Sx Recap

March 14, 2007

And the winner—for the worst airport in history—goes toooooo...San Jose International!

As I sit here weary, irritated that I just had to leave the confines of Terminal A to walk down the street and go back through security to Terminal C, I notice that my flight is delayed for the second time today. Awesome. Normally when I’m confronted with a situation like this, I’ll just head over to one of those really expensive airport bars and have a couple of beers to kill the time. Oh but wait, there is no bar in this terminal. Besides that, I’m really not feeling that great. Probably due to the fact that I’ve been out every night since Friday trying to catch all of the South-by after parties. Everyone around me is sneezing.

This was my first trip to Austin, and my first time experiencing the glory that is SXSW. I figured that I better collect my thoughts before I read any more scathing commentary from other attendees. I won’t bore you with too much panel-related crap. The panels I attended were pretty good overall, but most were far from mind-blowing. I also missed most of the panels that I really wanted to see, due to the fact that they were during the morning hours. It was somebody's brilliant idea to plan evening events until 2AM every night. Let’s do this day-by-day. Photos can be found on flickr if you care to follow along.

Friday, March 9th

My flight put me into Austin at around 3:30PM, and I caught a cab to my hotel, the Radisson. And yes, if you must know, I put the “Rad” back in Radisson. I was pretty happy with the location, which hovered above the suspiciously named Town Lake. It looked more like a river to me. After I picked up my badge from the convention center, I hit the streets and located a spot for dinner. I had only eaten a bagel during the course of the day, so needless to say I was staaahving. I had jotted down a list of vege-friendly places to try, and the first on the list was Koriente. Great place, and a great meal. I was ready to hit the first Sx party.

First on the list was the Porter Novelli sponsored Mix at Six. Multiple levels, lots of people, rooftop deck, and an open bar. Attending this schmooze fest set the pace for the rest of the event, because it was here that The Posse was formed. I latched onto a group of like-minded individuals, and we were off and running. Hit another bar after the party whose name I don’t recall, but they had about 50 beers on tap. Yum. I called it an early night and excused myself to find a late night taco shop. Surprisingly, I didn’t find one, and instead walked about a mile and a half to get a slice of pizza. Brilliant.

Saturday

There were panels that I intended to hit on Saturday morning, but getting up at 4:30AM the day before really took a toll, so I opted to sleep in. As Keith said: if you miss a panel, don’t sweat it. I decided to stroll back down to the area I had wandered into the previous night, which is referred to as SoCo. It was sunny, hot, and there was a lot of stuff to see. Great shops, restaurants, architecture, and signage to gawk at. I located the next restaurant on my list, the Bouldin Creek Cafe, and settled in for breakfast: iced coffee and a soy chorizo breakfast taco. I had thought that I invented the breakfast taco, but apparently I was mistaken. I wish I would have went back to this place repeatedly on my trip, but it was a little out of the way. I headed back over to the Convention Center and spent the afternoon attending panels.

The panels end at 6PM, every day. Immediately after that, you can head across the street to Brush Square Park for free grub and beer, paid for by some nice people who already give away their products online, such as Mozilla. The highlight of the night was the kickoff party, hosted by frog design. This thing was unbelievably huge. Bands played, there were multiple levels of interactive things to play with, and more importantly, a rooftop deck. This is where we parked it for the remainder of the party.

Once that was over, we headed over to a place called DeVille, probably the best spot we hit all week. It’s very dark and laid back, and has an excellent outdoor patio. An excellent reprieve from the craziness that is 6th Street. It was here that our Austin representative, Tanner, introduced us to a group of his friends. Great people in this town. We went over to another chill bar called Mugshots and shot some pool. They had Alkaline Trio and Hot Water Music in the jukebox, so I was set. The night continued on from there, and I was up till the wee hours of the morning socializing with new friends. I missed a bunch of stuff on Sunday, whoops! It was worth it though, and great to break away from the nerdery for a bit and get to know the locals.

Sunday

Sunday was obviously a slow start. The highlight this day was the Web Awards, hosted by the always hilarious Ze Frank. That night was another doozy. We revisited some bars from the previous night where more events were being hosted. First stop, DeVille, only this time it was packed and pouring rain. Thunderstorms had popped up all afternoon, and when it rains here, it rains hard. We met some new friends to add to The Posse, and decided to avoid the crowds and head back to Mugshots. We were the only ones there, so that worked out perfect. For some reason—probably because we all slept so late—we felt the need to locate an after hours party, and our friend Sergio managed to smuggle us all in. Met a crazy cat that would only identify himself as Chupacabra, and man was this guy funny. He had David Byrne over to his house to eat beans one time, met Johnny Cash, was born in 1954, and rode a 1979 Vespa that he bought brand new in 1979. What a guy. I struck up a conversation with him because he had a Bardahl hat. Apparently when he was a kid, Add Bardahl stickers were all over the place.

Monday

By Monday, a few people began to get weary and our group thinned out a bit. But as one of my new friends stated via text message, “You can sleep when you’re dead!” Good point. I saw Dan Rather speak during the afternoon, and that was pretty interesting, if not a bit long-winded. We went to the Yahoo! party at the Light bar later that night. Saw a band called the Little Ones, and enjoyed the set. Got tons of free swag, including a couple American Apparel t’s. Not bad. Fortunately, our new French friend, Gui, made it out and instructed us to to go to a party way up on 16th Street. I don’t recall the name of the place, but it was a wild bunch. People were dressed in some sort of vaudeville gear, and there were robots and strange gadgets all around. A great gypsy-ish acoustic group called That Damn Band played, as well as an excellent set by a local group called White Ghost Shivers. The lead singer was somewhere in the neighborhood of 7 feet, and that is no exaggeration. Danced, howled, drank, and had a great time. After that, we caught the tail end of the South by Northwest party hosted by the gang over at Blue Flavor. Always a good time at their parties.

Tuesday

Highlight of the day was seeing the creator of the Sims series of games. Wow, what a smart cookie. We were introduced to a demo of a game called Spore, in which you start as a single-celled organism and gradually evolve into more intelligent creatures that you can edit with a real time 3D editor. Eventually, you procreate and populate planets with colonies, and finally, an entire universe. It looks incredibly fun, but it’s hard to explain in words. One thing that was great, is that you can even edit the atmosphere. So for instance, he began adding greenhouse gasses to the air, the planet quickly heated up, oceans rose, then evaporated, then the whole place became uninhabitable. He thinks this is a good way to teach kids about what’s going on with the environment these days. Brilliant.

That night, we attended the closing party hosted by Media Temple. It was pretty uneventful. Bad music, and everybody just seemed uninterested and wiped out by this point. Regardless, I joined Gui and we headed over to the Beauty Bar to meet some friends and see some bands play for free. At this point, the music people attending Sx begin to arrive. Granted, the Interactive portion is full of geeks, but once the music festival begins, the douchebag ratio sharply increases. I’m not sure which is worse. It was a whirlwind of a night, jumping from one spot to the next within a couple of hours. Before I knew it, half the people I was with had called it a night, and I lost the other half at a crowded bar. I figured that was a good way to end my trip, and headed back to my hotel.

I'm definitely hooked, and I'll be back next year. To all the people I met along the way, it was a pleasure. Thank you for making my first trip to Austin so memorable.

Posted by Aaron on March 14, 2007 09:11 PM| Permalink

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