I’m famous (not really)
If you watch about 30 seconds in you can see my head just to the right of Sarah Lacy’s head. She is broadcasting from the 16bit part at last weeks SXSW interactive festival. That makes me sort of famous, right??!?
Sarah Lacy Publishes Awkward Moment
Pretty ballsy to put a clip of the most talked about interviews in tech (for fault of yourself) on your own site. Sarah is one if the hosts of Tech Ticker on yahoo!. Clip below:
Schwag
I hit the trade show SOOOO hard today. Below is a photo of all my takings. So happy, but how am I going to get it all home? FedEx?
Terrible time change
Hit up the parties last night.
- Google Party - line was too long to even attempt. Down and then around the block
- Avenue A | Razorfish Party - Pretty sad. They shut down the open bar before the party was over as the waitress said “They ran out of money.” Not exactly the image you want to give off. I guess the 6 billion bill gates gave them ran dry.
- 16bit Party - Had to sneak in the back as they were doing one in one out at the door and the line was thick. The cool thing was they had a freak show. Girl with no legs, elephant man, lobster girl. Some of them even played in the band there. Kinda weird, definitely different.
The panels yesterday were varied. Went to a nice one on creating SEO friendly rich media (flash, video, audio etc..). Interesting stuff as the guy from google was contradicting some common practices on how to serve up different content to search bots than a site serves up to its users. The practice is called cloaking.
Tentatively for today I am going to these panels.
- A/B Testing: Design Friend or Foe?
- Social Strategies For Revolutionaries
- Keynote Interview with Mark Zuckerberg
- Tools for Enchantment: 20 Ways to Woo Users
- SEO 3.0: Optimizing Search & Social for 2008 and Beyond
- SXSW Web Awards Ceremony
Utterz.com Moblog Interview
Sitting down in the hallway - Lee from utterz.com walked up and asked if he could do a few second interview with Jeremy, Mike and I to showcase the service. Below you can play the audio from the interview and see the awesome group shot of us sporting our new utterz.com wristbands. Utterz.com lets you instantly post to the web - audio, video, and photos. The quality is so so but I guess that is the trade off for instant access.
Jitba take over
For those of you who follow this blog - the next 5 days or so I will be posting from Austin, Tx for the SXSW interactive festival. I will be posting lots of links and a few short posts about what is going on.
updates will appear below
On my way
On my way to SXSW although sitting in the very back of the plane. Starting to get pretty excited looking over the upcoming schedule and panels. Stay tuned for updates throughout the 5 day event.
Impromptu SXSW interview
I am heading down to SXSW in austin tomorrow for the interactive portion of the show. I somewhere marked down that I was going and that information ended up in the hands of Paul Walhus (see previous comment). He wanted to chat about my company Media Refined Inc and my overall view on the tech geek fest.
On another note I am testing out Vimeo and have uploaded the interview to the service. The video appears to lag compared to sound at times but seems to catch up. I think it mostly has to do with the quality of the original. Makes me want an HD camera.
Video below (warning: video is 15 minutes long). sorry about the opening scene nose pick.
Jim Crews Interview - SXSW 2008 from Jim Crews on Vimeo.
Segway
Mike and I on the Segways with the owner and two employees from Segcity.
SXSW 2007 - All done
Sitting in the airport waiting for our flight back. Yesterday turned out to the best day of all. The panels were decent, the parties were good, and Mike and I talked the owners of segcity into giving us a 30 minute tour around downtown after they closed down. The owner and 2 other employees came out and did a casual cruise around town with us. Cruising the segways was actually a bit harder than I initially that it would be. Even as the ride was ending I was still a bit shaky legged on it, but I didn’t let it slow me down as I was popping wheelies up on curbs.
Just as I said last year, this conference was not only informative and jammed with great speakers, it was an absolute blast. I already can’t wait for next years show.
Day 2 wrap up - Day 3 panels
Day 2 was much more calm than Day 1 was. Last night was the SXSW Web Awards ceremony, announcing the winners from a variety of categories. There were a ton of innovative and inspiring sites nominated. Head over to the nominees page to see the full list, or just hit the winners page to see the cream of the crop.
In other news, Austin was slapped with a number of tornado warnings last night. While the legion of geeks ran off into the storm to enjoy the only party in 2007 they were invited to, Mike and I ordered up a huge plater of sushi and a few beers to our room. We definitely decided to take it easy after Day 1’s marathon. Now that we are well rested we are ready for a full Day 3. Below is my agenda:
Panels
- Barenaked App: The Figures Behind the Top Web Apps
- The Future of the Online Magazine
- Dan Rather Keynote Interview
- Why Marketers Need To Work With People Media
Nightlife
- 6 pm: Nuclear Taco Night: “a celebration of masochistic cuisine”
- 6:30 pm New York New Media Party: Open bar and sushi with the likes of College Humor, Nerve, Salon, The Onion and more.
- 8 pm: Gawker/Lifehacker Party: “open bar, a great outdoor space, Team Lifehacker, and maybe even a guest appearance by Deadspin’s Will Leitch”
- 9 pm: GOOD Magazine/Creative Commons Party: “$20 gets you 6 issues of GOOD, a great interactive night with open bar, and all proceeds go to Creative Commons”
- 10 pm: PocketFuzz + TechStars + ID345 SXSW party: “great music and lots of free booze”
- 10:30 pm: South by Northwest: “plenty of free drinks and cool people to meet”
For those interested: the full list of panels and full list of evening events
Day 1 wrap up - Day 2 panels
Day 1. It’s over. After getting up at 7am and getting to bed around 4am, we almost made it a full 24 hours for our first day in Austin. After the last panel of the day, we headed to a party that our company was hosting at the Whiskey bar - and from there it started. 3 parties and endless “Where do you work? Oh what do you do there?” conversations later, we made our way back to the Hilton for a few hours of sleep before this morning’s panels. Below is a list of panels I will be attending today.
- Using RSS for Marketing
- Avatar-Based Marketing in Synthetic Worlds
- Keynote Conversation: Limor Fried / Phil Torrone
- Online Advertising: Is it Worth It?
- Create a Campaign in an Hour
- SXSW Web Awards
SXSW Links
I have made this list of links “sticky” to show the latest links that Mike and I have tagged during the panels. These links could be things that were the subject of the panel, or just mentioned in passing. Check back often during the day as we will be tagging links all day. I apologize for the duplicates as we might tag the same things from time to time. Enjoy.
Full list here.
Also a list of links tagged for “work.”
SXSW day 1
update:: it has been one year since my last trip to SXSW and many things have changed, but one thing that hasn’t is the piss poor internet connectivity that the conference provides. With this many geeks all toting around the latest apple hardware, you would think that the conference organizers would have the foresight to see that the geeks with laptops might want to hop online from time to time. The connection is slow and spotty at best, it’s a real downer. sigh.
It is the first morning of SXSW interactive, and after a nice round of opening night parties - its time to get down to business. The panels I have in my sights today are:
- Online Publishers & Ad Networks
- Turning Projects Into Revenue Generating Businesses
- Kathy Sierra - Opening Remarks
- TV: The Next Generation
- Web Hacks: Good or Evil
- Pay Up! Should Publishers Choose the Porn Path?
sitting behind photo matt WHAATTT?
Right now as Bruce Sterling is giveing his ”State of the world” closing statements, I am sitting directly behind matt… that’s right, matt - wordpress matt. Complete internet celeb. Matt, thanks for sitting in front of me.
UPDATE: Bruce just broke down on stage, talking about serbia, he started to cry. Weird dude.