldn't really take pictures, except this one of the porta-potties. They had projections on them showing what position people were in inside, and showing a timer. You were supposed to use your RFID tag (which had no connection to your personal info or name), and they tracked the gallons of pee. They also tracked you at the bar, and you could scan your RFID with someone elses to make a connection, which was projected on a big wall. All very odd, very interesting, very frog design.
I went to an early party at Austin's Ginger Man. It was for the3six5, a writing project started by Chicago's Len Kendall and Daniel Honigman. Good beer, good people.
I stopped briefly at the SXSW interactive trade show. Its a bunch of software and hardware companies with little booths trying to sell you their products or services. I bought an extremely cute flash drive, but the real bonus for me was getting a demo of 3D-TV from Panasonic. They showed a number of clips, and the effect was terrific. Especially nice: video from 2008's Olympic Opening Ceremonies in Beijing. Awesome. Gotta start saving some sheckle.
Microsoft's danah boyd, who like k.d. lang disdains capital letters in her name, gave Saturday's keynote about privacy and publicity. There was a lot to think about in her remarks. Rather than try to boil it down, I highly recommend that you read them yourself.
I next attended a provocative session called "Mind Control: Psychology for the Web." Ben Scofield, a web developer who studied the brain in college, gave a lot of good advice. He argued against using web analytics to figure out what works on a web site. Instead of describing where the users click, figure out WHY they click. "If we understand why people do what they do, we can make them do what we want them to do." Make your site likable. People like pretty sites. Get people to identify with what their peers are doing. He strongly recommended following these guidelines from Stanford University. It looks like good advice. Other tips: giving things away for free, as Google does with Gmail and many other products, builds brand loyalty. On the other hand, something scarce (like Gmail was in the early days, when you needed an invite) makes people want it.
I'm abandoning my old format of a long post about the day.
Instead, short posts of what's going on. This one doesn't have much: Saturday began with me sleeping in a bit too late, and cabbing it over to the Radisson, and being denied entrance to a packed panel on the iPad. You can read up on what I missed by using checking out these tweets from people inside.
After another long absence, its time to resume my blog, covering the SXSW Interactive/Film/Music convention in Austin, Texas.
Its interactive that first got me interested in the festival, and that's the first thing on the agenda.
Since the first sessions didn't begin until 2 pm, I felt it necessary to have some Texas Barbeque before I got started. I sated my appetite at Iron Works, conveniently located next door to the convention center. Just ahead of me in line was Leo LaPorte, host of my favorite podcast, This Week in Tech. I asked him if he had ordered his iPad, which just went on sale that day, and he said he had ordered two. Alas, I only ordered one.
One button. Sounds like an Apple idea. Appropriately, my first session was The History of the Button. It was an interesting talk about the abstract notion of the button, how it came to be, and how its changing; most notably in that many of the buttons we use on the internet don't appear as buttons at all. Instead, they are text, or a graphic, or anything else that you can click on to cause something to happen.
Then it was on to Successful Networking for Introverts, Rebels and Misfits. My friends don't believe it, but I am an introvert. There were some decent tips on how to more easily chat up strangers in social situations. I offered a tip: act like you are a reporter interviewing someone.
Then I attended PayTV vs Internet: The Battle for Your TV. Speaking for PayTV was Mark Cuban, maverick Mavericks owner and HDNet mogul. On the Internet side was Avner Ronen, founder of Boxee. About 5 minutes into their debate, a false alarm caused the evacuation of the entire convention center. But it was over quickly, and the debate resumed. Here's a nice little writeup of the exchange. I videoed the whole thing, but the audio is too crappy for me to post.
Then it was on to my first party, the Tocquigny Martini & Beer Marketing Mixer. I had a lovely chat there with Jenny Goddard, a young local filmmaker.
One of the events I skipped last year is called "Pastries and Pasties." I had a cupcake called "Sloppy Seconds" made from peanut butter & chocolate. Yum. And I watched burlesque-style stripping going on. It was amusing. The crowd even more so. And I was surprised that the performers included all shapes and sizes. I'm proud of the heavy performers and their self confidence!
I then spent a couple of hours at the official SXSW Film Opening Party at Buffalo Billiards. Here, the crowd was a lot bigger, and noiser. I had trouble acting sociable, but as I was about to leave, the aforementioned Ms. Goddard grabbed me from behind, and introduced me to some friends of hers. Still, I couldn't hear conversation, so I headed out and back to the hotel. A good start, but things will be getting better. I still haven't seen any films, and the music doesn't even get started until next week.
