Sunday, February 25, 2007

Break Bread with Brad SXSW Eve 2007

If you're headed to Austin for SXSW Interactive, I do hope you're planning to arrive Friday evening in time to join me for the Eighth Annual Break Bread With Brad. A new location this year, but the same marvelous party: good food and drink (a tasty menu and cash bar), good friends and a great opportunity to mingle, plot and reminisce before the madness of the conference begins.

There is also the possibility of a special Break Bread With Brad limited-edition commemorative gift. Ah, the mystery!

Sound like something you'd be interested in? Yeah, I thought so. Check out the details and RSVP at upcoming.org.

(Photo thanks to Austin Tolin and Creative Commons.)

Tuesday, February 6, 2007

Baby, baby, baby…

One intense weekend struggling with assorted import and export nonsense and, voila, the new SXSW Baby! awakens from a long winter's nap. Yes, friends, it's only a few short weeks until the annual pilgrimage south of the boredom for South by Southwest Interactive (and Film and Music), and your favorite site for news, tips and trivia is live. Be good to the Baby!, and the Baby! will be good to you.

The main blog is up and running and some other features, old (such as the Ride/Room Share board) and new (stay tuned!) will be coming online shortly. If you're planning the trip to Austin this year—or even considering it—pop on over and check it out.

This is the second major site I've built with the new love of my content-managing life, Expression Engine. The robust blogging features of the software (including unlimited custom field, status and category groups), built-in membership and community management, and extremely flexible templating system are really, really nice.

There's a slightly steep learning curve (steeper still when you're..., well, me), but once I ascended it, the site-building process seems the most natural thing in the world. The EE documentation is extensive, although I would love to see a "...For Dummies" book or its like; that would definitely have given me a jump-start last year when I was beginning to learn it. But there's an active community growing up around the software, a new "fan magazine" online and more and more sites every day to serve as good examples. (Plus the pMachine crew are planning a SXSW meetup.)

And I'm planning, eventually, to convert The BradLands to run on EE as well. My heart is still full for Blogger, Movable Type and, yes, even Frontier and my own miserable hand-coding. But one of the main goals of this site has always been to learn, and EE's basis of PHP and MySQL offer a great opportunity to push my meager skills along the path. In my copious free time...

Anyway, check out SXSW Baby! and perhaps I'll see you in Austin.

Sunday, March 13, 2005

Batteries draining, batteries charging…

Greetings from the heart of Texas. The weather is gorgeous and the geeks are too! Just a brief note to report that, yes, I am alive and having a simply marvelous time. Break Bread With Brad was a smash, and attendance topped 90 for the first time ever.

The people just kept coming—including random literary sensations— and the beer flowed freely and the food was yummy and I gave away the usual assortment of eclectic crap door prizes. (More pictures here and here.)

There's too, too much going on. I'm overstimulated. I'm underslept. At the same time my creative batteries are getting juiced up, my literal batteries are rebelling; both my digital camera and my laptap refuse to hold a charge for more than a few minutes at a time. It's long past time to replace the camera anyway, and I've put off buying a new iBook energy module for a long while too.

And that's the news from Austin, where the food is plentiful, cheap and delicious; the Shiner flows as easily as the conversation in the convention center hallways; and the men—o, the men!—are smart, funny and gorgeous! Further bulletins as events warrant, breaking news around the clock at SXSW Baby!.

Sunday, March 6, 2005

SXSW 2005 Pre-flight

It's just a little over 100 hours until I hit Austin for my annual trip south of the boredom for South by Southwest Interactive and all the attendant hoopla and folderol. Even at this remove, I'm already energized by the anticipation, so much so that a couple of my long-dormant web projects began percolating this weekend and will probably be ready to pour out sometime after the conference and the end of the season at work.

If you haven't made plans to go, there's still time to be a part of the SXSW experience. Check out all the juicy info at SXSW Baby!, and maybe you can hitch up with a kindred soul on the Ride/Room Share board.

If you will be there and have a hankering to meet up, here's a few of the places you're likely to find me:

• Break Bread with Brad SXSW Eve, of course, on Friday evening. All BradFans are invited, natch, although the favor of a RSVP is requested. Meet and greet with some of the smartest, most beautiful and urbane geeks on the planet.
• KICK!, the informal Saturday morning konference kick-off in Palm Park. I will not oversleep myself this year!
• Web Standards Billiards Party, Saturday evening, followed by the Opening Party at the rightly legendary frog design.
• AMODA Digital Showcase, a promising lounge/art party/live music thingy.
• The Earls, also known as the SXSW Web Awards, at the Hilton, followed by the after-party, followed by the after-after-party, then...well, you get the idea.
• I'll be taking two minutes of your time at 20x2—a grand experience, even when I'm not part of the fun—to answer the question "What's the word?" (I will not get too drunk and flirty with a cute local at another party and miss it this year.)
• Bruce's party, wherever and whatever it winds up being this year.

There's more, of course. There's always more. Hell, there's an entire four days of conference panels and plenary sessions I haven't even mentioned. Come Friday, for the sixth year, I'm off to see my friends, longtime or yet unmet, to quaff my weight in Shiner, and to soak up the energizing enthusiasm exuded by the so many giant, delicious brains in one place.

I. Can't. Wait.

Saturday, January 15, 2005

The Baby is back!

Last week we soft-launched the 2005 incarnation of a long tradition, the informal and thoroughly unofficial SXSW Baby! weblog. After some tweaking and retouching, the Baby is ready to stand on its own and once again be a place for Austin acolytes and those who are considering being a part of the SXSW experience to meet, chat and trade news and tips.

This year, in addition to a focus on the Interactive conference and festival, there are additional categories to discuss the Music and Film portions of the 10-day SXSW gig. There's also a place where folks wanting to share rides or rooms can hook up and, of course, the ever-popular Notes Exchange where, once things are underway, you can post or Trackback your notes on the various conference panels and share them with the world.

The Baby is growing, and there's plenty more to come. I'm going to work on integrating the archives from previous years—such as they are—and folks are stepping up to share their particular knowledge about SXSW. (For example, Kathryn Yu has written this great guide/call-to-action about SXSW Music that's making me wish I could stick around.)

Thanks to pb for all of his help in getting the Baby on its feet, to Movable Type for being simple enough that even I can use it to build something like this, and to Shiner Bock, the official beer in the belly of the builder, the Baby is back!

Tuesday, January 4, 2005

SXSW 2005—I’m There

I feared I might have to sit this one out. It's taken some creative accounting and juggling of other obligations, but I decided today that SXSW Interactive 2005 won't happen without me. Once again, I'll be south of the boredom in Austin, Texas—my third home—from March 11–15 to soak up all the great energy that makes this trip my favorite getaway every year.

Of course, that means that I'll be hosting the Fifth-and-a-half Annual Break Bread With Brad SXSW Edition on Friday, March 11. Things will be a little different this year, but the gist is the same: good food, ample drink (first Shiner on me), dubious door prizes and the company of the best looking, smartest and funniest geeks you've ever met. Mark your calendar and plan to arrive in Austin by Friday evening. You don't want to miss this one. (Further bulletins as details coalesce. Also, once I've tamed the rest of this site, there'll be a new BBWB section with info on past and future events.)

I can't wait.