Curatorialist

As I prepare myself for my first trip to SXSW, I’m trying to sift through this insane dust cloud of activity that seems to descend upon Austin. But, you know, I’ve been to conferences before. I’ve sifted through complication before. I’m not a little baby, wandering naked into a zoo with no locks on the cages. Not since the 70’s. This is an event, after all, like any other – panels, speeches, discussions, movies, get-togethers, etc. I think I’ve done this before. It gets slightly more noisy at SXSW, I guess, because of all the social networking. But haven’t all conferences had social networking… forever? You participate, or you don’t. And, really, it’s just talk. Once again, those of use who make messages are getting caught up in the medium.The real sifting one has to do is news versus noise. I’m on a mission to learn something and although the experience of being at SXSW sounds kind of exciting, so are a lot of things. I’m not on a mission to be excited. The last 10 years have been too exciting, as far as I’m concerned. Digital has become legitimate on the knotted shoulders of those of us who’ve stuck with it and built it. And make no mistake, hype is not what built the Internet – real companies, like the ones we work for, are who build it, for their real business needs. The rest is entertainment. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I’m more interested in what’s going to change the way businesses run.

So, I’m preparing myself. How to take in the best panels, hear from the top minds and maybe accomplish the promise that SXSW poses: TOMORROW HAPPENS HERE. We can’t rely on Twitter to tell us what the future holds. Twitter just is now. Oh, I’ll be hooked in to the hashtag hoi poloi, don’t worry. But I don’t want to look back, I want to look forward. But first… prepare.

So, I’m at the page for “first timers:” http://sxsw.com/first_time and I am greeted with this nice lead-in paragraph: “SXSW can be overwhelming to first-timers. All the things that make SXSW amazingly informative, fun and unique are also what can make it so daunting. We’ve made a video to show you what SXSW is. Watch it below:” Okay, I’m on it. Don’t love being categorized as a noob, but whatever, nobody’s watching…

HOLY CRAP. Am I supposed to be less daunted from this? A montage? And not just a montage, which daunts me, but a sped-up montage, with music! And the organization of information in this video seems to follow a “5 Days Of…” mechanism. You fit all this into five days? Even if this were put to Yo-Yo Ma, I’d be a little stressed out with how to take it all in. But scroll down; travel tips, hotel tips, dress tips… hold on, are they really giving me dressing tips? Hm. Starting to feel a little like that naked baby, all of the sudden. And, content-wise, what’s new here that I haven’t seen on a hundred conference websites? Let’s look at the panels.

I’m here for Interactive, specifically. Some interesting topics, to be sure: “The Young and the Digital.” Sounds good. “How Sci-Fi Shapes the Internet.” Interested. But, hey, what’s this: “How to Rowk SXSW.” Uh oh. That sounds awfully self-reflective. Especially when described as “Veteran SXSW speakers and attendees give their light-hearted insights and tips on making the most of your next few days in geek wunderland.” Whaaaa… where’s my bottle! And, as an aside, is misspelling words with the same amount of letters as the original word really our future? Didn’t that end with using Z’s instead of S’s? Moving on. Oh no, look at this: “How Not to be a Douchebag at SXSW.” Yeah, that’s a real panel. And perhaps the single most perfect example of irony ever constructed. So, you self-prescribed elitists, with your superior knowledge would like to impart upon us lesser-thans a warning about how not to be elitist and superior sounding, I suppose? Can somebody please call Keith Olbermann? I’d like him tackle this.

Let’s look outside the SXSW fold for a minute. Mmm, this is getting worse. Here’s an article called, oh god, “10 Ways Not To Be A Jerk at SXSW.”

Well, now I’m angry.

I’m angry, not just because this couldn’t be less helpful or more obvious, but because of the tone. Is this the voice of a new generation? It sounds like the voice of the old generation. It sounds like Silicon Valley elitism and entitlement all over again. It sounds like people I don’t want to work with, or know, or follow, or put on my Twitter List. And, unlike the pre-2000 days, where I didn’t have a choice, I really do have a choice now. Digital is legitimate. The best minds are the winners of the day, not the biggest attitudes. I know that’s what the article is trying to convey, too. But name calling isn’t necessary. We’re big boys now.

So, I believe my preparation is complete. Noise is, as it turns out, noise. I unfortunately won’t be attending the Music portion of SXSW, but I will be tackling this like I would that: trusting my ear and listening to one thing at a time with the kind of attention and appreciation that the people who are singing deserve. In that video, at 1:20, some dude dressed in all black said it pretty well, “The joy of learning and doing something new and doing something the way it really feels right – right here, right here and right here.” And he pointed to his gut, his heart and his head.

Interesting what happens when you become a grown-up. The hard truth is, there is no “balance.” Balance is an ideal, but it doesn’t play out like that. You don’t work for an hour, relax an hour, eat healthy, work out at exactly the right time, have time to yourself, be social… it sounds nice, but life goes more like this: work really hard and sacrifice your social life, family life and health. Then cram a bunch of social activities in, get on the road for a few days, get sick for a few days, take a vacation, go on a diet. Things happen in bunches, phases, often in reaction to pendulum swings in other directions. THAT’S life. The average height of a roller coaster is somewhere between the ground and the highest point, but that doesn’t explain what it’s like to ride one.

Mobile technology is important because whether you’re on the upswing or downswing, it is there with you. Not many things can travel with you through all your phases. I think we are just starting to see the potential of what that can mean to us as we watch our behaviors change. We often evaluate technology on the big shifts that it creates – the printing press brought news to the world, airplanes made the world smaller, etc. – but not on the personal shifts. The applications that are coming out for mobile devices affect our smaller moments. So that while we often find ourselves pinned to one side of the car or the other, we can start to envision a life with a little more center.

The following are 5 apps that have changed my life. Not in the enormous sense, just in the behavioral sense. And, really, these are the kinds of shifts that affect us the most – personal ones.

1. Runmeter. It was a new year’s resolution to start running again. I said it, but I still didn’t want to do it. Saying it was part of my way of getting myself motivated. But then came the time to pony up. I found Runmeter and it’s actually made running somewhat enjoyable. Runmeter does everything that Nike+ can do; log runs, give you audio split times, compare how you’re doing to previous runs, show you routes on a map, all while you listen to your music mix, etc. But where Nike+ entails using a combination of their shoe, their chip, your iPod and their website, Runmeter does all of it through the iPhone. Way way easier to set up. Way way easier to use and enjoy. Also, it has incorporated social networking in a really innovative way. You can set it to tweet that you’ve gone for a run and it will fade out your music and text-to-voice you the encouraging replies from your Twitter followers. That’s smart, and it makes you smile while you run. And I never smile while I run. The calendaring function is great and you really get a macro view of how you’re doing. I’m looking forward to my runs and the in-depth look at how I’m doing adds a game-like aspect to the whole thing that I enjoy. That’s a behavior changer.

2. Momento. I’ll be straight up, this is a diary application. I never considered myself a diarist, but here’s the thing, if you partake in social media, you’re a diarist. This app puts it all into a new perspective. The main “new math” is that it imports your social media activity (Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and Blip.fm) and logs it in the calendar. It also does it retroactively, so as soon as you get the app and give it your info, you can go back and look at all your status updates through a calendar interface and it changes your perception of social media and your life. All of the sudden, I find myself logging little notes about things going on in my day and uploading pictures taken on my iPhone, too. The truth is, we partake in social media for ourselves anyway. We like to mark moments, we want to remember our days and not let life slip by. This app has brought a lot of elements together to make that possible in a way I’ve never seen before.

3. Photo Apps. I use the broad topic because there are so many and which one you use is a matter of preference. I like Camera Bag and Hipstamatic. The thing about these apps is that they do such a great job of making the images look like a Lomo, Diana, viewfinder or old Polaroid camera that they need absolutely no post work for what they are. I have a very good SLR camera and I do a ton of photography and like a lot of other photographers, I make a distinction between shots that just capture a moment and shots that I go create. For the former, you often feel compromised in the quality of the image. You know how you SHOULD compose it, but it’s not that kind of shot. With these apps, you feel better about posting to FB or just having them in your library of captured moments. The idea of EVERY shot in my collection having a certain creativity to them is very exciting.

4. Four Track. Four Track is a legitimate four-track recording application. You can record separate tracks, mix them down, adjust volumes and balance and it has a number of add-on features that surprise you for a $10 app, including the ability to cut and paste drum loops in from another app of theirs. Now, let me be clear, I’m not looking to get my songs on the radio or anything like that, but can I throw down a guitar track and then go back and add in some vocals? Hell yeah I can. And if it’s in my bathroom, it sounds… well, it sounds terrible, but it sounds like me. I gave up the idea of being a musician a long time ago, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have music inside me. An app like this makes it possible for a regular guy with a guitar to have a little musical outlet without all the expensive software and hardware. And ego.

5. NBA League Pass. Aside from local games, which are blacked out, League Pass plays all the NBA games either live or recorded from that day. The quality is not bad, either. I’m a basketball guy, so for me this app brings me games I never would have been able to see other than through highlights on SportsCenter. And I’m not a SportsCenter guy. Also, more than anything, I’m a Laker fan. So, seeing Laker games on the road with this is a joy that is hard to even explain. Of all the apps I’m talking about here, this one is probably the one that comes closest to a Big Life Change. Watching TV on your mobile device has large implications for many industries, but it is really the deeper personal relationship to a sport that makes this so amazing.