Monday — SXSW
Alright. I am going to do this daily blog thing. DETERMINATION. Which in hindsight was a funny motto to go into my first session with. Kona Brewing and Duncan Channon got the whole ‘sell your place and be authentic’ right on.
In honor of Monday, let me give you a taste of Kona Brewing.
Pretty awesome right? Here’s one more that has set the tone for my day.
FOMO is a real thing at SXSW. These guys helped alleviate my fear of missing out. It’s been as freeing and glorious as eating cake for breakfast without pants on.
Plus, now I want to buy Kona beer and go to Hawaii.
As I was waiting for the next session to start, Native’s Leading Ladies: Making Kickass Content, I opened up this email.
Talk about blush. That moment of…
Thanks Joe Midura! Like any other curious human, I had to check out Austin Startups and if my blog was indeed appearing at the top.
Sure enough! Even right next to Hugh Forrest. THE , Hugh Forrest. Minnesota friends, don’t worry if you don’t know who he is, I have to shamefully admit I didn’t either before arriving in Austin. (Pssst… he’s the director at SX).
Disclaimer: These next few sentences might be TMI but I have a feeling I’m not the only one out there. So throwing it out there… not sure if it is just me (which is totally fine if I am and then we will have just shared an awkward moment together.) but I’ve been holding my pee a lot so I wouldn’t lose my spot in a session. I can only imagine what I looked like when walking to the bathroom with a full bladder and a pulled calf muscle. Thinking I pulled it due to the large amount of walking. Should I be embarrassed or proud of pulling a calf muscle from simply walking? You decide.
Next up, Native’s Leading Ladies: Making Kickass Content. They all wore black to keep with the kickass theme. I enjoyed that. It was like the Charlie’s Angels had arrived.
If you want to know who these kick-ass women are on the slide:
Melanie Deziel, Annie Granatstein, Stephanie Losee and Melissa Rosenthal.
The question isn’t, “is this content good?” the real question is, “is this content in the right context?”
And here ensues the THE EPIC CHRONOLOGICAL PHOTO BLOG TOUR OF SXSW. I already apologized once for the dramatic nature of that in my last blog so maybe it will become a thing now.
I got a free orange that I just completed the consumption of. Now my fingers are sticky, that was not a smart choice.
This is me as the most pale person here or the most obvious Minnesotan, the land where all of my limbs are completely covered for 9 months of the year.
Now for some observations about people of Austin.
They also love their dogs. I tried to get a picture of a woman playing fetch with her dog but it sucked. So here is a picture of my dog instead.
Most of you ladies out there will appreciate this picture, the trifecta of things that break the internet. Wine, a bearded man and a puppy. And when the said bearded man is holding both the wine and the puppy… you have gold. I threw in this picture because I didn’t realize how comically posed and a marketers dream it is. Five points for those of you who are wondering why the flannel shirt wasn’t included in the mix. If the flannel was included it wouldn’t be a trifecta anymore now would it? ;)
Thank you for allowing the puppy side tangents, back to South by…
At Google Fiber they had a Wonder Woman display, promoting the new movie that is coming out this summer. I am a big sucker for strong women movies, books… you know, that sort of thing. They had VR of an artist’s work of illustrated Wonder Woman scenes, which was super cool! To be immersed in the artwork was a neat experience. I was less impressed with the VR trailer that played after the artwork. It felt like I didn’t have my contacts in, everything was blurry. This whole VR thing still has further to develop.
The team assembled for dinner. When that first person sends out the ‘wanna meet up?’ group text it feels a little like Ron Burgundy assembling the news team.
I had the best dinner I’ve had so far and this is what was left of it.
The out of focus picture with the napkin thrown is totally representative of how I felt after that meal with my happy, full tummy.
Until next time… TTFN!
….
TTFN is an initialism for a colloquial valediction, ‘ta ta for now’, based on ‘ta ta’, an informal ‘goodbye’. The expression came to prominence, in the UK, during the Second World War.
