Saturday
Had a great first day at “South By”, as it’s called. Had to start the day by moving to a different hotel (”No room @ t/Inn”). Hotels are jam-packed. A cabby told me that every year it seems that SXSW, the State Rodeo and the state high school basketball tournament (taking place @ UT) all happen at the same time, resulting in a tidal wave of tourism. Too bad I had to leave the HI, it was right on Town Lake and that greenway; now I’m about ten blocks away at the Doubletree Club.
Met some guys from a Web shop in Phoenix in the lobby and we chatted on the walk into town. Nice group - everyone seems to have a good attitude. It’s great to be able to converse about
“Web-standards-based design, javascript libraries, Cake PHP, CMS templates, blah, blah, blah…”
w/folks who understand and who are also trying to build great sites.Met up w/another gang of New Englanders once @ t/Convention Center: the guys from Union Street Media of Burlington, Vermont.
Bill Simmon of Vermont Community Access Media brought me up to speed on digital video production - equipment, post-production, the whole nine-yards. Thanks, Bill!
We had lunch at the Iron Works BBQ [Google dart] which is highly recommended by cabbies (and others) all over Austin. They are right to do so.
Also met up w/a blogger from Beantown, Christine Liu, among others. We hopped from party to party - big design firms like Avenue A | Razorfish and Frog Design (are they big?) hosted a bunch of ‘em and alcohol flowed freely (literally - it was free).
