Part of the SXSW Herd

Okay, everyone else is doing it, so here’s my “headed to SXSW” post.  Baaaa!

I’m getting in Saturday afternoon, just in time to miss Jeffrey’s opening remarks, and will be around through Tuesday.  Early Saturday evening, I’ll be at the WaSP/WD-L/CSS-D/WSM/AIR meetup at Buffalo Billiards; the festivities kick off at 6:00pm, and no RSVP is needed, so drop on by!  It promises to be a madhouse (a MADHOUSE!) of standards and billiards.

On Sunday, I’ll be speaking from 10:00am until 11:00am on the topic of “Emergent Semantics“.  I’ve been scheduled to do a half-hour book signing at 12:45pm that same day; if it’s anything like last year, there will be a few authors sitting at a signing table at the same time.  I’m told there will be copies of Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide, Second Edition, the CSS Pocket Reference, Second Edition, and More Eric Meyer on CSS in stock, but you don’t have to buy a copy at the show to get one signed—if you already have a book of mine, bring it and I’ll gladly sign it.  Heck, bring me anyone’s book and I’ll sign it.  I’m easy.

After the signing, I’m planning to sit in on Tantek’s presentation, “The Elements of Meaningful XHTML“.  His talk and mine make a good one-two combination, so if you’ve any interest in either, you might consider checking out both.

Come Monday, I’ll be getting a late start with an appearance on the panel “Where Are The Women of Web Design“.  Before I get raked over the coals again, I’d like to point you to Molly’s post about the panel and its genesis, as well as the comments that followed (particularly this one).  Just after that panel, assuming I haven’t been burnt to a tiny crisp, the SXSW folks have me doing another book signing.  That’ll be from 4:45pm until 5:15pm.

As soon as I’m done there, I have to skedaddle over to the Red Eyed Fly for Vox Nox, an early evening of New Riders authors showing their “B” sides.  Vox Nox, which starts around 6:00pm and is scheduled to end around 8:00pm, is in many ways a sort of mini-Fray Cafe, which is appropriate… because Fray Cafe 5 is going to be held at the Red Eyed Fly on Sunday, the night before Vox Nox.  I have to admit to being a touch nervous about my part in Vox Nox, because the piece I’ve created is deeply personal and I’m not totally certain how the audience will react.  But that’s one of the interesting things about public performance, right?

Tuesday I got nothin’.  No scheduled events at all.  I can just kick back, check out sessions, hang out in the halls, and generally act like I don’t have a care in the world.  Trust me, it’s just an act, but I’ve gotten kind of good at it.  That evening I’m doing whatever, and by the next morning I’ll be gone.

So if you’re going to be in or around SXSW, come over and say “hi”.  Even if you don’t have that much interest in me personally, you should still come by, because the concentration of Web design stars, standards gurus, and forward thinkers assembling at this year’s SXSWi is frankly a wonder to behold.

• Part of the SXSW Herd was published on Wednesday, March 9th, 2005.
• It was assigned to the Speaking and Standards categories.
• There have been three replies.