Now that I've fully recovered from SXSW, it's high time I start cleaning up.  The schwag mountain spilled over and caused some damage but I got it under control.  So now it's time to spring clean my workflow and social media usage.  I subscribe to this, follow that, or just end up trying to fill up big holes in my life with tiny sand distractions that it gets way too overwhelming, as I'm sure others can identify.  Once I realize that, then I know it's time to pare down my workflow and regroup.  It's not a perfect system, but when it comes time for a change I'm ready to make it.  So how am I doing this?  Glad you asked.

First off, Twitter, it's time I change my relationship with you.  You see, I enjoy trying to follow as many tweeps as I can to match some of the other D-Grade web celebs follow counts, but it's just not working out.  What happens is a undending stream of garbage and links to articles I already read.  True, you've had lists for a while but I'm sorry I didn't pay attention to you earlier.  That's okay.  I think the change will be made for the better for both of us.  That way, when we have conversations with each other, it can be meaningful.  Here's what's I'm doing.

The dribble will be cut out.  I'm going to use a couple of handy tools like JustUnfollow and Mr. Tweet to cut out the bad and bring in the good.  Most of the time when I tweet, I get no retweets, replies, or direct messages.  Now, part of that is my fault, but another part is the list of followers I have don't match my core values.  So while Tim Bray might stay, Verified Alf is outta here.  Also, if a tweep blasts out multiple links in spurts, I'm unfollowing them and I may even block them.  I will be ruthless so if you get unfollowed don't take it personally.  If you get blocked, then please take it personally.  Especially if you are an SEO Expert or social media marketer.

Because I fell so behind using lists, I will play some catch up to make them more important.  This will be built on the fly and will break out to a set of maybe 10 or 15.  That's about all I can handle.  Then I can check up on certain lists and be able to interject and interact with greater precision.

All of this in the name of meaningful usage.  Most people when they talk about Twitter, they get some kind of value of messaging people.  I don't nearly get as much bounce back as they do.  Even my girlfriend who recently converted is getting better usage than me.  So, I will cut down and build some lists that I can follow easier which will enable me to tweet more effectively.  Included in that effectiveness will be more personalized messages from my link tweets.

On to Google Reader.  Whatever gets missed in Twitter ends up in the RSS catcher.  So whenever I read blogs or hear suggestions of sites from others, I end up subscribing to more and more RSS feeds.  Fortunately with Reader's Trends section, I can see what I use on a more frequent basis and cut back on the feeds that I barely touch.  This again hits at matching my feeds to my core values.  It's easy to lose focus when I spread myself around so I need to keep myself in focus and in check.  It happens to all of us so it's always great to go back every once in a while and clean things up.

Next up, the desktop.  My laptop rocks the house.  It's a beefy Sony Vaio that already paid for itself many times over.  I can run so many things at once, it's a multitasker's dream.  The problem is that I usually have Pidgin and Tweetdeck up going and flowing.  It's incredibly easy to glance left or right on my screen to see what's coming and get distracted.  So what I will be doing is turning them off.  For some it's easy, but I have always had my instant messenger open in more than one location at all times since college.  That's 10 years.  So it will be a huge change.  I'm thinking that when it's time for a break, the starting and stopping of these programs will be a great physical switch.

It's amazingly easy to get distracted and let projects clutter up your mental space.  At least once a year, we need to clean it all up.  Much like our physical space, the junk in your mental space will make it harder to move around quickly and get projects done.  I encourage people to try these methods out to help clean up all mental junk.

So Sunday was our last day here in Austin as we are heading back to Kansas City on Monday.  Compared to the rest of the time here, it was pretty tame.  The only official SXSW thing we did out here was a softball tournament my lovely girlfriend participated in.  Bookending the tournament was a couple of walks around South Congress shopping and getting some eats.  It was a vacation from the vacation.  We even had some time to hot tub and relax the sore muslces from the whole SXSW experience.

That's what SXSW is: an experience.  You know when someone says you gotta try something once or go someplace once?  Well, take all of those combined and come down to SXSW.  From the Interactive techno fest to the long nights rocking out at the Music fest, you will take part in a get together unbeknownst anywere else on this planet.  I'm trying to pick my brain and remember what all I did on this trip and I still can't remember all of the good times I had. They say if you take out your intestines and roll them out, it will measure about 40 feet.  Like that, except SXSW times.

Even more so, I have this massive schwag bucket to go through when I get back.  Not for the goofy trade show trinkets, but for the contests and follow ups on all things tech and music.  The vacation is almost over and the real work is about to begin.  The mental schwag I picked up here as well will keep my motivation going for at least the next 6 months.  The flood gates have opened and it's time to ride it back to Kansas City.  Look out, I'm not even close to the high water mark.

So Friday down on 6th street, I marvelled at the mass amount of culture floating around the bricks and shops.  Well, overnight, a nothern storm blew through and dropped the tempature about 20 degrees for the day.  The wind also made if feel like back home in Kansas City.  The thing is, though, Kansas City was going through their own version with an additional 8 to 10 inches of snow on top.  So at least we missed out on that.

We were guessing that the crowd would thin down to the badge holders for SXSW because of the weather.  As the evening came Saturday, there were tons of people out, but nowhere near Friday night's crowd.  That said, the concert going faithful still made the venues respectable. Through the cold, we made our shows and ended the Music portion of SXSW a memorable one.  Today, it's the softball tournament and battery recharge before the one day drive back home.

No day panels today.  We tossed that out the window after the mis-managed scheduling of the of the songwriter panel.  So with gig bag in hand, I headed out to the parties on 6th street with my lovely girlfriend.  The day parties went great and we got our fill of drinks and schwag.  We opted for the super secret Muse show at Stubb's and enjoyed every second of it.  But the biggest thing I took away from SXSW today was somehing special.

I remember a cab driver tell me that we didn't even know what would hit us when the weekend showed up.  After we got out of Stubb's, I now know.  The streets were spilling over with people constantly moving.  We're talking jam packed with all different types of people, not just the badge holders.  What was on those streets was pure humanity.  Every culture of every type represented.  It was like the Olympics.  Except instead of competing, the world's best in music got together to celebrate.  And it will only get more crowded tomorrow.

Alrighty today saw me hit up more of the music parties than some of the panels.  I wanted to go to a songwriting panel but they A) moved it on me and B) ended up cancelling it.  Oh well.  What I've learned down here more than anything else is that you just need to keep moving.

The one event I did make was the Ableton Live demo.  Basically, the product guy from Ableton Live showed off some of the cool features of the program.  What I learned was not only does Ableton do a great job of layering live elements, but it can also switch to a linear view to edit in a more traditional DAW style.  I also got some info about the APC40  and will be doing some research on it when I get back.  That's about it for the panels today.  Check my music blog for the show run downs.

Alrighty, the Interactive portion is done, but I'm still going strong.  Please head on over to Helping Zero Knives Enter You, my music blog, for a roundup of what music I'm checking out for SXSW.  In the meantime, I'll be blasting the panels I will attend during the day before rocking out at night.

The only panel I made yesterday talked about how people will listen to music in 2020.  Some representatives from SoundCloud and Last.fm were there as well as some other music industry types.  They talked about how streaming is the big uptake now.  They were quick to point out that it will fall in line with a preference rather than a dominating choice.  The question of money came up not only for streaming but also for terrestial radio and it provided for some heated discussion.  I can know see the point of of view for charging radio stations to pay for per play licensing like interent radio.

So that's about it.  The music yesterday was awesome and I encourage you to check out this blog as well as my music blog to follow along.  Peace!

Day 5 of this mish mash of culture here in Austin and SXSW left me experiencing a true intermission.  The Ineractive portion winded down while the Music portion is winding up.  I took the opportunity to head out the lobby and get myself a drink.  Speaking of drink, the early morning rain scared us from walking to SXSW and we ended up taking a cab to catch the afternoon's events.  Even though I had a small number of panels, it ended up being very beneficial and marked a great transition to the Music portion of the show.   Oh, and the closing party rocked.

The previously mentioned rain held us up big time in the morning.  Combined with the wickedly awesome Computer Blip Blop Bull@#$% party we were rained on from last night, and this guy had the beginning of a small chest cold.  So we piled into the car and now I'm currently rocking the Zicam and Airborne.  Works every time.  So, after an hour or so of blogging and recovery, we hailed a taxi via phone and headed to the convention center.

The first stop of the day marked my first keynote address.  Me and my lovely girlfriend got a prime seat to watch Daniel Ek talk about his UK only music app, Spotify.  Not many people knew of this service before and when the demo went through, the oohs and ahhs confirmed it.  Ek talked about the liquidy of music and developing a platform that handles the fragmented liquidy of the music industry.  We also got a chance to check out a live demo of the new Spotify running on an Android phone that Sony was putting out.  The keynote informed and entertained and I'm glad we had a chance to get an overview of an app that will definitely give iTunes a run.

Next up was a quick panel on mobile advertising.  Now, I'm not the advertising guru, but being that I'm here to check out all thinhs mobile app development, I needed to see some business views revolving around it.   So Dennis Crowley from Foursquare fame and a representative from Mocospace (the original guy couldn't make it) talked about strategies they employ to get business to do ad buys for their phone apps.  What I got from Mocospace's talk was how traditional mobile apps work with companies to do targeted ads based on demographics for mobile phone users and using the platform to do some media promotions as well.

Crowley's side of it was fascinating.  Foursquare created a new platform that behaves its own way.  So they sell ads, while they are in the middle of figuring out their business model, in a non traditional way.  Crowley also talked about how they have very little in terms of resources going toward sales reps.  The reason is that the users of the app are pushing the local business to do the Foursquare based specials.  So one hand, I got a view of advertising on a traditional model and on the other I got to peer into how a new platform evolves its advertising model.

The final panel for my Interactive portion was perfect for transitioning to the Music.  I sat on the Remixing for the Masses panel ran by Paul Lamere from EchoNest.  If you don't know who he or the company is, go chekc out the More Cowbell app and come back.  So Lamere started out the panel talking about the differences between remixing, sampling, and mashups.  Girl Talk was the apex of these methods and we got to see a quick video of how he does it.  He then asks, how can that be made easier?  With the stuff he showed off from EchoNest, I believe that it will be.

Lamere demoed what EchoNest software can do in terms of combining Digital Signal Processing and Natural Language Processing and producing new ways to cut up software.  He showed off using some Python code to select the first bar of a song and cutting it out without degradation.  He showed that they can take each beat and flip it in reverse piecewise.  I saw him combing audio and video to select the vocals of a Nickleback song and place them in the same song to make it sound the same.  I could go on with the rest but I gotta say you have to check it out for yourself.  And, yes, they have a live performance version in their labs.

After the panel, we had the opportunity to check out a real movie for the Film portion.  Skeletons is the Scottish version of Being John Malkovich.  It had an endearing quality while not being to goofy or silly.  Check it out when it comes out in your town.  Then we headed out to the Mohawk for the Media Temple and SXSW Interactive closing party.  Hey, when you have free PBR tall boys and some kick ass Alt-Mariachi music, you know it's a good time.

So that's it.  That was the Interactive portion.  What did I come away with?  Well, discovery was the goal and I laid my eyeballs on so much that I more than fulfilled that requirement.  I have tons more work to do when I get back because of it.  Awesome!  So now comes the time to celebrate by hitting up the Music portion.  I'll talk about some of the days events here, but I will also hit up music information on my music blog.  Keep tuned.

Okay, so I kicked this one off a little later than usaul, but that's because I logged in the fullest day so far here at SXSW.  The official tally is 6 panels, 2 happy hours, and 1 wet party.  I'm a little under the weather this morning but that's due to the massive amount of stuff that I and my lovely girlfriend did and the rain storm that hit us last night.  Don't fret, however, we are taking it easy this morning and heading back down to the convention center to try and make a couple of more panels and keynotes on the last day of the Interactive portion of SXSW.  There's much to go over, so I'll try to make it condensed.

First off, we are very proud that we actually made a 9:30 session.  Due to the schedule plus daylight savings and such, we ended up missing some of the opening day panels.  The first one saw me hit up Jake Marsh, a developer that did ShopSavvy, talk about porting your mobile applications across multiple platforms.  With a comic book analogy, he described the plusses and minuses of each mobile platform.  What I came away with on this panel was that if you want to do multi-platform development then you should build for each platform instead of one consistent code base.   It will be much quicker to start from scratch as well.  Since each platform has its own UI style, you gotta build toward it.

The next panel say Dries Buytaert, the founder of the CMS Drupal, talk about how awesome Drupal was.  Seriously, half of the talk went over how lame it was to build content for the web.  The other half was Buytaert telling us that Drupal solves all of the problems.  I've rolled out Drupal to multiple clients.  I know how awesome it is.  I really didn't need examples of other site usage.  Someone did ask about Drupal 7 and it seems to improve on much of the drawbacks of Drupal.  We're talking usability, multiple database support, and other things.

I skipped over to the Courtyard next to hear a talk about open sourcing consulting models.  What I expected was strategy in selling open source to your clients.  What I got was strategy into open sourcing more than just your software.  Internal processes, hourly rates, and other items were talked about by Alexandra Samuel and how it helped their consulting company.   It was really engaging to think about open sourcing processes and focusing on execution.  Plus, due to the group talk nature of the panel, I got to hear how some consultants charge with open source software anyway.

Monday's keynote with Ev Williams of Twitter did not seem so exciting to me, so I skipped it.  I headed upstairs to hear a talk about pre and post production for game audio.  I have not been exposed to anything in the video game industry so this was my first stab.  I have a bunch of music software and to hear Alexandar Brandon talk about the latest game engines and process to mirror the game dev side of things was pretty cool.  He even suggest use source code control for audio files to help.  Apparently I need to check out Real Time Mixing for games as well too.

Next up saw an Objective-C crash course and demo.  I am not an iPhone developer so I had no clue how complicated the syntax was for iPhone development.  Joris Verbogt blew through some basic information on Objective-C as a language.   He went through it pretty fast and I'm fairly sure I got all of it down.  Then Verbogt showed off a demo.  After all of information and demoing, I still am unsure just how to develop for the iPhone.  Well, plus I need a Mac to do it.  The last panel of the day helped contrast between this and what I can do in terms of development.

The last panel of the day was a real treat.  Jonathan Stark of Stark Consulting went through a process that web developers could use to built almost native-like apps for the iPhone.  Stark first demoed jqTouch, which is a jQuery library designed to emulated the browsing behavior of the iPhone.  What does that mean?  It means the transitions, buttons, and animations on the iPhone can be used on a web browser.  Next up he talked about PhoneGap.  PhoneGap is a library of code used to setup an encapsulated web server as a native app.  You can drop your web code into an exposed www directory and build natives apps with only web technology.  Many oohs and ahhs from this one.  It was fantastic.

So after all of that, there was still some more stuff to do.  I popped into the Wired Magazine's mixer afterward to meet up with my girlfried.  There we had a nice conversation with a guy from the Nonprofit Technology Network.  He definately out does me in terms of passion.  Oh, I also won a pretty sweet schwag bag there.  I got a bunch of clothing stuff and an iPod Touch!  Looks like the schwag bucket will pay for the trip.  After a quick bite at Serrano's we headed to one of the must do parties for SXSW.

My girlfriend and I love the Found Footage Festival and when we heard they were throwing a party at SXSW, we were instantly sold.  So we headed out to Club Deville to be first in line for the festivities.  We met Nick and Joe there and even got their autographs on a crappy video they did!  They had a hard time setting up the projector for the rocks outside, but the rain that started pouring stopped that and pushed us indoors.  We stuck around for most of the party and headed back.  Nick and Joe were great in person and we're stoked about seeing them again in Lawrence.

The fourth day of SXSW was by far the best one so far.  I learned so much in new technology trends and techniques.  The fill of schwag is over capacity.  We actually got into parties and met one of our heroes in bad movie comedy.   This day reminded me just how awesome life can get.  Everything that I identify with in terms of life and career converges here in Austin.  It's not even half over and it's totally worth it.

Okay Day 3 is over and as I'm drying off from the quick hot tub dunkin', I'll blast off another recap for ya.  Today saw a crazy start with the time change.  Once we finally got into the sessions, we got back on track, even though some of the panels were disappointing.  The SXSW Block Party helped pick things back up real fast.  Tonight I finally decided that the film portion of SXSW just isn't all that cracked up to be.  More discovery on another day of SXSW, here we go!

I set the alarm early so we could make the first session.  The phone went off and we got up.  For some reason, the clock in the hotel room was off an hour.  Yeah, we forgot it was Daylight Savings.  So we automatically assumed that we were actually an hour behind becuase the cell phones were off.  We got dressed and rushed the Adobe Sunday Brunch.  The crowd was light and my girlfriend and I scored some hot eggs and about 4 shirts a piece.  Once we sat down, we realized that we were actually on time and could make the first 9:30 am.  Wah wahhh.  At least we got the free schwag before everyone else.

The first session of the day for me was JavaScript Architecture:  The Front and Back of It.  Kyle Simpson led a talk that revolved around a major issue with MVC style coding and then offered up a JavaScript solution to handle.  The gist of the problem was that the 'View' portion of MVC development was severely lacking in terms of consistency, maintainability, and flexibilty.  So Simpson suggested something he coined CVC or Clients View Controllers, where the 'View' and 'Controller' part of the code was all JavaScript (using JSON) and the same for both client and server machines.  He then went on and demonstrated a JavaScript server and webserver.  All in all, this talk was great for me and helped me think about ways to implement JavaScript and build off my somewhat limited knowledge of MVC.

The next session was somewhat disappointing.  When hearing that Gina Trapani, of Lifehacker and This Week in Google fame, was part of the Coding for Pleasure: Developing Killer Spare-Time Apps panel at SXSW, the panel moved to my must see.  When I sat through the first 1/2 hour, however, I felt like my expectations weren't close to being met and bailed.  Trapani, along with Adam Pash and Matt Haughey, ended up talking about a couple of apps they built and how you need to code for fun and non-profit.  Granted their fun apps ended up growing big.  Much of what they talked about I already knew about in terms of motivation, passion, and inspiration.  What I was looking for was a best practices or tips session and I all I got was them talking about thier apps.  The movie poster display for the Film portion of SXSW did a good job filling things in.

In what was one of the more entertaining sessions of SXSW, Bruce Lawson and Martin Kliehm dug down deep and pulled out all of the stops in terms of what HTML 5 is and how it will affect is in the near and long term future.  Lawson started first and his drama-major background really shone through in his presentation style.  He talked about how backward compatible HTML 5 is, showed how all of the major vendors are implementing it, then showed all of the cool portions of HTML 5 that Opera 10.5 implemented.  We saw video, form validation, input form fields improvements, and some tasty canvas applications.

Next up, Martin Kliehm talkd about new techniques for browsers and some HTML5 API implementations.  Kliehm showed off mutli touch and its uses in the browser.  You can really use all of your digits to move images.   He then demoed orientation and browser use.  This means that in supported computers when turned around, orientates the browser and its contents stays static or pointing up.  After the oohs and ahs, we saw some APIs including file I/O that plug into the browser and allow it to become more of an OS than a web browser.  This panel blew my mind and I'm coming away with fresh inspiration and motiviation to get to work on HTML 5 technology.

After the kick ass HTML 5 session, the rest of the official day was rather fluid.  The CouchDB guys talked about how crappy the tech book publishing industry is more than selling their book about CouchDB.  The SXSW Block Party saw loads of booze and much more schwag to add to the bucket.  I also had an opportunity to talk to the Pop Box guys and now I'm leaning more on to getting one of these suckers instead of rolling my own home theater internet streaming device.  It's a good thing the Block Party closed at 6, because I was getting lit pretty hard.

What better way to take care of a massive buzz?  Walk 2 miles to a SXSW Film event!  We tried to hit up the Saturday Night premiere but like all of our other previous film attempts, it was overbooked and we couldn't get in.  The consolation was a movie called War Don Don that put me to sleep.  I'm going to go on a limb and say that theilm portion of SXSW is overrated and that it seems to be the most pointless part of the entire experience.  It's a good thing Maudie's Tex Mex consoled our souls and bellies after the show.

We cabbed it back after that and called it an early night.  We needed some rest and hot tubbing before the big day and night we have planned for tomorrow.  Today was just a bit more roller coaster like, but I'm still coming away impressed with all of the information blowing around in Austin for the conference.  The discovery keeps trucking and we aren't stopping for nobody.  Watch out too, but we are kicking it into high gear, right now!

Whoah nelly, this guy it pooped!  Today was the first full day of conference snaction down here in Austin for SXSW and I now know what this whole thing is about.  From thoughtful collaboration, genuine inspiration, to a closing night ceremony, I finally experienced all that I imagined I would when attending this conference.  As I struggle to type out a recap of the day, I gotta smile a big grin.  To be this tired after day 2 means that I will exhaust myself to the limits and come away with a total conference experience.

We started the day hooking up the laptop lugger and pulling on toward Congress street for the morning jaunt.  I switched from the velcro wonder to the running shoes to make my walk more comfortable.  Apparently I developed a blister under my left foot last night and I'm still feeling it at this moment.  We stopped by Jo's on the way down and promptly decided to mark Jo's as the must stop coffee plop every day.  After the quick java jump, we made our way to the convention center for Day 2.

The girlfriend and I split up for the first session.  I went up to the 4th level to check out the How To Make a Living as a Blogger talk.  The panel featured Brian Fairbanks and Colleen Kane.  The unique feature of the panel was that it sported a community/town-hall type back and forth.  The whole panel basically stated that to make some money, you need to do a niche brand of blogging and proactively contact the companies/people you blog about to build business relationships.  I learned a good deal and got a strong foot hold to jump off whenever I decided to move my blogs in that direction.  I also ran into a 13 year old pro blogger but I will get into that in my post SXSW series.

After a quick bite at Champions, I headed over to the convention center again to check out Then Ten Commandments of User Experience.  This one was run by Raina Van Cleave and Nick Finck.  Here's my short take on this panel:  find new ways to make things simple for people to use stuff and deliver on it to the customer.  This panel was also the first of a three part workshop but I decided to skip the rest for other functions.  It was also pretty crowded on there and my bakc was killing me due ot the floor seating.  On to the next panel!

The last panel of the day saw me and my lovely girlfriend help pack the house to see the Ze Frank Conversation: The Creative Lifestyle.  Ze Frank, if you don't know,  is the master for internet interactive wizardry.  If you haven't seen his stuff, go do so now and come back here.  Ze Frank does a great job at pulling at your heart strings and making you life.  Scott Kirsner helped found out how he does it while doing an introspective/question answer session.  Panel of the conference so for for me.

Now between these panels I had the chancce to take a gander at some of the other offerings the conference rolled out.  I dropped by the ScreenBurn Arcade and left a little disappointed.  The Legos were cool but the rest of the stuff was kinda meh.  The Trade Show opened up for the first time and I worked it for a good hour or so.  I dropped off cards, saw some 3d hd tv action, and got to check out some cool companes.  I also picked up some schwag but I didn't sell out for a mother load of schwag.  If I'm not interested in a product, I'm not going to talk to a guy about it to get the USB flash drive or shiny shirt.

I met up with the girlfriend and we shimmyed on over to the SXSW Opening Night Party.  We missed out on all of the night time activity last night so we more than made up for it tonight.  Frog Design did a great job with some interactive light shows while they passed out some free drinks to help lube up the social.  When we walked in, they handed us some RFID tags.  We used them to keep track of how many drinks we had, time ourselves in the port a potty, and even mess with the light shows they projected.  It was stary eyed and magical.

When the decision came down to attend SXSW this year, I was nervous that it might not live up to my expectation.  Welp, after Day 2, let me saw it has been met and I'm ready for it to be exceeded.  I'll double back after the conference to go more in depth on some of the topics I'm covering as it's coming in just too fast.  In the meantime, I need to rest the rest the feet and get ready for another awesome day.