Gonna try and do a daily brain dump. Don’t expect much coherence. This is mostly to get stuff out of my head so I don’t forget it. Proper write-ups (with links and coherence) will follow later.
Arrived last night after the long flight. 7am start with Andy Hartwell kindly driving Tom, Jim and myself to Heathrow winding up at Austin at 9pm local time. Someone else do the maths.
The motel Fiona and I are staying in is a classic in the 80s style, but it’s clean and warm and cheap. I was expecting to be paying sill money for cabs all week but Fiona figured out a bus route into town and their day passes are only $1.50. Kinda remarkable that public transport is so cheap here. They’re not as frequent as I’m used to though and 30 mins waiting in the cold rain (yes, it’s currently cold and raining here – we just missed a massive drought aparently) was a slightly grim start to the day.
But not enough to dampen the spirits. Arriving nice and early we got registered in record time (the queues were mental by noon) and, meeting up with Helga, Tom and Jim, did a quick tour of the massive convention centre to give them a sense of orientation and for me to see what, if anything, had changed. Not much really, which was good as my mental map from last year is still valid.
I did a couple of panels. The first was pretty normal – looking at how to sell this kind of thing to corporates. While I don’t exactly work in that area there were some useful things to follow up and adapt to the areas I do work in.
The second panel, entitled Fuck Stats, Do Art, was really good, at least for me. Smaller than most panels it saw Dave Olsen talk through his history of doing stuff and some lessons he could impart from that. It worked for me because he’s sort of a fellow traveller having done the zine thing. I’m still processing my thoughts but it tied in with some thinking I’ve been doing about what I might end up getting involved with next, given that the professional social media thing is a relatively small chapter in my life. More to come on this, hopefully, though it did make me think about Nikki’s ponderings about Interstitials.
The others from Brum, those I’ve seen anyway, seem to be adjusting well, or at least are as discombobulated by the whole experience as I am. Speaking of which, I had an indication of my level of discombobulation just now. In the toilet, sorry, bathroom, I tried drying my hands with the paper toilet seat covers the Americans are so fond of because I couldn’t see the paper towel dispenser. Doh.
So, so far I’m spaced out and full of brain juice and it’s only the first (half) day. Early-ish night tonight is the plan. Four more days to go and it’s going to ramp up tomorrow. Now for Tex Mex. Woo!
Thanks much for rolling my the F@ck Stats, Make Art prezo – i really dig sharing stories and inspiring folks to find their potential and not get hung up on the social media wankfest which is (as you put it) a small chapter. Social media is a means for sharing stuff your awesomeness and not to be confused with the awesomness itself.
See ya down the road i hope.
PS If you haven’t already done so, please roll by http://rate.sxsw.com and drop a review for me ;-)