Ultranormal

Category: sxsw

  • The Crippled Conference

    I was really looking forward to SxSW this year. I’m moderating a panel I’m really excited about. I get to see all of my south-by pals, go to amazing panels and eat good food. It was a good plan, until I went to pick up the rental car and rolled my ankle turning to talk to someone. I don’t know if it’s bad or not. I don’t know if it’s just a mild sprain (which is what I thought it was the first time), something serious, or nothing at all. It’s the first time I’ve tweaked it since surgery, and I’m freaked out. It’s swelling more than usual, which may be normal because I’m doing more walking. It hurts, which also may be normal with all the walking.\
    What do it all mean? It means I’m not doing a bunch of stuff at night, and I’ve already skipped one keynote so I can ice and shock it (yes, the home electrocution kit made the journey). It means I’m missing out on a bunch of stuff, and that makes me sad. I had to skip out after dinner last night to ice myself into oblivion. Have you ever had ice directly on your skin to the point that it burns, till your skin turns red?\
    Yes, I’m just feeling sorry for myself. I’m still having a good time. I’m still extremely excited about my panel. I’m still ecstatic to hang out with my pals and meet new people. I’m excited about other peoples’ panels. My favorites so far have been Creating Passionate Users (see the blog) and How To Be A Web Design Superhero from Andy Clarke and Andy Budd. Both were very well done, and I got a lot out of them (now, I totally need to redo I Am Alpha). I am in complete envy of the Andies slides. They were the best slides I’ve ever seen, and I don’t normally like slides. If you were there, you know what I mean. If you weren’t, imagine a comic book as a presentation and then throw in some complimentary motion, and that it fits perfectly with the tone and timing of the panel. Yep, they were that good. It makes my poor little s5 slides look a little anemic. But, I’m not a designer, and I think the content is good, so we’ll go with them and see what happens. You can even get the slides yourself!\
    If you see me hobbling around, please say hi. I would love to meet you. Also, please come to our panel Tuesday morning at 10!! We’re in the “big room” according to the mini-schedule, and it would be kind of embarrassing if no one showed up.

  • The Way To Celebrate A Panel

    Our panel on Tuesday (at SxSW if you didn’t know already) is at 10am, and you should go. But, that’s not what I’m writing about now. Thanks to Upcoming, I found out that the Comedians of Comedy are playing Austin on the 14th!!! And, better yet, Flight of the Conchords is playing too, at the same place!!!! And it’s only \$15.50 to get in!!!!! Can you tell I’m excited? You know I’m going, right? You should totally come too!!\
    No, really, you should. If you ask nice, I might even let you sit next to me.\
    It’ll be a great way to celebrate what I’m sure will be a successful panel (it will be, it will be, it will be, it will be… really, it will).

  • SxSW 2006 and Ankle Update

    It’s still four months away, but I started trying to get all the AOL folks going to 2006’s interactive festival organized. I started a wiki page with our travel details, where we’re staying, things to do that I believe are happening next year (like Break Bread With Brad, Kick!, 20×2, etc) and other tips for attending the conference.\
    I did the same thing for February’s W3C meeting in France.\
    I think I’m tired of being stuck on the couch.\
    And speaking of, I started physical therapy this week. Starting Monday, I have three appointments a week of electric stimulation (shock the monkey where I’m the monkey!), strengthening, stretching and pain. I would be upset, but I think I’ve found the perfect place for me. They’re funny, and not into torture. The folks I went to for my knee five years ago had no empathy at all. These guys were showing me their scars and we were comparing “war stories” of our various injuries. It felt like a fraternity of the wounded, which is really what physical therapy should be. It’s a bunch of broken people trying to put their weak, busted bodies back together. Empathy should be there every step of the way, and at this place, it obviously is.\
    I can also finally see the big bone on the inside of my ankle! The swelling’s finally gone down enough to show the end of the tibia, which is progress! There’s still a lot of swelling farther down and on the bottom of my foot (which is fun!), but seeing that bone is cool.

  • My Headshot for SxSW

    I could take a new one, but I just don’t have time between now and surgery on Friday. I think this’ll have to do.\
    This photo came from my first trip to Dublin – although I should probably just ask Dan if I can use this one

  • Writing About Myself Is Hard

    You’d think that having a blog would have prepared me for this moment. For SxSW, I have to write a short and long bio… about me. You would think that someone who talks as much as I do would be able to come up with a paragraph describing myself. But, every time I start, I get self-conscious about writing about myself in the third person and it goes all Bob Goulet on me. Here’s what I’ve got so far:

    Kevin Lawver is a passionate lover of web standards (which his wife oddly doesn’t mind). He french kisses his CSS and makes sure all his tags are closed so the neighbors don’t gossip. Kevin (that’s me) loves writing valid semantic markup by candlelight, and desperately wishes that Barry White had written a love song about CSS3 Selectors. But, Kevin realizes that it’ll probably be country music that brings us our first song about CSS – and it will unfortunately probably be about adjacent siblings. Kevin longs for the day when all browsers hold hands in harmony and web developers, management and designers all understand and love standards and understand their benefits. Kevin would also really like a cookie.

    What do you think? Too much?

  • How To Convince Your Company To Embrace Standards

    Since we’re listed on the official panels list, I figure I can blog about it. Our panel got approved for SxSW Interactive next year!!\
    It’s called How to Convince Your Company to Embrace Standards and should be a lot of fun. We’ve had a really interesting experience the past couple years trying to push AOL to adopt and embrace web standards. I think we have a lot of interesting information to share about how to translate the technical benefits of web standards into terms that decision makers understand, and how to build a grassroots standards movement “under the radar” without getting yourself fired or pissing off too many people (or at least the wrong people). Since AOL is the size it is, a lot of the strategies I’ve seen posted on blogs and at other conferences don’t scale. Hopefully, we’ll be able to help fill the gaps.\
    We’ve lined up some really interesting folks for the panel, all with a part in the drama, and all with slightly different perspectives on the whole process:

  • The Best Review of SXSW Ever

    Josh nails it. He says:\
    bq. …SXSW is a space for people who’re inventing the future to actually live it for a few days…\
    Yep, that’s it. The rest of his review is just as good.

  • The Slow South-by Recovery

    All use AOL’ers made it home last night, but it took a lot longer than we expected. Instead of one three hour flight on a small plane, it was two flights with a stop in Houston, lost luggage and a cab driver.\
    I have so much I want to say, but right now, I just want to tell you how freaking tired I am, and how cool having all the SxSW notes up on a wiki is. As I find more peoples’ notes, especially for sessions we didn’t get notes for, I keep adding them. If you’ve got some you’d like to share, please feel free to add them. Also, if you’re a Mediawiki master and feel like sending me the right .htaccess to hide index.php in the url, I’d love that too.\
    I’ll try to post the “new people from SxSW” list in the near future after I un-bury myself. There’s nothing like extreme engagement (panels, meals, socializing) to show you how much e-mail comes in. I was downloading 100+ messages every day, and barely able to read a tenth of them. This morning was an exercise in damage control. Oh, I long for the day when everything that I actually care about comes through NetNewsWire, and all the other cruft that ends up in my inbox just goes away.

  • Sterling’s Keynote at SXSW

    Was awesome, as expected. I took notes, but I’m nor sure how coherent it is.

  • SXSW In A Wiki

    It’s totally not the same as being here, because the best thing about SXSW is the interaction with people who are just as weird, creative and passionate as you are, but we’ve been taking a lot of notes on the wiki, and I thought I’d share some of my personal favorites: