SXSW Day 4

Monday, March 10:

First stop was an 11:30am panel about social networking and protecting one's web identity and personal brand. It was ok but I might have done better in another one.

I then went back to the trade show for a bit, and talked to someone at Microsoft Silverlight and someone at MapQuest. (I seem to have 5 t-shirts more than I did when the weekend began, among other things).

I went to the 2pm Frank Warren keynote speech. Frank Warren runs the PostSecret website and put together the related books. Midway thorough, he brought an attendee up on stage, who proposed to his girlfriend. (She said yes). He showed some slides that he couldn't put on his website or in his books, mostly because of copyrighted images. It was interesting and entertaining, but my first choice had been a panel on browser wars with IE, Firefox, and Opera representatives, but that room was overfilled.

After listening to Gina Trapani read some passages from her new LifeHacker book, I went to my next panel on I18N and Unicode in web pages. (I connnected into work briefly before and after this, but I'm basically going to call it a vacation day). The last panel I attended dealt with issues of managing data on so many diverse web accounts, social networks, etc.

I went to the reception tent with the free beer for badgeholders (but I decided not to have a beer anyway).

We ended the day with Morgan Spurlock's new documentary, "Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?" It was so full, not even all badgeholders got in. (They should have held it at the Paramount instead of the Alamo South Lamar). I wound up in the very front row, looking up at the screen, though it was a great seat for the Q&A portion. I ordered a Pizza and a Fat Tire, and then 15 minutes into the movie the power went out, stopping the movie. After we waiting a while, Morgan Spurlock told the staff he was buying a beer for everybody in the theater. We left around 10pm, heading home.

My new plan: take another day off Tuesday, back to work on Wednesday, then I will take Thurs and Fri off as planned.