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SXSW Part 1: Rejuvenation

When I was in the process of applying for my current job (back at the tail end of last year), Jo mentioned to me that I would get home at the end of the day and not want to face staring at another computer screen.

Knowing quite how much of a geek I am, we both shared a good laugh over this. It was funny until it – or at least something in the same vein – started happening. I had about enough time, energy and concentration to catch up on my feeds and e-mails, and of course Gears of War, but out-of-hours web development has pretty much fallen by the wayside. Nowhere has this been more evident than here on my blog.

Enter South by Southwest. Being around geeks, discussing, lauding and celebrating all things geek has done wonders, even after two days, for my enthusiasm. The “taking a holiday” part of it doesn’t hurt either. The net result of this is that I spend most of my day feeling enthusiastic, proud of what I am and what I do, and glad to be alive. This is a big deal.

In order to prevent this from fading away the moment I return to the UK, I’m signing up to Anton Peck’s Project 52 initiative, pledging to post at least once a week between now (or, more accurately, the Monday after next) and next year’s SXSW.

You never know, I might even make it as far as starting a redesign…

Suckswee retrospective

On Friday morning I returned from the States, from the South by Southwest Interactive festival and from a week and a half sharing a room in the Radisson with Steve “Nutcase” Marshall. It’s taken until Monday to wade through the swathes of news feeds and emails (the vast, vast majority of the emails being from a particular mailing list – you know who you are). With that finally out of the way, it’s time for the traditional “OMGSXSWFTW” retrospective blog post.

I’m not going to bore you with a panel-by-panel, geek-by-geek account of where I went and who I met: suffice it to say that the vast majority of the panels I attended were thought-provoking and interesting (with, I’m afraid, the odd notable exception) and the vast majority of the people I met were really friendly and enjoyable to be around. Even better, I have learned a couple of life lessons from my time in Texas:

To elaborate on the second point, I’ve realised that, while I met plenty of people who could be considered ‘A-listers’, that’s far from the important thing. What’s important is that I’ve met a lot of really friendly people: I originally wanted to do a shortlist of the people who most stood out for being friendly, but I couldn’t cut it down sufficiently, so I’m just going to give out a “Friendliest Person at SXSW ’06 Award” to Shaun Inman. Cutting the list down to one person was the only way to keep it from becoming twenty people, and who would ever want to name-drop like that? ;-)

Faruk-mocking aside, there were lots of people who were very nearly as friendly as Shaun: if I met you then it’s pretty safe to say that it was a pleasure and I’d love to see you again next year (or even before that, although I’m not planning on going to any more conferences before then so it’s pretty unlikely that the opportunity will arise).

All in all, a wonderful experience. My photos are uploaded, I’m up to date on my feeds, and Jon Hicks doesn’t want to kill me. Life is good.

Suckswee

(Term shamelessly stolen from Steve.)

So, the “next one” I mentioned previously is fast approaching: my ten-and-a-half-hour flight to George Bush International Airport (I feel dirty) heads out on Wednesday morning, giving Steve and myself ten and a half hours to fight deliberate over which panels we’ll be attending – not to mention which evening events we’ll be attending apart from, obviously, ultimate geek bowling experience. The hotel – the Radisson, for those of you who are wondering – and the flights are all booked (as the result of precisely zero effort on my part), the travel insurance is bought, the dollars are purchased, the obligatory business cards are printed, the packing is not quite done yet not even started.

To anyone who happens to read this blog and is going to be at SXSW, try to find me before 20:00 on Monday 13th, as after that Faruk and Steve will have combined their powers and driven me insane.