brad garland

So I’ve offically been up since 4:45 this morning where i got my sh*t together and started making the trek to Austin. I grabbed some kick ass Whataburger taquitos and I was good to go. Mapquest said it would take 3:45 to Austin, did it in 3:05. :)

I made it to Austin with plenty of time to register and get into the 1st class which was on XML. The class, for me, kinda blew because it was a bit more programmer-ish and was for audience that fit into that role. So at times it lost me, but that was ok because SXSW has free wifi for everyone so I had a chance to catch up on some emailing.

I then went to an AJAX class - ‘What you need to know’, and it was more conceptual than anything so I did get a kick out of that and it included the panelist that actually coined the phrase AJAX, Jesse James Garrett.

Then went and grabbed some lunch and sat down with a young lady and began talking to her about the festival. She mentioned she was going to be a panelist and I ask what her claim to fame was, she says, “I write for Lifehacker.” I was like, “What? Really? Lifehacker.com? That’s awesome…that is on my RSS feeds and I check it daily. I’m talking about Gina Tranpani and I’d have to say she was very cool to speak to and seems to be a very humble person despite her blog’s success. I like ppl that don’t take themselves too seriously.

Anyway, went to a couple of other panels after that and they weren’t much to talk about so I won’t. After today’s panels, I did go by the Buffalo Bill’s and met some cool people and I’m really beginning to dig how this conference seems to bring people together. Although, I feel like I’m the only non-designer/non-programmer in the bunch but I still like to keep up with those things. Guess I’m a designer at heart…

[tags]SXSW, Web 2.0, design, programming[/tags]

Off to bed, dead tired. More tomorrow!