Jules Says

SXSW, Day 3

Ok, so blogging during a conference is harder than it seems, I admit. So much to catch up on! Day 3 of SXSW was Monday. The Henry Jenkins interview was fantastic. His book, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide has been on my to-read shelf for a couple of weeks. After hearing him talk, it's moved up to "next" on my list. He discussed the impact all the new options for media consumption has on the relationship between  producers and consumers. He credits early sf fan fiction with launching much of today's convergence culture, in fact refers to himself as a "fanboy." If his book is as interesting as he was in person, it'll be a great read.

Thanks to an unannounced (at least via SMS) room change and the ridiculous layout of a recent convention center addition that forces everyone to take a circuitous route to one set of rooms I've named "the dungeon", I missed the first half of the When Communities Attack panel. On the other hand, it didn't seem that I missed much. Granted, this was one of those panels I could have given, but judging by the grumbling in the halls afterward, I wasn't alone in my disappointment. It's really clear that some of the presenters simply didn't bother to prepare, or bother to look into presentation skills 101. There was too much assuming the audience knew all the acronyms, web sites, and personalities mentioned. Unfortunately, this was pretty common. The panel I attended after that was Virtual Teaming. Again, some basic presentation skills would've been helpful. This was one of many 30-minute "power sessions". 30 minutes simply isn't enough to really cover much meaningful information, IMO. In this case, the presenters wasted 10 minutes telling us what they were going to tell us, which just doesn't work in such a short session. Could've been good. Wasn't.

SXSW, Day 2

It's been another good day of programming. Making Your Short Attention Span Pay Big Dividends was fun and rather validating for me. Short attention span: it's not a bug, it's a feature! The Designing for Global Audiences panel had it's moments. There were occasional juicy examples... when you say "I need it at 5 on Friday" to someone in India, that pretty much means Monday or Tuesday. Much of the presentation meandered, though... a couple times I caught myself wondering "man, is he ever going to say anything? Online Advertising: Is It worth it was interesting, but they never really addressed the actual topic or answered their own question. Fictional Bloggers was delightful. Odin Soli talked about his years writing a personal blog detailing the daily life of a bisexual woman, grew a huge audience, and was eventually outed. I met Liz Henry at the BlogHer event Friday - turns out we peripherally know each other through the world of Science Fiction fandom. She had so much to say - it's unfortunate that this was one of the short (1/2 hr) panels - it really deserved more time. I'm eager to read lots more of Liz.

Tonight it''s the SXSW Awards Cermony, at which the Dewey Winburne award is given out. Dewey was a visionary and a friend of mine. Last year the award went to Dale Thompson, with Austin Free-Net. I'm proud to say I'm a co-founder of Austin Free-Net.