Seeing as I’m here in Texas as part of a West Midlands contingent, it was funny to stumble across this pub on my first trip into Austin. Is Shakespeare our region’s most exportable brand? Answers on a postcard/blogpost. I’m going to start a list. 

]]> http://www.sxswm.com/2008/03/09/exporting-the-west-midlands/feed/ http://www.sxswm.com/2008/03/08/sxswi-2008-saturday-first-impressions/ http://www.sxswm.com/2008/03/08/sxswi-2008-saturday-first-impressions/#comments Sat, 08 Mar 2008 21:58:46 +0000 Dom Murphy http://www.sxswm.com/2008/03/08/sxswi-2008-saturday-first-impressions/ First impressions stepping into the convention centre — where the bulk of SXSWi activity takes place — was of overwhelming excitement. Registration was fast and easy and after getting the event catalogue I realised some tough decisions needed to be made. With so much on offer to see and do I wasn’t sure where to start.

I came to SXSWi with a goal to discover new technologies which could help TAK! in the future as well as examine whether graphic / interface design excellence is a lost art. Over the past year or two I’ve gotten quite bored with the state of the web and how design can appear so cheap in comparission to other creative mediums (ie: print, motion etc.) So at SXSWi I wanted to find out whether the internet today (and tomorrow) is more about content and social networking than unsability and interesting design.

Upfront my opinion is that the very best sites should do everything. Visually they should stand out from the competition, work well and be feature rich. Not wanting to blow my own trumpet but TAK!’s community site StickerNation covered a lot of bases — where great content sat within a visually inspiring look and feel; still today we get a lot of emails thanking us for doing that project and how it inspired them to get involved in street art or web design.

The first talk I went to was Design is in the Details by Naz Hamid from Weightshift. I caught the 2nd half and although Naz didn’t cover any new ground, he did reaffirm the design process and made me feel better that people out there do strive for good design online.

The next panel I checked was the How to Rawk SXSW — a fun primer to the festival with a good bunch of speakers.

After that I decided to get some food and see if I can find a cheap iPhone and small gifts for loved ones. I forgot how big this place is, and an hour was spent walking a couple of blocks and discovering nothing but eateries and roads. I did stroll past the Childrens Museum which looked pretty cool. Nice characters!

On return I proceeded to check out Ellis Labs’ presentation of version 2 of Expression Engine. I’ve not heard of Expression Engine before but a quick check of the internet during the SXSW Rawks panel I realised it was a session worth investigating. Expression Engine is a well priced CMS which seems to be both powerful and desincentric. What they presented literally blew me away. Of all the features on display the sheer innovation in the interface was the thing which impressed me the most. Shit was shown that I didn’t even think was possible. From the reaction from the more technically minded, it would seem the CMS itself is very good behind the scenes being fast, scalable and customisable. It’s something TAK! will definately look at for certain projects.

After that conference I got stopped by a chap from Utterz who took my photo and interviewed me. Straight after that my good friend Ben Hostler from Beef spotted me — he’s at SXSWi representing Bristol on a very similar thing to myself and the West Midlands Massive. At this point we both realised our 3.30pm panels were starting and I quickly rushed to check Great Design Hurts. Unfortunately the room was full and so I ended up missing the talk which I wanted to see most (shit). The talk seemed to tackle the question which I have come here to research. From the pre-talk blurb — great design does hurt and doing something new and different is scary, but worth it. From what I gather all the talks will be available to download afterwards - so all is not lost!

More updates from SXSWM 

The Southbysouth West Midlands posse take in the Fuddruckers burger emporium. Fantastic!

Is there an unwritten rule that says, ‘the day before you’re about to go on a trip - your workload will explode’? There seems to be a direct correlation between the number of days you are away from the office and the length of your to-do list.

However, this time around I shouldn’t be too far from my office, albeit a virtual one, despite being nearly 5,000 miles away. I’m lucky enough to be heading to Texas tomorrow for SXSW Interactive, thanks to support from Digital Central. A group of us are heading over to live and breath interactive media for the next five days, make some valuable contacts and share our experiences with the digital media community back in the West Midlands. My reason for going is to learn more about this fantastic festival , make some valuable contacts and spread the word about the Digital Media and Film Event taking place in Birmingham this October, which I’m project managing. I can’t wait. All I need to do now is attempt to clear the to-do list,  pack by bags and find my passport!

I’ll be posting my thoughts and SXSW experiences on this blog, and you can  find out more about what we’re all up to at www.sxswm.com. More news on the Digital Media and Film Event to come very soon.

]]> http://www.sxswm.com/2008/03/06/texas-here-we-come/feed/ http://www.sxswm.com/2008/02/29/delicious-islamic-homeschool-diary-earthquake-continued/ http://www.sxswm.com/2008/02/29/delicious-islamic-homeschool-diary-earthquake-continued/#comments Fri, 29 Feb 2008 18:02:02 +0000 Joanna http://www.sxswm.com/2008/02/29/delicious-islamic-homeschool-diary-earthquake-continued/ Many of the quakes in the UK are clustered around an enormous block of rock known as the Midlands Microcraton. This is an ancient, Precambrian (older than 590 million years) feature that runs up through Birmingham towards the Potteries.

I realise I once gave a presentation in 2004 in which I talked about Austin, Texas as an example of a place that was doing interesting stuff around developing creative communities. In particular it developed an unofficial ‘Keep Austin Weird’ tagline for itself. I think I was making the case for the West Midlands to take an equally leftfield approach.

The full presentation is too long and dull to post here so I’ve pulled out the four relevant slides. Also (and better than my slides) here’s some reading for you. One academic, one useful piece of journalism:

• Andy Pratt from London School of Economics on ‘Digital Places’. Jump to the Austin case study on page 23. 
• 2003 Austin Chronicle article

My point in this: Austin the place is as interesting as SXSW the event. We should maybe have an ‘About Austin’ page? Tease out some of those issues around how it’s developing its creative community in relation to how we’re doing it here?

Dave

I’ve just come back from a brilliant committee meeting for the Cure Leukaemia Art Auction 2008. This is an event I got involved with officially last year (thanks to an introduction by Susan McNally). It was launced in 2006 to raise funds for Birmingham’s world class leukeamia centre by holding an annual auction of work donated by artists (the majority of whom are from Birmingham and the West Midlands).  Its a great event, and last year raised over £17,000  which was used to both commission new art work for the Centre, and fund research and treatments for patients. As well as being involved in a fantastic project which leads to real benefits, it great to be part of an enthusiastic and proactive committee. Especially when our chair, Ian Allen, so kindly provides us with bacon butties.

This year’s event is on 20 May, I’ll post more details soon.

]]> http://www.sxswm.com/2008/02/28/talking-art-and-bacon-butties/feed/ http://www.sxswm.com/2008/02/28/stef-lewandowski-south-by-south-west-midlands/ http://www.sxswm.com/2008/02/28/stef-lewandowski-south-by-south-west-midlands/#comments Thu, 28 Feb 2008 10:34:52 +0000 Stef http://www.sxswm.com/?p=2139 In short - a bunch of Birmingham digital media types are going to SXSW Interactive in Texas next week, and we are doing a ‘remote control blogging’ thing where you get to ask us to attend stuff and report back for you.
Last year I went to the SXSW Interactive festival in Austin, Texas - the […]