South by… What Was I Saying?
Published 17 years, 8 months pastFor me, SXSW 2007 was over almost as soon as it started. That’s because my one and only panel, “A Decade of Style”, was in the first Saturday morning slot. It seemed to go pretty well, thanks to the great folks who agreed to be on the panel and some sharp audience questions. Now I have nought to do but attend the sessions that seem the most interesting and catch up with some folks I haven’t seen in quite a while.
It’s great being here, and I love seeing everyone, but in all honesty I’m starting to think about leaving a day or three early. I miss my wife and daughter. A lot.
I’d also like to take this opportunity to apologize to anyone I inadvertently ignored, insulted, or misidentified on Friday. I was dead tired, having had to get up at 3:30am to catch the first leg of my trip to Austin. As I’m sure you know, when the alarm goes off at 3:30am, it isn’t ringing at the end of a full night’s sleep. In my case, not even close.
So I spent yesterday in kind of a moderate-functioning daze, and kept mistaking people for other people. Three times (that I know of) I put the wrong name to a face, and these are people I’ve known for a while. Seriously, at one point I identified Brian Alvey as Aaron Gustafson. After I introduced him to someone else as Aaron, I then proceeded to talk with him about what he’s been doing at AOL and about his house in the suburbs of New York City. After he excused himself to go grab something to eat, someone asked me who it was, and I told them it was Aaron and that I worked with him on A List Apart. I swear this all made perfect sense to me at the time. There was absolutely no sense of mental discontinuity whatsoever.
It was only two hours later, when I ran into Aaron at the Big Bag pickup desk, that I realized what had happened. What went through my head was pretty much, “Hey, you’re… not who I was talking to earlier.”
So if I did something like that to you, I’m really sorry. I got a ton of sleep last night and am now back to my usual level of not being able to remember people’s names.
Comments (5)
Heh, and that after your “So how does your name get misspelled”, topic. *g*
Sounds embarrassing, yet lightly humorous nonetheless. :-)
No worries Eric. I’ve been confused with worse people ;-)
Eric – I totally feel you on the missing the wife and kid. It’s the only reason I’m not having a ton of fun here.
I’ll point Alvey to this post in case he was offended ;)
I was in the same boat. As much as I enjoyed the conference and the people, by Monday I was really missing my wife and daughter as well. I’m glad to be home, even if I missed the last day of the interactive. It was great running into you. Thanks for saying hi. I was pleasantly surprised you remebered me from last year. it took me aback for a second.