As it is now, we’ll be heading to SXSW this march. Hopefully we’ll have a nice flight, nothing compared to what happened last year… Read my sxsw 2006 entries here.
Speakers list is here, schedule to be out later.
Recall from this entry i wrote the first day in Austin:
I’ve met these folks who started a web based service where bloggers will be put in contact with publishers from traditional media (ie print medias) so that content from bloggers could be printed in your favorite newspaper next saturday. (the name of this service and the people coming soon, cant remember it right now).
These people’s service is called BlogBurst and is created by Pluck.
I’ve heard about nightmare stories from different people traveling: flight delayed, being stuck in cities for 24 hours or more, sickness, sleeping on airport benches and so on. I guess it was now my turn to face the airport nightmare.
Starting in austin, from where i left the hotel at 9h30 am. As i am writing this it is 21h12 pm, yes, 12 hours later, and i am sitting in washington airport. My flight from austin to washington got delayed of an hour due to bad weather. Landed in Washington at 17h30, 20 minutes after my flight to montreal took off. Airport full, sore throat and a little fever, empty belly.
I was told at 20h30, yes, i waited in line for 3 hours, to have someone telling me that the flight to montreal which i could have taken at 21h30 was full, they so booked me for the first flight to montreal for tomorrow, 8h25. 12 hours still to go.
Belly status: still empty. Patience level = 0, please send me to the closest hotel so i can eat and sleep, this nightmare i want to exit. But no, the airline doesn’t offer me a paid hotel room. The supervisor i was directed to clearly saw that i was trying to hold my tears, and i guess feared that i was close to a nervous breakdown. She pulled me away from the crowd, asked me in a oh-so-kind way ‘c’mon, lets walk this way to talk’… to announce me that no, they wouldnt pay for a hotel room and that ehr, all hotels around where fully booked. When i asked her if she voluntarily took me away from the crowd to announce me this she denied.
Damn hell, i can now say that she was so right about the breakdown. I could have kicked something with my best kung fu assets. Instead, i went to the closest bathroom where i wept for 2 minutes thinking about the next 12 hours i would have to spend on the airport’s benches. ‘I highly recommend gate D-1, its safe at nite for girls’ she said. I wanna kick-you-in-the-face.
Hiding in the bathroom i started to think about how i could, once after making a on distress phone call to my mom, something i last did when i was 14, spend these next 12 hours in a creative way. I could try to take pictures of all corners of the bathrooms of the airport, get to meet the nite-airport-weirdos, make an all-you-can-eat alone with myself (belly status is still empty if you remember), dance my way around, write 35 entries on my blog, read all the 800 unread feeds in my RSS reader, fill out all pages of my drawing book of insults for United Airlines and sing them out loud afterwards, find fellow frustrated travelers and create the first unsatisfied customers demo in a US airport, rearrange the airport signalization in a emcee way. Wathever.
Still in these thoughts i got this flash that no, this cant be. This just cant be. There must be place for me on this plane. I then walked to the gate where the 9h30 flight was schedule and tempted my chance for a last time. In case someone didnt show up for this flight, i could even hide in the bathroom, better, in the captain cabin. ‘I wouldnt even mind flying first class you know…’
It is now 9h30. I feeded myself with some airport food. My head hurts, i am absolutely, totally, extremely exhausted. T-i-r-e-d is even hard to spell.
There was a place on the 9h30 flight, someone did not check-in. The flight is late since i am still siting here writing. But god knows i’ll sleep at home with my cats. God knows i now hate this airline, truly and from deep down inside me i keep these feeling for them. Not providing a hotel room or any kind of compensation to customers who have to stay overnite because of a flight delay is unacceptable.
Its pass 1 am, so happy to be back home.
Flight delayed. Nothing good when you miss your cats and really feel like being back home.
11h00 am. as the interactive part of the festival is ending today, music lovers are starting to show up all around the place creating quite of an eclectic mixture of genres. Geeks and nerds will slowly be replaced by colored hair and funky clothed people all around.
I am pretty tired from last nite’s odeo-consummating-adaptive path party, but this isnt over yet – closing party is taking place tonite.
I’ll hopefully post more notes from all the latest conferences in the next hours, or on my flight back to mtl tomorrow. There’s so much to share.
to be watched here – Hiiiiiiiiiaw!
There is so much information entering my head since 3 days, it is impossible to blog everything that crosses my mind and that i am sure would be interesting for some Vu d’ici readers.
I just left another panel about the new entrepreneur culture and one thing is clear for most web entrepreneurs today: everyone with a passion and an idea can start a business – do not wait to have the money, a 50 pages biz plan or the time to do it, start small now. Now. An hour a day and your passion will do. Start Now.
so META.
Moi et antoine sur la photo, parce qu’en fait nous sommes 4 Québecois sur le terrain.
Cette photo a été prise hier en soirée lors du party organisé par Yahoo regroupant les flickr, Upcoming et del.ici.ous. Bouffe et boisson gratos sont de mise à chaque party, et les party se suivent: 4 à 5, 5 à 6, 6 à 8, 8 à 10, 10 à 12h et ensuite minuit à 2h am – faut pas oublier que tout ce petit monde remplissent les salles de conférence le lendemain matin à 10h!
En se déniaisant unpeu on fait de belles rencontres. J’ai entre autre pu parler avec les gens de rocketboom (photo) et biz, auteur du premier livre que j’ai pu lire à propos des blogues en 2002 (photo de moi et biz ici).
Mon cell pour faire du vidéoblogue n’est pas encore arrivé. Nous sommes 6 à avoir été nommés pour faire du vlogging d’ici la fin du festival intéractif qui se termine… demain!
Voici une photo d’où je suis présentement :
3ième journée de conférence aujourd’hui et pour vous dire bien franchement, j’ai juste le gout d’aller m’assoir à la piscine et lire quelque chose qui n’a aucun lien avec internet. Et aussi ne plus voir de monde pour une heure ou 2 ca ferait du bien.
Lien à l’album photo de mon voyage ici.
“Tagging 2.0″ – is tagging (user-driven description of data on the Web) *THE* key element of “Web 2.0″? What new tools can help us organize an internet’s worth of information for our own use and to share with others? Tagging systems are taking off now, what are the issues for communities of users and for those just trying to make sense of their own stuff? This session will show what’s new with tagging and get insights from a variety of perspectives, from folksonomies to the Semantic Web.
Moderator: Don Turnbull Asst Professor, Univ of Texas at Austin
Adina Levin VP Prod, Socialtext
Prentiss Riddle Tech Evangelist, Shadows.com
Rashmi Sinha Uzanto
Thomas Vander Wal Principal & Sr Consultant, InfoCloud Solutions Inc
Don Turnbull Asst Professor, Univ of Texas at Austin
panel notes:
- what is tagging? more than just categorizing, we are labeling
- what are uses of tags? using them to describe things, people, linking users by interest, user as a personal archive system,
- tags are good for discovery
‘It may be more interesting to find a like mind than a resource recommendation’
problems with tags:
- tag spaming
- tag clouds are probably not the answer, how to make users use tags?
- we can loose subtleties of language
- no hierarchy or ranking
what will tagging 10.0 be?
how will the use of tags move from early adopters to mainstream?
You’ve got a The Next Great Idea and three brilliant engineers who want nothing more to work insane schedules for a year. This panel will discuss the key decisions you’re going to face during your first year of existence that define the culture of your company. We’re not going to tell you how to get funded, we’re going to discuss what decisions matter and which ones don’t. Come hear it from the folks who’ve done it and, sometimes, done it right.
Evan Williams CEO Odeo, Joshua Schachter Creator of del.icio.us; director of engineering for Yahoo, del.icio.us, Joel Spolsky CEO, Fog Creek Software, Michael Lopp Sr Engineering Mgr, Apple, Cabel Sasser Co-Founder, Panic.
With the web, mostly anyone with a project in mind can create a business with basically no money.
moderator: ‘did anybody here has a business plan?’
panelist: ‘heeer, no!’
Frustrated by the conventional “work-for-hire” model of the creative business, Jim Coudal of Coudal Partners and Jason Fried of 37signals have pushed their companies in a decidedly more entrepreneurial direction over the past two years. With the idea of taking a greater amount of control over the creative they produce, both firms have built products and businesses which allow them a large degree of independence and the ability to apply the crafts of design, writing and programming for their own benefit. As Coudal said in a recent article, “the only way to free yourself from the tyranny of clients is to become one.”
Jason Fried’s speach is a must hear for any creative with a web project in mind. Highly inspiring.
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