calling all storytellers at sxsw

I'm hosting a SXSW meetup on Saturday at 11 for writers, creatives, journalists, brand stewards and other social types for an hour of brainstorming, kvetching and sharing tales out of school. Please join us! Details here. FYI, the Empire is about a ten minute hike from the Convention Center. On East 7th Street, at 606 E 7th, about a block south of Stubbs. "Empire" sounds like a lovely hotel, but actually it's a hole in the wall bar next to a music venue disguised as an automotive repair center. Gotta love Austin.

more postcards from sxsw

screen grab from Amber Case keynote

even street bands have QR codes

Mad Mannish sxsw12 fashion trend--mini fedoras

transmedia recipes for bigger brand muffins

If you're at SXSW and interested in transmedia for marketing, hope you'll make it to @BettyDraper's Guide to Social Storytelling. I'll talk about how transmedia is transforming the marketing landscape and show examples of brands using it to their advantage.  Monday, 9:30 AM in the Longhorn room at the Omni. Full disclosure. January Jones won't be able make it.

postcard from Austin

When the first SXSW took place in 1987, 150 attendees were expected, but more than 700 showed up. It feels like the same jump this year, only the shark is much bigger. Last year, 18,000 attended South by Southwest Interactive ("South by", to badge holders) and this year estimates are closer to 20,000. There are lines for everything--sometimes even lines to stand in line. (Except for women's restrooms, which is a nice change of pace.) Badge pickup for arrivals was, at one point, two hours. There are over 5000 sessions and panels to choose from, but rooms get closed out. Especially sessions about branding and marketing.

Running late to a session, I stopped by an Info Booth. "Where's Ballroom D?" I asked a friendly looking guy. He pointed to a map. I can't read maps. But I knew enough to know he had made a mistake. The box he was pointing to wasn't marked D. It was called The Ogilvy Day Stage. "They changed the name," he said. Which gives you an idea of the ad agency presence here. What used to be known as Spring Fest for Geeks is now Cannes-west for Advertisers. Some gripe about this. But there are advantages. Like that Ogilvy does cool wall-size visual notes of some sessions and makes them available each day at its Day Stage (next to the elusive Ballroom D.) You can see them in the virtual world, here.

Crowded or not, SXSW is a blast. Whatever you're interested in, someone more interesting than you will talk about it onstage or at a party. So far, I've attended sessions on social TV, transmedia, publishing, cool hunting and how women present themselves online. (Natch, missed The Crash Course in Becoming Superbetter.) I don't begrudge the attendance, nor the monsoon-hard rains. Austin needs them both. According to Wikipedia, SXSW is the highest revenue-producing event for the city's economy, bringing in $167 million last year. Excuse me while I make a civic-duty run to Allens.

new sxsw camper? here's what to pack

1. Comfortable shoes. Forget the stilettos. The conference is now broken out into themed campuses. Your sessions can be up to a mile apart. Parties always seem to be located at the top of a hill.

2. Want to be friended by people around you? Bring a power strip. Every session fills fastest near wall outlets and people are incredibly grateful for shareable connections.

3. Extra batteries for whatever needs batteries.

4. Water bottle. Alcohol is everywhere, water not so much.

5. Dollar bills. For parking. Instead of housing your rental in a mindblowingly expensive conference hotel lot (which are filled to capacity by 10 AM), you can leave it in open lots all day for $7 if you've got enough dollars to poke through the slots of these low-tech machines.

6. A thumb drive. Or two.

7. Business cards with white space to write on. So people can make note of where they met you. Trust me. They'll never remember.

8. Patience, good will and a sense of humor. There's expected to be 20,000 campers besides you. Real world social skills make the experience better for everyone.

sxsw shopping

It’s two days before thousands descend upon Austin getting their geek on at SXSW Interactive which promises to be bigger and more overwhelming than ever before. I’m exhausted already just trawling this schedule of over 5000 list of panels, events and exhibits. Not to mention the party list.

Aside from my own session on Monday, here's a few I've got in my cart:

Integrating Brands into Social Television

 Execs from Oxygen Media, Nielsen, MTV, ESPN and Adweek discuss how brands can reap benefits from engaged audiences across social platforms.

Next Stage: Immersion 101: Inventing the Future of Entertainment

 Frank Rose, Wired editor and author of The Art of Immersion chats with Susan Bonds, CEO of 42 Entertainment about the latest, greatest and not-so-great apps, ARGs and marketing campaigns.

China: Creators and Consumers of the Future

 How are consumers in a country of 1.3 billion creating and combining platforms for the newest generation bred on instant gratification and constant connectivity.

Brands as Patterns

Execs from Microsoft, Method and Hewlett-Packard join an Austrian-born composer to debate how brands can maintain a consistent voice without being repetitive in multiple media. 

How Women Present Themselves in the Digital Age

Editors from The Huffington Post, founder of the Webby Awards and the author Susan Orlean get together to delve into the sometimes paralyzing performance anxiety technology produces. 

Digital Debauchery with Anthony Bourdain

How can this not be delicious.

Pinterest Explained, Q&A with Co-Founder

Whether you're a power pinner or not, it will be fascinating to hear from a founder why the heck this relative newcomer is gaining such traction.

@bettydraper's guide to social storytelling

If you're in Austin for the SXSW digitalpalooza, hope you'll join @BettyDraper and me for a fun session on Monday morning at the Omni Hotel. It's @BettyDraper's Guide to Social Storytelling where we'll take a look at current examples of social advertising, transmedia, brand fiction and branded content to determine what makes stories work for today's social audiences--and what makes them fail. 

takeaways from sxsw--more learning, less swag

I was momentarily disappointed this year at check-in to discover that SXSW "big bags" bulged with far fewer giveaways. (I arrived in the evening, hungry, having spent the day in sustenance-free air.) Was this year's dearth of swag due to a green effort, as organizers contend, or to the fact that recession-hit companies didn't want to pony up for thousands more note pads, snacks, energy drinks, pens and CDs? But who could blame them? There were 6000 more digital attendees this year than last, a total of 17,000 swarming the Convention Center for what felt like just as many panels. The bound roster was 330 pages and almost 3 lbs. (Callout to massage therapists attending return of digital warriors.)

Sheer volume of offerings makes it impossible to do a proper summation, but to my mind, Oliver Burkeman gets it right in The Guardian by observing that what the conference was ultimately about was the fading delineation between “real life” and “online life.” Almost all of our life (for better or worse) is now being lived in connection with crowds of others in various timezones. New ways to blur the line between the physical and virtual worlds excited a lot of SXSW chatter.

A hit at parties was Instaprint, the new location-based photo booth. (Pictured, at Club DeVille) It’s a lunch-box sized printer you can hang on the wall to turn online Instagram photos to tiny actual prints. Toting two to Austin made the Breakfast agency A-listers. Another much-talked about evernet topic was mobile tagging which makes anything clickable, according to Microsoft Tag’s director of marketing. TAGs are a color, updatable version of QR codes which, happily, were not part of badges this year, eliminating the need to awkwardly point your cellphone at someone’s chest.

What else did I learn at SXSW aside from the fact that the W is Austin's new "it" hotel? Here are notes from a couple of panels. Unfortunately, I missed the one that promoted itself with a hilarious video I just saw this morning.

Your Mom Has an Ipad

This session was about UI designing for boomers. Not unemployment insurance. User interface. Which means how user-friendly a digital experience is. The goal of UI designers is to make interacting with a machine as simple and easy as possible. Obviously we need more of them on the planet.

Boomers comprise a third of the population online, reported the gratifyingly age-agnostic 30-something presenter, John McCree, pleasantly surprising me and, no doubt, the handful of other boomers in the audience of hundreds. The trick to UI designing for boomers, he said, includes added emphasis on ease of use: embedding terminology that’s consistent (don’t use “exit” on one screen and “quit” on another.) Don’t dumb down the experience, just make it simpler to navigate. And (to this boomer, most relevant) don’t keep adding features to make a device better. Adding unwanted features, just because you can, increases only confusion and irritation in those who grew up with 2-knob televisions and non-programmable rotaries.

Barry Diller Shares Insights on All Things Media

Seeing Barry Diller on the schedule made me feel better. I knew I wouldn’t be the oldest one in the room. Conveniently, his talk was located in a Ballroom next to the Ogilvynotes table, where I was able to snag illustrated notes on panels I’d missed the day before.

At first, I wondered why I was sitting there instead of at one of the 15 sessions on simultaneous offer. “The internet is a miracle,” Diller began, waxing on about its impact on culture, as if it was 1999. But when CNN anchor Poppy Harlow nudged him into meatier territory, he was off to the races. (You don't get to be one of the world's biggest Media Magillas without learning to pivot.) He quickly reacquired attention of the audience by confiding that his wife, Diane von Furstenburg, plays Angry Birds. Here's a few of his most tweeted bon mots:

on owning a business
If you don’t have a business, you’re just out there on the town square, crying out to the crowd.

on pay per use
Premium content costs money to produce. If the person creating content receives no benefit from it beyond knowing it’s being shared, the model has no commercial prospect.

on policitians
Instead of going out and making speeches, politicians should stay home and make better laws.

is content king?
Well, if you do content, you want it to be king.

advice to startups
Get enough money to get it started. Give away as little as possible. Keep your head down. Don’t listen/talk to anybody except your audience. If it works, great. If not, you get to do it all over again.

postcards from sxsw

Greetings from Austin where SXSWi campers have descended in unprecedented numbers. Hugh Forrest, director of the festival, maestro of orchestration, estimates via email there are 16,000 digital attendees this year--a increase of about 25% since 2010.

themed campuses
To accommodate surge in attendance, conference sessions are, for the first time, divided into "campuses." My session was (curiously) assigned to the Future of Journalism campus which I was dismayed to realize is 11 blocks away from Convention Center hub. I was afraid not many would make the hike but was gratified to arrive to the SRO crowd pictured. SXSWers are intrepid. Thanks to Austin Chronicle reporter Belinda Acosta for writing it up.

walking shoes
are necessary. Campus locations can be a mile apart.

truck food

Some of the best food can't be had in a restaurant, but ordered from the windows of parked lorries or airstreams with names as memorable as menu items, like Man Bites Dog and Electric Cock.

bacon

Where ever there's food, it seems, there is bacon. Even in waffles.

pedicabs
Taxis are scarce. Hotel line-ups long. People-powered transport is the fasted, most refreshing alternative to walking. No meters, though. Pedal-pushers work for tips. Going rate is $5 a head...er, derriere. Now you can even call one with your smartphone.

'pile of legos' is a foursquare location. of course

does writing still matter?

In this age of character counts and SEO metrics, are keywords now more important than words? Should writers write to captivate people or search engines? But as Copyblogger points out, "It’s people who use search engines--not some other life form." In fact, the latest SEO strategies aren't about keywords, they're about creating content so compelling others want to share it. And it's hard to make content compelling without knowing how to write well.

What's losing relevance is the way you learned how to write in third grade. The grammar that worked for Proust "dznt always matter, unless u r anal," observes Ann Handley of Marketing Profs. (She goes on to make the case for general use of good grammar, however, because "as a business leader, colleague and boss, it’s important for you to communicate clearly.")

Of course, writing for screen has its own rules of grammar which you must abide by or come off sounding stupid or pompous or careless or clueless. Remember Oprah's first tweet in all-caps?

New media is expanding our definition of good writing and putting new value on the mastery of saying it short. Brevity is becoming a key to success not only in the world of commerce. Poems are being created on twitter. Novelists are publishing stories in six words. (Longed for him. Got him. Shit. —Margaret Atwood) Literary gatekeepers are finally giving the nod to flash fiction writers like Lydia Davis.

This new emphasis on short-form has implications for writers of all persuasions, in both new and old media. It's a topic that fascinates me, and one I hope to explore in a session I've proposed for the upcoming SXSW conference: Saying It Short: Writing Workshop with @BettyDraper. Check it out here. I'd vastly appreciate your comment and/or thumbs up whether or not you can come to the conference. Tx. I mean Thanks!

can writers save publishing?

One of the best panels I attended at SXSW last year was on the future of publishing where I was happy to hear that yes, there is one⎯ if old models give way to new, creative approaches. Recently I've come into contact with three authors taking unconventional approaches to the age-old business of transforming dead trees into handheld content. Interestingly, all concepts involve crowd sourcing, that model antithetical to revered image of lone writer scratching away in a garret.

Crowdsourcing Cover Art. Crowdsourcing content isn't a new concept, actually. The book that's been a bible of sorts for getting into the ad business has been crowdsourced from creatives since the 80s. (Proud to say recent update includes an essay from AdBroad.) The author/curator is Maxine Paetro, who was manager of creative talent at some of the best agencies in New York before she segued into writing bestselling thrillers. But crowdsourcing cover art? For recently edited update now available for pre-order, her publisher offered three design choices , none of which Paetro felt was quite right. So she dreamed up a contest and sent out word to art and design schools, offering a bit of cash and the chance to be published. She received hundreds of Flickr entries from around the world, so many of which were good, she had a hard time deciding which she liked best.

Crowdsourcing an Advance, a Title, an Editorial Board. Strategy Director Bud Caddell recently launched a project on Kickstarter, to develop and publish a book that is an evaluation of how everything in the attention economy actually works, and how to profit by it. The genius of his idea was this: instead of circulating a proposal among agents, waiting for interest, then waiting for an agent to strongarm a publisher into shelling out an advance, Bud approached book writing as if he were setting up a nonprofit: he sent out word to people passionate about the same subject he was and wrote them a proposal, promising them an opportunity to help make a difference. Within a month, he enlisted not only 103 board members (including, full disclosure, myself) but over $18K which allows him, five weeks from the day he put out the book concept, to be travelling around the country doing interviews for it. Further brilliance of writing a book this way? You've got a built-in community of amenable readers, editors and fact-checkers, which relieves friends and loved ones of these onerous duties.

The Dickensian Approach: Blogging Installments Euro RSCG Chicago Chairman/CCO Steffan Postaer, discouraged by the bleak house that publishing is these days, is releasing his third novel a la Dickens whose books were first published serially in magazines. Postaer is blogging a romantic comedy chapter by chapter via blog posts, an approach that gives him the benefit of further dimensionalizing the story world with visuals. He's also staging a contest for cover art. Ironically, the winner will receive what many in publishing are fiercely resisting: an ipad.

Hopefully, many more writers are transforming old world publishing models out there. Aren't they?

3 things i learned at sxsw

QR Codes

At first, I wondered why SXSW campers were grabbing at others' badges and holding them up to their cellphones. Then, someone pointed out that QR codes were printed on badges this year. QR codes are little squares filled with boxy squiggles. They were invented in Japan (of course) and first used to keep track of auto parts for delivery. Now they're used on everything from magazine covers to business cards. QR stands for "Quick Response" and with proper reader installed, taking a pic of a QR code catapults you to a Web site. In the case of SXSW badges, you were directed to the owner's "my.SXSW" social network url. Interestingly, no one seemed to pay QRs much attention after the first day or so. For one thing, it was kind of awkward pointing your cellphone at someone's chest. For another, it seemed just as easy, and more efficient, to ask for a card.

Sticky-bits

The item in schwag bags that most got people talking were samples of Sticky Bits, a new app launched at SXSW this year. StickyBits are stickers printed with bar codes. You stick one on an object you want to track, scan the code, then upload a video, photo, voice message, text message or anything digital you want to attach. You'll be notified when the attachment is downloaded and where. Attach video to a birthday card, resume to a business card, photo of something you're trying to sell with a flier. A pack of 20 stickers are available on Amazon for $9.95, but barcodes can be downloaded for free on the StickyBits website. I haven't stuck bits on anything yet. But carrying around the pak, so I'm ready when inspired to do so.

Space Food Stix

Former Tang lovers will remember the original power bars created by Pillsbury, official sponsor of NASA. High energy protein snacks supposedly developed for space-age travel. Shaped like Slim Jims, they tasted like flavored Tootsie Rolls: peanut butter, caramel, chocolate. All were packed in foil wrapping to simulate space age-ness. Good news! They're back. Found them on trays next to the crudites at several SXSW parties. Get 'em here. Fresh from outer space.

postcards from sxsw

crowds

Almost every session I've attended at SXSW this year has been SRO, including our own, which was gratifying. Last year, 10,000 campers convened at the Convention Center in Austin. This year, the number I've heard is 14,000. You have to get to sessions early, or sit on the floor. But even finding a space on the industrial carpet isn't easy, especially near wall outlets. I was glad to snag a seat in this crowd gathered for "Extend Your Brand, There's an App for That" with Shiv Singh and Adrian Ho, moderated creatively by Brian Morrissey.



food

There's too many sessions, too little time to sit down for meals which are generally grabbed on the run from first floor cafe stands or food trucks which of course have their own twitter accounts.

making a session is as challenging as making a plane at JFK

It takes a bit of planning to navigate Austin Convention Center which is as cavernous as an international airport. Inevitably, when a session is moved, it's moved to a spot furthest geographically from where you are standing. Just like air travel.

parties

Many, many, many. As with sessions, if you don't get there early, you might not get in. Ironically, admittance to many parties the first night required hardcopy printouts of RSVP acceptances-- what? Mobile digerati were expected to have toted their printers? Party hosts have wised up since then and attempts to equalize party access to "first come, first served" have reverted to old-school VIP pass model: you don't need a printer, you need to know the right people.

Here's bird's eye view of funfest thrown last night by Barbarian with Stumbleupon, taken from the roof of the Mohawk.

And a shot from earlier in the evening: former McCann Chief Technology Strategist Faris Yakob embracing the awesome at Beer Sphere, Club Deville.

Zappos party bus/bookmobile

Zappos CEO and business book writer Tony Hsieh is one smart social media cookie.

of course, sxsw wouldn't be sxsw anywhere but austin

sign spotted by Shutterstock

Hive Awards launch at SXSW

For me the best opening party of SXSWi last night was the first annual Hive Awards show held "to honor the unsung heroes of the internet." The show was inaugurated to give props to those who innovate and create on the web but rarely get credit: coders, programmers, information architects, and others. It was the brainchild of Alan Wolk of Toadstool fame and former creative director from FCB. Ironic to me that it took a renegade from traditional advertising to come up with a way to acknowledge creators of digital.

The party was a rambunctious, live-streamed gathering of SXSW campers at Red 7, a fun bar near Convention Center. I'd thought a launch ceremony would be pretty barebones, and was pleasantly surprised by free drinks, catered eats (including local treats like chicken fried chicken which impressed my local friend who is hosting me here), a bona fide stage and comfortable seating. Alan, master of ceremonies wore a Mad Men-era tux, which contrasted dashingly with the crowd of ironic t-shirts.

Slickly produced programs were provided on chairs, but it was too dark for ad broads to read, even by the light of their iphones. So I had no idea that Ad Broad was a finalist. Honestly, hadn't seriously considered that a blogspotter who can't speak a speck of html could be thought of as a "hero of the internet." Halfway through the ceremony, my companion and housing host announced she wasn't well (maybe the chicken-fried chicken?) and I drove her home. What a thrill to receive news (via twitter of course) that Ad Broad won in the Advertising blog category.

Congrats to all winners including Deep Focus, Firstborn, RGA and others. Lucky for us and appropriate to the category that prizes are items more practical than dust-gathering engraved statuettes: flash drives.

@BettyDraper packing her hatbox for SXSW

Thanks to you who kindly voted on this proposed panel last Fall, I'm on my way to Austin where @BettyDraper will be presenting a session on Brand Fiction: what the heck is it? What can it do for your brand? How to integrate it into current marketing efforts? It's been recommended as a top SXSW panel for business and highlighted in SXSWorld and by the sharp folks at Razorfish. If you're putting your SXSW schedule together, hope you'll consider joining @Roger_Sterling (Michael Bissell) and me at 3:30 on Saturday for "Rules of Brand Fiction from Twittering Mad Men." A little fun before happy hour!

@BettyDraper needs your vote

It's that time of year again. Voting for panels for next year's SXSWi, the annual digipalooza in Austin. This year's list of offerings is more impressive than ever. Still, I'm throwing my (pillbox) hat in the ring. For last year's SXSW 2009 (which was great), I organized a "Behind the Scenes with Mad Men on Twitter" panel that seemed to go over well.

This year, I'm proposing two panel ideas. One that shares lessons in twittertainment learned from tweeting as @BettyDraper. The other sharing learnings from real life Mad Men which have surprising relevance to digital marketing. Hopefully one (or both!) of these ideas will gain traction. Whether or not they happen depends on (shameless appeal) votes from people like you! You can vote even if you can't be at the conference. SXSW releases podcasts of all presentations so you won't have to miss out! Hope you'll take a minute to give these the thumbs up. Just click on the bubbles. Or hot air balloons ;)

10 Rules of Brand Fiction from Mad Men's @BettyDraper
Recipes for creating successful twittertainment and other participatory entertainments that drive brand engagement and ROI by providing consumers with an immersive experience.

and

What Digital Marketers Can Learn From Mad Men
The transformation taking place in advertising today has been compared to the creative revolution on Madison Avenue when radio gave way to television as the most popular platform for entertainment. What do creative revolutionaries of the Mad Men era have to teach digital marketers today? Presentation will include screening of vintage commercials. Fedora optional.

what we learned being mad men on twitter

.

Part of the fun of sxsw was getting to meet people whose work I’ve admired only from afar. Steve Hall. Guy Kawasaki. Frank Rose. Henry Jenkins. And Roger Sterling aka Michael Bissell. Here we are, with Peggy Olson aka Carri Bugbee after the panel we had the pleasure of giving. During Behind the Scenes with Mad Men on Twitter , Carri summed up learning for all of us, which constitutes great advice for entertainment brands seeking to create what I call brand fiction:

1. Reserve twitter addresses for the names of all characters for projects in development. If a character’s name isn’t available, you might want to go so far as to change it before you launch the show. Because if the name isn’t available, it’s unlikely you’ll be able to retrieve it.

2. Monitor (constantly!) what’s being said about your brand in digital space. If you’re not following what people are saying about you on Twitter, you’re missing out on a treasure trove of critical data.

3. If you find yourself in the middle of a maelstrom as AMC did upon Twitter accounts shutdown, don’t bury your head. Use the dustup to your advantage. Turn the tide, as AMC did when they made sure accounts were up and running again within 24 hours.

4. For most companies, the hardest part of venturing into social media is relinquishing control they’ve taken for granted was theirs. But real-time conversations can’t be submitted for approvals. Content creators stand to gain enormously when they allow “hijacked” efforts that blur the line between brand infringement and brand extension, encouraging passionate support of advocates who will drive engagement deeper within their communities.

5. The new marketing model's component of twittertainment is surprisingly time consuming, given that posts are just 140 characters. But doing a good job takes not only adroit postings, it takes research and reading and active monitoring across a variety of platforms. Don’t expect it’s a job that current staff can simply add on. And when you choose a community manager for the role, be sure it’s someone who’s energetic and outgoing and loves to perform—look for someone who’s a bit of a ham.

6. Assign one writer to several characters. Only by controlling multiple characters, can you stage spontaneous scenes and mini-dramas which won’t work as well if characters are controlled by people who need to be coordinated, over timezones and schedules. If one writer can handle more than one character in a book or screenplay, she will prove to be equally dexterous in this medium.

If you’d like to read more, Texas State grad student Chris Troutman just posted an interesting review of the Mad Men on Twitter panel, complete with footage. Daniel Terdiman did a thoughtful writeup about what our work means for the future of marketing. And check out Supporting Characters, a consultancy that Carri and Michael and I are forming, with others. (And now back to our regularly scheduled program.)

postcards from sxswi

I just got back from Austin where I attended my first South by Southwest Interactive Conference (sxswi, to geeks) It's a convocation of 10,000 digerati from all over the world, a gathering so huge and overwhelming I can't possibly do it justice in a single post. So, like the blind man describing the elephant by the part of it he is touching, I'll tell you about a few things that struck me.



Legos

A giant pile of Legos kept kids of all ages happy in the adult playpen. Also, the Austin Convention Center is so cavernous (everything is bigger in Texas) that the giant visual was useful in directing people to where you were trying to meet them. “I’m in the lounge closest to the Legos.”




Phones

World’s highest concentration of iphones per square foot. Which were contantly dropping calls or losing connections. Wired reported that AT&T was hauling in COWS (cell-sites on wheels) to shore up capacity. (Ironically, after resisting the lure of buying one for 2 years, I’d finally succumbed to Apple last week. Probably would have been better off with my Centro.) Still, no one seemed desperate enough to stand in line for the one working old-fashioned pay phone still on premise.




Parking

Because of SXSW, I think of Austin as the Silicon Valley of Texas. So I was startled to discover arrangements for nearby parking decidedly low-tech: you fold up dollar bills as small as you can and poke them into the slot labeled with your parking space number. If the bills don’t fit, you push them in with the handy “pusher” hanging on a wire. (No not that kind of wire.)

How to get friended by people around you

All it takes is a multiple outlet power cord. Every session filled fastest near the wall outlets. Power social-networking requires lots of powering up and people were exceedingly grateful to those who shared a connection.


Tattoos

are everywhere.


BBQ

Now I know. The saucey stuff I always thought was BBQ isn’t. Lots of great BBQ served at the parties but the best by far was the real Texas BBQ was served at Sam’s in East Austin, a hole in the wall so venerated that when it burned down in 1992, the community raised funds to have it rebuilt. Sam's isn't fancy, but it is serious: slabs of many kinds of meats piled high on a paper plate, served with plastic forks and white sandwich bread: mutton, brisket, sausage and ribs so good that when Stevie Ray Vaughan played Carnegie Hall, he had them shipped to his dressing room.



Parties

Every night. This was taken at the Mohawk, a honky-tonk where The Onion (satirical newspaper) and Barbarian (satirical ad agency) hosted over 1000 to free indie rock and beer.


bats

Man (and woman) can't live online alone. My friend/hotelier and art director Pat took me to see a natural phenomenon that has become quite the tourist attraction in Austin. The largest urban bat colony in North America lives under Congress Bridge, which has been recently renovated to accommodate them. Every night from mid-March to November, bats emerge at dusk to forage for food. It's quite a sight. They fly, forming clouds as they flit through the air like giant black butterflies. I took a few shots, but mine pale next to this one taken by another of Pat’s houseguests, photographer James Salzano.


James Salzano