in austin at sxsw

For the record, Maria Menounos is stupid hot. She was down here doing a standup (presumably for the film festival, but she was standing among us interactive types).
(Have I mentioned that I’m here at SXSW for the Interactive festival? Well, I am. I haven’t been in Austin for a full year, which is downright criminal for someone who lives in Dallas.)
Anyway, this year’s festival is crazy. Rumor has it that attendance is double what it was last year, and it feels like it. Registration Saturday morning traditionally takes about five minutes; this year there was a line extending across two floors and it took a full 50 minutes to get my badge. (Which features a photo of me from some past festival, giving me a chance to relive my beardless past lives.)
I’m happy for the organizers, particularly after persistent rumors in the last couple of years that Interactive might some day be canceled if numbers didn’t improve, but I think The Return Of The Boom makes SXSW a little less pleasant for folks like me — web hobbyists with no real business connection to the industry. Lots of panels on funding models and entrepreneurship and the business/tech-skills-to-make-money sides of things, less on the social-ramifications stuff. Totally understandable, of course — I’m hardly SXSW’s target customer — but unfortunate.
It appears the organizers have tried to fill that social-ramification void by grabbing onto the Gladwellian School of Yuppie Self-Help — that school of thought, driven by Malcolm Gladwell, that aims to convince college-educated people they can understand the world through five anecdotes, a couple of scientific studies, and an overarching theme. Gladwell spoke at SXSW last year, but this year there are two of his journalistic heirs on the program: Dan Gilbert and James Surowiecki.
Surowiecki gave what I’m sure is his standard stump speech on “The Wisdom of Crowds,” which argues that groups of people are collectively smarter than their smartest individuals. (Except, of course, when they’re not.) Gilbert is angling for a bigger market; his book blurbs him as a cross between Gladwell and David Sedaris, which is of course porn for bookstore owners. Despite his professorial background, his schtick is more stand-up than anything else; his basic point is that people make logical errors and do a bad job of predicting the future. He’s a lively writer, from the first 40 pages I read, but his presentation was sloppy, including a few basic errors that undercut his credibility (with me, at least).
Anyway, it’s been a good weekend to catch up with my Austin homies and my blogfriends from around the world. Special props to Lucian for giving me a place to crash.
Finally, those of you in town may be want to drop in at 20×2 Monday night. (At Tambaleo, 302 Bowie Street, 7 p.m.) I’ll be one of the 20 speakers. Well, I’ll actually be showing a two-minute short film, so the only speaking of mine you’ll hear is a half-second sound effect repeated several times. I’ll post the film here after the talk.