Five minutes after I should have left for the airport to catch my flight to Boston and An Event Apart, I finally got the DSL service back, four and a half days after it went dark. After a few minutes of frantic testing and configuration to make sure it would work for Kat in my absence, I blew out the door.
Guess what’s broken in my hotel room.
Something for you 2007 SXSW Interactive attendees: if you need to get to the rooms-in-exile (8, 9, and 10), you can skip the line for the elevator. Here’s how:
When you leave said rooms, you can go back by the same escalator or use the staircase near the elevators. I’d recommend using the stairs to come up, except they’re locked to entry from the ground floor and I haven’t gotten my hands on any duct tape yet. Ten community karma points to the person who hacks around this problem as well, though they’re a little bit harder to spot than the escalator. Pass it on.
For 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.
I know that you don’t need to be told this, but I’m just going to put this on record for anyone who might be Googling for the information in the future, not to mention the four separate people who got this wrong within the last 24 hours. It’s like this:
My last name is spelled M-E-Y-E-R. No trailing “s”; an “e” to each side of the “y”; no “a” anywhere within its bounds. Got it? Good!
Also, it’s “Eric” with a “c”, not a “k” or even a “ck”. ‘kay?
So how does your name get misspelled, and how much does it bother you?
I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news to any potential AEA Boston attendees, but we sold the last available seat just before noon yesterday. You can still get in touch to request a spot on our waiting list. if you like. If not, there’s always the Seattle show coming in June, with tentative plans for two more shows by the end of 2007.
Some of you may recall that I prophesied, a few weeks back, that we’d sell out on February 28th—and so we did. Go me. I feel like a regular Edgar Cayce.
This wiki is intended to be a place where those who are interested in becoming speakers (particularly, but not exclusively, in the web world) can come to get advice, mentoring and help. It is also intended to be a meeting place for those who are interested in helping others become speakers.
On the same site: an evolving (and evolvable) page containing Advice.
…some practical suggestions for folks who want to gain some confidence in their own speaking abilities and how I worked up to presenting at conferences… I’ve spoken at a bunch of conferences over the past year, and well, this might help someone.
Below are a list of some of the events which encourage people to get up and speak about what they love. The list is Australian-centric, mainly because that is the circles I hang with, but I would love to hear of similar things going on around the world…