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Back to Reality...and some other thoughtsI spent another whole day in Austin, just knocking around town to see some sites...actual sites, not the websites that had been the focus of the preceding week. I went to the State Capital, the LBJ Presidential Library, had lunch downtown. A nice, leisurely day.
- Other SXSW 2000 Albums & Thoughts can be found at...
- Haughey.com
- Gyford.com
- Onfocus.com
- Prehensile.com
- Jezebel.com
- Powazek.com
- Before, during and after SXSW, folks are talking at the unofficial weblog of the event, SXSWbaby.
- Do you have photos, thoughts or ephemera from SXSW2000 online? Well, why didn't you say so?
Already, I missed a lot of the great folks I'd met and I spent two hours in a cafe trying to sketch out the sitemap for The BradLands v4.0 that I'd shot off my mouth about all week. Suffice it to say that change, evolution really, is in the wind hereabouts. More on that later.
In the aftermath of SXSW2000, a lot of folks who were newcomers to the festival/conference have remarked on the amount of energy and inspiration they took away from it. Heck, a lot of the "old-timers" have said as much. I know it was a kick for me to spend a week with a bunch of folks, friends new and old, who "get" the Internet and, to the extent that it's possible, "get" me too. There certainly seems to be a lot of potential energy humming out there to create great and greater things.
If even a fraction of it pays off, SXSW2001 should be a real hootenanny.
It reminds me quite a bit of my experience after the March on Washington for Gay & Lesbian Rights in 1987. For a lot of people, particularly those from small towns and out of the way places, it was the first time they had found common cause with hundreds and thousands of folks who were more or less on the same page. It was late in the early years of the AIDS pandemic, there weren't a lot of structures in place around which to really build community and political change, and there were enormous feelings of isolation, desolation.
But people returned to their own communities invigorated by having spent a week in the company of great and like minds and used that energy to build the foundations of community. The number of gay and lesbian civil rights organizations, AIDS service groups, community choirs, bands, art projects and worship groups formed in late 1987 exceeds the number before or ever since.
Events like the March or SXSW are urgent and important because they energize and inspire people, not necessarily institutions. They're about potential, individually and collectively. They encourage collaboration, cross-pollenation, imagination and innovation.
Well, that and they offer plenty of opportunities to drink free Shiner and hang out with cool folks. See y'all next year!
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