connecting*the*dots

On Thursday I’m heading to Austin for the 2006 SXSW Internet Conference and Film Festival. It took me a while to figure out if I could make it, but with my latest research project moving into recruitment mode, it looks like I’ll be free… enough. In-between live blogging panel discussions, hitting after parties and enjoying independent films, I’ll probably have to do some work here and there, but I can deal.

Aside from the input of media and ideas (and reconnecting with long lost friends and colleagues) I’m really looking forward to meeting the people whom I’ve shared discourse on blogs or lists for the past six years. This is my first conference since the IA Summit in La Jolla, way back in 2000. A lot has happened since then.

I’m terrible with names, and sometimes even faces, so please excuse me upfront if you see me squinting in your direction as if I’m attempting long-division; I’m not being rude, I’m just being me (can’t help it).

Here’s the SXSW pre-schedule that I’m attempting to follow:

Friday March 10th:
7:00pm - Thank You For Smoking (Film)
9:30pm - Music Videos (Shorts)

Saturday March 11th:
10:00am - Beyond Folksonomies: Knitting Tag Clouds for Grandma (Panel)
11:30am - We Got Naked, Now What? (Panel)
1:45pm - Wide Awake (Film)
3:30pm - James Surowiecki Presentation: The Wisdom of Crowds
5:00pm - Tantek Çelik Presentation: Creating Building Blocks for Independents
7:00pm - Al Franken: God Spoke (Film)
8:00pm - frog design SXSW Opening Party

Sunday March 12th:
10:00am - Design and Social Responsibilty (Panel)
11:30pm - The Future of Education in a Digitally Convergent World (Panel)
2:00pm - Keynote Conversation: Heather Armstrong / Jason Kottke
3:30pm - Running Your New Media Business (Panel)
5:00pm - Serious Games for Learning (Panel)
6:00pm - Flickr, Upcoming.org, and Del.icio.us in the company of Yahoo! (Drinks)
8:45pm - The Last Romantic (Film)

Monday March 13th:
10:00am - Cluetrain: Seven Years Later (Panel)
11:30am - Microformats: Evolving The Web (Panel)
2:00pm - Craig Newmark Keynote Interview
3:30pm - Peter Morville Presentation: Ambient Findability
5:00pm - The New Startup Cultures (Panel)
7:00pm - EFF/EFF-Austin/Creative Commons/League of Technical Voters (Drinks)
9:00pm - Adaptive Path + Consumating + Odeo SXSW Party

Tuesday March 14th
11:15am - Shadow Company (Film)
2:00pm - Burnie Burns Keynote
3:30pm - Democratization of the Moving Image (Panel)
5:00pm - Bruce Sterling Presentation: The State of the World
8:00pm - Hard Candy (Film)

Hope to see (and meet) you there!

UPDATE: I’ll be staying at Homestead Austin - Downtown (wherever that is)

My father’s sculpture has been standing guard in our home for as long as I can remember.

So what do you do when the grind of the city commute smacks you in the face? You find a comfy spot in the back of The Jazz Gallery and let Steve Coleman’s workshop grab ahold of your soul.

Coleman wasn’t on my radar before tonight, but leave it to Jonathan to introduce me to a hot act in the Jazz scene. This guy is dope. He’s currently playing a 1-1-2-2-2-1-1 then a 1-1-2-2-2-1-1-1-1 then a 1-1-2-2-2-1-1-1-1… 1-1 beat, getting his drummer up on cue to the progressive, deterioration of the riff. Man, this is a workshop. Sue Mingus runs a “workshop” with the B and C players of the Big Band and Orchestra, occationally practicing new compositions. I love you Sue, but that’s not a workshop. That’s income.

Steve just invited audience members to join him on stage and work out the riff. Now with two women on the mic and the drummer carrying the beat, he gets abstract off the beat — like a launch point of a ramp built in progressive takes.

Two boards added, a half peeled away, two and a half stiched on, pause for a second, add three and gone!…

Now an audience member is on the piano, riffing to the progressive beat, Coleman standing back, checking out the take… and the first woman on the mic scatting… add Coleman…

Coleman’s not only brilliant, he has the patience and explanatory skills of a teacher.

Alright, now he’s dropping the improv down an octive and slowing down the tempo, mixing up the original riff into more paused flashes of laddders. Live blogging a jazz show… if I could visually describe what I’m hearing, well, imagine it to be something like this.

Dope!

No matter where we go as a community, we have to remember how we got here:

Pick up the documentary today.

(Full disclosure: my brother, Andy, is the documentary filmmaker)

Words can’t begin to describe the passion in this drop.

I stumbled across the no one’s listening podcast site and their interview with Noam Chomsky yesterday. The interview was entitled, Fake News; a title fitting his perspective on the American media. I have to admit though, after reading most of Noam’s work from the 80’s and 90’s, it was good to hear that he’s optimistic about the future.

The following is a transcript of part of the interview:

Noam: The effect [of the media] on the public isn’t very much studied, but to the extent as it has been, it seems that among the more educated sectors, the indoctrination works more effectively. Among the less educated sectors, the people are more skeptical and cynical.

Irene: Right… so what can we do because now I’m depressed. [nervous laughter]

Noam: I think it’s a very optimistic future, frankly.

Irene: Really? You wrote 90 books…

Noam: Look, very much so. There’s something we know about this country more than any other: we know a lot about public opinion. It’s studied very intensively.

Irene: That it’s fickle?

Noam: But it’s very rarely reported. You can find them, it’s an open society, you can find them. What they show is very remarkable. What they show first of all is that both political parties and the media are far to the right of the general population, on a whole host of issues. And the population is just, you know, disorganized, atomized, and so on. This country ought to be an organizers paradise. And the, that’s why the media and the campaigns keep away from issues. They know that on issues they’re going to lose people.

So therefore you have to portray George Bush as a, look he’s a pampered kid who came from a rich family, went to prep school, an elite university and you have to present him as an ordinary guy, you know, who makes grammatical errors, which I’m sure he’s trained to make, he didn’t talk that way at Yale and a fake Texas twang and he’s off to his ranch to cut brush or something.

That’s like a toothpaste ad. And I think a lot of people know it.

Given the facts about public opinion it means what’s needed is something, you know, not very radical. Let’s become as democratic as say the second largest country in the hemisphere: Brazil. I mean their last election was not between two rich kids who went to the same elite university and joined the same secret society where they’re trained to be members of the upper class and can get into politics cause they have rich families with a lot of connections. I mean people were actually able to vote and elect a president from their own ranks. A man who was a peasant union leader never had a higher education and comes from the population.

They could do it because it’s a functioning democratic society. Tremendous obstacles, you know: repressive state, huge concentration of wealth, much worse obstacles than we have, but they have mass popular movements, they have actual political parties which we don’t have. There’s nothing to stop us from doing that. We have a legacy of freedom which is unparalleled, its been won by struggle over centuries, it was never given, you can use it or you can abandon it.

It’s a choice.

So… I guess the question is who’s ready to make a few personal sacrifices to begin to elicit change?

A legendary poet and prophet lives on…

(reminder via The Republic of T, "Working Class Hero" personalized video by Don Thrasher)

Vladimir Yarets Alexeevich is on a mission that he can’t tell you about. He’s both deaf and mute, but don’t think for a moment that stops him from reaching out and touching your soul with his story.

I met him at a vista point above the Golden Gate Bridge last Sunday. Apparently, he’s been traveling the globe on his bike since 2000, trying to get into the Guinness Book of World Records for the most distance traveled on motorcycle by a deaf mute. Yeah, their categories are awesome. Vladimir showed me where he’s already been and it’s pretty much the entire globe (including all 50 states). He’s about to head to Hawaii then Australia and Japan to wrap up.

The guy had me rolling on the ground when he mimed his 2003 crash experience. He pointed to his replacement bike (a BMW) and then clicked his heels together, threw his right arm up with a flat hand extended and made a serious face (pretending to be a Nazi). Then he points to his ride and throws up his two thumbs and grins.

Fuckin’ A.

He pointed to a laminated card that said that donations get him around the world, so I peeled off $10 and shook it into his hand. I’m now living vicariously through the guy. When I got home yesterday, I Googled him and found an old article about Vlad, two years into his journey.

How this hasn’t become a movie, I have no idea.

(via RealityStudio)

I tag like a 15 year-old kid in the South Bronx with a box full of Krylons and a yard full of freshly sandblasted cars.

I tag like I just got jumped by a handful of punks who made the mistake of letting me follow them to their trailer park homes adorned with freshly cleaned aluminum siding.

I tag like I get told who I am, what I’m supposed to believe and how I’m supposed to act on a daily basis.

I go all city, hoping that one day, the vehicles I’ve touched get stitched together to form a complete sentence.

I tag because I saw you leave your mark and it was dope.

I tag because I know how to freeze, watch TV and (kinda) avoid the kissing bugs.

I tag because the words I drop in time will find a way to form a cohesive rhyme.

I tag because the world may be getting smaller, but it’s damn sure not coming together.

I tag your name, your spot, your position, your mood, your frame of mind when it’s too hard for you to see it for yourself.

I tag the expected terms of modern constructs.

I tag the post-modern undercurrents of miscellaneous descriptors.

I tag my tags so that when structure is forged out of chaos, you’ll know how to find me.

I tag so that it’s me you won’t be looking for.

When I tag, I’m regurgitating the meal I’ve caught for the chicks in my roost.

When I tag, I feel one with the universe of the collective unconscious.

When I tag, I can see the pillars of control quaking in their foundation.

When I tag, I experience therefore I understand.

When we tag, anything is possible.

————

Tag! We’re It! Part II
Tag! We’re It!

I’ve only been a NYC resident for the past three years, but after going through last 9/11 and commuting past ground zero every day for the past six-months, I’ve come to realize that no matter where I live for the rest of my life, I’ll always consider myself a New Yorker.

The people here in this city are fighters. They get knocked down, but get right back up and offer the other cheek in defiance. I’ve dealt with a ton of adversity in my life and consider myself someone who doesn’t relent easily, but I’m more than humbled by the collective resolve of my neighbors here.

There’s no way to express the grief that’s shared on a day like today, but this morning I had the opportunity to overhear a conversation between a group of firefighters on the train that I wanted to share.

They seemed somewhat somber while beginning to talk about a fallen brother from a year ago, so I braced myself for the remainder of the conversation.

What do these guys end up doing?

For the entire 7 stop ride, they cracked on his horrible cooking around the ladder company back in the day.

New York.

gone is my muse
from which i took leave
of artistry and conviction
to discover what i believe…
how much bullshit is that?
eating nothing, yet getting fat…
the head getting cold while wearing a hat…
the D train passing without the sight of a rat…
i guess i left it up to her
to flower in her youth
to take me far beyond
the absolute & vermouth.
and i wonder why the years look so dim
i had a muse and let the slim
chance of her breath to inspire and create.
god, i deserve all that i got…
all that’s left on my plate…
so here i am
with only myself to be inspired…
hey… what a thought
how profound
i think i’m feeling wired
back with society,
or at least with the lost part of me,
i’m approaching this so gregariously
it scares me to think
of how she might feel
because there’s still a part of my muse
left up inside of me…