Category: Travel

SxSW 2002

Well, if you’ve been wondering where I’ve been for the past few days, wonder no more. I’m in (fairly) sunny Austin, for the South by Southwest Interactive conference. Rest assured that I’ll have a full report with pictures posted in, oh, about three months, but in summary, I’m having a blast hanging around with some incredibly smart and talented people. In fact, just as I was writing this post, I introduced myself to Clive Thompson, one of the editors of Shift magazine and a really great writer on web subjects.

One of my ongoing projects is to write a profile of Canadian web whirlwind Cory Doctorow, whom I’ve also met here. Well, Cory has set up his Airport base station here in the Convention Center, and in fact this is how I’m posting right now. He just walked by to tell me about it and Clive grabbed him and set up a breakfast meeting. So, it’s quite possible that I’m going to be scooped by Clive Thompson.

In other Canadian news, last night I met Nicci Scheid, who is the New Media Manager for Now magazine. And, GTABlogger Katherine Parrish is here, too, putting together a report for CBC Radio’s Definitely Not The Opera. Suddenly, I feel lazy and untalented…

Chicago Notes

Back from the Windy City with some keen observations:

  • We saw flags and “God Bless America” and “United We Stand” posters all over the place.
  • The Chicago El has got to be the most un-user friendly transportation system in the world. The signage is confusing. There are not just two stations named “Harlem” but three, with two on the same line!
  • I like Frank Lloyd Wright’s “Prairie Style” architecture better than the Victorian style.
  • America still surprises me with its stark distinction between black neighbourhoods and white ones.
  • The American Girl doll phenomenon is really freaky. We spent some time at “American Girl Place” and found girls buying clothes so they could dress like their dolls, and sitting in the restaurant sipping tea along with their dolls. Oh, and spending ungodly amounts of their parents’ money on outfits and accessories.

Yes, we had a wonderful time. But I must complain that with all the media coverage of how airline security is getting tougher, we noticed no differences at all.

Welcome Home James!

From an email I sent to my gracious hosts, Dinah, Kristin, and Jish:

“Just wanted to let you all know I’m back safely, even though I had an aisle seat in the second to last row on my SF-Pittsburgh flight and we had awful turbulence and the freakish looking permatanned “flight attendant” almost spilled things on me and some old guy almost “air raged” at me when I tried to get past him on the way off the plane since he couldn’t get his bags out of the overhead container and somehow I lost my key and couldn’t wake Brooke since she had the phone unplugged and so I had to wait almost half an hour in the lobby of my building at 1am on a Monday night when no one comes in or out until Brooke finally woke and plugged the phone in and got my pathetic message saying I’m stuck in the lobby and please come down and let me in…”