Skip to content

Visits (49 of 90)

The last few days have thrown my summer into a tizzy. Not in a bad way. Just the way that my life, unattached to things, is sometimes tizzied.

On my way to Austin, I received word that my presentation on “The Living Learning Classroom”, a fancy name for deploying social technologies in a way that allows previous knowledge to be aggregated for future classes (and for former students to participate in current classes), was accepted at a conference in Anaheim. In June.

When I was supposed to be in London.

That’s okay. No plans were set yet so changes can be made. (And I can hustle up the cash to do this, I guess. Anaheim isn’t that far from Redlands and my friend Kris said her house was empty after I left.) Anyway, The Soho Theater is in flux (good flux mind you, but flux nonetheless) so switching things here and there isn’t a problem.

Anyway, it gives me an excuse to spend a good, solid month in Austin. Something I haven’t done in a few years. Something I desperately need to do more often. I’m getting closer to shutting down the travel caravan for awhile and this might help me with that decision.

But we’re not there yet.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted 18 March 2010 † Brad § Life § The Year of Friends ‡ Comments °

Empty (48 of 90)

It’s 10 pm on St. Patrick’s Day. It’s also the first night of the South by Southwest Music Conference and Festival.

I am home, sitting in my makeshift bed where I have been since 3 pm today after I dropped off the last of my friends at the airport.

I’m physically, emotionally and in every other way possible, drained.

I’ve been running for 2 solid weeks: Arizona, California, Indiana, Memphis, Arkansas and now Austin. I have boxes of research. Stacks of papers. Folders of digital files. Deadlines swirling around me. Conferences coming up.

It’s ridiculous, honestly.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted 17 March 2010 † Brad § Austin § Life ‡ Comments °

Why The People Who Hate on SXSW Interactive Suck (47 of 90)

ED Note: I exchanged a few comments and Tweets with Jolie earlier today. She was surprised by the spirited response to her blog post (from the blogosphere; not from me). Our conversation confirmed what I thought: she’s a decent gal. She just waded, unintentionally, into the annual post-SXSW Interactive reaction debate. For all of you out there who have a burning desire to be a hater-hater, please I’d like to offer the paraphrased advice from my favorite judge in California: all parties are advised to chill.

South by Southwest Interactive is over, and with that brings out the annual “Why I Hated SXSW Interactive” bloggers.

This year’s queen is Jolie O’Dell. She wrote Why SXSW Sucks, which has some rather disturbing assertions in it (which have nothing to do with the conference, yet are troubling) and some recycled issues that get brought up each year (which did have to do with the conference, and are also troubling).

I have no idea who O’Dell is (other than what her bio says) any more than I know who most of the people who attend SXSW Interactive are so I don’t want this to appear to be an attack on her. I’m sure she’s a fine human being and I enjoy reading other opinions. So it seems important to say – and then re-iterate – that this isn’t an attack on her ideas.

It’s also important to note that I’ve been to every SXSW Interactive save one (when we were re-launching MIT’s Technology Review website and I needed to be on site), I’ve been on the advisory board for several years and I make my home in Austin (although I teach in Indiana, which means I’m only in town for a few months a year these days).

The problems with SXSW aren’t new, although the scale is different. What is new is the community has grown. It includes a new set of people: not developers, not creators, not distributers. Not the core of SXSW. Now we have the “tool users,” the non-tech set who have built their operations on using the simple creation, distribution and aggregation tools built by the SXSW core.

I love the convergence. The show has been headed this way since the beginning. It’s just reached a tipping point because the ubiquity of the tools. (A great credit to the engineers in the country, by the way.)

Here’s the real problem: This new tribe is disappointed to find that SXSW isn’t meant to be Spring Break. It’s not set up to help you party. It’s set up as a conference and festival, a place to interact. Not a place to get drunk and check-in.

It’s not, in other words, set up to be all about you.

***

The first Interactive conference, one I can barely remember it’s been so long ago, took place in the far end of the Convention Center, in the area above the main keynote ballrooms.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted 17 March 2010 † Brad § Austin § SXSW § Science + Tech ‡ Comments °

South By 5…(46 of 90)

It’s been a long day, but there’s but one full day left.

I’m too tired to be sad. And too far behind in my work to worry.

At some point this evening, I’ll need to get my Media Ethics lecture finished (although it’s possible that will have to wait until tomorrow and instead I’ll put up my Thursday lecture, which isn’t mine. It’s Larry Lessig’s.) Currently I’m awaiting the last of my videos to upload so I can send off my AEJMC Tech Meme column, FIVE GOOD MINUTES, a series of vlogs with some of the smartest people I know.

And I’d like to get some sleep since I’ll be co-hosting the Accelerator tomorrow for six hours. Delirium is a bad way, I understand, to host an event.

Still, too much great stuff to do and too many smart people to track down is a high-class problem, as a former work colleague used to say. Because today was another beautiful day.

The highlight was spending a few hours with Dave Ferguson, the director of the Center for Media Design, who is in town for dual purposes. We had the chance to grab dinner before we each sprinted off in different directions. Two hours that flew by far too quickly.

Funny, of course, that we had to fly 1,200 miles to have time to get dinner. Then again, that’s the nature of the modern technology fast track. The world may be flat, but the travel still takes time.

While this isn’t the most compelling blog post ever, it’s certainly going to need to suffice.

Posted 15 March 2010 † Brad § Austin § SXSW ‡ Comments °

South By 4…(45 of 90)

It’s midnight here in Austin, the end of the South by Southwest weekend.

It’s a sad day. Not because the event is over. There are still three days left. But there is a shift on Monday and Tuesday. The parties slow, the conference slows. The business begins to set in as the end draws near. At least for Interactive.

A whole year crammed into 5 full days. It’s hardly enough time really. Still, it was an amazing day in Austin.

The day started with a trip to The Spiderhouse for some work. Unfortunately, Ball State University still requires that I, you know, do my job. That means dealing with administrative tasks.

That was dispensed with quickly enough and my friend Jenny Toomey, who now works for the Ford Foundation, and I had lunch, caught up on old times and laughed quite a bit. She’s a lovely woman, one I’m proud to know. We’ve traveled long roads the past ten years, but life has really evened out for us.

Brad_Jenny

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted 14 March 2010 † Brad § Austin § Life § SXSW § Science + Tech ‡ Comments °

South By 3…(44 of 90)

South by Southwest (SXSW) is simply seven days of heaven. The weather was gorgeous and the panel sessions really kicked off today.

It’s fair to say the conference is under way.

I started the day with a nice 3 mile run, although the hamstring is now acting up regularly. I think when I get home I may have to look for alternatives to running until it heals. For now, running is all I’ve got to keep myself going.

After that, I headed to grab Micki (@mickipedia). She’s promoting her company, Neighborgoods, at the conference so we picked up her flyers from down south. (Her business partner lives in town.)

After that, it was off to the panels. First up: Andrea Phillips talking about Alternate Reality Games.

Phillips2

The talk focused on how female stereotypes harm the writing process. I’m usually very skeptical of these talks (from my days as in the Women’s Study minor at Miami University), but she made a really compelling case for why writers should focus attention on female characters. When the talk becomes available, I’m posting it here.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted 13 March 2010 † Brad § Austin § Life § Media § SXSW § Science + Tech ‡ Comments °

South By 2…(43 of 90)

The first full day of South by Southwest is over, 18 hours after it began. It’s unclear if I’ll survive the gauntlet in front of me considering my inability to finish anything.

This is a price worth paying.

The day started at 9 am at the convention center (after an aborted run due to hamstring issues). I sat down to check my schedule and – as oftentimes happens here – I struck up a conversation with the folks at the table. First timers covering the event. We went through their schedule. I pointed them in the direction I found most interesting.

Then ran into my pal Tim Malbon (@malbonster for you Twitter folks), one of the founding partners for Made by Many, an amazing British company that builds the back-end content management technology, creates the media and manages the community for companies.

Brad_Tim

Along for the ride was Brian Sheridan , a journalism professor whom I met a few years back when I delivered a talk at a regional SPJ conference.

We headed over to the Cedar Door, one of the mainstays of life at South By. On the way out the door, we ran into Shane Richmond (@shanerichmond), a technology editor at The Telegraph.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted 13 March 2010 † Brad § Austin § Life § SXSW § Science + Tech ‡ Comments °

South By…(42 of 90)

18 years.

I’ve been coming to Austin, and South by Southwest, for almost longer than I haven’t been coming. Which is something that happens to me more and more. For someone who doesn’t finish much, I’ve certainly got quite a bit of unfinished history happening.

I am simply in love with this city, this event and the people who come here. It’s 6 glorious days without explanations, justifications or convincing. The people here simple get the digital life.

Not that it’s all roses. I’ve lived long enough to see this grow from a few hundred people sitting around tiny breakout session rooms into teeming masses of fanboys and fangirls. I’ve seen the haters slag on this event, this amazing mass of techno-nerdgasm. These folks, all of them, miss much of the grand nature of the conference. The brilliant minds that are here, oftentimes away from the throngs of Users.

For me, South by Southwest (SXSW) – South by to me – is simply the Greatest Show on Earth.

Highlights from Thursday:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted 11 March 2010 † Brad § Austin § Life § SXSW § Science + Tech ‡ Comments °

Down with the King

I’ll arrive at my 18th South by Southwest later today. I can barely remember what that first experience was like. I certainly didn’t imagine it to be a life-changing one. And yet, I owe much of what I do today to my experiences there.

I’ll be blogging this year’s experience at The Cult of Me, the AEJMC’s Tech Meme and Tweeting from @thecultofme.

Now, it’s time to get Down With The King:

 

Posted 11 March 2010 † Brad § Austin § Life § SXSW § Science + Tech ‡ Comments °

Killing Myself Redux, Or What It Takes To Love (41 of 90)

A few years ago, my world was crashing.

I’d met a girl. A fabulous girl. We shared the same interests, the same passions in life. We were Type As who liked the home when we weren’t working. And we liked to drink. And write.

Of course we hit it off instantly and found ourselves in a relationship. Fast. Too fast as it turns out. She was fresh out of a very long relationship and I was just returned from 12 years on the road. Before we knew what happened, we were living together.

It ended. Rapidly. Badly.

And I left. The minute summer came, I climbed in my Pontiac Vibe and set out across the country, determined to change my life (The Year of Action, it was dubbed). I spent the summer exercising, trying to curtail my drinking, attempting to quit smoking.

Mostly, though, I spent the summer calling all my friends and my ex-girlfriends. Asking them for frank assessments of me as a human.

No judgments. No arguments. I actively encouraged them to tell me the things that I was unable to see myself. The resulting three-month trip across the country turned into the Killing Me blog (on MySpace). I wrote about the conversations, the mistakes, the women, the friends. 75,000 words worth.

It was a journey into my head. This helped prepare me for what was coming, although not in the ways I expected. It did help me, when I returned, to realize how much I had loved – still love – that girl. Enough that I was able to let her go. So that she could find her happiness.

A happiness she was able to return to me just a few months later, when my drinking nearly took my life.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted 10 March 2010 † Brad § Life ‡ Comments °