Monday, March 10, 2003
Yesterday was a lot to digest. I'm going to have to organize my notes into something more coherent. There were some pretty good sessions. I went to "Trends in How the Internet Connects People" with the meetup.com guy, livejournal guy, and the hotornot.com guy. That was decent. Then there was "Journalism: Old vs. New," with a bunch of people. Lawrence Lessig's speech was good, but nothing new to me. The last one I went to was "Because We Can: Web Publishing for the Hell of It," which wasn't too productive, but was pretty entertaining. Random thoughts:
- I need to find a SXSW buddy. Going alone is clearly less fun than it would be with a friend.
- Apple is kicking ass in the notebooks for the web-hip department. I'm seeing a 2:1 ratio of Powerbooks/iBooks to PC notebooks. A lot of the Apple users are now also Safari users, which is pretty significant for a project that's only been out for a month and is still in beta.
- The web royalty cliques translate to real world as well. They have groupies and hangers-on. It's kind of funny in a high school sort of way. I'm jealous.
- I don't know if this is the standard reaction to something like this, but the value in the panels is more in what they provoke me to think about and less in what they actually say. I guess it's because 99% of an idea is coming up with it, and 1% understanding it. They say it, I understand it, and then move on. Or maybe it's just egotism. Perhaps there's a bigger lesson here that goes along with the whole "weblogs as conversation" idea. It's not about broadcasting complete, well-formed thoughts like more traditional media. It's about stimulating people to think (hopefully!) and respond. Or maybe I've been infected with the new media virus.
- Real-time weblogging is a gimmick. I have a notebook computer and wireless access in the panels, but it seems completely pointless to post my stream-of-consciousness sentence fragments. I do not endeavor to be a text-mode video camera. It's about how the world looks from where I am, you know? And that doesn't mean what I see, but what I think about it. I need time to sort through my notes and formalize and organize my thoughts (ironically, one of which being the advantage of weblogs being that one doesn't have to, and perhaps should not, stimulated by the "Old vs. New Journalism" panel). And that's going to take a little while, possibly after SXSW is over. Not to mention there's the car time, when my brain is buzzing as I drive home. Unfortunately I can't exactly type and drive at the same time, so I forget most of it. Perhaps that's for the best.