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

SXSW panel shopping? 13, er, 14 items in my cart

If you're like me, you're inundated with tweets, emails, Facebook messages and spamblasts soliciting your vote on proposed SXSW panels. No wonder. Public "thumbs-up" and comments count for 30 percent of the decision-making process. (Sort of like hinging a college admission on the dubious qualifier of how many letters of recommendation a candidate drums up.) Over 2300 panels were proposed this year. Your two cents counts in deciding which ones are chosen. How to shop through them if you're not a bot? You could start with the ones I'm buying, listed in no particular order:

1. Tweeting On Weekends: Are We Becoming Socially Anti-Social?
As technology allows us to share every moment instantaneously online, are we missing out on what is right in front of us? Posing this question (and presumably answering it) is Ogilvy's Rohit Bhargava, author of the new marketing book, Personality Not Included and writer of Influential Marketing blog.

Recommended For: anyone who's ever been grappled with the question of text-iquette or gotten the stink-eye for tweeting under the table

Vote and/or comment here.

2. Ad Agencies Need a New Mindset to Survive
Will the ad agency survive now that the reins of media have transferred from a few professionals to 2 billion individuals? If so, it will have to revamp its entire way of thinking. How? Find out from Edward Boches, CCO, Mullen who's organizing a panel including Rob Schwartz, CCO, TBWA\CHIAT\DAY, John Winsor, Founder & CEO of Victors & Spoils and Ben Malbon, co-founder of BBH Labs.

Recommended For: marketers, branders, anybody with a job in adland, or looking for one. Great networking possibilities.

Vote and/or comment here.

3. Ladies Claim Digital Strategy is the New Creativity
What makes this panel interesting to me isn't only its topic (what the heck constitutes creativity now?) but the fact that the panelists are all of the female persuasion. Which may be a first at this testosteroned geekfest. Organizer is Ana Andjelic, i [love] marketing blogger and contributor to AdAge. Panelists include former BBH Chairman Cindy Gallop known for her irreverance onstage and off, who I once saw flabbergast into silence a (mostly male) audience by holding up⎯and explaining⎯ a new kind of dildo.

Recommended For: creatives, strategists, planners, social media pundits. With ovaries and without.

Vote and/or comment here.

4. I'm So Productive, I Never Get Anything Done
Hoping that, for my own state of productivity, this one makes it. David Carr, digiculture columnist for New York Times, promises to shed light on a question that hobbles more of us every day: how to get things done when you're busy doing myriad other things. Like, um, writing blog posts. He produced a book. So maybe he knows.

Recommended For: anybody with a to-do list and easy access to interwebs

Vote and/or comment here.

5. Why Doesn't This TV Have a Pause Button?
Kids are growing up in a world where connectivity is as taken for granted as air. How will this affect the future of media? Spatial relationships? Multi-tasking? Panel features experts on this topic⎯kids. Moderated by Alan Wolk of KickApps, writer of acclaimed blog ToadStool⎯and dad.

Recommended For: Anyone who plans to be around in the future.

Vote and/or comment here.

6. Genius Steals: Remix Culture IS Culture
According to Faris Yakob, MDC Partners, the only way to achieve new is to remix the old. In fact, he says, recombinant processes are the only source of novelty, from sexual reproduction to idea creation to technology. Faris is a thoughtful and riveting presenter, more fun than you'd think a guy with a doctorate from Oxford would be, and I look forward to the originality with which he's sure to support his assertion that Originality is a Myth.

Recommended For: writers, strategists, creatives, thinkers, content creators

Vote and/or comment here.

7. Community Thunderdome--Branded vs Unbranded, You Decide
This panel was given last year and I was going to blow it off. It was on the last day I was there, it was early and I was exhausted. But it turned out to be one of the best I attended. Ostensibly, its subject is serious: how can brands harness crowds and collaborate with communities to find meaning within culture and market products? But more compellingly⎯it's a lot of fun. Sitting back and watching fantastic collection of entertainments compiled by Bud Caddell (creator of Bucket Brigade publishing project) and Mike Arauz (Undercurrent) provides much needed respite from talking heads.

Recommended For: anyone afloat in the information-overload that is SXSWi

Vote and/or comment here.

8. Keds. The Original Sneaker, Relaunched
What's great about SXSW is how many ideas are discussed, how many assumptions challenged. But sometimes you need a break from the headiness, to sink your teeth into a meaty case study. Darren Paul tells the story of how his interactive shop Night Agency succeeded in making a century-old brand relavent again. The tale isn't just about creativity. It's about strategies for aligning the forces of three brands with seemingly little in common⎯Bloomingdales, Keds and the Whitney Museum.

Recommended For: marketers, branders, advertisers, anybody with something to sell

Vote and/or comment here.

9. Better Crowdsourcing: Lessons Learned from the 3six5 Project
One of the most innovative crowd-fueled ideas I know: diary of a year as told from 365 points of view. Imagine having to rally, coach, edit and proofread a different writer every day. (Disclosure: I am honored to be one of those writers.) Take a peek into amazing collective consciousness created so far. I look forward to hearing behind-the-scenes stories and learning from the3six5 creators Len Kendall and Daniel Honigman as they talk about mistakes and revelations.

Recommended For: content creators, nonfiction writers, publishers, digital strategists, rabble-rousers

Vote and/or comment here.

10. Futureproof Publishing: Interactivity, Magazines, Journalism and Augmented Reality
Does the internet need to kill journalism and quality publishing or might it be what saves the industry by creating a new kind of interactive magazine? As an industry that survives on marketing dollars, how can interactivity make the publishing industry more attractive to marketers? These and other questions impacting the future of publishing will be explored in a panel moderated by Benjamin Palmer, co-founder of The Barbarian Group which has recently made interesting forays into futureproofing corporate communication.

Recommended For: writers, publishers, journalists, digital strategists, content creators, storymakers

Vote and/or comment here.

11. Interactive Narratives: Creating the Future of Literature
Oh, yea. The emerging field of creating new narratives is a topic in which I am very interested. Razorfish's Andrew Lewellen is putting together a panel of experts to explore how technologies like augmented reality, transmedia storytelling and interactive stories offer new ways for narratives to be created and experienced. What's more, he promises insights into how writers and developers can work together to go so far as to create new forms of literature.

Recommended For: writers, AR creatives, transmedia tellers, content creators, creative technologists, readers of all persuasions

Vote and/or comment here

12. Transmedia Artists Guild: New Media Needs New Representation
And who'll represent the interest of players emerging onto this new field? At SXSW last year, a group of transmedia, ARG and net-native story designers formed a new advocacy organization, representing individual producers and artists working in this still-hazily-defined world: the Transmedia Artists Guild. TAG seeks to fulfill needs that are currently overlooked by established creative guilds and advocacy organizations. What is it and how can it transform your career? Panel organized by Jay Bushman, with whom I shared a fun panel at Digital Hollywood, so I can vouch for his entertainment skills.

Recommended For: writers and creators of fictional worlds that spin off from the page or screen where they first combusted

Vote and/or comment here

13. Saying It Short: Writing Workshop with @BettyDraper
Yup, this is my own session. (If you can't sell yourself, how can you hope to sell anything else?) It's on a topic I hope interests others as much as it does me: how our definition of good writing is evolving in an age ruled by search engines and character counts. I'll take what I've learned winning writing awards in three areas (advertising, social media, litworld), pull out teaching chops (one student went on to become Lady Gaga) and, with the help of like-minded others (you!), put on a show that's interactive, informative, learning-based entertainment.

Recommended For: anyone writing today, which is to say pretty much everyone

Vote and/or comment here.

Let me know if I've missed any unadvertised specials. Shopping ends Friday, 11:59 CDT, geektime. Your two cents matters even if you can't be at the conference. SXSW releases podcasts of presentations, so you don't have to miss them even if you don't make the digipalooza in person.

UPDATE: How, in my original post, did I omit the timely Is Facebook Skynet? which explores the all-too-real possibility that as in Terminator (remember?) the platform is growing progressively smart enough to annhiliate the whole human race. (Already, it's terminated life as we knew it.) Panel led by Ian Schafer, CEO of Mad Men agency Deep Focus, who is touting it with Draperly genius: a trailer.

Recommended For: 500 million Facebook players and marketers who love them

Vote and/or comment here.

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

@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