SXSWi Day 3

I am writing this from a patch of lawn across from the Austin Convention Center.  The little scrap of free wireless connectivity is failing me as I finish my Thai iced tea (you can’t bring outside food or drink into the ACC).  Once I’m done, I’m going to check out the SXSWi trade show, where my alma mater, University of Michigan’s School of Information, is tabling supposedly.

The Thai iced tea was from a Thai/Vietnamese restaurant on 6th street called Mekong River.  For lunch I had what are called ?? Mermaids and these wonderful yam-and-corn fritters.  VERY tasty and highly recommended.  These SoBe reps are hawking free “HTML5-in-a-cup” on the sidewalk in front of me, and I just overheard a young woman explaining a party trick she does using Grindr (a gay hookup mobile app, for those unfamiliar).

We had breakfast in the lobby of the Driskill, this fabulous Italianate hotel dating from 1885.  The lobby was stunning with exquisite hushed lighting, though the breakfast itself was ridiculously overpriced.  I proceeded to a pretty helpful conversation session called “Your Web Developer Thinks You’re An Idiot.”

The porn industry panel last night was pretty interesting too, by the way, and not surprisingly attended by about 90% men.  There was one young woman on the panel, Alison Vivas, who was an executive in the industry and who seemed remarkably poised, canny and professional.  You could have picked her up and plunked her down in any other industry sector without significantly altering her presentation.  Very impressive.

Last night, after free drinks at a CNET live podcast party, we crossed off another bar, Rain, on our “Gay Pub Crawl of Austin” checklist.  The bar was huge — three or four separate spaces, including a dance floor and an outdoor deck —  and was very well-attended for a Sunday night, with plenty of reasonably attractive guys from a range of ages.

I caught myself feeling a little weird about posting so much about Austin and SXSW on a blog that is ostensibly about a couple of Rust Belt cities, but I think it’s really important and valuable to share my experiences here.  People who care about their communities need to get out in the world and see what’s happening elsewhere, to see what’s working and try to figure out why, and to bring some of the magic they see in other cities back to their own.  It’s one thing to read about Austin and all the supposed reasons it has been such a success story over the past several decades, while our own cities in the Great Lakes have withered on the vine; it’s another to experience first hand the good — the food carts and the student-powered pedicabs and the gay bars and the seemingly miraculous March weather — as well as the lousy — the too-narrow sidewalks, too-wide streets, and the lack of bike lances that impair the pedestrian experience, as I pointed out in yesterday’s post.  Getting out and reporting back for readers in Michigan and other cold, shattered places helps us set the bar higher for what we expect from the cities and the regions we live in.

Day 2, SXSW

I’m writing this from the ballroom of our hotel in Austin where they were streaming 4chan founder Christopher Poole’s keynote; I’ve stayed in the room for some automated stock trading panel in the hopes Felix Salmon shows up and gives me my first celebrity spotting of the week.

I mentioned in my post yesterday how new Austin seemed.  History buff that I am, a big part of my appraisal of a city comes from how old a city’s core is and how well-preserved that core is, so these things are important to me.  Last night we walked up Congress to the Capitol and saw the older, nineteenth century part of downtown; then today, my cousin drove me through the older student-dominated neighborhoods northwest of UT, which is crowded with adorable little one-story wooden bungalows, estimated vintage 1920s-40s, in various levels of disrepair.  I hypothesize that they built these homes slung low to the ground, prior to air conditioning, because of the summer heat.  He also took me through the Hill Country, which is considerably more rugged and scenic than I had expected.

Drinks here are cheaper than expected, too — at two different bars last night (OilCan Harry’s and Charlie’s, both very nice) we got 2 cocktails for about $11.  The atmosphere last night, crowds of people and music spilling all over the street, was reminiscent of a better-behaved,  better-educated, and generally less trashy Bourbon Street.  We scored free ice cream sandwiches from another truck on the way home, courtesy of Mozilla, which is hawking its new mobile Firefox app.

I don’t see Felix Salmon so I think I’ll split, head over to the Hilton and try to stake out a spot at this invitingly naughty-sounding 5pm panel.

Day 1 @ SXSW

The thing that has surprised me most about Austin — the little sliver of downtown Austin I’ve experienced since we arrived last night — is how new everything, the built environment, is; probably half.  And they are not afraid to build high; the mostly low-slung skyline is interrupted by numerous, shiny and really quite pretty residential glass skyscrapers, plus the remarkably beautiful Frost Bank Tower.

It is not especially pedestrian-friendly, my boyfriend notes; sidewalks are frequently missing and the streets are typically several lanes wide.  My perception of the city is inevitably going to be skewed by SXSW — there are throngs of Interactive geeks crowding the sidewalks, so the city seems quite lively with heavy foot traffic.

This morning I saw what appeared to be a demonstration by teachers’ unions.  I ate at this terrific Korean fusion truck called ChiLantro — I had a very tasty tofu burger with kimchee — and there were several other trucks on that same block(Congress & 2nd) that looked equally delicious.  I am hoping some restauranteurs steps up to the plate and brings some food trucks to Ann Arbor and Detroit.

I am typing this from a panel discussion called “Web Mashup Platforms for Future Programmable Cities.”  It is very abstract and unclear to me what this means, so I am going to try to listen up and pay attention.  Basically it sounds like it’s about collecting data from tech apps contributed by users for the purposes of helping cities allocate resources.  It strikes me as a possible complement to the types of data gathered by agencies like the Census Bureau or the National Bureau of Economic Research.

The panel is very European-dominated, with the exception of Rachel Sterne, the new Digital Officer for the city of New York who seems remarkably young for such a position.  She asks, how can we look at cities as platforms the way Facebook is a platform?

The conversation is interesting enough that I’ll look these folks up later, but right now I’m going to head over to join my man at another panel.   Stay tuned for more updates from what is probably, at least for the next few days, the geekiest place on Earth.