DerekAllard.com : CodeIgniter, ExpressionEngine, and the World of Web Design

South by Southwest 2008 : Day Three

March 10^th, 2008

Three weeks of late nights, (and about 5 days of being extraordinarily ill) have started catching up with me.  Catching up with all of us actually.  Saturday night was a blast, but it also meant hardly any sleep again ;)

We sponsored a brunch Sunday morning, lots of great casual interaction again, this time without loud music and beer (I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing).  In fact, a number of good ideas came out of it, and even though the coffee tasted like burned sawdust, it was worth it just for that.

I had a chance to hit the big trade show.  In general, it was a disappointment.  A new company tried to sell us on their “mashup” social site… Paul and I sat through about 2 minutes and then excused ourselves, and Paul membled “moblog module” as we were walking away.  Yup, EE does everything they were bragging about out of the box.  <sarcasim>OHhhhhh.... I can post blog entries from my cell phone.  Dude, you just blew my mind</sarcasim>

Also had an odd experience at the booth for the Opera web browser.  They had these big posters advertising their “next big thing” called “Dragonfly”.  I asked the guy attending the booth what it was, and he said he couldn’t tell me.  WTF!  The entire point of their display seemed to be to advertise a product that they “couldn’t talk about”.  I repeat.  WTF.  It would be one thing if I asked him, so what’s the next big thing you’re working on?  It’s entirely different for him to come to me and do that.

While I’m venting… allow me to indulge for another moment.  There was a booth there advertising their new web-framework.  Since I’m kinda involved in a round about way (sorta) with a web framework myself, I thought I’d see what they were about.  So I asked the guy “so what’s this all about”.  The conversation pretty much went like this (note the pattern, I ask a question he gives an answer that doesn’t make sense, or doesn’t make sense without a lot more context):

• ”We’re a web framework that runs on javascript”
• ”oh, so you’re a client side framework?”
• ”No, you need our server.”
• ”So are you a hosted service then?”
• ”No, we run on your server. We’re a web framework that runs on javascript”
• ”So you’re an Apache module?”
• ”We’re built in Java so we work anywhere.  You write pages in javascript and we interpret it for you.”
• ”How do I get your interpreter onto my server?”
• ”oh, you’ll need our server.”
• ”Uh huh, how do I get your interpreter onto my server?  FTP?”
• ”No, you need our server installed”
• ”OK… buh-bye.”
• ”Want a tshirt!”

Jeez, go sell crazy somewhere else.

The night was spent enjoying some ultra nerding out over a great dinner (Derek and Paul ordered some very fine… very costly, but very fine… wine), and then retired to my room for some fine ale generously sent to us from Steven Hambleton of Hambo Design, and a nice bottle of wine sent from Lee Tengum of Made by Fresh.  Thank you both so very much!

I’m returning to Toronto with a renewed sense of excitement and energy and the possibilities before us, and the communities beside us.

This entry was made on March 10^th, 2008 @ 10:11 and filed into ExpressionEngine, Noteworthy.