John F Croston III

I know I should have done this at least two weeks ago, but here goes my overview about what was interesting at SXSW 2008. I will give you the top most memorable things of each day.

The first two days follow with the other four days to follow in two more posts with two days in each. Finally, the notes from all the different talks will be posted once I get them typed up in about two weeks.

Thursday - (2008/03/06)

Arrived in Austin around 12:30 PM. got luggage and stopped at the information booth to find out where to pick up the fifty cent bus (Route 100). It stops at 6th Street and Brazos, which is one block back and then down like 4 or 5 blocks to the Hampton Inn.

I grabbed a chicken burrito at the Taco Shack on the way to the hotel. When I got to hotel I was able to check in and then grabbed my laptop and wnet downstairs to the second floor lounge, to eat and check e-mail and twitter. Sat around and visited with people as they got into the hotel.

Went to dinner with 20+ people to Moonshine. Had a very nice dinner of flat iron steak with mac and cheese. Left Moonshine to head over to Buffalo Billiards. On the way there we were all walking along and there were two people ahead of me walking along the curb. I was turned to my right talking with someone when the two people in front of me parted. When this happened Patrick Haney yell “Look out!” at which point I turned back to him first and then forward again at which point I walked straight into a parking meter. This made a great thud as my rib cage hit it. Everything was okay, just a little sore. It was nice that everyone checked to see if I was okay before letting a a bit a laugh. It was funny, at least from my point of view and I’m the one that hit the parking meter.

Spent a bunch of time at Buffalo Billiards talking with people I met last year and to new people I just met. I even watched and listened to some great karaoke upstairs.

Friday - (2008/03/07)

Slept into until like 8:00 AM and went downstairs for breakfast. It was nice seeing even more people that I had missed the day before. Later in the morning I headed over to the Austin Convention Center. It took about 25 to 30 minutes to walk over get my badge, grab the big bag of stuff, and then back to the hotel. Once I got back to the hotel I got rid of at least 85% to 90% of the stuff in the bag. I wanted to keep the bag so I could use it for grocery shopping back home.

After all that was done I started working on loading up Parallels on my 13″ White MacBook, since the weather was a bit cold and over cast and it was something I needed to do. I got it loaded pretty easily. Once that was done I worked on getting XP Pro installed. Once XP Pro was installed I spent a good half hour to forty-five minutes downloading and installing like 90 plus patches and fixes to the software.

Around 2 or 3 PM met up with a bunch of DC people and headed to convention center to go see “Respect!” with mostly people from the Happy Cog team. But first we ended up catching the second part of How to Rawk SXSW: The Basics presentation.

After the talk was over went back to hotel to drop off stuff and then headed over to the Iron Works for dinner. I got the mixed meat platter, which came with a smoked sausage, smoked beef brisket, smoked beef rib, and some pork BBQ. If that was not enough the platter had potato salad, beans, and a slice of plain white bread. Great dinner and the perfect satrt to getting back into BBQ after years of being a vegetarian.

After Iron Works I can;t remember what I did. I think I called it an early night and went back to hotel and checked  e-mail and twitter.

Tell me what you did on the first two days of SXSW 2008 or any of the days.

Left for Washington National Airport (Reagan) at like 6:10 AM. The walk to the metro was not that bad. It took a while like 30 minutes to get to the Continental check in and it went very quickly, since no one was in line at all. Then I got to the security line and there were about fifty to seventy-five people in each line. There was a guy that was behind me that had a 7:10 am flight and it was like 6:52 am. I let him get ahead of me, since I had over an hour to kill. Hopefully he made his flight, since he seemed really worried about it. I would suggest tha tnext time he might leave a bi earlier to make sure he makes his flight.

While waiting for the plane I ran into three Refresh DC people. It was the guys from Politico (Ryan, Andrew, and ??). They were going to be on the same plane from National to Houston and then from Houston to Austin as me. Both flights were uneventful. The only thing that was odd was the woman next to meet on the second flight was taking her thin red licorice and tying it into knots before eating it. The other thing was the couple behind me that were both snoring before we even left the terminal gate.

Once we landed it only took a little while to get luggage. While i waited I went over to the information desk and asked them where I should go to catch the 50 cent bus. The lady told me to go to the center island and head down to the column that has the “4″ on it and wait for the bus. I got lucky again this year by only having to wait like 10 minutes to to catch it.

The trip from the airport to the Hampton took about twenty minutes. As last year at the first stop on the trip into Austin we stopped and thy changed bus drivers. It was about the same time I took it last year. I guess the first driver must have started at 6:00 am, since we were stopping there at like 1:00 pm.

Got dropped at off at the corner of 6th and Brazos. On my way to the Hampton I stopped at the “Taco Shack” for a chicken burrito. I got it to go so I could have it over at the Hampton and sit in the lounge and relax. When I got there my room was ready so i was able to drop off all my stuff and grab my computer. Took computer down to the lounge and ate while I checked e-mail, blogs, and twitter.

While checking Twitter I started see a great deal of messages about people being getting stuck in Dallas do to snow(?). A bunch of the Brits are stuck there, since none of them have there liscences with them or do not have one to begin with. A few people here were taking about renting a car and driving to Dallas to pick them up.

This is my SXSW adventures so far.