Abductedcow | SXSWi

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.