Sadly, I wasn’t able to post to this blog from South by Southwest Interactive 2007. However, I did update Twitter frequently using my mobile phone. So if you were watching Twitter you knew, for example, that I was at one point tossed into the back of a battered red pickup truck and driven across Austin to an unknown destination. Fortunately, delicious tacos awaited me at the end of the ride and not a horrible death at the hands of a drug cartel. (Always a possibility at these tech conferences.)

Here are a few scattered observations:

There’s more to the Metaverse than Second Life
SXSWi opened my eyes to a variety of online virtual realms, such as the delightful game-powered world of Puzzle Pirates, Three Rings’Whirled project, and MTV’s virtual space that lets fans of the shows Laguna Beach and The Hills interact with their world (and smooch their stars.) Hot topic for discussion: should companies market to users, or to their avatars–the online representations of who the users would like to be?

There are good notes on the panel “Avatar-Based Marketing in Synthetic Worlds” available at Blast First (summary) and 3pointD (full).

Alternate Reality Gaming is on the rise
How would you like to take thousands of smart, talkative, excitable people and immerse them completely, obsessively, and joyfully, in your brand? Alternate Reality Games, or ARGs, have been doing this since 2001 when subtle clues in promotional materials for the movie A.I. led audiences down the rabbit hole where they collaboratively solved a genre-crossing interactive murder mystery. Since then ARGs have been employed by sponsors such as Microsoft, Audi, and ABC to promote their products. Panelists at “ARG! Attack of the Alternate Reality Games” reported that the flexible costs and measurably positive results of ARGs are causing companies to beat a path to their doors.

Notes on the ARG panel at Licence to Roam.

Check out this presentation on the Audi ARG “Art of the Heist”.

SXSWi is a fantastic place to meet people
After the aforementioned pickup ride, I got a lift back to the conference from Tom Merritt of CNET. While I was waiting to get into the awards show, Patrick Norton of DL.TV gave me advice on editing podcasts. A trip up to the roof at the Yahoo! party put me next to Ze Frank, days before he was due to post the final episode of his yearlong project The Show With Ze Frank. Lunch at Stubb’s resulted in a chance meeting and great conversation with folks from Crispin Porter + Bogusky and Wieden + Kennedy. And I spent most of the conference in the company of an interactive strategist and the senior manager for information architecture at The Designory. And that’s the short version of the list.

Many business cards were exchanged and LinkedIn connections made.

The Discovery Channel wants you
Representatives from the Discovery Channel were at almost every panel I attended, and they were HUNGRY. They really, really want to get into the interactive space, particularly interactive video, ARGs, and virtual worlds.

Mad scientists and venture capitalists make good co-panelists
After the first panel I saw with pioneering blogger and PMOG visionary Justin Hall on it, I decided that whither Justin Hall goest, I will go. Especially rewarding was “Online Games: Beyond Play and Fantasy” (notes at 21apples) where he and venture capitalist Joi Ito dropped science on the convergence of games, life, work, and education.

Stubb’s does barbecue right
Ben, one of our global writers, told me that I had to eat at Stubb’s when I was in Austin. Now, I’m of Southern descent and I have very particular ideas of what constitutes proper barbecue. I am pleased to report that Stubb’s serves its barbecue with slices of white bread on the side (as God intended), and–shockingly alone of all the restaurants that I visited–has sweet tea.

Austin is home to the largest bat colony in the United States, and here they are flying out from under the Congress Bridge at sundown

See y’all next year?

• Created a second WordPress blog, which is not quite presentable yet.
• Spoke with my wife and my friend Jim about the pros and cons of Blogger and WordPress.
  • My wife is thoroughly unimpressed with WordPress. She mainly wants to post pictures, and Blogger lets you upload them directly to the blog. WordPress…well, I guess it does too, sort of. But not as easily as in Blogger.

Work

• Am struggling with post-holiday and post-illness fatigue.
• Many people are still out on vacation. It’s slow and quiet. This makes me antsy.
  • Not antsy enough to want to update spreadsheets with new product names, though.

Life

• New Year’s Eve was quiet. We watched a Fred and Ginger movie and ate Chinese food from Imperial Wok – the only good Chinese restaurant in Bothell.
• Crab Rangoon Wontons are excellent, mainly because of the name.
• We spent our anniversary doing small things. We bought ourselves small gifts that would make our lives better, such as notebooks and desktop organizers. We bought bottled water from Wales and cookies from England. We ate steak and garlic mashed potatoes.
• This Saturday we’ll go out on the town.
  • Must get concert tickets for Benaroya Hall.
• My weight gain in 2007 causes me to resemble Otis, Lex Luthor’s bumbling henchman in Superman: The Movie. This year I return to Weight Watchers.

Podcasting

• Messed about with the iRiver, testing it in church to see if it would pick up Fr. John’s sermon, and in a conference room to see how it registered me speaking in a quietly conversational tone.
  • It works pretty good.
• Began reading Podcasting For Dummies.
• Discovered Odeo Studio.
• Mixed a test recording on Audacity – me speaking over the randomly chosen song “Ziggy Stardust”.

• Posted the service times and Eucharistic Lectionary for this Sunday at Episcopal Church of the Redeemer.
• Posted about animated pink flying wangs on Second Life at The New Marketing.
• Updated an old post on the Rockett Science blog hosted at Blogger, and the blog crashed.
• Impelled by the above, I created a new version of the blog on WordPress.com.
  • It’s not that Blogger is bad; but I’ve been using WordPress for the church and arts blogs, and it’s better.

Work

• Taking advantage of a brief post-holiday lull to update timesheets, organize e-mail and docs, and work on small, low priority projects.
• Installed Skype.

Life

• Our 12-year wedding anniversary approaches.
• As does the iRiver mp3 player/recorder that didn’t make it in time for Christmas.
  • When the iRiver arrives, podcasting will ensue.
• Unknown Armies one-shot at Phoenix Games rescheduled for January 5th.

Outstanding issues

• The Redeemer site still displays the wrong day for events. Where’s the problem – in the RS Events plugin, or the LivingOS PSI template? Or is it perhaps Satan?