Our long national nightmare is over, SxSWi 2010
Posted in austin, sxsw on March 19th, 2010 by Mark RamseyI have been ignoring Ramsey Rants as I have been sucked into Twitter and Facebook. But I have realized that nothing helps me take a strong constitutional digital dump then writing in a longer form. The short quick updates are only pieces of candy and not the whole meal. The past 5 days in Austin were completely epic and have inspired me to return to this dark area of the Internet. I drove down to Austin last Friday to attend SxSW Interactive, the drunken geekfest. Since I no longer drink, nothing crazy could happen, right?
First of all, I attended SxSWi several times when I lived in Austin and it was nothing like this. It seemed like something had shifted. I had always known Austin to be the Live Music Capital of the World. The past week, it was the Geek Party Capital of World. A ton of folks said that the panels were not what they specifically wanted. Pleasing everyone is difficult and seldom accomplished. The panels I attended were great and informative. The Citizen Journalism panel had a great back and forth with the audience. The conversation that was started at the panels ended up in the bars and restaurants of my favorite city, Austin, Texas.
Had a great dinner at Hut’s Hamburgers with some friends and then headed from bar to bar down 6th street like the old days. This time, I could keep my sober wits about me. Molotov, Star Bar, then finally Emo’s. The crew seemed tired of hopping and decided to check out the band. We had no idea what was about to happen. At first, a drunk woman in the crowd was screaming “Whiskey Business is the best band ever!” She seemed a bit deranged, but so did the band. They were a tripped out funkified redneck satanic jugband and we fell in love with them. The only problem was the drunk girl decided at some point to just slap me pretty hard and say, “I’m a laaaaaaaady!” I still don’t know why.
On Saturday, there was one thing on everyone’s mind. Diggnation. The live taping of Diggnation was a big event about 3400 people packed into Stubbs. The line was wrapped around the block. Luckily I was able to hope in line with @donthorp. Brian Brushwood put on a great show as the opener doing some of his fire eating and bed of nails. Then the rock star nerds of the Internet came out with special guest Austin film mogul Robert Rodriguez and a live streaming, beer chugging, crowd surfing Leo Laporte. Epic.
Could it get better, maybe. On Sunday it was time to get some actual work done. The Pigskin Radio podcast was scheduled to go live at 9PM so I had to get ready during the day. I worked with the Wookiee on show notes remotely from the hallways of the convention center. The show was going to start at 9PM but we had to wait for Idiot John to finally arrive from Dallas. The show was actually a cleverly disguised roast of Marc Ashe the bar manager of the Creekside Lounge. After the show, we went to the Mashable party at the Buffalo Billiards where I weaseled my way onto TWIT.tv and lost my driver’s license!
On Monday, it was a day to relax. The Wookiee and I headed over to the Kung Fu Saloon for the Appcelerator / Javascript Meetup and party. Doug Krasiewski came to visit from San Antonio and we headed over to the gdgt event. Then the rains came and geeks started to get nervous. Thinking they may get electrocuted so a retreat to the hotels was made. Tuesday was a a day of rest and reflection. I caught up with friends inside “#thunderdome” during more rains and decided to head back to Dallas early. It’s Friday today and I’m just getting my bearings back. Time to make plans for SXSW 2011!
