Curatorialist

You know what I learned from SXSW? That I could totally make TED better.

From my POV, TED and SXSW are almost completely opposite from each other – but each needs what the other has.

TED’s motto is “Ideas Worth Spreading.” SXSW’s is “Tomorrow Happens Here.” And that says a lot. TED speeches are amazing. My mind has been blown many times from the videos I’ve seen coming out of there. But the next day, I’m onto my business and it hardly ever comes up again, except in dinner conversations. The ideas are worth spreading, but the emphasis is on the worthiness of the ideas, not the spreadability of them. Enter SXSW…

SXSW is about the spreading, often at the expense of the idea. People gather, make plans, share code, talk shop and scheme about new systems and collaborations. And usually the subject is the social web; new tools for connecting. And they’re do-ers. Makers. Tinkerers. Sure, a major portion of the ideas you hear about will end up being nothing more than lonely code, but there’s an energy of making things happen at SXSW. It has a laboratory feel. I was sitting at a table last night, talking through an idea and the people at that table, literally, could have made that idea. There were coders sitting next to artists, writers, producers and publicists. All we needed was computers and phones. And the likeliness of that idea getting made is actually pretty high. Because I know who to call and we all broke bread together.

SXSW is kind of strangely devoid of tangible results – that is, there are so many ideas, proposals, speeches and programs that you tend to get cynical because you just know they’re not all going to get traction. Just check out Paul Carr’s rant on Tech Crunch. It’s not that Carr is completely wrong, it’s that he belongs at TED. He’s looking for a finished idea for proof of worthiness. He should be at the conference that celebrates that. But that conference could learn something from SXSW, too.

I know I could turn TED into a place where ideas actually do spread. But it would be a chiropractic shift in how they organize it. I doubt that they’d ever embrace or try it, for two major reasons:

1. It’s apostle-based. TED does celebrate the inventor, the genius and the bringer of good, there is no doubt. It is an event for the “best and brightest” and those that are allowed to attend are of the same ilk. I think the strategy is to invite influencers and those with the kind of capital and following to make these ideas come true, It’s an old process for the spreading of ideas, invented in Ancient Greece and Rome. And it’s outdated.

I know people who go to TED. They’re leaders. And leaders are delegators. They tackle large issues and hand off the small ones – whatever system they work in needs that kind of top down approach. But that’s not how spreading happens anymore, not on a grand scale. Even the most dynamically enthused TED conference-goer, is too limited, in terms of reach. Impassioned speeches are simply not the tipping point for great ideas.

TED would have to break down the structure of who’s invited and who participates in order for this to work and I worry they’re not interested in that. They have created a club that I think appeals to the egos of those who get to go (it certainly would if I went), and that ego-stroking is tough to let go of. It’s too seductive.

2. Open source is complex. The other major hurdle to TED becoming more contemporary in how it spreads ideas is that the organization of their program is a relatively simple closed loop system. There are a number of complexities that surround the event – certainly the work being done by the participants is enormously complex – but the conference itself could be organized by any event planner. The invitations process, the event production and the website all employ very standard approaches.

TED needs to look at how SXSW organizes their event, perhaps even hijack it. It is a study in de-centralization. It is, itself, an open API. For TED to do that, they’d need to make available a lot more data, besides just the videos. In fact, the videos are perhaps the least important part of it. The videos should be the invitation to the event, not the result of the event. What happens next needs to be a collaborative and iterative process of geniuses, organizers, builders and social media experts.

Is TED ready to organize an open source event of that complexity? I doubt it. They have too gorgeous a package right now. It would mean a Charlize Theron-in-Monster-like ability to let go of what it’s famous for and expand itself through a destruction of its current image. Tough stuff.

TED needs what SXSW has. And SXSW needs what TED has. In some combined way, though, they could Make Ideas Happen. I wish they would.

Hell, I would organize it myself. I could do it, too. Just let me in the club.

So, here are the sites that I noticed on guru of new @scobleizer’s Bookmarks Toolbar in Firefox during his presentation. Not that I was staring, obsessing, learning, adapting, growing… stronger. If these sites are good enough for him to keep prominent, they’re good enough for the rest of us:

1. New York Times – Bits Blog

2. Boing Boing

3. Switched

4. Engadget

5. BuzzFeed

And these were sites/apps he mentioned or visited during the presentation:

Google Buzz

TweetDeck

Foursquare

Techmeme

Google Blue Dot

The Cadmus

Gowalla

Bonus: this site was actually shown during a discussion with @bs from Twitter itself. I guess they just put this together for SXSW this year, you know, on a whim. Cuz they do that:

SXSW/Twitter

Extra Bonus: I recommend requesting your free trial of Tap11. It’s like TweetDeck, but with charts and metrics and numbers. Keep track of your brand, natch!

Tap11

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.

This website – which matches up simple, but strange, household objects of seemingly lost eras with a writer – seems a lot like a creative writing class assignment. But it gets to the heart of what creativity is, for a lot of people – an assignment with a good inspiration; small, life moments described. Putting one thing with another and watching the chemicals react in the test tube.

Get into it here.

This is just a fun thing to do while you’re thinking of other stuff:

http://thisissand.com/

Many have gathered to make art in the form, and spirit, of collaboration. Little of it transcends. Originally, the Louvre was a place for a sort of artists’ collective, during the French Revolution. But collectives borne of necessity have a distinct advantage over graffiti artists getting together to do a mural for Nike. Maybe this kind of thing has been done before, but I haven’t seen it. A UK Website here proposes that an interaction on the site results in instant action/reaction at a real art studio. Like much art that relies on technology, rather than a more viscous material, it feels a bit cybercold underneath it all, but from what I’m seeing, the art that’s getting made at the studio itself is secondary to the possibilities that this opens up. Remember Christy Brown, of “My Left Foot” fame? Putting that into context with today’s technology offers some very encouraging possibilities. Beyond that, the gap bridged by technology has never seemed to reach into the world of fine art. All of the sudden, the Internet is a real tool for expression and the spreading of paint, clay, pencil lead and many other things. It is well time that our exponential growth in technology lead to something more artistic, human, tactile and expressive. I’m into it.

One of my new daily check-in spots, Hipster Runoff, is worth bookmarking. Strangely, I’ve been listening to his show on Blog Radio on XM and catching his updates on his sites WITHOUT KNOWING IT WAS THE SAME GUY. WHAT’S WRONG WITH ME???? This is why you should not do things that ruin your brain, like drink from the cat bowl and eat only microwaved potatoes in college (always always always poke holes in it first, with a fork).

On the radio he is recognizable for his monotone voice and not-so-provocative questions, that turn out to be more provocative than you first give them credit for. It’s a style of talking that is one part plain-stupid truth, one part snarkasm and one part keenly observant ponderings of indie culture. He clearly knows his way around the music scene, but to me, it’s all about the cult of him. Sitting at the brink of popularity – a fine mess for a guy who admits he only likes bands that aren’t popular, because pop music themes are too universal. Watching him watch himself walk that tightrope is immensely interesting, even if it’s delivered in the least interesting kind of way.

Deadpan is the new exciting.

Hipster Runoff

Interview in The Village Voice

I don’t know what I’m doing. Am I looking at it? Buying from it? Learning from it? Being inspired by it? Knowing what day it is by it? I am helpless before it but somehow better because of it. It is Uniqlo.

I guess I just love me up some of the GIFs. Something I didn’t anticipate; becoming wistfully reminiscent of a technology from adulthood. I get my swoony love of 8-bit graphics and the sound of a Casio keyboard, but it’s harder to reconcile feeling all gushy over something that I used for work.

Perhaps it’s a representation of how far I/we’ve come since getting into Web design, back in the mid 90’s. Sort of like looking back on your first car, not nearly as advanced as your current car, but still a mark of distance, growth.

But moreso, I just like the creativity one experiences when leaning into a limited medium. All media is limited, in some respect. Certainly 8-bit graphics were. But even a canvas has an edge. Finding creativity within the constraints of technology are no different than within the constraints of clay. And the results no less effective. At least not to me.

Some of it, also, is knowing where something like this might show up: as a personal icon in a comment section, or simply sitting in the corner of a web page somewhere. Animated GIFs are like virtual graffiti tags – it’s as much where you place it as the mark itself. The technology and format of it is specific to the Web, and therefore it is as inextricably tied to it, as paint is to canvas or music was to vinyl (sigh).

Continue reading ‘A Moment in Time: An Homage to the Animated GIF.’

Weird, right? John Wayne is an icon, but so is that little picture of a house up in your browser navigation. Big, small. But in both cases, a symbol of something. But a person can spend an entire life trying to become an icon, noticed by everyone, whereas a graphic icon must often get created in the virtual world and is doing its job when it goes relatively unnoticed. Today we honor the small icon with this gorgeous set of graphic symbols (purchasable right here) ready to go for iPhone application developers.  They may be small, but to me, this is still a symbol of something great.