Created March 13th, 2010

Updated March 21st, 2010

Note: This single post will serve as my centralized SXSW blog experience. I have found it difficult to blog while at conferences but I want to keep you updated with what’s going on and what amazing conversations (and experiences) I’m having. I will change the date above to indicate the last update time!

Thursday 3/11/2010

I got here early. In fact, I arrived Wednesday just so I would have more than enough time to relax.   I wanted enough sleep and time to practice my presentation.  No drinking for me before Friday.

I unpacked and there is a great view from the hotel room. This will be my home for the next week.

The Hilton Austin is much closer than I imagined. It’s right next to the Austin Convention Center so I’ll go downstairs, head out and it’s right across the street. I have Liz (@calinative) to thank for the advice to stay here. Panelist got first dibs on rooms back in November/December so of course, I asked Liz who has been to SXSW before.

Channel 32 on the hotel TV is showing clips and maps of SXSW.

This afternoon, I’m meeting with Michelle (@m000sh) and Gareth (@GarethM) from the BBC. They have a show called Digital Planet. They want to interview me for the SXSW segment and I find out they’re having a fun Quiz panel on Saturday at 3:30pm. They’re nice enough and we chatted about the differences between America and UK. Geeze! Why do I feel so nervous about it?

For their quiz, they had teams of tech gurus including Dan Gillmor, Jay Adelson of Digg and June Cohen who is the director of TED Media .  I missed the live version but listened to the podcast.  Round two is “Guess the panel” where computer sounds have replaced the topic names and the third round is “App or Mishap?” where Gareth names off iPhone apps that may or may not be real.

My favorite was, “Gangsta Gardner” where the goal of the game is to kill slugs to protect your garden turf.

Gillian (@gillianr) my roommate arrived today around 6pm.  She’s been to SXSW 3 previous times (once was only music).  She’s a serious development geek and works at the Nerdery.  Here you can see her playing the real version of Foursquare near the Austin Convention Center.

I went out for a quiet dinner at 219West where I had a delicious appetizer of fried calamari, a burger that was “ok” and a wonderful carrot cake with caramelized pecans with a scoop of ice cream.

Friday 3/12/2010

My first day at SXSW.

My Presentation

“How Sci-Fi Shapes The Internet”

My session examined the content and careers of great sci-fi creators, Alfred Hitchcock and Rod Serling.  By exploring where they came from and what they created, we could find lessons to apply to our future progress.  I started off comparing Sci-Fi to the Internet for weirdness because both can cause people to feel uncomfortable and confused.  That’s ok!  Both test the boundaries of our human brains.

I talked about how every, single, person can look up into the sky and think, “Who’s up there?”  or “Will I be up there one day?”

I covered innovations influenced by science fiction:

• Ebook readers like the Kindle (HitchHiker’s Guide To The Galaxy)
• Cell Phones (Star Trek)
• Home Theater systems and earbuds (Fahrenheit 451)

There are also many inventions that, although not directly credited to sci-fi, have a strong connection.  Star Trek showed a wireless headset being used by Lt. Uhura in the  two pilots founded Plantronics and their company went on to become the choice company for NASA.

I made it through my presentation and was happy I remembered the content because I had a lot more slides than I usually have.

The goal of my presentation was to inspire hope.  We as humans still fall back into patterns that helped us survive for thousands of years so all this “brain logic” and “abstract thought” can be a bit much to digest and accept (see Conspiracy Theory: Did we land on the moon?).  Science fiction has caused young people to think outside the box, experiment and plan for a future that could be.

NASA is scheduled to be “put on ice” September 2010.  I suggest we cut corn subsidies to fund NASA!

And this lead me to my point about the ability to conceive something larger than the sum of our parts.  I described how US contractors were approached by a new government agency to build something that could go into outer space and return again, in one piece, with a human inside!  Many of the first were companies who build aircrafts.  Those were relatively new as well with maybe…30 years under their belts.

We need to keep hope alive in our young people and the space program has proven it can do that.

It’s still true today that some people don’t want to venture onto the Internet just like some avoid sci-fi. They just don’t get it…yet.

There was a wonderful turnout for my session of about 200 people.  As some know, I really, really, really wanted Nichelle Nichols who played Lt. Uhura on the original Star Trek to join me on stage but I found out from the agency that represents her that there’s a speaking fee of $10,000.  That pretty much put Nichelle out of my humble SXSW budget.

I worked with Ana of Anafxfz.com who specializes in media rich presentations.  She helped me find great images and video for my presentation created in Keynote.

Black Blogging Rockstars

Great panel!  See post on the Black Blogging Rockstars panel at SXSW

Zendesk in the house!

My new co-worker from Zendesk has arrived.  Her name is Helen Yu.  We’ve been chatting via Skype video and email in the last week.  She has a lot of great ideas about the webinars and I’m glad she’s here to help me spread the word about Zendesk!  Her official title is Director of Product Marketing.  Her Twitter handle is @hyu915 but make sure you check out her out on Yelp because she has just passed over 900 reviews!  In fact, Helen did 4 reviews during her 2 days at SXSW including one on the Hilton Austin Hotel and Whole Foods.

Dinner With Small Business Web

I attended a dinner party held by The Small Business Web, a collection of cloud companies including Freshbooks, Batchbook, Mailchimp, SurveyGizmo, Litmus, Shoeboxed and more.   Helen who is the new Director of Product Marketing at Zendesk was in attendance as well!

In this photo, I bet Sunir of Freshbooks is explaining some hugely important abstract concept to the Survey Gizmo team. He’s known for his big ideas.

Blacks In Tech Meetup

This event was held by Jeff Bowman of Ogilvy.  The event focus was to create a space for Brown folks to meetup and connect at SXSW.  I gave feedback on what I wanted to see at this meetup but was unable to attend because The Small Business Web dinner ran a bit late.   I’m glad this was a recognized SXSW event and thank Jeff for pulling it together and getting sponsorship. From what I heard, there was a panel, time to chat after and a bit o’ drama.  More on this later!

First Night Out On The Town

Being an introvert, I was a bit scared about going out at night at SXSW.  I had decided to congratulate myself for getting through my presentation by having a drink.  Since arriving on Wednesday, I had not enjoyed any alcoholic beverages so I could focus on my presentation.  I met up with Amani in the lobby and we proceeded to geek out about the OWLE he had just received, the best way to work on video when using a Mac and I helped him setup Google Analytics on his blog.  Realizing I still needed a drink, we proceeded to the Hilton hotel bar.  Brandon tweeted at us and showed up.  Then Jbrother love.  We went out strolling the town and I got my first taste of drunken spring break in Austin!  After seeing the guy whizzing in the doorway, I exclaimed I’d seen enough and we eventually made our way back to hotel.

Saturday 3/13/2010

Today is my first “real” day at SXSW.  Yesterday was all about my presentation and the dinner for The Small Business Web since I’m representing Zendesk while at SXSW.  Today I open up my booklet and scan the site for sessions.  Erica was super awesome in that she sent me a list of panels and sessions she would attend if she was going to SXSW this year.

South By South West Small Business Web Cloud Party

Saturday afternoon I headed over to the Pure Volume house for the cloud party with Helen.
Of course, you can’t have a geeky party these days without cupcakes!

Here’s Michelle from BatchBlue holding the prize that will be given to the “Most Connected Customer”. It’s a Crumpler bag filled with goodies!

Lovely lights being setup.

Spreading the Zendesk love

Cloud providers and customers together

It was a nice space to have a party in

Sunday 3/14/2010

Monday 3/15/2010

Tuesday 3/16/2010

Wednesday 3/17/2010