This year’s Interactive conference was interesting to say the least, because I was too sick to attend two day’s worth of sessions. So, I’ve been listening to the podcasts of the sessions I really wanted to go to but missed. The fine folks at SXSWi have also made videos available online for sessions misssed.
The Dooce/Kottke keynote had me laughing aloud while I listened. From Jason asking Heather if she had seen her Wikipedia entry, noting that it said at the bottom “both Heather and husband remain unemployed” to Heather commenting that a subscription model for blogging for money gives people the sense the they are owed something, and when Jason went on a 2 week vacation during the year, Heather said “Bastard took my money and went to Asia with it” both of them cracked me up constantly. Interestingly, the Wikipedia entry has been changed to say “They currently remain self-employed.” My guess is that someone changed it during the session. At South By SouthWest Interactive most audience members are multitasking with an open laptop and IMing their friends or liveblogging during the sessions.
One of the reasons this was such a great session was the complete opposite nature of the two speakers — female/male, extrovert/introvert, personal blogger/personality purposely removed blogger, Heather’s married with a two-year-old daughter, Jason’s getting married in two weeks, Heather lives in Salt Lake City and is a self-proclaimed “house wife,” Jason’s living in New York City. Their blog styles are completely different and it’s likely their audiences are different but with a lot of overlap (they’re arguably the two most popular bloggers out there today). Certainly the audiences they have in their heads are different, according to the session. Jason says his are the “bored at work network” and Heather thinks hers are mostly women either with kids or trying to have kids.
In my mind, the main reason they were chosen as opposites for this keynote is because both “went pro” in the past year, blogging for a living. Heather chose ads as her method of payment, and Jason chose a subscription model (1500 “micropatrons” paid him an average of $30 each). I’d describe this keynote as a great match up, great format (they asked each other questions while sitting opposite each other in overstuffed armchairs), great questions for each other (the audience questions were pretty dull and uninspired) and a great idea, whoever thought of it. I was more entertained than educated by this session which was fine with me. I have no current intentions of blogging for a living. (Yes, I don’t consider this arrangement of corporate blogging to be blogging for a living, there are definitely other tasks I do for BMC that are my “living”.)
Read this Real SXSW post to get a funny insider look at what goes on at SXSWi, which involves random encounters that lead to many more connections and podcasting in the streets.
I also attended BarCamp Austin at lunchtime on Saturday and met some interesting people, Alex Muse from Dallas was one, and I had a nice short chat with Michael Cote, formerly at BMC but now analyzing and blogging for RedMonk. BarCamp is an informal meetup where you chose sessions to present and then could listen to presentations all day, given by fellow barcampers.