Koozie Notes

SXSW Interactive: Day 1

The Imagination Challenge
Alexander Manu

12 MAR 2005 @ 1000

Even though I arrived late, I really enjoyed Mr. Manu's presentation on imagination and the power of play.

• Told story about the introduction of foam to replace sand for the high jump pit. This change cause an athlete to re-examine his form for the high jump and develop the back jump.
• Told his idea for selling socks as individual clothing items instead of in pairs. He pulled up his pants to show his non-matching socks.
• Dichotomy of Work and Play: Mastery of play, possibilities. What could be possible?
• CPO: Chief Possibilities Officer
• Tactical to protect, Strategic to create

Ramblings from the Ranch
Chipp Walters [bio] and Michael McGar

12 MAR 2005 @ 1130

Mr. Chipp Walters, proudly wearing his cowboy hat, took the lead on this panel.

• His companies include: Design Edge(1984), Human Code(1995), and Altuit(2000)
• Magic Carpet, his CVS like tool
• Button Gadget
• altSQLLite

Mr. Michael McGar heads Alchemy Studios in Wimberley, TX.

• Painter for 11 years.
• Media creation, teacher.

His company produces and creates trainging video for Goverment and Private accounts. He showed a sample training video on how not to blow yourself up.

How to Hot-Wire the Creative Process: Drive it like you stole it
Curt Cloninger [bio] lecturer - University of North Carolina at Asheville

12 MAR 2005 @ 1530

The slides from his presentation can be found online at lab404.com/austin. He covered some interesting topics including tools to help you generate designs.

Blogging without Borders: Bridging the Digital Content Divide - Panel Discussion
Jonas Luster [bio], Sean Bonner, Christopher Ulbrich [bio], Ze Frank [bio], and Hossein Derakshan [bio]
12 MAR 2005 @ 1700

Chris Ulbrich, who doesn't blog, made a few interesting points. All journalists read blogs. How well does a story age? Ze Frank covered contagious media and his dance party video.

Jonas's Bloggers without Borders site

Hangar Hotel

  Hanger Hotel 
  Originally uploaded by Koozie.

I took a few shots of some planes that were on display in Fredericksburg, TX.

Sea World

Sea World
Originally uploaded by Koozie.

I took some photos at Sea World in San Antonio with my new Nikon D70. I'm still experimenting with some of the settings and reading the manual to get up to speed with the camera.

SXSW Interactive: Day 0

I've done a pretty good job of not posting anything lately, so below is my first update from SXSW.

Ducking Bullets and Blowing Up Barriers:  The Indie Development of Alien Hominid.
11 March 2005 @ 1930 CT
Tom Fulp - NewGrounds.com

Tom performed well considering this was his first time presenting to an audience.  I really enjoyed the part when Tom read one of his worst rejection letter he received trying to get Alien Hominid published as a console game.  The rejection letter included very candid comments from testers.  Ouch.

Tom told another funny story about one of his friends who happened to instant message him one day about a review he just read -- in Playboy magazine.  Tom thought that was too cool to have a review about Alien Hominid in Playboy.

Other highlights from his talk include: 
  - 18 months from start to finish to get Alien Hominid completed
  - Sold about 50,000 units of Alien Hominid
  - Received teen rating, instead of mature reading, (whew!)

-Chris

 

SXSW Interactive

SXSW Interactive is starting this Friday evening with a presentation by Tom Fulp, developer of Alien Hominid, titled, "Ducking Bullets and Blowing Up Barriers: The Indie Development of Alien Hominid."

According to an email I received earlier this week,  SXSW badges will be available for pickup on Friday from noon to 8:00pm.  Don't forget your photo id.

-Chris

Gnomedex 5.0: Jun 23-25 2005

Chris Pirillo sets the date for the next iteration of Gnomedex. Time to block out my calendar.

-Chris

AutoRuns Ver7.0 Released

The guys at SysInternals have updated their splendid tool, AutoRuns, to Version 7.0.

-Chris