By the way, Scott and I recently finished FarisWheel 2.0. We had a lot of fun building a site for ourselves—and building it the way we wanted it—a welcome change from clients telling us what to do all the time.

Bowling

• Pin Pals collective score: 567
• Pin Pals average score: 81
• Minimum average score required to qualify: 110

Panel Highlights

• After the Brief: A Field Guide to Design Inspiration with Jason Santa Maria and Rob Weychert
• Web Typography Sucks with Mark Boulton and Richard Rutter

Best Food

• Eddie V’s – Prices are on the high side, but excellent steak…and excellent service
• Brick Oven – I don’t think many non-Austinite SXSW attendees know about this place since it’s kind of on the North East side of downtown

More on all this next week!

The Lineup for Team Pin Pals

• Stuart Colville (aka Muffin Man)
• Carl Camera (aka Italian Stallion)
• Teresa Camera (aka Carl’s hot wife)
• Chris Mills (aka Friend of ED)
• Summer Shepherd (aka my hot wife)
• Shane Shepherd (aka .NET Mac-head)

If you’re looking for something to do after the Web Awards, join us at 300 Austin and buy us a pint!

Panels at the 2007 event will cover topics such as accessibility, advertising, blogging, business issues, content, creativity, design, entrepreneurial concerns, mobile technology, legal issues, online video, open source, podcasting, programming and usability. A preliminary list of panels will be released in early October.

My main grip regarding the 2006 Conference was the lack of programming topics. There was no shortage of web 2.0, AJAXy entrepreneurs showing off their applications, and plenty of designers, accessibility evangelists and semantic code promoters. Jeremy Keith and Aaron Gustafson presented what was probably the closest thing I saw to a full presentation on programming with their presentation on DOM scripting. Jeremy also sat in on one of Tantek’s presentation and presented a really cool mashup he had developed. I also seem to recall Shaun Inman also participated in a joint venture where he got to show off some php skills with a redesign of Plazes.com (Plazes does not appear to be using that design).

So, why the focus of SXSW weighted so heavily towards client side layout and code? Business logic is a very important part of “Interactive Design”. Without parsing engines, how useful are Microformats? How about RSS? Without server-side code, how do you do web 2.0?

I would like to see more sessions that focus on server-side development. Here are some suggestions:

• The Framework Olympics – Four popular frameworks go head to head. Django, RoR, CakePHP and (prepare for backlash from open-source community) ASP.NET.
• Subversion for noobies.
• Communication Skills for Coders – How to get a word in edgewise when in a room full of power-hungry entrepreneurs, touchy-feely designers, and loud mouthed marketers.
• Rapid Development Skills – You don’t need a framework.

Just a few ideas.

But, an equally important factor behind the growth of SXSW is the growth and support of the devoted community that follows the event. As always, we welcome your suggestions about the website and about all other aspects of SXSW Interactive. Beginning next week, you will be able to give feedback on 2007 panel proposals via a special online interface.

Perhaps I will submit some of mine.

The panels I’ve attended have been a refreshing source of information and idea sharing; It’s inspiring to experience this meeting of minds. I attended the following panels today:

• What’s Hot in Web Applications
  panelists: Scott Dietzen (zimbra.com), BJ Fogg (yackpack.com), Seth Sternberg (meebo.com)
  moderator: Peter Merholz (adaptivepath.com
• How to Make the Most of Maps
  panelists: Rev Dan Catt (geobloggers.com), Jared Cosulich (communitywalk.com), PJ Hyett (wayfaring.com), Glen Murphy (movinGmap)
  moderator: Kevin Cheng
• Demystifying the Mobile Web
  panelists: Kelly Goto (gotomedia), Cameron Moll (Authentic Boredom), Dave Shea (brightcreative.com)
  moderator: Brian Fling (Blue Flavor)
• Web 2.1: Making Web 2.0 Accessible
  panelists: Faruk Ateş, Derek Featherstone, Shawn Henry (W3C WAI), Matt Vande Voorde (Accessible Content Magazine)
  moderator: James Craig (cookiecrook.com)
• Holistic Web Design: Finding the Creative Balance in Multi-Disciplined Teams
  panelists: Garrett Dimon (Bright Corner / YourTotalSite), Shaun Inman, Jason Santa Maria, Carl Sieber (fd2s inc.), Eris Stassi

I skipped out on the evening events; I opted to eat dinner and rest instead. After shaking a million hands, jostling through crowded hallways and sitting in cramped chairs for three days, I need to recharge.

Bryan Veloso has a podcast of March 11, 2006 at SXSWi. I haven’t listened yet, but I’m guessing it includes only the panels he attended.

I ended up attending “How to be a Web Design Superhero” with panelists Andy “Buddman” Budd and Andy “Malarky” Clark. This was a humorous look at all the attributes necessary to be a superhero…translated to web design terminology. I had no idea Andy Clarke was such an entertaining guy. Included in the list of “superpowers” necessary to be a web design superhero are:

• super speed – the ability to get jobs done quickly
• empathy – the ability to understand a clients needs
• telepathy – the ability to understand what the client is not telling you
• elasticity – (I didn’t catch what this was)

If I were to take a guess at what my superpowers are I’d have to say:

• organization – the ability to take complex or chaotic things and put them in order
• anticipation – the ability to predict the outcome of a current course

The most useful panel I have attended so far was “How to Bluff Your Way in DOM Scripting”. Both Jeremy Keith and Aaron Gustafson were great. The content was well prepared, there was a practical overview of the DOM, and useful code examples. I’ll probably have to buy Jeremy’s book when I return home. It’s been on my Amazon wish list for a while…but it looks like no one is going to “hook me up”.

I’ve had several requests for my notes from the “How to Bluff Your Way in DOM Scripting” panel. Unfortunately, I neglected to take notes on this panel. However, Stuart Colville has blogged his complete notes/transcription.

I haven’t finalized which seminar’s I’m attending tomorrow…must sleep now.