This was my day at SXSW for March 14th

Sunday was pretty rush day. 

I attended three panels: David Heinemeier-Hansson's "Why You Aren't Done Yet", Coding for Pleasure and Online Advertising: Losing the race to the bottom with John Gruber and Jim Coudal.

David HH's talk was a lot of fun. The flare and voice of the Getting Real book was personified. All the content David spoke of seemed to come from their new book Rework.

David's message was loud and clear: Cut the shit, make some changes and do good work.

Immediately following Heinemeier-Hansson's talk came the "Coding for Pleasure" panel. What I expected was some kind of conceptual talk about how to make personal projects happen. I wanted to hear "quit playing World of Warcraft and watching Lost and just do this..."

Instead we got three panelists telling us where to outsource our HTML/CSS work, what technology they used and some plugs for things they'd made.

It was a total waste of time, and most of the place left long before the panel was over

I met with Tim, Travis and Brett and the Hickory Street Cafe for a quick lunch, since we were all heading to the Gruber/Coudal talk together. Hickory Street is a good place to grab a quick lunch in Austin. Do swing by if you're in the area.

Gruber and Coudal interviewed each other for their panel. Both of them had an interesting outlook on how online advertising can work. Neither of them follow the conventional methods of selling or distributing ads – and it was refreshing to hear from people who aren't figuring out everything they do with a calculator and an accountant.

The main thing I took away from the panel was publishers should focus on making good things for their readers first, and revenue will be easier to sort out later.

After the panel we went out to have dinner. We thought it was time to have some local fare, so we went to Stubb's for some Texas barbecue. Stubb's was terrible. Thin cut slices of flavorless beef, french fries that likely came from a McCain bag all topped with a piece of Wonderbread and a mushy slop that might have once been macaroni and cheese.

After dinner we met up with some other folks and the inevitable finally happened: Someone said strippers.

On the recommendation of a local we cabbed up to Palazio.

Strip clubs in Austin aren't anything like their Calgary counterparts. There's nothing vulgar about them. There aren't guys crowded around a stage throwing coins at the dancers. They're set up like lounges. 

I was surprised by how many men brought girls on dates there. There were three or four tables with couples.

Throughout the evening girls will come by the table either waitresses or dancers. They're flirtatious and very persistent. The whole experience was a little embarrassing but a lot of fun.

The crowd outside the club at closing was pretty sketchy. There was a small fight and a lot of pretty revved up dudes shouting. I was really surprised that many of the dancers exit out the front with the patrons.

At the end of the evening Brian and I caught a cab back to the hotel, which turned out to be three blocks from the club.

This is my day at SXSW for March 13th

Saturday morning I arrived at the conference center early. There were many great looking panels happening.

I attended "We Fucked Up", a panel with folks from Happy Cog on how they recognize, deal with and learn from failure. The panelists had relevant, well dictated examples of things they'd fucked up in the past, and how they dealt with them. This was the only panel I was at where it didn't lose me in details or a lack of conflict. Particularly interesting was their part on "the two types of failure": Unrecoverable and recoverable.

Unrecoverable requires you abandon ship. Recoverable the kind that requires course correction. Both types of failure, according to the panelists, have one thing in common: you need to recognize them and own them.

The panel let out close to lunch, so a few of us went to Franks, a hot dog place near the conference center. To unleash our inner hipsters, we all ordered tall cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon. Expectedly the food was delicious and the beer was total shit.

Knowing that Ze Frank's talk at 3:30 would be busy, we got to Ballroom D early. We were able to get a seat without much trouble, but by the time the panel was about to begin the place was pretty near full.

Ze was interviewed by Scott Kirsner, and began the talk with a short presentation on some projects he's done recently. The focus of the talk was around living a creative lifestyle. Ze's an amazing speaker, and I imagine it's pretty unnerving to have to interview him.

What I took away from the panel and Q&A was something Ze's show imparted a long time ago – think it, do it.

It was really interesting to get a glimpse into Ze's day-to-day life. And some of what he had to say around making The Show was really fascinating. It sounds like it was as much or more work than you would expect to do a daily video blog with audience participation woven in.

With Ze's talk at an end we went out to have dinner. We went to Chupacabra, lured by their siren patio. The waitress was kind enough to serve us pitchers, even though they weren't really on the menu for that time of day. If you're in Austin and looking for a place to have a drink in the sun, I'd recommend it.

Tim, Brett & Travis had been raving about this pizza truck. So we set our sights on that for food. It didn't set up until 8:00pm, but was worth the wait. Stony's Pizza is fantastic – and it turns out his truck was made in Winnipeg. Although the manufacturer recommended he use frozen pizzas in it. I'm amazed he didn't punch out the salesguy.

After that we spent most of the evening looking for someplace to have a few drinks. The Austin downtown area was closed to vehicles, so walking around was easy.

Having learned my lesson from Thursday night, the mantra of the night was "pace".

This is my day at SXSW Friday, March 12th.

Brian awoke in a pretty rough state – neither of us packed any Advil. Rookie mistake.

After overcoming a great deal of pain, we hopped on a shuttle to the conference. We ate at a place called BD Riley's – an Irish pub. Burgers for breakfast. Truly living the American (Texan?) dream.

At 2:00pm I saw Margot Bloomstein talk about Content Strategy.

Content strategy is a bridge between design/IA and copy. It's performed early in the site planning process. The Content Strategist takes into account what the client wants to say and how it ties into the brand, and then outlines it.

I like the idea behind this. It allows designers to work with something concrete when they're creating comps. It gives copywriters a pretty appropriate style-guide. And of course, it can narrow the project manager's estimation down a lot. The client benefit is a project that is more likely on-time, on-budget and a better representation of themselves online.

At 3:30 I went to Ballroom D to see Ogilvy's Kaiser Kuo talk about Google's situation in China. The room was surprisingly empty.

Kaiser's insight into the Chinese Internet user base was really deep and interesting.

His message to the room was essentially "most Chinese Internet users don't care about the Internet we think they ought to have."

He outlined three scenarios of what could happen with Google in China and dispelled some of the myths around the situation. One insight that jumped out at me in particular was around the Chinese Mobile market.

Kaiser's point was, Google will be reluctant to give up in China because the mobile market there is so huge. They're making a major push into mobile with Android, and they can't ignore China's influence in this space.

After the two panels I returned to the hotel for a nap. At around 6:00pm I hopped on a shuttle back to the conference area to meet with a few friends.

We had dinner at a wonderful restaurant called Fogo de Chao; a Brazilian barbecue. If you're ever in Austin, I highly recommend it.

Finishing out the evening we met up with the iStock veterans at Imperia. They introduced us to photographer John Reese. John's portfolio is incredibly impressive. He's a very interesting guy.

Saturday will bring a panel by Ze Frank, Quentin Tarantino and the folks from Happy Cog.

Got up yesterday at 3:00am to catch a ride to the airport. Arrived in Austin at 2:30pm their time.

Getting badges at the Austin Convention Center was pretty fast considering their looked to be at least 1,000 people floating around.

Austin is a beautiful city. It's sunny and the older buildings are designed much like they are in Mexico. Seamless transitions from the inside to the outside, no vestibules to keep out cold that never happens, thin windows. There are trees everywhere. From my hotel window I can see light growth all the way to the horizon.

My cab driver tells me that in the summer it gets very hot. He said last year it was over 100 degrees (37ºC) from May to October. Right now it's 25ºC throughout the whole day.

Some friends from iStock Photo, who are veterans of this conference, showed us around last night. We had dinner with them and far too much to drink. It was nice to get some insight on how to best see the thousands of things going on here for the next 10 days.

Today my roommate Brian Clegg and I will drag our sad and hungover selves downtown to start seeing some of the interactive panels.