I’m back at SXSW for the second time, soaking up as much new information and having as many conversations as possible!

No interviews this year, and so far, just adventures and no misadventures! From the Copyblogger.com writer’s party (guest post coming there soon!) to being interviewed by the SXSW Baby Podcast to winning an iPad 2 and a bag of Doritos at the Alcatel Lounge, it just gets better every year.

I’ve been to several sessions and met some incredibly interesting and inspiring people – which is to be expected! The sheer volume of awesome crammed into 5 days in Austin is extraordinary; it will take some time to digest it all once I return.

To add to the awesome, Ysmay of metroseeker.com wrote a very complimentary review of my book, you can read it here. Thanks Ysmay!

• Four hours to dictate everything I could remember.
• A couple of hundred bucks for transcription services [well worth it, too!]
• Eight hours reviewing handwritten notes, photographs, emails, and a stack of business cards
• Two weeks rearranging chunks in Scriviner while studying the calendar
• A few hundred dollars for a sweet deal with a great editor
• Fifty hours (off and on) embellishing, editing, rewriting, adding, subtracting, tweaking, and polishing
• Sixty hours (more or less) with assistance laying out the print format
• Thirty hours (more or less) with assistance laying out the ebook format
• $250 for a block of International Standard Book Numbers (ISBNs)
• Various small publishing/proofing fees with LightningSource.com
• Thirty hours (at least!) for artwork (my assistant rocks!) for the cover
• Ten minutes to fill out the online forms, upload the final files, and hit the Publish button

Followed by days of anxious waiting and wondering.

Then it happens…

…the book is PUBLISHED!

Now the real work – promotion – begins!

(That was fun! Let’s do it again!)

Guy Kawasaki wrote a book, Enchantment (affiliate link), and talked about it at SXSW 2011.

The book spells out in simple terms how to be liked and likable, inside and outside of the business world.

For some, it’s “old news” though it’s not a rehash of Carnegie. For many – especially a certain section of the population that has more conversations with computers than people – it’s eye-opening enlightenment. In several places, the standard accepted wisdom is shattered, for good reasons (for example, see “Dress for a Tie”).

I read it on the trip back from SXSW, and thoroughly enjoyed it. Guy presents his ideas in a way that flows smoothly across topics, building steadily throughout the book.

One section in particular, “How to Enchant Your Boss”, should be no surprise and on the surface seems almost trite: when your boss asks for something, drop everything else and do it immediately. But there’s more to this than meets the eye, and no brief review can do justice to the carefully-crafted buildup that sets the foundation for this one sentence to have a profound impact on your daily life.

The advice applies to your spouse also, not just your boss. Read it and decide for yourself.

Guy lives what he teaches: He consented to an interview for a blog with no readers, and gave me two autographed copies of his book – one of which I will give away to a random commenter, provided the comment is relevant to Guy or the book.

So tell me: why do you want to read the book? Or why do you not want to read the book?

(c) by -Snugg-, on Flickr

In the Beginning

Let me tell you about my sister’s lasagna -

It’s terrible. [Sorry sis!]

For one thing, it’s meatless. For another, she used cottage cheese – which I loathe.

But our parents were happy to let her cook for the five of us, so we had it…far too often.

In the Middle

After I left home, I didn’t eat lasagna for almost 20 years. I didn’t like it at home, and of course naturally assumed that that was how it was supposed to be.

In the End

But it doesn’t have to be like that.

I didn’t know any better. That’s the way it always was, cooking is not my forte, so I just accepted it as given that I didn’t like lasagna.

Now I know that – made properly, with meat and real cheese – it’s delicious.

So What?

A few months ago I had one of those long and somewhat painful growth-conversations with my life/business coach that I didn’t want to have, but knew that I had to have if I was ever going to get beyond where I was. I was overwhelmed with work, at the limits of my personal capacity, yet I was loathe to hire anyone to help me. I did not want to manage people. Ever. Again.

You see, I managed an incredible team of 25 stellar programmers for a start-up company many years ago. It was hell. Not because of the programmers, but because of the inane and insane corporate organization, policies, paperwork, micro-management, hours, rules, meetings, pressure, deadlines, and so on that came with the position. No amount of reason or appeal to modern management resources could alter the death spiral of doom.

I spent most of my time trying to keep the team from quitting, and the rest of the time wondering why.

It was my sister’s lasagna all over again.

Break Free

There was no reason for the insanity. No reason for the inane policies. No reason for the micro-managing paperwork and bureaucracy. No reason at all, except that’s the way they’ve always done business.

It was out of my control – but since I didn’t know any better, I accepted it as normal.

It is not normal. It never was. And furthermore it didn’t have to be like that again.

Stop Eating My Sister’s Lasagna

My company would not do these ridiculous things. My team would not have to put up with such non-productive nonsense. My way…was not that way.

How many things in your life are you rejecting out of hand because of what happened in the past? Because of things that do not have to be the same now? How much faster could you make progress if you let go of these bad recipes, and tried your own tasty concoctions instead?

Temptation. Networking. Socializing.

Start Work With Good Intentions…but first

1. Check email

• respond quickly to minor questions
• leave major questions and issues for later
• click on funny video your friend sent and watch half of it

2. Scan Your RSS Feeds

• skim a couple of articles
• click a few links
• read a few interesting bits mentioned in one linked article
• do a google search for more information on one interesting bit
• make some notes for a possible blog post about it some time in the future

3. Glance at Your Favorite News Web Sites and Blogs (that don’t have RSS feeds)

• skim a few articles with catchy headlines
• read the angry/amusing comments for a while
• read one article on Windows Phone Development in detail

4. Answer Questions on Your Favorite Forums

• respond to comments with pithy comebacks
• write short responses to a few new questions
• write a detailed response to one question, including researching links to back up your advice

5. And Check in on Social Media

• read status updates and tweets from important friends
• post bits about stuff you’ve read this morning

6. Then Check Email Again

• respond ROFLMAO to a few more jokes from friends
• reply “I’ll get on that ASAP” to new requests

And Now it’s Lunchtime!

After lunch, restart work with good intentions. Start to look at your to-do list, but check email instead…

And suddenly the whole day is gone.

Sound familiar?

To Avoid This:

• Today, before you stop working, pick the most important thing to accomplish tomorrow
• Tomorrow, before you check email or do anything else, work uninterrupted on the thing you picked the day before, for at least a half-hour

That way you’ll at least make some progress before the Internet’s Plethora of Shiny Things steals another workday.

Collect the Whole Set!

Before I went to SXSW Interactive 2011, I asked a couple of artistic friends to come over and take some pictures for business cards.

For a while I had wanted to create a business card that was a picture of me handing you a business card.

Two talented friends plus moo.com made it easy.

I ordered  100 cards, gave out about 60, and the rest (all but one) disappeared out of my luggage on the way back home.

They’ll probably show up on EBay as collectors’ items once my SXSW book is a best-seller.

Or not.

Time will tell.

I had one more interesting conversation and almost interview on the way back from SXSW – on the plane from Austin to Atlanta.

Read the whole story on planely.com.

Music makes us happy!

Noise in the basement is playing in the Road to Nightfall series March 24 at Rhythm and Brews in Chattanooga, TN. We’re excited to play somewhere besides the basement!

Please join us if you can; arrive early and stay ’till the end because YOUR VOTE MATTERS MOST!

We are competing for a chance to headline at the 2011 Nightfall Concert Series…which would be all kinds of awesome!

If you’ve never heard us, check out the official band web site, or our Facebook page.

The day before, heading towards the first futile bus ride

South by Southwest Interactive 2011, Austin TX (SXSW)

I keep up with new technologies and trends by reading voraciously. Some of it is even relevant.

This year, I decided to get out of my home office and go be there, go meet people, actually have…conversations.

I know, radical, right? Probably a complete waste of time and money. Take a week off of work, put everything on hold, run up the company credit card. Get out of my comfortable workaholic man-cave and swim upstream like a deranged salmon. Scary.

Totally worth it.

Why SXSW?

South by Southwest is “spring break for geeks”. It consists of film, music, and “interactive” segments. The Interactive segment was the attraction: hundreds of sessions, keynotes, panel discussions, lounges, and meetups about technology. This is where Twitter and FourSquare happened. This is where venture capitalists gather in private parties to see secret demos of The Next Big Thing. This is where A-list bloggers go to just hang out, be seen, or in some cases, not be seen. This is where fascinating authors go to promote their new book, explain their new book, or occasionally think about creating a new book.

Why Interviews?

I decided to interview people for a blog with no purpose and no readers for several reasons, but primarily to force me to start conversations. My natural tendency would lean more towards mere observation. But this is SXSW Interactive, not SXSW Passive Observation! So I jotted down a few questions on the plane to Texas, and resolved to start as many conversations as I could politely engage.

Hook ‘Em With a Great Line

The approach would be honest: this is a new blog, it has no readers, no one knows or cares who I am, and that’s ok.

“Would you like to be interviewed for a blog with no readers?” I asked.

Everyone I asked said “Yes”.

And that is what makes SXSW so great. The people.

But SXSW Jumped the Shark!

You can say that SXSW has jumped the shark if you like. I wouldn’t know, because I’ve never been there before.

I found it easy enough to avoid the marketing ponds and irrelevant festivities, and I’m not into the party scene. Instead, I soaked up a lot of great information, went to many informative sessions, met tons of fascinating people, and interviewed several of them. The interviews will be published just as fast as I can get them transcribed. Subscribe to the mailing list or feed in the sidebar on the right if you want to be notified when they are published.

In the Beginning…

I keep up with the world, especially the technology world, via the Internet. I travel infrequently, work primarily from my office in the basement of my house, and earn a comfortable living doing what I love: helping people improve their businesses, creating new products and technologies, designing and implementing software systems, doing technical research, writing, thinking, and providing consulting advice to clients. I am fortunate to do what I love for a living, and am blessed with a family that supports and understands this odd calling.

Out of the Garden…

But lately I’ve been thinking that I wanted to get out and actually meet some of the fascinating people that were doing great things, instead of just reading about it. I’m not talking about the famous – though I did meet a few of those, and found them to be remarkably human and fragile just like the rest of us. I’m talking about the up-and-comers, the enormously intense twenty-somethings rushing around the SXSWi sessions in between meetups, check-ins, emails, and working on laptops in corners crouched by electrical outlets.

I feel these are kindred spirits, accelerated by the tools and trends of the time. These are my (techno) peeps, and this is their interviews.

SXSWi unexpectedly provided a minor journey in self-rediscovery and personal growth, which may go into a forthcoming book. There are also several anecdotes around the interviews
that were not part of the interview itself.

Want to read about my 1st time experience at SXSWi?

Click HERE to read about my extraordinary journey.

Did you?

Did you go to SXSW 2011? Did you enjoy it? Did you jump some sharks, or find new truth and purpose? Tell me what you found in the comments below!

Lorem Ipsum is the standard filler text that designers use (since the 1500s, apparently) to check text flow in layouts. Then they show it to clients, and the following conversation inevitably occurs:

Let me be blunt:

1. I don’t like photoshop wireframes, but even more than that,
2. I loathe lorem ipsum placeholder text.

There, I said it. Let the flood of elegant yet hateful calligraphy begin!

Can’t Help It, Just Can’t Help It

Designers seem to love both of these – they were taught them in school, in books, and everywhere else. “Make a wireframe in a high-end graphic design tool. Use a lorem ipsum generator to test the text flow.” The phrase “a reader will be distracted by the readable content of a page when looking at its layout” is drilled into them from the cradle, and repeated a million times on the Internet [I'm not kidding, click the link].

And that’s great, because it works, for the designer. But it doesn’t work for the customer.

Latin: Pretentious and Dead

I don’t know latin. People that speak and write latin are either pretentious, or dead, or both. Latin scares people – they think they should recognize some famous quote, like “Carpe Diem,” ["seize the day"] or “Caveat Emptor” ["let the buyer beware"] or “Cogito ergo sum” ["I think, therefore I am"], and they feel stupid when they don’t. [Note: the preceeding three latin phrases are all I know; I wouldn't want you to think I was pretentious, or dead!]

And while we’re at it, photoshop wireframes either look like crap or they look too good. When they look like crap, it’s hard to sell the client on the concepts behind the layout. When they look too good, the client thinks you’re already done! – “Why do I have to pay more, just publish that!”

[Deep breath. Count to ten. Imagine a peaceful meadow full of bunnies. Being stepped on by Godzilla.]

Kick the Habit!

I may be in the minority – the phrase “lorem ipsum sucks” yields only 82 results on google.com as of this writing – but I’m not alone. And I suspect that the silent loathing is far larger than that.

So please stop. Just stop. Wireframe and lorem ipsum to your heart’s content. Or sketch in crayon and write “All work and no play makes Jack a dull bot” a thousand times. I don’t care. But when you’re done with that, do two things before you show it to the client:

1. Get rid of the lorem ipsum. Whitespace or “your text goes here” is better than that crap.
2. Make sure the wireframe looks like a mockup, and not (a) crap or (b) a finished site.

The 5 Reasons not to use Lorem Ipsum

OK, I promised you 5 reasons, and all I’ve given you so far is a rant. Here they are:

1. I hate it
2. I hate it
3. I hate it
4. I hate it
5. I hate it

Just kidding. Here they are:

1. I hate it
2. the clients hate it
3. no one likes it but the designers
4. I hate that designers cling to it like rabid bulldogs
5. the clients hate that the designers force it on them

OK, that was rude. Here are the real reasons:

1. It’s intimidating (is that some famous quote? should I admit that I don’t understand it?)
2. It’s confusing (am I supposed to be able to read this? what does it mean?)
3. It bears no resemblance to actual text, especially for web pages (with bullets and headings and so forth)
4. It’s pretentious (latin is for pretentious posers and quotes from dead people)
5. It’s distracting (clients have to consciously ignore it to imagine the real page)

Give It Up for Clarity

Just. Don’t. Do. It.

What Do You Think?

Lorem Ipsum – do you hate it or love it? Why? Leave a comment below, and subscribe for more ridiculously useful information at random intervals.