For those of you who are heading to Southby for this fist time this year, you’re in for an exciting ride. From the buzz I’ve heard, SXSWi 2011 is shaping up to be an epic year. A friend of mine asked on Twitter last night if I had any tips for first-timers. I definitely couldn’t fit my reply in 140 characters so I used Longreply to send him a few tips. I figured it’d make a good blog post too, so here are my top 10 tips for enjoying SXSWi:

1. Invest in a backup battery for your smartphone. I currently pack a NewTrent IMP500 for conferences that has enough juice to charge my iPhone4 at least 4 times before needing an outlet. If that’s too much to carry, a battery case is a good option as well. I’ve also used the 3GS version of the Energizer Powersleeve, which worked pretty well but left me needing mo’ powa.

   Being tied to an outlet really sucks. (Photo credit: Scott Fegette SXSW 2006)

2. Plan out your daytime programming. The official SXSW Schedule and sched.org are great resources for planning what talks you want to go to. Try to pick a backup talk for each slot because rooms can fill up in the time it takes you to walk/run from one side of the convention center to the other. If you’d rather just wait and see where your friends are heading, Twitter and sitby.us can help make your decision a little easier.

   
   Screenshot from http://austin2011.sched.org

3. Wear comfy shoes. As you may have guessed from my previous point, you’ll be doing a lot of walk/running during the day. The same will probably be true at night if you plan to hit up several parties that are spread out across downtown Austin.

   
   Bowling shoes at the 2006 Avalonstar Bowling Extravaganza (Photo credit: Jeff Croft 2006)

4. Be flexible at night. The official SXSW parties are sometimes fun, but always crowded. On any given night though there are dozens of other non-official parties going on. Keep an eye on Twitter/Gowalla and ask the people you meet what their plans are for the evening. You might end up getting an invite to a more fun, less crowded venue.

   
   A typical “official party crowd” at the Mashable Party (Photo credit: Andrew Dupont 2010)

5. Bring business cards. Sure, there are plenty of ways to exchange contact info via phone, but swapping cards is fast and allows you to carry on the nerdy conversations you’re having without diverting it to phone talk, especially at parties. It is a nerdconf though, so if you want to bump, sms or ocr someone’s contact info, it won’t be as awkward as it is back at home sweet home.

   
   Business cards are still in style at SXSW. (Photo credit: Brian Warren 2006)

6. Hit up the local joints. Austin is chock-full of amazing places to eat and drink. Ginger Man, Draught House Pub, Stubb’s, Iron Works, Juan Pelota, The One Taco trucks, Casino El Camino, Salt Lick (worth the drive)…I could go on, but the moral to this story is that you should explore the city and not hang at the same places all week.

   
   Chalkboard art at The Ginger Man, my favorite Austin bar. (Photo credit: Scott Beale / Laughing Squid 2010)

7. Stay healthy. I’ve managed to come down with a cold after most of my trips to Austin. This is a regular occurrence that’s affectionately referred to as SouthByScuvy among attendees. Your immune system defenses are bound to drop when you’re traveling, staying out late, getting up early and hanging out in crowds of people. Drinking plenty of water, washing your hands often, taking VitaminC every day, eating well and trying to get *some* sleep will keep you from being useless the week after the show.

   
   A very tired person at SXSW (Photo credit: Brad J. Ward 2009)

8. Don’t embarrass yourself. Although my SXSW friends might tell you otherwise, I’m not a big drinker. If you’re like me, be sure to pace yourself at the parties. Keep in mind that there are people there that can make or break your career. I’ve heard plenty of stories about no-name kids insulting industry leaders at parties and at least one that ended with projectile vomiting. Have fun, but don’t be an ass and remember, what happens at Southby, goes on Flickr…and Instragram, and Twitpic, and YouTube, and…well, you get the picture.

   
   Me, after a few drinks, pretending to be Jeremy Keith. (Photo credit: Rob Weychert 2007)

9. Prepare for the weather. March in Austin can be beautiful, rainy, cold or hot and can fluctuate several times a day. Be sure to pack sunglasses, an umbrella, a poncho, long sleeves and a jacket. It’s a very casual event, so don’t worry about dressing up. Even the speakers typically wear jeans. A jacket and tie will most certainly be made fun of.

   
   Yes, it rains in Austin. (Photo credit: Dave Delaney 2008)

10. Have a blast! No matter what specialization of the web you work in, you’re guaranteed to learn something new and make some great connections at SXSW. Don’t let it just be about learning and networking though. If you’re not having fun, ur doin it wrong. “Spring Break for Nerds” really is an accurate description of the SouthBy experience. Break outside of your comfort zone, talk to people you don’t know, heck, ride a Mechanical Bull if you get the chance. SXSW is as much a party as it a conference.

    Kevin Hoffman performing at Happy Cogaoke. (Photo credit: Randy Steward / blog.stewtopia.com 2010)

The conference was held at the newly remodeled and amazingly swanky Gaylord Opryland Resort in Nashville, TN.

I really only decided to go because I’d never been to Nashville and Jenny, a personal friend of ours who runs Southern Savers invited us to come along. I was planning to work from our hotel room while Ames attended the conference, but when I told MailChimp I was going to a blogging conference they gave me some monkey hats and shirts to give away and offered to pay my conference registration. “Sweet!”, I thought. “I love conferences.”

I’ve got a pretty impressive collection of badges and lanyards from all the web design conferences I’ve been to, but I’ve never been to en event quite like Blissdom. First off, it’s targeted at women. There were a few guys there, but the crowd was probably ~96% female. Most web design conferences are probably more like 27% female. (Take those numbers with a grain of salt, they’re pure speculation.) I knew I wasn’t really going to blend in, so instead I just wore my monkey hat so I could stand out. The goofy hat served as a good ice breaker and led to some great and often hilarious conversations.

Another way Blissdom differed from every other conference I’ve been to – I didn’t know a single speaker before I came. Choosing what panels to go to was purely based on whether or not the topic sounded interesting, which, at a conference like SXSW can be really hit or miss. Overall, most of the talks I went to were great, but they keynotes were the highlights. Brené Brown’s opening keynote struck such a chord with Amy that she immediately bought her book, The Gifts of Imperfection. The closing keynote was from a guy named Scott Stratten, whose talk about “Un-Marketing” was very funny and insightful. I haven’t bought it yet, but he also has a book on the topic which I’ll probably be buying here soon.

ConAgra provided a formal sit-down lunch with a cooking show by celebrity chef, George Duran.

The final way this differed from most of the conferences I’ve been to was sponsorship. Web design conferences usually get sponsored by tools and software for people who build websites. Blogging conferences apparently get sponsored by anything that any blogger might ever cook, wear, use, read or give away. Seriously, the number of big brands behind this conference and the amount of money poured into it was mind-boggling. I’m not complaining, but the swag bags alone for the conference probably had a retail value that was half the registration cost.

To summarize everything I’ve written so far, the conference was mostly women, had unique, interesting topics and packed more sponsor-provided perks than I imagined possible. So, to all that I ask, where were all the web design and tech bloggers? There were supposedly representatives from a wide variety of blog communities and even a “tech” tribe, but the majority of the attendees I met were either frugal, food or lifestyle bloggers. There’s definitely room for more nerds at Blissdom and, dare I say, a few more dudes.

I’m here to attend Carsonified’s Future of Web Design conference, which doesn’t kick off till 9am this morning. I’ve been in town though since around 11am yesterday. As short as that sounds, I’ve already had an amazing time. The taxi ride from LaGuardia to the hotel was simultaneously slow and frightening at the same time. If you ever get the chance to go for a ride in a NY taxi, just go ahead and forget about any and all traffic laws. Once you’ve accepted that crossing into oncoming traffic, running lights, buzzing by pedestrians and honking at the horse drawn carriages is OK, it can actually be a fun ride.

As soon as I got to the hotel, I dropped my bags and hit the streets. I grabbed a quick lunch at Ray’s Pizza, walked through the theatre district and disappeared into Central Park where I spent the first half of the afternoon. The weather was terrific, the Fall colors were in full effect and there were people everywhere. I wandered my way up from the Southeast entrance, over some boulders to the Wollman Ice Skating Rink. From there I walked up to the Central Park Carousel, through The Mall and stopped to watch some crazy skateboarding kids and a street dancing crew near the Naumburg Bandshell. Then, I headed up to Bethesda fountain, around the Loeb Boathouse, and looped back and headed South again along the West side of the park. I didn’t really stick to the trails, so I’m not sure what the exact distance was, but I’m sure I covered at least 4 miles just walking the park.

After that, I hit a little Espresso bar called Zibetto for a coffee and made it to the MOMA by about 3pm where I spent the rest of my afternoon. When I woke up this morning and started writing this post, my time in the museum was what I really intended to talk about. There’s just something magical about being able to walk up to and experience so many famous works in one place. As someone who studied art history in school, I knew a lot of the pieces I saw, which made it that much more amazing. It was a great refresher course and very inspiring.

For dinner, I had planned to take the subway over to Brooklyn for a Forrst meetup. During the day though, I got an invite to attend the FOWD speakers dinner. I couldn’t pass that up and I’m glad I didn’t. It’s always energizing and inspiring to hang out with other web design speakers and authors. While the dinner was probably fancier, I don’t imagine it was much different than the meetup would have been. Everyone in this industry is very cool, friendly and approachable and we all have something in common to talk about. I really had a great time.

Well, I started off this post saying that FOWD doesn’t start till 9 and that time is quickly approaching. Time for me to head over there to kick off another crazy day in the Big Apple.

Thanks to Greg Lunn for recording our last Refresh Columbia meetup and giving me permission to post this up on my blog. Thanks also to Mike Rohde for letting me use his SXSW Sketchnotes in my presentation.

Here are a few things I learned from the panels I attended:

1. From Rob Weychert’s Design Lessons in Chess – After quoting Sun Tzo, Rob went on to explain how strategy without tactics is like attempting to design a website without putting much thought toward the Information Architecture. Tactics without strategy however, he explained, is like trying to designing a website without knowing anything about the client.
2. From Ethan Marcotte’s Comps vs. Code: Couples’ Therapy – Ethan once worked with a designer who gave him a flattened Photoshop document to build HTML from. When he asked the designer why, he/she responded that “I was afraid of something changing.” Ethan explained how this kind of relationship doesn’t work between designer/developer and how he has learned to maintain communication through “The Handoff”.
3. From Aarron Walter’s
   Findability Bliss Through Web Standards – “The three simple goals of findability: 1) Help people find the website. 2) Help people find the content they’re seeking. 3) Encourage return visits.”
4. From Nathan Smith’s Striking a Balance – “If MacGyver were to choose a Javascript library, he’d probably go with jQuery because he knows he can do anything with it. If Bruce Lee were to choose one, he’d go with YUI and master every one of it’s weapon-like features.”
5. From Chris Heilmann & Dan Rubin’s Making Accessibility Sexy – “Making the Business Case for Accessibility: More users equals more customers, helps create goodwill for your brand, less chance of future legal action”

New brain-expanding knowledge aside, the best part of any conference is the chance to meet new people. At some conferences this can be an intimidating task, but not at the Jam Session. It’s just large enough of a conference to feel like part of a crowd, but small enough that you get opportunities to interact with the same people more than once. It was great to see a lot of familiar faces and meet new ones from all corners of the web.

Another interesting event from this year’s conference was the mysterious disappearance of Freddie the MailChimp mascot. MailChimp was one of the sponsors of this year’s Jam Session and placed a life-size(?) cutout of their cuddly mascot at the entrance of the main Loudermilk conference room. At the end of the first day, Freddie was abducted by someone who went by the Twitter & Flickr handle: ihazurchimp. At first this seemed like a simple practical joke, then maybe a publicity stunt. With each twitter update and Flickr post, it became more and more obvious that it wasn’t MailChimp, and that Freddie was not going to be returned. When Freddie showed up in South Carolina, I started suspecting my fellow Columbia residents, but I believe my coworker Ken Seals has solved the mystery. If his theory isn’t correct, the suspects have some ‘splainin to do.

1. Eiffel Tower
   
2. Golden Gate Bridge
   
3. Magic Kingdom Entrance
   
4. St. Louis Arch
   
5. Hoover Dam
   
6. Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas
   
7. Geysers at Yellowstone National Park
   
8. UCF Arena (Go Knights!)
   
9. Fountain of Rings at Atlanta’s Centennial Olympic Park
   
10. Our House (Somewhere in Columbia, SC)
    

Find something interesting in Street View? Post a link below!

The image above is the second in a series of collages from a childhood sketchbook.

Over the years, I’ve met, been inspired by, and become friends with many of my fellow web weavers. Getting to meet a lot of those people in person at my first SXSW last year and then again at The Webmaster Jam Session last Summer has been an awesome experience. Despite what anybody says about the size/growth of the SXSWi conference, being there really shows you what an intimate, tight-knit, and amicable group the web design/dev community really is. I can’t wait to see some familiar faces and meet tons of new ones. Here’s a list of fellow bloggers I hope to run into in Austin and their Pre-SXSW commentaries:

• Douglas Bowman
• Jared Christensen
• Dan Cederholm
• Jeff Croft
• Rob Weychert
• Lea Alcantara
• Dave Shea
• Paul Boag
• Jeffrey Zeldman
• Richard Rutter
• Matthew Pennell
• Cindy Li
• Andy Budd
• “Rands”
• Anton Peck

Of course, there are many other people attending that I’d like to see again or finally meet in person; those are just the ones I could find blog posts from.

Here’s my tentative schedule for the panels and parties I plan to attend. For many of the time slots, I’m double or even triple booked. This just means I either: a. Haven’t made up my mind which panel/event to attend or b. Plan to try to check out more than one in the same time slot. If you’re going to be there too, whoever you are, I’d love to get a chance to say hello. Just drop a comment here or swing by my book reading. I’ll be giving a presentation featuring a practical example of how to apply the information from my book and then hanging around the book store to sign copies – if anyone wants their book signed. (Sorry for the “-” disclaimer…it still just feels so weird/humbling to say I’ll be signing copies of my book.) Fell and broke two bones in my left hand last night, so it looks like I won’t be signing anything unless you want some right-handed chicken scratch. :( Also, I have a special treat for the first 74 people who can tell me “…some trivial bit of info that can’t be found online…” There was 75 special treats, but I ATED ONE. You won’t know if you don’t go…

Update: got a cast to match my business cards.

After a long “morning” of driving, flying, transfering, cabs, and registration lines, I’m finally here in Austin, sitting in a conference room at the very first panel of SxSW – “The Real Story Behind Snakes on a Plane”. I’m not sure what this panel is all about, but I’m tired of…planes and every 14th word is mother f*ing, so I’m taking advantage of the free wifi to write a quick “Woohoo, I’m at SxSW!” post. I’ve already met some cool people and I look forward to meeting many more. Ok, that’s all for now. I’ll update this post with the lowdown from Austin.

Saturday March 10th, 2007

Yesterday was a ton of fun. Had lunch at the infamous Iron Cactus, found out “How to Rawk SxSW“, and met a ton of people who I’ve known via their website for the first time in real life. Of all the business cards I picked up yesterday, Steve Smith has not one, but two of the coolest cards I’ve seen. As a wannabe print nerd, I’m highly impressed by coated papers, spot varnish & die cuts. One of my coworkers at Cyberwoven designed some rad ones with a really heavy stock and a spot varnish, but they weren’t quite ready by the time I left. Enough about business cards and print nerdery though, it’s time to get to the first panels.

Sunday March 11th, 2007

nGen Works. I ended up having dinner with those guys and chatting about work, school, and life in Florida. After that we all headed to the Frog Design party where I met back up with a bunch of other people I’d met earlier and introduced myself to Cindy Li who happened to know Varick from UF. It seems like everybody knows (or at least knows about) everybody else here, and that’s what makes it so special. Molly Holzschlag really hit the nail on the head when she called it a tribal gathering, because that’s exactly what it feels like.

I didn’t get a whole lot of sleep last night, but I’m looking forward to another crazy day of people, panels, and parties. My personal goal for today is to slow down a little bit, breathe deeper, take more pictures, and hopefully bowl some strikes!

Monday March 12th, 2007

Just to keep it short and sweet, yesterday was another day of the same Awesomosity, which is actually a term I picked up in James Archer’s “The Business Side of Webdeign” panel. Jonathan, Sally, Dustin and Cameron did great in their “Uniting the Holy Trinity of Web Design” panel and during the talk, they gave away a few signed copies of my book! After that last panel, it was off to bowling, which totally RAWKED. Thanks Bryan! We were supposed to pay about $10 each to bowl, but thanks to a generous contribution from the awesome guys at nclud, the whole event was free! That was a fun night, and as with the last update, I’ve posted the latest photos to the amesnjas sxsw07 gallery.

Tuesday March 13th, 2007

Continuing the trend of meeting cool people, I just got back from lunch with Mark Huot, Dan Mall, and Kevin Cornell. I can’t quite remember the name of the place where we ate, but it had a cigarette machine and the only video game was “Big Game Hunter II”; therefore I can assure you it was an authentic Austin establishment. I had a great time hanging out with those guys and I must say that Kevin is not nearly as eccentric a person as I expected him to be.

It feels a little weird to be updating this post now. Over the last few days, I’ve been updating when I get up in the morning, before going to any panels. That, of course, is only part of the reason I hadn’t made it to a 10am panel since Saturday. Today was intentionally different though. I got back to the hotel at a reasonable time last night this morning, woke up bright and early, ate a good breakfast and made it to the convention center early enough to get a close seat for Mark Boulton and Richard Rutter’s panel, “Web Typography Sucks“. Although this was one of my favorite panels so far, it quite honestly made me feel like crap. As Kevin said at lunch, “Now I need to go and fix all the type on my website.” My sentiments exactly. While these more technical design panels really challenge me to grow as a designer, it’s admittedly easier to sit through the lighter, fluffier panels that make me smile and nod. I also attended a panel called “Design Aesthetic of the Indie Developer” this morning with Nick Bradbury,
John Gruber, Shaun Inman, and Michael Lopp. I didn’t really know exactly what to expect based on the description, but it ended up being a very well moderated view into the working process and experiences of each of the panelists.

Now that I’ve finally started getting used to this absurd schedule of panels and parties, it’s almost time to head back to South Carolina. On one hand, I’m a little bummed that it’s over, but I miss my wife and know that I am going back home as a better designer with many more friends and connections than I would have had if I decided not to go at all.

Between these two projects I’ve literally been working 12-15 hours a day for the past couple months. Fortunately though, I got to take a bit of a break this weekend while my wife’s mom and maw-maw (grandmother) came up to visit from Florida. While they were up we took a little road trip into North Carolina. We went gem hunting at the Cowee Mountain Ruby Mine, had BBQ sandwiches and listened to some bluegrass music at the Franklin Folk Festival, spent the night in Asheville, NC and the whole next day touring the Biltmore Estate.

If you haven’t been to the Biltmore before and are in the Asheville area, I highly recommend it. Even though the tickets are a little pricey, this place will blow you away with it’s grandeur, intricacy, and history. There are plenty of far-away photos of the exterior floating around the internet, but below are a couple detail shots I took. Unfortunately, taking pictures inside the house was prohibited, so the shot of the glass roof in the Winter Garden is one of the only decent indoor picture I have. You can click on the two images below to get to their entries in our zenphoto album.

As we walked through this ginormous house, we learned a lot about it’s history, how it was constructed, and how it operated. One of the most fascinating things about the home (to me at least) is how technologically advanced it was. Although Thomas Edison didn’t introduce the incandescent light bulb until 1879, the house was wired for electricity and electric lighting when construction began only ten years later in 1889. Since they didn’t know whether the country would use alternating or direct current, it was actually wired for both. The Biltmore house also featured such advancements as refrigeration, central heating, elevators…and a bowling alley. It’s really amazing.

One spooky thing kept bothering me though. Whenever I saw pictures and paintings of the estate’s young builder, George Washington Vanderbilt II, I couldn’t help but think that he looked strangely familiar. I couldn’t put my finger on why, but I kept thinking he looked like famed web designer, Jason Santa Maria. A little flickr research turned up this photo of JSM by John Gruber. When grayscaled and placed side-by-side with a portrait of Vanderbilt, the resemblances are striking.

So striking in fact, that I believe George Vanderbilt didn’t actually die of appendicitis. Instead, I think it’s reasonable to believe that he created a time machine and is still around today. Those designer “prescription” glasses aren’t fooling anybody. I’m on to you Mr. Santa Maria…aka Stan, aka Mr. Vanderbilt.

…we knew we had to get outta there. We packed up as soon as I got off of work and hit the road by 4:30pm on Thursday. There was quite a bit of traffic on the roads till about 9:30, and then a 3-to-1 construction lane closure around Daytona slowed us down a bit on I-95, but we rolled into town at about midnight.

We’ll be in Vero through New Years, so I brought my workstation with me. I thought I’d post a picture of my temporary office. Yes, there’s actually palm trees, ferns, and green grass outside – quite a contrast from the Icy Tundra in South Carolina. Maybe I should post a picture of the pool too! :) Merry Christmas.