Month: March 2003

1. Reports of the conference’s demise have largely been exaggerated. Before I left for Austin this year, I was a little melancholy that talk had been streaking around blogworld about how South by Southwest was over the hill, that there was nothing new to say about this medium and, dangit, where are the limousines and dancing girls of yesteryear? Upon arrival, that sadness lasted about 15 minues. I have no idea what the economic state of the conference is and since I know nothing about the special events business, it’s foolish for me to even speculate. Yet the soul of South by Southwest–warm, passionate, creative people in one place committed to building a dynamic future-burns as brightly as it ever has.

2. To that end, the conference is turning a corner. The first wave of web mania is dead and buried. Weblogs are going mainstream and in many circles are there already. These stories have been told. And though it may be comforting, even fun, to hear them again, there are other walls to scale and undiscovered countries waiting on the other side. If South by Southwest is to grow with us, it will need to start telling these new stories, loudly, and asking for our insights in telling them.

3. Those new stories are already being told, on the conference floor, over meals and late-night cocktails. Keep an eye out for panels next year on online multiplayer gaming, digital music, D.I.Y filmmaking, human/web-powered city guides and finding time to pursue personal and creative projects. If you don’t see them, ask why not.

4. Hugh is a very capable fellow but most of the dazzling ideas for the conference comes from the attendees. So if you’ve been waiting forever to see a panel on Web-enabled kitchen appliances, don’t moan, do something. Pitch it to Hugh. He isn’t going to laugh at you behind your back and you don’t have to be all brilliant and sexy and award-winning to offer up an idea.

Case in point: I ended up doing my Book Culture panel because I ran into Hugh in the hallway at the 2002 conference and rudely asked him why there was nothing about the web and books at the conference. He said “Why don’t you do something about that?” That’s what I did.

5. Being intimidated, while understandable, is a waste of time. Though I’ve seeing the same faces at SXSW for four years now, there’s still a small group of people that I’m afraid to talk to. One I spotted at my second panel and again at Bruce Sterling’s house. I finally just tapped her on the shoulder and said “Thanks for coming to my panel.” She was very nice, which I would have found out last year had I not been too chicken to speak to her.

I’ve been talking about this with a few other attendees. I think next year I’m going to make a list of every single person at the confrence whom I’ve been too shy to approach and talk to them. I don’ go to Austin every spring to remind myself of what I was like in junior high.

6. I’m not a spring chicken anymore. This is my fourth South by Southwest and, though that may not make me an old timer, it certainly makes me at least middle-aged in conference years. I several attacks of deja vu walking the convention hallways, my badge bouncing off my jacket. People I used to only know from afar are now old friends. Four years ago, panelists were gods or at least much smarter and better looking than me. I was a panelist this year. Twice. I even found myself at dinner talking to a fellow attendee there for his first conference asking me how it “used to be.” Wow.

7. These young attendees, maybe of whom cannot even drink legally, are the future of South by Southwest. We owe it to each other and to the conference as a whole to share with them what we know and to listen to what they have to say.

8. Castle Hill Cafe is as good as its ever been. This year I got to spread its gospel.

9. The most special thing about South by Southwest is how selflessly nice everybody is. Every year I am thunderstuck by how quickly attendees open up their homes, minds and hearts to people they only see once a year, to people with whom they may only have this crazy hobby in common. And while there are plenty of people at the conference I may not be as tight with if we saw each other every day, we have a unique bond one week a year. For that one week, I love them all.

10. I need to feel more often like I do when I’m at South by Southwest. Maybe we all do. I had a rather poignant conversation with two new friends at the conference this year who both remarked with sadness how spoiled they get by attending the conference each year. For a few days, they get to surround themselves with passionate, creative people. Then they have to go back to the routineness of life, its car payments, skinned knees and Monday mornings at the office.

What I realized this year is that I’d like to feel the way I do at South by Southwest a lot of the time. Most of the time. I know the conference is not reality (something I have to say out loud every year as a reminder) and that I am in the fortunate position of being A) unmarried and childless, B) in good health, C) working at a job that I love and D) in decent financial shape in spite of C). Nonetheless, I want creativity, passion, and solidarity to be an everyday occurance. Or at least the neigborhood I live in rather than a foreign country I visit once a year.

I’m going to try and make this happen by saying yes to more events and projects like South by Southwest instead of “I’m too busy,” to listen to what those different from me have to offer instead of assuming I know best and to realize the craziest idea is probably the one most worth chasing. Most of all, I’m going to try and nuture the relationships I began in Austin this year, in hopes that we can all carry some of that “conference high” without throughout the year instead coming down as soon as we get home.

I’d say it’s worth a try. You coming along?

I’m on the plane ride back to San Francisco. SXSW for me ended around 3:20 Wed. morning when I took in a late night trip to Katz’s Deli after the closing party at Bruce Sterling’s house. In the fog somewhere between dawn and the middle of the night, a dozen of us ate french fries, laughed a lot, and promised to do it again next year, just like we had the year before that.

I love South by Southwest. Just plain love it. For five days each spring, just as winter is beginning to break, I come to Austin, my old home. I see old friends and inevitably make new ones. I stay up way too late and eat badly. I have ideas that I had never considered but seem here to spark of me like metal hitting flint. And by about day 2, “I” has faded, “I” has become “we.” “We” are my brothers and sisters I’ve grown to love, hundreds of bright, creative, passionate, warm people I get to keep company with, just as the seasons are changing and what is stale and routine in life now seems reinvented and shined up like new.

I’ve there’s a better way to celebrate the changing of seasons, I haven’t found it yet.

South By Southwest and I have been meeting like this for four years now, roughly paralleling my history on the web. Back then, Central Booking was in its infancy, I lived in Austin, and I was headed over to that big noisy Convention Center next door to see what all this web fuss was about. Now my professional life on the web is largely over and the strangers I once saw from afar, on panels and in the hallways, are old friends. Professionally, I’ve become more like them, speaking on two panels this year, and performing at Fray Cafe and 20×2. My friend Carrie called me a “rock star” and John Styn reflected on the last four years and noted that I’ve “exploded” onto the scene. They’re both exaggerating but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel more aware of my own evolution here than I’m yet comfortable with.

That’s part of why the conference felt different this year, though no less giddy and insane. I’m a bit older now, my headlong experimental days on the web largely behind me. My interest in technology now is largely intellectual rather than the key to my future plans. I know where I’m going professionally. Plus, with talk hanging in the air about how the conference is past its prime, how its got nothing new to say and nobody cares about new media anymore anyway, had me feeling a little less fancy free than in years past.

A word on that: South by Southwest, as a feeling, a happening, a state of mind, is only over when the hundreds of people who make room for it each year in their busy lives decide it is over. Obviously the conference itself needs money from festival passes and sponsors to survive and there isn’t as much of it around as there used to be. That’s for the organizers to worry about. Our job as attendees, as creative people committed to the spirit of the conference, is to A) maintain the energy of South by Southwest in our lives and work the rest of the year and B) if you were disappointed with the offerings this year, say so. Tell Hugh. He wants our feedback, our suggestions. If he can’t fit it on the schedule next year, do it yourself. Send out an email to everyone you met this year, saying “I’m doing a panel on Carpal Tunnel Syndrome on my weblog next year the first week of March because I never see one on the conference docket. Hope you can “attend.” Then do it.

I wasn’t around for the wild dot com ride that defined the conference in the late 90’s so I can only sort-of understand the longing for those days. But I also didn’t get involved with digital culture to complain that today is lame compared to yesterday. I got involved to dream about how tomorrow could be better than today. And then make it happen.

So I’ll be back next year, even if there is no conference, though I doubt its vanishing anytime soon. The time there, in these first days of spring is too good for my soul. And the people, most of whom I only see once a year and I’ll thank privately, are like a second family. I’d miss them too much.

What do we from here? It’s up to us whether we want South by Southwest to be five days long then stop or have an impact throughout the year and on into the next. That’s why I’ll be back, because to me it feels like it wouldn’t be spring otherwise.

See you, hopefully before then.

I’m sitting in the South by Southwest panelists room (Kevin’s a panelist? Look at his funky black ass), exploiting the free WiFi access and getting ready for 20×2 this evening where I need to answer the question “What are you waiting for?” in two minutes. I’m doing a kind of spoken word mish-mash that is currently scrawled on two crumbled sheets of paper. I’m going to see if I can fix them up before dashing off to the next event.

My panel this morning went surprisingly well. Carrie, Ben and I did some decent prep beforehand but for about the first ten minutes, I forgot I was the moderator and it was up to me to keep conversation going. After stumbling blindly for a few minutes, the three of us seemed to get back on track. I don’t know, I hear the feedback was good but its hard to tell if its you sitting there. I’ll wait until the accolades/jeers roll in.

I’ve got another schtick at 5 pm about getting published and finding an agent and all that jazz which I’m going to go prepp for. More later, perhaps.

And I miss Suzan. I hope she knows that.