SXSW: Day 4

Grabbed Pizza Hut at the Day Stage Cafe (bad idea) and sat in on the announcement of the Bloggies winners. Totally anticlimactic. The vast majority of winners aren't even there, so they just read through them all really quickly and that's about it. The IRC simulcast was pretty neat, though.

Rounded up the posse and headed across the street to the Hilton for Dan Rather's keynote interview. He talked a whole lot about journalistic ideals and not so much about blogs. Meh.

Next panel: Journalism in Blogs. Very legalese-focused. I wouldn't go so far as to consider myself a journalist, but since I blog about the Twin Cities for the people of Twin Cities, the line could be fuzzy.

Next panel: The Invisible Blogosphere with Jay Allen from Six Apart (PM for Movable Type). Everyone's been asking what the heck does he mean by "invisible blogosphere"? Jay Allen says it's privacy (by obscurity or by design): undiscovered blogs (off the radar of current metrics, foreign-language blogs (LJ in Russia, moblogging in Japan, only a matter of time in China and India, Brazilians on social networks), private personal blogs (flickr, vox, twitter, LJ, facebook), intranet blogs (fedex, boeing, genentech, intel) (internal marketing/communications, project/workgroup collaboration, workflow processes). Jay Allen wants to see blogging replace email to personal network via controls like LJ/vox/etc. It's more permanent and avoids the "email is broken"/spam factor. Short, sweet, to the point. Great power panel presentation.

Last panel: Do You Blog on the First Date? I think I'm more interested in a discussion of blogging about your non-blogging friends. People who are on the internet off to be likely to read it, but not so much into the blogging themselves. And I have a hard time giving a shit about your experience getting paid to blog about your dating life. I can't do this justice. Samhita will have a delightfully scathing review shortly. She was bristling the whole time.

Met up with the Metrobloggers at Nuclear Taco. Criminy, that's some hot shit. I mean, they post warnings, so you (should) know what you're getting yourself into. They are not kidding. Kinda hard to talk between the DJ in the Nuclear Taco tent and the band playing on the other side of the square in the Mozilla tent. Didn't stay too long. I needed some food anyway, since I couldn't eat my tacos.

Stopped in briefly at 20x2, since I was walking past it anyway. 20x2 is an event in which 20 different people have 2 minutes to answer a specific question. They can present this answer in any way they want. This year's question was "What if?" Saw about three of the presentations, then moved on for food. It would probably be pretty cool if you get there early and can sit comfortably through the whole thing.

Continued on to The Hideout (again) to catch up with folks. Had a snack and settled in for conversation. In the mean time, some sort of slam poetry event broke out. It was kind of strange. Some little guy got mad and tried to start a fight in the middle of it.

We all went over to Paradise Cafe for food and beverage. More chilling, chatting, and snacking. All the partying is starting to catch up with everyone. Great fun, though. I love hanging out with intelligent people. I'm finally feeling like I'm really getting what I wanted out of being here.

[flickr photoset]