Boggle The Mind

Sell half of your Apple stock.

Update: Doug Glennon pointed me to this article explaining why Steve did what he did.

SXSW is full of people at the top of their industry, who have likely influenced thousands of other people. There are certainly people there who have converted many to the ways of web standards, one of the hot topics this year. I think perhaps the most surreal meeting I had however, was to meet someone whose work helped me get into CSS - back in 1999. I finally got the chance to meet Steve Mulder, whose Stylesheet Tutorial on Webmonkey was my first introduction to the powers of CSS.

I’m sure there are people entering the industry now who will look back at folks like Eric Meyer, Dan Cederholm, or Dave Shea for some of the innovations they’ve brought to the industry. But for me, I’ll never forget that first tutorial that taught me about the wonders of CSS - Thanks Steve!

So I am finally back in New Hampshire after 6 days in Austin, TX for South by Southwest. I’ve finally had a chance for a full nights sleep, to see my fiance and my dog, and to relax for a few moments. I actually got back into town late Wednesday night, but went snowboarding yesterday. So, without furthur ado and in no particular order, here are my thoughts.

• Austin (what I saw of it) is a fun city. Future trips there will need to include some time set aside for more exploration of the city itself.
• SXSW really is all about meeting people in the industry. I don’t feel like I was shy, but I should have gone even further out of my comfort zone to meet new people.
• Good panels really need a great moderator. Molly was the best moderator I saw.
• Presenting really is a hard skill that not everyone had. Kathy Sierra was easily the best, even though she was a bit rushed in the end.
• Next year, I need to again move away from my comfort zone and attend more of the panels that don’t directly relate to my work.
• It is possible to get by on 4 or 5 hours of a sleep a night, but your mind will have no patience for boring sessions at that point.
• It’s probably not worth the trouble of trying to see every single session you think you’ll find interesting. A bit of extra sleep, or a longer lunchtime discussion with new friends can be worth playing hookey from the convention center.
• Don’t judge the food at the buffet by how it looks until you get a chance to actually try it.
• The nighttime activies are just as important (if not more so) than the daytime activities.
• I’m not a horrible bowler.
• I should have taken far more pictures.
• People are really very open to suggestion - Ben and I signed a free t-shirt at the bar the last night and sent it out into the crowd. Sure enough, it came back full of geeky signatures and thoughts.
• Breakdancing still gets people to form a circle and take out their cameras. That’s Ryan Romero, by the way.
• It’s really not over until you get home - I met someone on the plane home and managed to get in one more discussion and beer at Midway as we both waited for our connecting flights.

Just a few of the people that I met that have sites worth linking to (that I know about):

• Sally Carson - I got a few chances to talk to Sally, she’s a designer who provides random acts of awesomeness.
• Ed Shull - CEO of national SEO firm USWeb, we met Ed in our hotel bar the night before his SEO and Accessability panel and had a great conversation about all things SEO.
• Bryan Veloso - The guy who put together the Avalonstar Bowling Extravaganza
• Angela Laskodi - recently married and spent the last night at the bars trying to hand out t-shirts with her husbands blog on it
• Ian Muir - The poor fellow who does the training for my old company, Ektron
• PJ Hyett - one of the guys behind Wayfaring, recent college grad, and new CNET employee
• Jan Garcia - Director of Web Development at RTC Group, and quite amusing when drunk

I think that’ll be it for now, if I have time this weekend I might try to post about some of the sessions themselves. It was great meeting everyone down at SXSW and I look forward to seeing you all again next year!

So it’s officially Friday morning here on the east coast, and I’ll be flying out in about 10 hours to head to Austin, TX for my first SXSW conference. I’m excited to meet some great people, and I’ll try to post an update or two and maybe some pictures while I’m gone. Be good while I’m gone, will you?

I decided today to finally check out Synergy, an open source solution that allows you to use one keyboard and mouse to control multiple computers. The only downside over a hardware KVM solution is that each computer still needs it’s own monitor.

For my particular need today, this wasn’t an issue - I using Synergy to control my regular desktop, as well as my work laptop which is sitting on my desk as well. This allows me to avoid having to use the trackpad and notebook keyboard.

Synergy was incredibly easy to install and setup with the instructions on their website, and it works amazingly well. I was surprised that this sort of interaction would be so quick and easy over the network. If you have multiple computers running, I’d certainly recommend it - it’s available for Windows, *nix and Mac.

I got a nice surprise this morning when I was checking my RSS feeds and Lifehacker popped up with an entry about SimplyHired. SimplyHired is a great new job search engine that aggregates job listings from around the web. I find that it returns pretty targeted results, and you can view your search results as an RSS feed - no more annoying emails. Anyway, they give me a callout because I had recommened it in a comment a few weeks ago. Thanks!

SXSW has released the schedule of Interactive Panels - with some very interesting stuff!

I’m excited to be heading to my first SXSW this year, and here’s the panels I’d like to hit up: (double booked time slots mean I haven’t yet decided what I’d like to go to - activities after 5pm assume beer involvement)

Saturday, March 11th
10:00 am - Traditional Design and New Technology
11:30 am - How to Be a Web Design Superhero
2:00 pm - Jim Coudal / Jason Fried Opening Remarks
3:30 pm - How to Bluff Your Way in DOM Scripting
5:00 pm - How to Create Passionate Users
8:00 pm - frog design SXSW Opening Party
10:30 pm - South by Northwest

Sunday, March 12th
10:00 am - Design and Social Responsibility
10:00 am - What’s Hot in Web Applications
11:30 am - How to Make the Most of Maps
2:00 pm - Demystifying the Mobile Web
3:30 pm - Web 2.1: Making Web 2.0 Accessible
5:00 pm - Holistic Web Design: Finding the Creative Balance in Multi-Disciplined Teams

Monday, March 13th
10:00 am - Web Standards and Search Engines: Searching for Common Ground
11:30 am - Web Standards and SEO: Searching for Common Ground, Part 2
2:00 pm - Craig Newmark Keynote Interview
3:30 pm - WTF: WaSP Task Force Panel: Getting the Job Done Right
5:00 pm - Design Eye for the List Guy
8:00 pm? - Avalonstar Bowling Extravaganza (Team Hit or Miss)

Tuesday, March 14th
10:00 am - How to Develop Digitally Convergent Devices for Cars
11:30 am - Designing the Next Generation of Web Apps
3:30 pm - Dogma Free Design
5:00 pm - Bruce Sterling Presentation: The State of the World
8:00 pm - Media Temple Closing Party