Monthly Archives: March 2012

All hail Popehat, the snark overlord!!!

Posted on by
Reply

Pony on the shore, New Forest, Copyright Jim Champion and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons LicenceHis newly-developed policy on accepting paid posts to his blog is one for the ages:

1. We will accept a paid post from you.

2. The payment shall be in the form of a pony.

3. The prettiness and awesomeness of the pony shall be in direct proportion to the tediousness, banality, and sub-literacy of your guest post. If your post is quite good, you can pay us with any pony, even the sort of tired, dead-eyed pony you can steal from a child’s party in a suburb where the home foreclosure rate exceeds 50%. But for each cliche, null-content sentence, questionable segue, or instance of meaningless drivel appearing in the post, the pony must grow steadily more pretty, to the theoretical point where the pony is so pretty that it causes a quantum pony-cuteness singularity. For each spelling or grammatical error in your post, the pony must be one step more awesome, in the sense of “terrifying.” If you ever use an apostrophe before an “s” in a word that is plural, not possessive, the pony must possess the ability to breathe fire a minimum distance of twenty (20) feet.

4. The pony must be real, not pretend.

5. No Shetlands. Are you kidding me?

6. Also, hay. For the pony. And, frankly, it wouldn’t hurt us to lay some down for Clark.

I salute you, good sir. I wish I had but a fraction of your power.

Photo credit: Pony on the shore, New Forest, © Copyright Jim Champion and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence

Share

I dare say my mind has not returned to the working world

Posted on by
Reply

My SXSWi experienced has left me feeling inspired, intrigued, excited, energized, and…..utterly, entirely unmotivated.

Perhaps not surprisingly, spending several days talking to interesting people about interesting concepts and innovations is far more exciting than sitting in a home office and actually doing the stuff we talked about.

Share

SXSW Diary, Day Six

Posted on by
Reply

For those who spent all of SXSWi at doggie daycare, it's time to go home!The Interactive conference is over. I am catastrophically behind on work. Therefore, I did not do anything remotely SXSW-related today. Aside from writing this and a few other blog posts, I mean. I didn’t even leave the house except to go pick up my dog from the boarding place (she was very happy to see me!)

To the awesome folks I met over the past few days, I’ll get around to e-mailing you at some point, really. Hopefully you’ll be around next year, and so will I.

Share

SXSW just keeps on growing

Posted on by
Reply

n.a.s.a.-sxsw-2009-779328 by lullabyesFrom Omar Gallaga at Austin360, we learn of the explosive growth of South by Southwest Interactive. This year, there were 24,569 paid registrations, a 27% increase from last year’s total of 19,364.

In 2010, there were 14,251 paid registrations. In two years, that’s an increase of 10,318 people, or 72%. Assuming my math is correct, and it probably isn’t. Most of the pre-SXSW articles I read used the number 15,000 to describe how many attendees to expect. I have no idea if all 24,569 people actually showed up, but there were certainly many, many, many people there.

In case you are wondering, this is more people than the total population of Alvin (pop. 24,236) and San Benito (pop. 24,250), Texas; and slightly fewer than Paris (pop. 25,171) and Seguin (pop. 25,175).

We rule.

Photo credit: n.a.s.a.-sxsw-2009-779328 by lullabyes.

Share

SXSW Diary, Day Five

Posted on by
Reply
Travis County Courthouse

Nothing remotely related to SXSW was going on in the building today

I began the last day of the Interactive festival in just the way that anyone trying to leave their law career behind would like to begin it. By going to court.

I also had a rather inauspicious beginning to the day due to an unfortunate goof. Since I spent the weekend at a sleepover of sorts, I had not had an opportunity to “spring forward” with any of the clocks at home. When I got home last night, tired from a day of learning and growing as a person, the time change of the previous day was the farthest thing from my mind.

When my alarm clock went off at 7:00 a.m., affording me a whole two hours to wake up, shower, remember how to tie a tie, and get my butt to the courthouse, I did not realize it was actually 8:00 a.m. For once, I’m glad I have this compulsive need to wake up earlier than is strictly necessary. Rather than make it to the courthouse with around 30 minutes to spare. I arrived with around 3 extra minutes. The simple fact that I arrived on time should be cause for a damn parade, but I still don’t see any bunting.

Miraculously, I was in an out of court in record time, arriving at just short of 9:15 a.m. and adjourning just after 9:30. With the catastrophic traffic, I was parking near the Convention Center by about 10:15, and comically changing clothes in the car. Luckily, no one walked by to see the show.

Since I had just been reminded that I am a lawyer…

I got in just in time for a CLE presentation, which I decided I should attend because hey! CLE credit!

I went to two CLE sessions, which I will delve into on my law blog:

The Sweetness plays the Samsung Bloggers' LoungeBack to the Lounge!!!

I could tell I was burning out on panels, almost for good, as I fled the CLE room ahead of a panel on something like “Maximizing Revenues from Film.” You would think I could want to hear that, but I felt like just talking to people.

Once again, the bloggers’ lounge proved to be a great place to get free food and meet people. I met a fellow legal ghost-blogger. An interesting band called the Sweetness played, and then they kicked us out at 4:00 p.m., a couple hours earlier than on previous days.

SXSW NSFW

To cap off the conference, I headed with a friend to a session at the Sheraton Hotel. Thus involved a rather comical search for a Car2Go and a ponderous drive through absurd amounts of traffic. Our destination? A session titled “This Talk Is NSFW: Nudity and Online Journalism.” Thanks to traffic, we missed the first half, and I’m not sure I ever quite picked up the thread of the discussion.

As we walked in, the speaker, Keith Plocek, the Director of Web Content and Traffic at Village Voice Media, was showing slides of people in various states of undress and asking people to vote on whether they thought the image was “NSFW.” The issue was when a newspaper or other news source should tag an article or picture as NSFW. The general rule relates to context, but it can also be quite political. Whether or not to tag a picture, he said, largely depends on who is being sexy in the picture. Pictures that seem “gay” are much more likely to get tagged. Using the NSFW tag is a great way to get traffic, but it will get you angry comments if it’s too tame. You don’t want to deceive your readers about this issue, silly as it may seem, because that erodes your overall credibility.

He also talked about the importance of “covering” events as opposed to “pandering.” “Pandering” would be putting a naked woman somewhere and taking pictures, as opposed to covering a porn convention already in progress. He showed photos of the World Naked Bike Ride in Los Angeles from a few years ago. He said the page got about 800,000 views when they posted it, and then it leveled off. The page got even more hits the following year, in anticipation of the next ride, and now it’s up to about 2.5 million hits. Obviously, the NSFW tag gets attention.

They have to make some editorial decisions about what to cover, though, so they don’t over-use the tag. For example, they cannot cover every burlesque event in the city.

One question from the audience was about violent content. The NSFW can be used for violent content as well as sexual content. Apparently there is another tag, NSFL (“not safe for life” or “not safe for lunch”), used for particularly disturbing violent content. People tend to have certain expectations when they click on a link tagged “NSFW,” i.e. boobs. Don’t show them something really gross if they are expecting boobs.

And that’s all she wrote…

I wanted to go to the party thrown by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, but by the time I got home, I knew that is where I’d be staying.

Tomorrow, I catch up on work.

Thursday, music…

Share

Since my iPad case has been so popular, here’s how you can get one too!

Posted on by
Reply

It think it is fair to say that my iPad case has been one of the breakway stars of South by Southwest Interactive 2012. At least six people have approached me asking if they can take a picture of the case, and not a single one of them has asked me to pose with the case. I guess that shows you who, between me and the case, is the photogenic one.

For those who have not experienced the wonder of the case, it makes the iPad look like an Etch-A-Sketch. You know you want some of this.

20120313-152351.jpg

Thanks to Amazon, such a fly case can be yours, too. You can also get it directly from Headcase. Well, you can do this if you think you could handle this much concentrated awesome. Can you?

Share

Homeless people offer wifi service at SXSW

Posted on by
Reply

secret wifi hotspotThe latest gimmick to come out of SXSW has troubled quite a few people while also offering a valuable service. A marketing company called BBH has provided several homeless people with mobile wifi hubs–I think that’s the right term, but I’m not much of a techie–so people can quickly access the internet in downtown Austin, where the sheer mass of people makes accessing the 3G network problematic.

The plan has caused pretty substantial controversy, with reporting in the New York Times and even on BBC News.

I’m of two minds on the matter. For one thing, the name of the program, “Homeless Hotspots,” seems exploitative. Actually, the whole program seems exploitative in one way or another. At the same time, it is offering an opportunity that did not otherwise exist. I think the real debate should be in how the program is managed and how revenues are distributed–payments go directly to the company via PayPal.

Alternet offered a reasonable criticism of the program:

Mark [West] told us that they found him through a homeless shelter in Austin, where he has a case manager helping him look for employment. He doesn’t have an option while he’s out providing internet to check and see how much money he’s earned, but he had cards to hand out to passersby as well with his name on them (he was writing his name on the cards with a Sharpie) so that they could find and donate to him directly.

“The weather and the holidays were kind of sketchy,” he said, “I’m very confident that I’ll have something before summer. I took this opportunity to work now.”

“It’s your company,” he stressed, “What you bring in is what you bring in. They bought the devices, they’re allowing us to use the devices to bring in our own revenue.” But as my colleague Matt Bors noted, when you actually own your own business, no one takes away your supplies after four days. You don’t work for a suggested donation. You work for a salary, for an hourly rate, when you work for a company.

BBH compared the work to the street newspapers that homeless people in many cities use to raise money, but the key difference there is that in those cases, the newspapers are written by the homeless, and contain content that has political views. In this case, Mark cannot use the service he is providing, nor are the users of his service getting his story or his political views.

Of course, this is assuming that the point of the program is to spotlight the problem of homelessness, as opposed to offering a gimmicky service. The major difference between wifi service and newspapers, in my opinion, is that newspapers exist almost solely to convey viewpoints and opinions. The “Homeless Hotspots” program is primarily about allowing people in downtown Austin to get on the internet. Whether they are somehow exploiting or mistreating the homeless people involved in the program, I suspect, is the real controversy. I’m just not convinced that this is a particularly strong argument. Putting homeless people on a sort of technological display seems preferable to a different extreme, as noted by John Cole:

How is paying someone to distribute wifi access any different than paying someone to work in your food stand at SXSW for a week? I don’t see anything unseemly or wrong about it at all- they are providing a service and making some money, and I fail to see how it is different from a vendor selling t-shirts or bottled water.

And the fact that they are using homeless people seems to be better than what normally happens any time a big conference comes to a big city, which is basically they are cleared off the streets and penned up out of sight and out of mind. Again, maybe I’m wrong, but I just don’t get what is so awful about this.

My jury is still out on this. Discuss.

Photo credit: ‘secret wifi hotspot’ by woodleywonderworks, on Flickr.

Share

SXSW Diary, Day Four

Posted on by
Reply

We are now more than halfway through the excitement! Part of me is sad to think it will be over soon. The entire rest of me is exhausted, and slightly annoyed at that other part for continuing to make it do stuff.

The day was foggyThe day started out cold and foggy. It abruptly turned warm and sunny mid-morning, but this was not an inspiring way to start the day.

Not that my dietary habits are of any particular interest, but I had an awesome breakfast at Kerbey Lane, followed by some aimless wandering. I have been on vacation in my own town for the past few days, but today I must return to my actual house because of some real-world obligations, alas.

Copyright trolls

The first session I attended was “The Undoing of Copyright Trolls” (#UndoTrolls on Twitter), by Robert A. Spanner of the Trial & Technology Law Group. Since this was the only explicitly legal session I’ve been to so far, I’m going to put it on my law blog.

Game of Thrones geek-out

Perhaps the most anticipated (by me) event of the whole conference was the Game of Thrones meetup in Palm Park around 11:00 a.m. For those of you who do not know what Game of Thrones is, I have to ask, like I asked the people who’d never heard of “Firefly,” what are you doing here???

Moving on, Game of Thrones is the first book of the epic fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin. It is also a television series on HBO, starting its second season (roughly corresponding to the second book) on April 1.

The meetup was just a chance for fans of the books/show to hang out, talk about the books or show, avoid spoilers, and so on. It was great, after several days of feeling intimidated by my lack of technical know-how and slightly overwhelmed by the sheer volume of my own aspirations as a writer, to meet some like-minded people in an area that is more geeky than nerdy. I speak geek far better than I speak nerd. I happen to have strong opinions on the fundamental difference between “geeks” and “nerds.” That’s for another post, though.

So anyway, I met some awesome folks, found inspiration, learned a few new Westeros conspiracy theories, and fun was had by all.

Robert Rodriguez at SXSWChillin’

After hanging out with same Game of Thrones fan friends for an hour or so, I decided to wander again. I’m honestly a bit burned out on panels and sessions. I would rather hang out and meet interesting people. After grabbing a sandwich and charging my phone, I decided to head back to the Samsung Bloggers’ Lounge. I actually found a seat and once again met interesting writer types.

Since the whole raison d’être of this conference is to meet people, that seemed like the best use of my time. Another enticing feature of SXSW is chance celebrity sightings and surprise apearances. As I sat in the lounge writing and chatting, the person next to me excitedly noted that Robert Rodriguez was sitting on the stage. Turns out he was there for a live interview with “What’s Trending,” a web series or something. I have now achieved my obligation to see a famous person.

Actually, I’m pretty sure I saw Rob Riggle walking around Saturday, although his badge had someone else’s name on it. When I stood in line to get my badge on Friday, I stood next to someone I call not-Ben-Affleck. This is because I determined that he was not, in fact, Ben Affleck.

There was also a musician named Daria Musk who apparently built a following on Google+ and plays “hangout concerts.” She played on the stage for a little while and broadcast it (is that the word?) on Google+. I’m not entirely sold on the concept yet. It might have been the song title “+1 Me.”

On an unrelated note, I missed a panel the other day that sounded interesting, “Sex Nets: Pickup Artists vs. Feminists.” There were not as many fireworks as one might expect with those two groups thrown together, but I was more interested in hearing what people had to say. Panel participant Amanda Marcotte has a write-up of how the panel went. Worth a look.

Photo credit: ‘The day was foggy,’ ‘Robert Rodriguez at SXSW’ by wondermutt, on Flickr.

Share

SXSW Diary, Day Three

Posted on by
Reply

Today began with something spooky. With no alarm clock, I woke up at exactly the same time as yesterday. Except that the “exact same time” today isn’t really the same time as yesterday, it’s one hour earlier!!! How did my un/subconscious self know???

Of course, I followed that up by trying to do some work, without coffee. I got a decent bit done, as in I’m only two days behind instead of four, but I didn’t get to the Convention Center until around 11:00 a.m. In my own warped sense of time, that’s what counts for “late.”

Jeffrey Tambor at SXSWiOn the plus side, it is finally sunny!!!

I had a respite because, according to the SXSW website, a panel I wanted to see at 9:30 a.m. was canceled, rescheduled, or something. At any rate, it disappeared from the schedule.

I had a hearty breakfast of coffee and two danishes from one of the many Jo’s Coffee stands scattered around the Convention Center, and made my way to the fourth floor. I was particularly excited this morning, because Jeffrey Tambor, George Bluth himself, was leading an “acting workshop” (#SXtambor on Twitter). Nothing was going to keep me from this. I really mean nothing. I sat through part of a presentation called “What is ‘Social TV’?” (#SXsocialweb on Twitter) just so I would already be in the room (the same Room 18abcd that had caused me so much grief over Joss Whedon yesterday). It was interesting, although it was a bit over my head in terms of both technological and marketing jargon.

Jeffrey Tambor

All I can really say about Jeffrey Tambor’s presentation is that it was awesome. He coached two young actors, Matt and Caitlyn, for our entertainment and edification. As an improvisermand possibly-aspiring actor, it was incredibly useful. Mr. Tambor also confirmed that they will be making an “Arrested Development” movie and ten episodes for Netflix. Life is good.

Laugh by Deborah ArgyropoulosBlogging, hanging out, art appreciation

I just hung out for a while after that. I did some writing, met a fellow starving artist, and did not make it to the Funny or Die panel.

In the afternoon, I made my way up 6th Street, bathed in sunlight and surrounded by hipsters, to an open house at GoLab Austin. I noticed a distinct but gradual shift as I walked a mere two blocks north from the hip-but-bookish vibe of the Interactive attendees to the full-on-ironic atmosphere of the early music festival arrivals on 6th Street. It foreshadows what is about to befall my city.

GoLab Austin is a coworking space and art gallery. Some good art, and we heard from Shea Little, one of the founders of E.A.S.T. (East Austin Studio Tour) and the forthcoming West Austin Studio Tour. It was a nice break from the technological themes I had been hearing for several days.

Adult entertainment

I met up with a buddy and we decided to hit one more panel at the Stephen F. Austin Hotel. This was only the second panel I had attended away from the Convention Center. On a side note, even though the panels that might be most relevant to my field are at the Sheraton, roughly ten blocks to the north of the Convention Center, I have enjoying the atmosphere and the energy of the Convention Center enough to just stay there so far.

We went to a panel called “Maintaining Sanity and Profitability in Adult” (#SaneProfit on Twitter), largely out of curiosity about how they approach their business models. (Lest you think there was anything prurient whatsoever about this panel, all four presenters were middle-aged and decidedly casual, and there were no visual aids whatsoever.)

The discussion was mostly about trends in both brick-and-mortar and online adult businesses. The owner of Austin boutique Forbidden Fruit, Lynn Raridon, talked about the advantages of a physical retail location over the internet when selling, ahem “intimacy enhancement devices” (her words: “feeling is believing”). At the same time, operating a retail S.O.B. (sexually-oriented business) has its challenges, mostly in the form on legal restrictions. A business where more than a certain percentage of its products or services are legally deemed “sexual” in nature (I think they said 30%) faces extensive zoning restrictions, pretty much limited to industrial areas.

As for the internet, file sharing and “tube” sites (like YouTube but, you know…) are screwing up the profitability of sites that offer prepared content. The growth areas, they say, that cannot be pirated, are live webcam sites and “adult dating” sites. Setting up a webcam site from scratch requires a substantial investment in both hardware and software (make a pun about that and you are dead to me), but “white label” sites offer much of the technology and ongoing support. A person can put their own name on a white label site, the company provides the software, website, etc., and revenues are split, often as much as 50/50 between the company and the performer.

They talked a bit about a Canadian company called Manwin that apparently owns a lot of these tube sites. It you are interested in the business side of such things, I Googled them and found this New York Magazine article from a few years ago.

They talked quite a bit about the stigma of having any involvement at all in the adult industry, even if it is only peripheral, like by offering technical help. Opinions differed as to whether people should downplay their involvement or wear it proudly. Sid Grief, president of AAA News, has been involved in the adult business for 37 years. He said (and I paraphrase somewhat): “Being a pornographer is like being pregnant. There’s no such thing as a little bit pregnant, so be glorious in it.” Connor Young, a webmaster and marketing consultant, said that he thinks it is okay to dabble in adult, but to be careful how much of that you let show.

Jay Kopita, VP of YNOT.com and a marketing consultant with Young, made a very interesting point about social media and marketing. As social media companies are trying to get users to basically market to each other, they are looking into people’s search histories, and psychologists and other professionals are analyzing this data to try to determine what kind of person you are. This does not refer to a value judgment so much as a marketing category. I am not as familiar with Google’s new privacy policy as I should be, but I think it might play a big part in this.

Benedict Cumberbatch filming Sherlock croppedNot going to SXSW parties

A friend told me about a PBS party downtown, featuring the cast of the BBC’s “Sherlock.” Although I know several people who would never forgive me if they knew I had the opportunity to meet, or even stand in the same room with, Benedict Cumberbatch and didn’t do it, they would never forgive me (And if they read this, now they know.) Despite his delightfully-British name and the fact that even I will admit the dude is quite handsome, I went home to watch TV with the girlfriend (having probably neglected to mention thay whole “handsome” thing.)

I did, however, find this unintentionally-funny blog post from a libertarian-leaning blogger on how last year’s PBS and NPR parties during SXSW were a waste of taxpayer dollars since the entire public was not able to go to them. To be fair, even without a badge, I heard you could get in if you waited in line. The bar isn’t big enough to hold all of America, though.

Two days of interactive fun left, so I needs my rest.

Photo credits: ‘Jeffrey Tambor at SXSWi,’ ‘Laugh by Deborah Argyropoulos’ by wondermutt, on Flickr; Benedict_Cumberbatch_filming_Sherlock.jpg: Fat Les from London, UK derivative work: RanZag (Benedict_Cumberbatch_filming_Sherlock.jpg) [CC-BY-2.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Share