March 16th, 2006
Goodbye Austin & SXSW2006
Tompkins and Adamson at the Austin airport
Well, it took me until today to be able to write my goodbye to Austin. Man, that town and conference kicks some serious ass. Some of my favorite moments from this past week:
- Bruce Sterling’s closing remarks on the state of the world. I’ve never been moved to tears by a public speaker before… I’ve a new favorite author.
- Running into Doc Searls after the Sterling presentation, and chatting with him for an hour about everything from our shared past in Jersey and Greensboro (my current residence) to our love of basketball to our vastly different experiences with the KKK (mine is through my brother’s documentary, you gotta ask Doc about his) and then hitting up a BBQ joint with Doc, Marc Canter, Nancy White and Jerry Michalski.
- Experiencing Kirby Dick’s This Film Is Not Yet Rated and Alan Berlinger’s Wide Awake at the greatest theatre experience I’ve ever come across, the Alamo Drafthouse.
- Adam Greenfield’s ubiquitous computing presentation. (Adam is so very articulate and cultured, I can only hope that experience design is taken more seriously within the world of ubicomp than it is within the web) and Peter Morville’s Ambient Findability presentation. Two very similar topics, yet two very different presentations.
- Finally meeting Tish Grier, Will Giese, Thomas Vander Wal, Peter Merholtz, Tara Hunt and Chris Messina in person after months of blogging, commenting, plazing and flickring each other (did I say flickring?). And yes, I can confirm without a doubt that missrogue and factoryjoe are the web 2.0 version of Bonnie and Clyde.
- Hitting up the town with Khoi, Chris, Ralph and Jeff. We were robbed of the SXSW Web Award for Best Green / Non-Profit site (mediamatters.org) damnit! So we drank more.
- I only ran into one former collegue/friend at the conference — Dan Saffer — but I think I made a handful of new ones along the way.
I had a blast. And I’m looking forward to next year already.
Tags: Adam Greenfield, Alan Berliner, Bruce Sterling, Chris Messina, conference, Dan Saffer, Doc Searls, film, Greensboro, inspiration, internet, Jerry Michalski, Kirby Dick, Mark Canter, Media Matters, music, Nancy White, New Jersey, personal, Peter Merholz, Peter Morville, SXSW2006, Tara Hunt, Thomas Vander Wal, Tish Grier, Will Giese.
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Austin is the shit and Texas is the promised land. Give ame a ring and I’ll hook you up with a great real estate agent (my mom!)
i just might take you up on that, if not for a perm move, definitely for a crash pad in the heart of downtown.
Great to meet you too! (And my last name is White, not Smith. Dontcha hate those boring whitebread names? Oi. Maybe I should stick with choconancy!)
Now how did I miss the music at the airport! waaaaa!
Say hi to NC for me.
“And yes, I can confirm without a doubt that missrogue and factoryjoe are the web 2.0 version of Bonnie and Clyde.”, so Chris Messina and Tara Hunt are murderers? Let’s not distort history.
doh! i’ll fix that… that’s funny. i looked up “nancy white” to find your blog and then called you nancy smith. i guess i can’t get upset at doc for calling me “scott coon” and “sean coons” ;-) NC wishes you well…
yeah, lloyd, there’s nothing else to say about bonnie and clyde except that they killed people. you’re right. they probably didn’t love/live for one another and probably hated living on their own terms.
i’ll “distort” history however i damn well please.
You can glorify violence, if that suits you.
yeah, whatever.
Great to finally meet you. Let me know if you are planning another trip to TX, and I will let you know if I find my way to NC. Have a great weekend.