Category: Our Web, Ourselves.

The New York Times would like to inform you that a lot of the content on the web is being created by ordinary people just like you. In case you didn’t know (via New Media Musings).

A bunch of bloggers recently convened in NYC to bat this question around. My friend George Kelly was on hand and recorded the conversation.

Ah PubSub, where have you been my whole life? I think I found out you through Micropersuasion and now belong to a scret club of my own sinister and pathetic question.

Question to the gallery: Are you the kind of person who gets angry when you discover your favorite had an Op-Ed in the paper two weeks ago and you missed? Of course you aren’t. You have a life to lead.

PubSub lets you create a "Subscription list" of phrases (in my case, names like Susan Orlean, Nelson George and Sarah Vowell) then sends you, via RSS, whenever their names are mentioned in a blogosphere. It’s a fabulous tool for writers who leave very few trace elements online or who don’t have their own websites. Which is most of them.

I’m going to be using it for my name when my book comes out.

Continuing living. Nothing but Info-Geekery here.

Another spring, another blooming of change. It’s getting harder to imagine March without my annual pilgrimage to South by Southwest Interactive in Austin, where I normally refuel my creative tanks, fly my geek flag proudly and begin again, ready to shoot new arrows at the sun. Except this year I didn’t. My mantra the past few conferences has been "Come away with one new idea and try to make it work." I did that two years ago and only sort-of tried in 2004. This year was different. I wasn’t there for the same reason but I didn’t realize that until I arrived.

1. I needed a break: Professionally I’m eyeing a hurricane on the horizon. My book is "in galley" which means that stores across the country have placed their orders, tour dates have been booked and the seduction of media has commenced. The next two months consist of marshalling forces in all the cities I’m visiting, alerting everyone I’ve ever met that I have a book coming out and writing the proposal for my next project so my agent can sell it while everyone’s excited about this one. And this is all before June 1, when my tour begins and I’m in sales mode pretty much until Labor Day.

I have been so single-minded, so book-book-book the last 6 months that I don’t have the emotional bandwidth that I’ve had for the conference in year’s past. This time around I needed belonging, community and something I’d never thought I’d ask of SXSWi, normalcy. Despite the inhuman pace of it all, I spend almost all my time this year doing what feels routine: seeing old friends, haunting favorite haunts, bringing new friends along. I felt like ritualistic instead of awe-inspiring. And for where I am now, it felt right.

2. I’m old school: I believe Molly Steenson holds the record for most continuous SXSWi attendences with John Styn and Matt Haughey not far behind. I’m part of the class (along with James McNally, Brad Graham, Nick Finck and I’m sure others) immediately following, who began regular trips to the conference right before the dot com crash. Many of my contemporaries no longer attend. Last year I noted that I felt comfortably middle aged, that newbies asked me what to do instead of me looking for a herd to follow. This year, I led a lot of herds. I’m an old bison now but I appreciate the wisdom of age.

3. The power and limits of good intentions: I didn’t know a soul my first two years at SXSWi and consequently, felt pretty imidated and left out of the fun. Somewhere I promised myself that any newcomer who came into my orbit would not feel the same way. Largely I feel like I’ve done a good job welcoming them into my circle of friends. But I think I also learned that it’s better to work this on a social rather than formal level. I felt curiously inadequate after my opening day panel "How to Get the Most out of SXSW" because I couldn’t follow up with the 30-odd people there and ask them if my ideas worked for them. Silly I know but the lesson rung: I make a bigger difference for newcomers one-on-one than as yet-another guy with a microphone and a nameplate.

4. Go with a friend: If you’re thinking about attending SXSWi for the first time, use the buddy system. Josh and Neil had a tremendous advantage being rookies with automatic "ins." Even if you can convince a friend to go and still plan on coming yourself, pick a few attendees whose work you admire and start corresponding with them the month before the conference. It’s better than going in cold.

5.  Geeks are of the world as well: I’ve been thinking (mostly to myself) that the conference has spent too little time considering the humanistic and social ramifications of what we do. This year showed progress in that area. My favorite panel "Blogging While Black" featured a group of African-American bloggers who discussed race as a locus for exploring what we bring as humans, not simply writers or technologists, to online publishing and how the weblog can be a powerful tool for breaking down cultural barriers. I look forward to seeing more panels like this at upcoming conferences, where who we are as people is as much up for discussion as who we are as bloggers, geeks and future trippers.

6. Hooray for diversity: Dave noted during the "Blogging While Black" panel there were more black panelists than audience members. True but there were also Asians, gay folks and women in greater numbers than pretty much any other tech conference I’ve been to. Getting a diverse attendance base is no easy task (as this discussion aptly points out)  but I think SXSWi’s spirit of inclusiveness and focus on ideas rather than code and product launches has something to do with it. 

7. Think of your health: I’m not 21 anyone and can’t sleep 2 hours a night for nearly a week and feel good about it. Of course I did that this year. But I also make sure to hit the hotel gym a few times, eat at regular intervals, mediate each morning and at not waste time at events I wasn’t getting anything out of. Though I was still exhausted, at least I didn’t feel insane.

8. SXSWi mid-year: Several old–timers (meaning early 1990s) of the San Francisco underground were on hand this year and made overtures about bringing back Webzine (1998-2001) a San Francisco event I missed by moving to the city in mid-2000. Dinah and I have talked for years about putting together a mid-year SXSWi in San Francisco so we wouldn’t have wait a whole year before seeing everyone again. I hope this happens.

9. Memes are a sign of a community’s comfort with one another: Why else would you feel ok joking about black men stealing furniture and how to make best use of your scrotum (hint: It involves black tar heroin and a walnut cracker) with people you just met? 

10. SXSWi pays it forward: What I love about South by Southwest Interactive. Rookies arrive saing "I hope I meet Web Celeb X" and leave with an experience grander than their wildest imaginations. SXSWi rewards the effort you put in and in tun, burns off the energy of its attendees. Every year I run into Hugh near the end and congratulate him on another great job. He always shrugs and says something like "I just make it happen. The vision comes from all of you." That’s not modesty talking. I’ve gone to enough conferences now to know what a rare and special thing this is. I might have not been as present as I would have liked this year, but SXSWi meets you where you are. Then it asks you do better.

I hope to see as many of you as I can on my book tour this summer. If not then, next year in Austin. Without a doubt.

Past Wrap-Ups: 2004, 2003, 2002.

TypePad allows me to assign multiple categories to posts. Faboo.

Also, there’s a new version of Delicious Library. Anybody know how it’s an improvement? Or if it is?

Also Redux: Ive been messing around with Feedmarker which claims to be Del.icio.us and RSS Readers combined. I don’t quite get it yet but the creator was nice enough to respond to my questions. I’ll keep you posted on that one.

Because way back in the long forgotten days of 2002, I approached a young designer who was also a friend named Mena Trott to spice things up here at Where There’s Smoke. She was smart, talented and I liked her aesthetic. At the time, she and her husband Ben had designed and were marketing a weblog tool named MovableType. I had agreed to shift over to it from Blogger as part of Mena giving me a serious bargain on the design. We settled on that and the Gone with the Wind Deluxe Box Set as payment.

I read today that Mena and Ben and the other 70 employees on three continents in their company Six Apart have acquired LiveJournal, the third largest weblog tool provider. In this space, it’s the equivalent of Ford buying Chrysler.

Someday in the not to distant future, I predict a large media company like Yahoo or Apple will swoop in and buy Six Apart. Ben and Mena will be millionaires, then march off, design something else, and have the same kind of success. I’m still amazed that, when I met with Mena at their apartment to talk about the design, Six Apart was being run out of their spare bedroom.

So I can’t move things around here too much. The design is like a historical relic of the weblog’s teenage years. It’s got one of the giants of the medium’s finger prints all over it.