South Austin is one of those special places in the world. If you’ve never been here you probably don’t understand. Take some old hippies, some new hippies, some Mexican culture, a good music scene that runs the gamut between country to punk, mix them all up with some great food to be found in some fantastically crusty dives, and you’ve got a close approximation.

Artz Rib House is a great example. Serious BBQ, live music, and one of the top five sketchiest bathrooms on South Lamar. Last night they sat our party of four at at six-top in the main room where the music was happening. Soon enough our spare seats were taken by two Old-Austin-Type-Folks. These are the ones who’ve been here since the mid 70’s when there were more prostitutes than musicians and frat boys on 6th street. They’ve been the music scene and presumably they all personally knew Stevie Ray Vaughn.

So J.B. and MariBeth. They plop down at our table, absolutely taken aback that the hostess would try and seat them anywhere other than directly in front of the weee stage, so would we mind sharing our table ? He’s got the long grey hair and leather motorcycle vest thing going on. Dimes to Dollars he’s seen some interesting days in this town and others. A musician, a pianist classically trained. They know and introduce us to members of the band. They know Art, proprietor, slinger of excellent BBQ and sides and introduce us. Orbits and trajectories that would have remained mutually exclusive are smashed together by the inexorable force of gravity that is South Austin. That’s why we love it here.

At the end of dinner, brow perspiring from the excessive meal, I scrape the last resisting remnant of the baked potato through the detritus of a half rack of baby back ribs and sausage. J.B. regards the wreckage of my plate, finished in record time and says, “Son, I’m proud to know you.”

You too man.

Once again i’m struck by the intellgence of some of the folks presenting here.

TIVO will save democracy…
-Craig Newmark, Craigslist

His basic premiss here was if we can make politicians actually do their jobs instead of fundraising then the government would work a helluva lot better. TIVO and digital video recorders in general are making commercials an obsolete over-priced medium.

Again, smart, smart people.

And to finish up our day, here’s a bit of pirate Zen. I honestly have no earthly idea what this dude was about.

So it begins. I’m sitting in a meeting room in the Austin convention center, in a panel about being a web design superhero. I’ve got 15 people in front of me also updating their sites. More to come…

Update – Web design Superhero

A designer is not just someone who can draw a pretty picture.

-Andy Budd Creative Dir, Clearleft Ltd
An intresting thought about the future, while I’m not sure I like, i think it’s probably a reality. As a side note, I’ve never seen so many treo’s in one room.

Lunch
Adventure race before the conferfence: bad plan. Abdventure race and no lunch before first panel, just plain dumb. Noodle-ism to the rescue. Also, thank god/buddah/insert your diety here I’m a local…I saw Interactive folks headed for the Hilton for lunch. Poor bastards. Or at least they will be after thay pay their tab.

Jim Coudal of Coudal Partners and Jason Fried of 37signals Keynote

The creative shall inherit the earth ? Maybe, but it’s probably more likely that the curious will inherit the earth.

-Jim Coudal
Coudal had some really intresitng things to say about design, and why are we doing work for other peoples products, when we could just make your own product. He also talked about how we should, with any project 1) be able to do good work, 2) be able to get well paid 3) and be able to learn something. Fried (who I was really looking forward to, cause their products are so aweosme) was a little bit of a let down, although he did have some intresting this to say about the theory of less is more. Might should have thought about that in his remarks.

Online vs Offline Spaces
how the online spaces affect (effect?) the real world. Whoa. Mappa mundi for the web. Essentially, we’re talking about the box of photos at your grandma’s house that show what the property was like 30,50,60 years ago. Accept making it mobile. Making a collective history of the world, that affects every square inch of the planet and make it annotated, by everyone. Think wikipedia, meets the scrapbook. Wild.

Passionate Users
The theory is your users either love you or hate you but either is good. It’s mediocre we’re your screwed
Also the concept of the brain as a legacy brain is very interesting. we’re saying there’s a ‘crap filter’ (her words not mine) to make an impact, to keep an image/concept/idea to stick. Also that the brain cares about conversational language over lecture.

Other SXSW observations.
The badge glance: Everbody you walk by gives a glance at the the badge to check if your somebody famous. funny.
The bag breakdown: People carrying Crumpler bags are westcoast, Texas folks, and middle people are Timbuk2 kids and all the East-Coasters are carrying ‘distressed’ leather satchels.

wow. I’m so done.