SXSWi Day One: Opening Remarks, Expanding Paradigms, and Gay Cowboys

Thanks to the complimentary drink ticket, we had a noontime vodka tonic at this point after skipping breakfast and dinner the previous night, and spent the better part of the last two presentations chatting online about our day party logistics, but we did take notice when, during Austin band Peel-member Dakota Smith's drunken presentation, a dude in a plaid kilt ran up to the stage and grabbed the mic from a rather frazzled Smith. He asked Dakota something indiscernable in a voice thick with a fake Irish brogue, to which Dakota simply replied: "I'm a little scared."

Later, we attended the fantastic opening remark with Jim Coudal (Coudal Partners) and Jason Fried (37signals). Coudal began by speaking about how companies are moving away from in-house creative servicing to outsourcing, and how design firms such as his are forced to adapt quickly to ever-increasing project scopes. The key, he stressed, was to seek out new projects that exercised the intellect, and brought something new to the table. He ended by debunking the old adage of the meek inhereting the earth, iterating across several different revisions: if by meek one meant the nice but introvertive, then perhaps; was it the "creatives" -- people such as many in the audience? Likely not. According to Coudal, the truly victorious will be the curious. Fried followed this up by talking about how one should engage a new venture. Less, less, less was his mantra: start out small, avoid venture funding, aim for small, simple software that does its smaller set of tasks easily, quickly, effectively, and doesn't get in the user's way (Microsoft, anyone?). If you have someone else's money and loads of time, the natural human inclination is to exploit it to its fullest -- and, naturally, end up wasting other people's money and your own time. Start out modestly. Avoid the fancy office, the expensive desks, the glowing signs. Allow yourself to fail, quietly. It's easier on the ego, it's easier on the bank account, and it'll teach you loads of things you'll need eventually. Lastly: don't quit your day job.

Later in the afternoon, we attended a seminar entitled "How to Increase Creativity At Work," hosted by Expanding Paradigms Director Charles MacInerney. We expected something akin to the workshops we've attended at work, which largely consist of thinly-veiled group therapy sessions ... with crayons. Perhaps if we'd more closely read the description ("how to use yoga, breathing techniques and meditation to gain greater control of your energy levels and creativity"), we'd have been better prepared for what was to come: MacInerney, a quiet, unassuming, scholarly man in his mid-forties, discussed the concept of mind mapping, essentially free-form diagrams one would create when trying to figure out, or internalize, a particularly complex problem. His examples included technical books, marital problems, and a few business-situations that most of us in the web industry would encounter. Things picked up when he called a volunteer to the stage, strapping on to this poor soul a "subconscious buzz meter" that converted the subject's stress level to a oscillatory buzzing noise that was amplified to the audience. In such a fashion, if the guy's stress level increased, the buzzing would raise to a whiny ringing; correspondingly, when he calmed down, the buzzing was reduced to a low hum. Interestingly, MacInerney pointed out that as this guy's eyes shifted away from the audience to whom he was facing, his level of stress was greatly diminished. Such implications this raised went beyond our heads, but there was certainly an intrinsic value to applying his methods to even the most rote of daily challenges in web design.