Sunday, March 11, 2001

March 11, 2001

Greetings from Austin, Texas, where I'm south of the boredom at SXSW Interactive, the annual confab of webgeeks, creative types and assorted hangers-on such as I. It's been a whirlwind of activity for me practically since wheels-down on Friday, and the rest of the weekend and on through Wednesday promises more of the same. Yee—I say—yee-haw!!

There was a great turn out Friday night at Iron Cactus for the (first annual?) Break Bread with Brad dinner; a hungry crowd of some 35 personal web publishers and friends milled around for an ersatz happy hour while the restaurant crew struggled to find someplace to put us all. We ended up on the top floor patio, enjoying good food and great fellowship, with a modicum of digital flash photography to preserve the event for posterity. And, apparently somewhere along the way, Jish and I got married. It's kind of a blur. Anyway, thanks to everyone — old friends and new — who turned up and helped me kick off the weekend in fine style. (Afterward, some of the more robust souls adjourned to Lovejoy's for more drinks and talkie-talkie, and The Lady Rebecca Blood explained why, apparently, she always appears so stern yet animated in online photographs.)

Saturday brought a lazy morning, a bit of a walkabout downtown Austin capped with Peter Merholz's interview with comic artist Scott McCloud at the Convention Center. A starving pack of conferees followed that with an early Vietnamese-esque dinner and then — party, party, party. A predictably tame opening reception at GSD&M was followed by brief stop at the KLRU studios (where the long-running Austin City Limits music program is produced) for Texmex and PlayStation (and some live jazz) and then, some navigational mayhem later, a convivial kegger at Lane and Courtney's house.

Today brings the first panels, the trade show opens, and the evening promises the fabulous Fray Cafe, Frog Design party and, of course, the SXSW Web Awards, during which I've been warned to brace myself for a surprise from the emcee of tee-ell-see, John Halcyon Styn. Eek!

The weather's warm, the conference is hot and it's SXSW all the way, baby!! Y'all come!