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.
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.
The MINjas showed up a few minutes later, joining the Made By Many/Professor Extravaganza.
Soon to be joined by my pal Eric Hellweg, the editor for HarvardBusinessReview.com. Truth be told, Eric edited one of my first big magazine pieces (way back at Business 2.0) and we’ve been SXSW running buddies for years.
Eventually we made it back to the Austin Convention Center where I ran into Nina Steiger (@ninasteiger), the Writing Center Director at the Soho Theater in London. She was hanging with a collection of Art folks from London (and I’m a fool because I can’t remember their names).
We hung for a bit before Eric and I made our way to the Hilton.
After a few minutes of panel sitting, I met Laura Ciocia (@msciocia ) for drinks. She’s a friend of Stephanie (@swfrost), one of last year’s SXSW finds. I dropped Laura off at her hotel and scooted over to see Nina again before she headed off to dinner.
I swung back to Laura’s hotel, grabbed her and we met Stephanie, Jim Caruso (@jimcaruso), Jacqui Chew (@jacquichew) and Eric Wolf (@erikwolf ) for dinner at Annie’s on 3rd and Congress (although don’t ask, the meal with epically disastrous).
Laura, Jim and Jacqui headed to the Speakeasy, Eric and Stephanie retired to their hotels and I headed down to the Austin-Bergstrom airport to pick up my friend Micki Krimmel (@mickipedia). We dropped her stuff at the hotel and headed to Star Seeds, one of the great diners in the Austin area. (We did this because Micki was craving a milkshake; they did not have that on the menu. They did, however, fashion a rootbeer float for her. Lovely!)
Now, I’m uploading today’s videos – a FIVE GOOD MINUTES segment I’m doing for the AEJMC on cool things happening in media today – and uploading a handful of pictures I took at the Cedar Door.
There’s still so much work to be done; at some point, I’m simply going to need to do work and not worry about the panels. But that day isn’t yet.
Today was too much fun.
