Morning: Up early, I caught the bus and went to join the crew of World Hum for breakast at Jo’s. The coffee at Jo’s was the best I’ve had in Austin so far — though admittedly, that’s not saying much, the bar is pretty low. Fortified on “migas” — tortilla scram, really — and other Texas style breakfast wonders, we walked back to the convention center for the conference. I spent the rest of the morning walking out of sessions until running into Matthew Cashmore from Lonely Planet — we chatted for a bit until I decided to try again to catch another session. I dropped in late for a surprisingly interesting talk about intellectual property, the folks from the Electronic Freedom Foundation were talking about what to do when someone steals the content of your blog.
Lunchish: A handful of travel types headed over to crash the Hawaii meetup where the charming Neenz greeted me with a hug and an enthusiastic “Nerd’s Eye View! Aloha!” I spent quite a bit of time chatting with Burt Lum (Bytemarks) who responded for me when I was asked if I live in Hawaii. “No, man, but she plays the uke, so she’s in!” I was really glad I went — it’s nice to meet people who can help spark ideas for my Hawaii blog.
Afternoon: I attended to very different and very interesting talks. The first, a cryologist — she studies ice! — talked about her work in Greenland and also, about the methods used by mainstream media to obscure the science behind global warming. The second was a messy, rambling, compelling talk by Bruce Sterling who talked about how technology has changed the audience for his books, how we ought to be hurling support — financial, material, other — at people who are smart, how we should be paying better attention to marginalized humans in our communities, how publishing is dying, how he can’t throw parties any more…In between those talks I sat on the floor with Todd Lucier and some new friends to talk about Al Gore, environmentalism, and sunflowers.
Evening: I wandered over to the lego pit to find friends for dinner. Sheila Scarborough,Wendy Perrin (The Perrin Post) Roger Wade (Boots n All), and I found a place in the sea of lego to take a group photo, the Roger and I crossed the street for Nuclear Tacos. Hot damn, those tacos were nuclear indeed, I could not eat mine and had to go straight for the ice cream, meaning I ate more ice cream for dinner than anything else. I was okay with that.
Night: I sat at a 6th and Congress bus stop, hitched up to a perfectly good wifi signal, while watching unbelievably glam people strut about. The SxSW film crowd was lined up outside the theater, the line was three or four people wide and stretched down the block, around the corner, and as far as I could see in the fading Austin light. I unlocked the door to my place around 9pm and I was sleeping, actually sleeping, by 930.
Now: The sky is turning pink while the sun comes up, the birds are singing, and I’m going to make a little coffee. I am finally — and completely — enjoying Austin.