We started our trip in Vancouver, ending up in Calgary just in time for the Stampede with stops along the way in Salmon Arm, Lake Louise, Emerald Lake and Banff among other points of interest.

Unfortunately, and ironically, for a good portion of our road trip, we were in the mountains and had no cell (voice or data) reception at all. This was fine with me as it gave me a chance to explore the phone itself (being relatively new to Nokia and it’s Symbian OS) as well as take in the landscape as a passenger for a change instead of being the driver.

The N97 Mini is a slick little smartphone in a candybar style form factor that is smaller (although slightly thicker) than my iPhone 3GS. It’s been out for about six months in the US so there are plenty of reviews around. I thought I’d focus on a few things that interested me about the phone.

The Camera
With an onboard 5 megapixel camera, with autofocus and LED flash, it’s pretty capable and similar to the iPhone 4. Here’s a number of photos I took while travelling around in the RV:

I really liked the depth of field possible with this camera:

I really liked the quality of the images taken with the camera although I found it a little sluggish to use but fairly consistant to an average point and shoot camera which it could easily replace. I found the flash to be pretty decent and to work slightly better than the iPhone 4 which always seemed to suffer for ‘white eyes’ when I used it briefly.

It is also capable of shooting video (with the flash working as an always on light), although only in standard definition. It also has a front facing camera but it’s very low resolution. I never had a chance to try out the video calling features but hope to in the coming weeks while I still have the loaner phone.

Navigation with Ovi Maps
Nokia also includes built in navigation software that is pretty slick.

Three features really stood out about it beyond the standard functions you’d find in a Garmin or TomTom unit:

1. You can choose and download your maps to the device using desktop software so you don’t need a network connection to use it (especially useful if in a foreign country without data)
2. Using the Ovi Voice app, you can customize a large portion of the navigation system using your own (or anyones) voice. One of the tasks we were given on the trip was to customize the RV’s phone with our own voices so we had a lot of fun with it as it asks you to record over 50 different phrases and words that it integrates into the navigation…if the RV gets lost along the way, I think they can blame us for having too much fun with the feature.
3. map updates are free for the life of your phone

Another nice touch is that the N97 Mini comes with a window suction cup mount in the box which makes it even easier to use as an in-car nav system and speakerphone.

Build your own Nokia apps without coding
Nokia recently announced a web based app builder for it’s Ovi Store. Basically it allows you to make a self contained app that pulls in any rss feed you want…so I made one for this site:

It’s pretty basic but it worked pretty well and took all of 5 minutes to create an app, followed by a 24 hour approval process before showing up on the store.

A few other Likes/Dislikes
I liked:

• great form factor that is very comfortable in hand and slips into a jeans pocket easily with possibly the best flipout keyboard I’ve ever used on a smartphone…small enough to be hidden well, comfortable enough that I might actually type on it…also has a satisfying click sound when folding away the keyboard
• Nokia’s app store (erm, Ovi Store) has a surprisingly deep amount of apps, games and themes – many things that on Android require rooting or jailbraking on the iPhone – although I haven’t had that much time to fully explore their usefulness
• true multitasking by simply press’n'hold the ‘wonky button’ (Tom’s British, you know) method for closing running apps
• decent battery life…although we were using these phones constantly, they managed to last about a day with heavy use

I didn’t like:

• the Symbian OS feels dated and slow compared to Android/iOS…truly feels like the Linux of the mobile world…fine if you’re into command lines but not so much if you’re into a snappy GUI
• the phone got very hot while charging or using as a wifi hotspot (or both as we usually used it on the RV), thanks to the metal back plate
• some of the apps were pretty pricey…Gravity, seemingly the best (if not only) Twitter client for Nokia was $10
• the video mode suffered from an auto exposure strobing effect that I found annoying…I didn’t find an option to lock it in place, just switch it between a few presets
• constantly being prompted to ‘go online’ or being told that what I’m about to do would incur data charges or simply being offline & having to press a button or 3 to get an update…no matter what settings I changed, I couldn’t make it stop or stay online. I just wanted to be always online like I can with Android or iPhone. Perhaps this is a holdover from the past when data plans didn’t come in 6gb blocks for less than a mortgage payment

It was a lot of fun to spend time in the RV with other mobile geeks, learning about the phone while travelling around. Tom, our host, mixed things up on a daily basis by giving us challenges to perform using the phone…including dropping us off in an empty parking lot in downtown Calgary. It was early in the morning after a late night at the Stampede then they drove away leaving us with some coordinates to use with Ovi Maps to find our way to breakfast. Fortunately it was only a few blocks to walk but a solid and fun challenge.

I made a couple of timelapse movies during the trip…here’s day one where we travel from Vancouver to Salmon Arm with a brief stop at the Othello Tunnels:

Heading Home
The RV dropped us off at the airport in Calgary and was continuing on out East with a fresh batch of mobile geeks they’d pick up along the way.

While waiting to fly home back to Vancouver, we were entertained at our gate, Stampede style (captured by the N97 Mini), much to Daniel’s chagrin:

All the photos (many taken with the N97 Mini) I took on the trip can be found in my Flickr set.

Huge thanks to my hosts, Tom Hall and Donna Suffling with WOMWorld/Nokia, Chris our awesome RV driver, and my travelmates: Michael, April, and Daniel.

Things started off at the Rodeo:

Followed by the Chuck Wagon races which are insane:

After the last race, they hauled this huge stage onto the main track area:

The stage was where the Grandstand Show (called World Party) was held…I was skeptical at first but it turned out to be very entertaining, featuring all kinds of performances (including Cirque du Soleil performers from Quidam, and crazy motorcycle stunts), finishing off with one of the most impressive fireworks shows I’ve ever seen in person:

We finished up the night with a trip through the midway:

I tried a deep fried Snickers. You can view my full set of photos on Flickr.

Special thank you to Hala Dehais (Calgary Stampede) and Judy Love Rondeau (Tourism Alberta) for their assistance with media access to the Rodeo and Chuckwagon races and to Tom and Donna with WOMWorld/Nokia for getting me there – how I got there will be the topic of my next post but here’s a hint:

The first weekend, as a guest of the fantastic Whistler/Blackcomb Media team, I got to stay in the amazing Dream House that lived up to it’s title. A fantastically appointed 5 bedroom ski in/out lodge right under the Blackcomb Gondola complete with hot tub on the deck which I spent a large amount of time in:

Shortly after arriving, we found out that the house was hosting a party with a huge list of who’s who in ski and snowboard media, gear makers and a number of world class athletes. Word quickly spread that I had my iPad with me and I gave a bunch of demos of it and had some great conversations with photographers and magazine people about the device and how it had the potential to transform their industries. I also learned a new trick that I have yet to master but I’ll keep practicing. It was a great way to get settled into my new home for the next couple of days.

One of the more interesting things (to me) that happens at the festival is a number of different photo & video contests that happen. There is a 72 hour film showdown where teams have 72 hours to make a video that is then screened and judged. There are also a couple other photo contests including the Pro Photo Showdown where some of the best ski & snow photographers compete. Unfortunately, these events happened mid week so I missed them but I’m thinking they are a great reason to come back next year and get more involved in them. Getting to meet a lot of the people competing in these competitions also made me envious of what they were doing as it seemed to be an absolutely fun way to compete, doing something they love.

The next day started off with a new experience for me: a visit to the spa!

I had already spent a fair bit of time in the house hot tub (hey, it was there and somebody had to use it) so the idea of going somewhere for more hydro therapy was very appealing. I’d never been to a spa of any kind before and apparently the Scandinave Spa was a pretty special place. It’s a huge outdoor facility with pools scattered amongst other buildings which housed different types of wet and dry saunas, including the amazing Eucalyptus steam room (the red building in the photo above) – it felt like you were inside a Halls lozenge…in a good way. Then it was suggested that you jump into the cold pool for full effect…it was actually quite exhilarating.

Being a first timer at a place like this, which is really an adult playground, I kind of felt like I was in a James Bond movie…expecting Sean Connery to come out of the steam room and then ninjas would jump out of the bushes and attack. I know that may not sound relaxing but it was still a pretty cool place to visit. We were all very mellow afterwards so clearly the spa experience is relaxing.

Next up was a visit to Sushi Village for dinner. Now I’m not a seafood eater so I was a little nervous about going for sushi but my hosts assured me they would help me navigate the choices. Worse case, I could order some chicken ‘KFC rolls’ if the fish didn’t work for me.

I figured I was already trying new things and might as well try new foods while I’m at it. I had tried sushi in the past was never compelled to try more than one or two pieces before being turned off. Thanks to everyone’s help, I eased into it and eventually found myself quite enjoying it all…It would appear that fresh & quality seafood really makes the difference. Or perhaps it was the Saki Margaritas. In any case, it was fun experience with great company.

The buildings in the village were a fantastic backdrop/screen for some awesome video projections during the opening kick off party later that night…including these retro videogame visuals:

It was pretty cool to hear the Donkey Kong theme blasting throughout the village while being projected on the side of a hotel.

Before we headed home the first weekend, we spent a fantastic afternoon sitting on a patio in the Village watching the Whistler Chef Challenge in front of Araxi:

It was a frenetic cookoff with lots of chefs competing Iron Chef style in timed challenges then judged on the spot to see who would advance to the next level:

Heading home that day was tough – the festival was just getting underway and we had to head home. But a few of us were coming back the following weekend so we had that to look forward to.

Fast forward to the following Friday, John, Rebecca & I met up again to participate in the Chevy Road Trip to WSSF along with some other media folks (Chevy is one of the sponsors of WSSF). We were loaned a brand new Chevrolet Equinox to drive up to Whistler and take in the rest of the festival (although this photo was taken at the Squamish Spit):

One thing we tried to do the previous weekend but didn’t make it before they closed was to visit the Grilled Fromage in Squamish. Rebecca had gushed about this place and I’m a big fan of grilled cheese sandwhiches so we convinced the rest of the Road Trippers to stop off and get our cheese on:

It’s a fun little diner that features over 60 different kinds of grilled cheese sandwhiches with a cheesy decor that includes a ton of cheesy things that I could spend all day browsing around the shop:

I opted for a smoked gouda, bacon & pickle sandwich which goes by the name of the ‘Polyester & Pickle’ which was amazing:

Once checked into our hotel in Whistler, we headed to the Fashion Exposed show to see the latest in ski and snowboard fashions all the while, a couple of great bands (The Zolas and We Are the City) performed in the middle of the runway.

We spent Saturday checking out the many WSSF events around the Village including getting to test drive a bunch of different vehicles including a Camaro and a few hybrid trucks which were on hand for anyone at the festival to take for a spin:

So much going on and I didn’t even set foot on the mountain where there was a whole other set of ski & snowboard events happening. As I said earlier, next year, I’ll have to plan to spend more time up there for the full festival. It was still an amazing couple of weekends in Whistler.

A huge thank you to Amber, Michelle, Tabetha & Stephanie for hosting me the first weekend and George, Janice, and Fred for hosting the second weekend.

You can view my full WSSF 2010 photoset on Flickr.

Update: I figured I could probably do a separate post just about all the food photos I took at Whistler but because she mentioned it and did suggest an awesome place for breakfast, I give you VanCity Allie’s ‘Meat Pile’ from our breakfast at Elements in the Village:

This time around, unlike previous years that I’ve attended SXSWi, I had no plans beyond my own panel which fortunately was on the first day of the conference. Being my first large scale talk, and at SXSW of all places, I was anxious about it right until I met up with my co-panelist, Chris Heuer, in the green room before the session.

Chris, being a veteran SXSW speaker, put me at ease immediately…he’s awesome like that.

It was also exciting to find out as we made our way to our panel room that it was full and people were actually sitting on the floor. I had no idea what to expect for our little panel topic so to hear that many people were interested in what we had to say was incredibly encouraging.

It was even cooler to discover that the signboard out in front of our session had been ‘defaced’ in a positive way:

The session went very well…we were very fortunate that many of the folks that turned up were very vocal about the issues and once Chris and I got the ball rolling, the room took over. Someone joked that it turned into the Phil Donahue show as we had a queue of people that wanted to either voice their opinion, respond to someone else’s or ask a question to us and the room. There was some people that left and reading some of the comments/tweets after the fact it was mostly due to the fact that we were all over the place as far as cool kids vs suit issues. I concede that was a problem and we tried to steer things back on track but it was also interesting to see the room discuss things organically so it was hard to want to stifle the open dialogue.

It was very gratifying to me to have people come up to me in the halls of the convention centre later on (and even days later) and thank me for giving this topic a spot to be explored. Even folks that weren’t in town yet when the session was on, but knew about it and recognized me from the session description and wanted to talk about it further. This was a very new experience for me and I was thrilled that the little idea that kept me up at night last summer had grown to be this thing that people wanted to talk about. We even got interviewed by the Austin Chronicle about our session as one of the trending topics at SXSW this year.

I haven’t talked to Chris about it yet but it seems obvious to me that we should submit a followup to the session as there are plenty of things we didn’t have time to get to that we wanted to explore…not to mention the feedback we’ve gotten from people in person and online. So that’s got me excited to go back to Austin in 2011 even more now.

The rest of my time in Austin was a blur…five more days of amazing times with amazing friends…including a special trip to the Salt Lick BBQ in Drifwood, Texas:

where I got so see my pal Josh propose to his longtime girlfriend Traci:

spending time at the Social Media Clubhouse with lots of amazing people:

of course the parties that SXSW is famous for:

some burlesque performers showed up to make a fun night out even livelier:

I even managed to get on TWIT.Live…twice!

While this SXSW didn’t see me have the photographic output I usually create (my DSLR was still in the shop post-Olympics), there was no shortage of other types of content creation while in Austin. Dave Olson and I recorded a marketing-themed podcast while on the Social Media Clubhouse bus about our experiences at SXSW and along with Kris Krug, also shot some footage out at the Clubhouse about our recent Olympic experiences which might end up in the With Glowing Hearts documentary.

It was a very special SXSW experience for me this year…in many ways surreal. Big thanks to all my friends (new and old) that helped to make it so memorable with an extra special thanks to Chris and his lovely wife Kristie who were amazingly generous to me. I’m looking forward to seeing them again soon at Northern Voice.

The purpose of the event was to let the local community know more about Bluewater Adventures which was recently proclaimed “one of the Best Travel Companies on Earth” by National Geographic Adventure Magazine who rated them 93.6% overall and 100% in customer satisfaction.

Compared to the other event, this was a much more intimate affair. It was like a floating kitchen party.

Did I say kitchen? Of course there was food:

The sailing tours (or ‘adventures‘ as they call them) cover pretty much the entire West Coast from the Gulf Islands up to Alaska and most points in between including the Queen Charlotte Islands. These trips also focus on a number of ‘eco-actions‘ including the entire trip being carbon neutral.

After getting to experience an afternoon on the boat, I can see why this form of touring the West Coast is so appealing and was honestly something that I’d never considered doing myself. It’s a very relaxing way to travel with all the comforts of home onboard. Something else I wasn’t aware of was the fact that a biologist accompanies all tours to help answer any questions guests have about the environment.

The famous WigWam Inn:

One thing that really hit home this past week of boating is how freakin’ amazing BC really is. We really do take for granted the beauty that is right around us and people from all over the world come here to experience it. This whole ‘tourist in your own town’ thing is really under-rated.

I thought it might be fun to clamp a camera to the boat and make a little time lapse of our trip and it turned out pretty well:

You can view my entire photoset on Flickr – and all the photos are geotagged so you can see exactly where each one was taken along the trip up Indian Arm (click the ‘map’ link on each photo).

Thanks to our hosts at Bluewater Adventures (who are also on Twitter) for opening my eyes to a truly amazing way of exploring the province.

I’ve talked about WordCamps before and even gave a talk at WordCamp Whistler earlier this year. Like Whistler, I was joined in San Francisco by John & Rebecca from Sixty4Media and Duane & Dale from BraveNewCode which I referred to more than a couple of times as Team Canada.

During Matt Mullenweg’s ‘State of the Word’ talk, it was cool to hear BraveNewCode’s plugins (WordTwit and WPTouch) getting mentioned as two (out of 3) of the most popular plugins for WordPress users based on a Twitter poll Matt ran before the event.

This year I was asked by Lloyd to help out in the Genius Bar – basically a bunch of passionate users/geeks helping others with any questions or problems they have about using/installing WordPress.

During my shift I only answered a handful of questions due to a ‘genius to customer’ ratio of about 10 to 1… admittedly it was towards the end of the day and smack in the middle of a couple of well attended sessions. We did manage to come up with a few terrible WordPress themed pickup lines.

After a day of geeking out at the conference, it was time to head to Automattic’s space at Pier 38 for the WordPress 6th birthday party featuring WordPress themed cupcakes and a whole lot of awesome food and drink:

If you’re interested in any of the topics covered at WordCamp SF, keep an eye on WordPress.tv as most, if not all, of the sessions were videotaped and should appear online as soon as they are edited together. Rebecca also covered a lot of the sessions with her excellent day blog.

Considering the amount of camera gear I brought down there with me, I didn’t take a lot of photos…mostly because there wasn’t a lot of time between trips to and from the airport. I think next time I do a quick weekend trip like this, I’ll scale back my gear a lot more. I didn’t even get any decent photos of Team Canada….of course I blame the tequila.

As before, shot with the Kodak Zi6 and edited with iMovie ’09.

Shot with my Kodak Zi6 HD camera and edited using iMovie ’09 which seems to have it’s quirks but I’m giving it a shot for awhile before I go back to Final Cut. iMovie is definitely faster to pull stuff together like this but you have much more control in Final Cut. I also thought I’d try out YouTube’s HD format. I didn’t have enough upload space on my Vimeo account for the full HD version, plus it would have taken a week to process. I’m really close to dropping the $60 for a Vimeo pro account. If you like rewatching movies, check out the 720×480 version over there.

Stay tuned for part two – the trip home which was fortunately on a much nicer day.

Now is the time to start doing a few things to maximize your time in the Lone Star state. If you haven’t already booked a hotel room, expect to be spending a lot of time in cabs getting to and from your room out on the interstate and the Austin Convention Center….all the close hotels (walking distance) were booked up last summer.

If you haven’t already registered, you should do it soon since the price goes up the closer it gets. Peter and I booked our flights last weekend….airline prices are down thanks to the current economic situation…$100 less than last year.

If you want to use your iPhone (or any other phone not from the US at least), you’ll probably need to unlock it and acquire a US Sim card. Cheapest route I’ve found still is an AT&T Pay as you go phone which can found almost anywhere in the US (Target, Walmart, 7-11, etc.) for as little as $15 (with a $10 airtime credit). You then add the $19.99 Medianet data plan for unlimited data for a month while you’re in Austin.

When you activate your cheap phone, make sure you choose the option to pay $1 per day of use. It means that you’ll only pay $0.10/minute for most calls (plus $1 for each day you use it) and calls to other AT&T users (like say, anyone following these instructions) are completely free (aside from that initial $1/day). If you don’t use it on a certain day, you don’t pay. Text messages are still a rip off at $0.15 per (incoming or outgoing). Keep in mind you probably won’t be able to use a foreign credit card to top up these phones but plenty of places (including gas stations) sell top up cards.

Now is also a good time to order some Moo cards. I just ordered another batch and it came in less than 2 weeks….last year lots of people were upset because they ordered either too late or it took longer to deliver due to increased demand (not sure if it’s SXSW related but possibly).

I know a few people haven’t been happy with the quality of their moo cards but I’ve ordered at least 5 batches with no issues at all and have been very happy with their quality. I’ve got a few 20% off coupon codes if you’re placing a first time order so leave a comment if you want one.

Finally, now is a good time to start scoping out the activities. Sites like Upcoming already has a number of the parties listed so you can at least start RSVP’ing to those that interest you. Most things you can simply walk up to on the day while you’re there but some require being on a list of some kind in advance due to the huge crowds that get bigger every year. Hopefully Jeremy Kieth will update his fantastic Adactio Austin party list for 2009 soon too. My pals over at Raincity Studios have already booked the biggest party at Southby each year. I stumbled across an Austin Flickr meetup last year that turned out to be really special and it wasn’t on any SXSW agenda.

There is even BarCamp Austin to check out while you’re in town if you want to skip out on SXSW for awhile.

I’ll leave you with an awesome three-letter-word reason to go to SXSW:

and maybe the fried pickles at B.D. Riley’s too:

I was particularly interested in the Cork & Fork which is a carry-on bag with a removable camera backpack inside. It was like getting two bags in one…although they are quite pricey, they are in line with the price of their other bags.

The Cork & Fork is basically the Period Charmer bag plus an innovative backpack (which doesn’t appear to be sold separately) meant for carrying camera gear that can be removed from the main bag.

I actually bought the Cork & Fork awhile ago but didn’t have the opportunity to use it on a trip until recently during the holidays.

Most airlines allow two carry-on bags…usually a ‘proper’ carry-on bag (for the overheard compartment) along with a laptop, camera or similar bag that can be stowed under the seat in front of you. As you can see in the photo to the right, the two bags didn’t quite fit into the guide at the airport but I never had an issue from the flight crew onboard. The main bag easily went into the overhead compartment and the camera backpack fit perfectly under the seat in front.

Thanks to a baggage mishap I had awhile ago, I’ve been extra weary of checking anything in my bags except the basics like clothes. I always try to carry on any gear I want to have on a trip.

As you can see, the camera section can carry a lot of gear. It has a large main section along with a small zippered section with a mesh cover so you can easily see inside. This little section is perfect for batteries, memory cards, cords and other small items. For those curious, this shot contains my Nikon D90 with battery grip and 50mm lens attached, SB-600 speedlight, SB-400 speedlight, Kodak Zi6 HD camera, 18-105mm lens, 10.5mm Fisheye lens, Lensbaby Composer, Rocket blower, Gorillapod and Ultrapod mini-tripods, wide/tele lens adaptors, an Airport Express, Belkin travel power adaptor, Sanyo Eneloop + Nikon battery chargers plus a pile of smaller gear in the mesh compartment.

The larger main section is divided into three areas that can be customized with the included ‘snake’ dividers and removable velcro tabs. Unlike other bags, the fact that the velcro can be moved around makes it really easy to customize the layout of the bag for all your gear. It actually took a number of attempts playing with all the options to find a layout that made the most sense for my stuff. The backpack has a number of external pockets and straps for attaching tripods or whatever to it. One external pocket contains a rain cover for the backpack and the other is large enough to fit my Macbook Air or a magazine or two. Not sure if a regular Macbook would fit.

As the backpack section is meant to fit inside the main bag, I’ve found the backpack straps to be a little on the small side and not as comfortable as the other Crumpler dedicated backpacks are to wear. But for lugging around an airport, they work great. The bag also features some very beefy and sturdy wheels.

This is the first wheeled bag I’ve owned that doesn’t fall over when upright regardless of load inside. This appears to be due to some very well placed rubber feet underneth as well as on the back so that you can lay it flat when you want to get something out of it.

The retractable handle is very strong and I used it many times as a coat holder during my unplanned and extended visit to the airport (thanks to a snowstorm). It extends quite far and never feels like it’s going to break or buckle.

The inside of the main compartment of the carry-on is lined with a number of small pockets for stashing stuff and a full size internal pocket you unfurl to cover and zip over the main cavity which I think is meant for dirtly clothes. Since it’s not removable, it can’t be washed so I didn’t use it for laundry.

The outside of the main bag has a number of slot pockets for things like a laptop (up to a 15″ at least), magazines and large, open pocket that is secured by velcro and the outer buckles. You wouldn’t want to put something like a laptop in this pocket but it’s good for a jacket or some other loose item that can’t fall out.

Overall, I’ve very happy with the Cork & Fork. My only issue with the bag is the cost…there is no denying it’s expensive. I even hesitated at first and then I went and looked at other higher quality carry-on bags and it’s actually pretty comparable for a solid bag plus you get the internal camera backpack. Take a look in any ‘outdoor’ store that carries luggage and you’ll see what I mean.

While not really an issue, I would have also liked some more color options for the luggage….baby blue isn’t my favorite color but I can live with it.

Disclosure: I purchased this luggage at a small discount when the luggage line was launched via a special offer because I’ve bought from Crumpler before.

Things have been pretty quiet around here because I’ve been on vacation with my wife in Hawaii. This was my third time to Hawaii and I have to say, it was probably my best trip here yet. I highly recommend it if you’ve never been. I’ve taken a ton of photos and even a couple of videos to play with Flickr’s new video feature.

Here’s a couple of videos and photos to give you a taste of what things are like on Oahu:

This video was playing on our hotel tv…they have three separate channels for different activities to do (shopping, dining and tours). We saw this before we went snorkling for the first time and we couldn’t help but think of the video while underwater.

We went for a drive to the famous North Shore and weren’t disappointed. The first beach we stopped at was the basking beach for the Hawaiian Green Turtles (known locally as Honu) and it was amazing to see these guys up close. Previously I had gone to the Big Island of Hawaii and was able to play with a number of turtles while swimming but that was about 15 years ago.

One of the turtles had a GPS device attached to his back. The volunteers at the beach would record the turtles movements for scientific purposes.

We were able to find a semi-secluded beach to spend some quality time at….the only downside was that it was particularly windy so the shorebreak was a little difficult to navigate…made for some fun in the surf though and a great workout.

It wasn’t quite as windy as it sounds on this video….just a point and shoot camera mic with no windscreen so it sounds worse than it was.

Let me know if you want more details as I can’t recommend this place enough. You can check out the rest of my Flickr set for more photos and videos.

So in no particular order, here’s some thoughts on what happened in Austin over the past week:

• this year was way bigger than last year – lots of people guessing on the numbers so take this with a grain of salt but it’s ‘supposably’ 50% bigger than last year. So that puts it somewhere between 5000 and 10000 geeks in one place. This was especially evident since previously, you’d always run into people you know but this year, I know there were people I knew in Austin and yet I never managed to see them in the halls/panels
• I wished I made it to the I Can Haz Cheeseburger panel – they were actually giving out hamburgers to the audience
• 12 sessions per time slot does not work
• 10am panels are very hard to attend
• there needs to be more technical panels. Of all the ones I attended, only two could be considered (by me) technical and they were incredibly well attended – as in standing-room-only-geeks-sitting-in-the-aisles-fire-hazard kind of well attended. Of course since there was 12 sessions in every timeslot (plus other stuff in and around the convention center), it’s entirely possible there were more technical sessions.
  
• the panel rooms need to be reworked (again). Nothing sucks more than having to go from room 18ABCD to Room C – it’s like walking to Surrey from North Vancouver. I’m all for the walking but when you consider that a panel ends at say 11am and the next one starts at 11:30am, it doesn’t give you much time to actually talk to the panelists afterword, or with friends about the panel before you have to start hoofing it to the other end of the convention center to get a decent seat for the next session
  
• Twitter stayed up during the whole conference which is a huge deal since it was probably the number one web site talked about (yes, even more than Facebook and the infamous interview). Impromptu ‘Tweetups’ happened everywhere and were awesome. Your twitter name should be printed on the badge next year (everyone just wrote it on theirs this year)
  
• Internet access generally seemed better this year…except at my hotel which crawled. The convention center’s wifi was much more robust this year and they had a 802.11n access point which was great. Also more and more venues had free wifi so it made using Twitter and checking Google maps a breeze. My prepaid AT&T sim also got a good workout and thanks to some flaky hotel access, ended up costing more than it should have – see my $12 flickr photo for one example:
  
• Apple should have sponsored a shuttle to the Apple Store…there was a convoy of cabs there from the convention center on a daily basis.
• Canadians showed up in force this year. Not just the 20-30 Vancouverites I knew were going either….great folks from across this great land came down and had a great time
  
• Once again, the Raincity Studios crew had the best, most coveted t-shirts (read about it in the L.A. Times) and hosted the best party at the Iron Cactus. My second favorite shirt (after the Space Invaders RCS shirt) is the “Hacking is not a crime” shirt I picked up from the MAKE booth
• in Austin (and probably just for SXSW) the term ‘Ranch’ can mean many things. What I didn’t expect it to mean at the Pure Volume Ranch (home of the huge Digg party among others) is dirt floors covered in wood chips and port-o-lets. Moby and Kevin Rose didn’t seem to mind.
  
• Finally had a chance to visit the Salt Lick BBQ in Driftwood, Texas (outside of Austin)…been coming to SXSW for three years and always heard about it but never had the chance to make it out there. It lives up to the hype
  
• you can buy iPods at the Houston Airport from a vending machine
  
• iPhones were everywhere and mine at least was indispensable during the trip. From the wifi that was available everywhere, to the Google Maps locate me feature, it was easily the most used item I brought. Using the sched.org tool to make a customized calendar of sessions/events/parties to attend, it was easy to see where to go next or what our options were if we decided to change our minds.
• I was able to get a tag for my camera that I should have exploited more. Strangely, I saw all kinds of cameras (not just DSLRs) with the tag, including a tiny little lipstick-sized webcam. There also seemed to be some discrepancy as to who should get a tag as Peter was denied just minutes after I got mine.
  
• If you don’t like Rockband, be glad you weren’t at SXSWi….every second booth in the Trade Show had it setup and many events used it as a focal point
• Adobe had a sneak peak of their new Adobe Media Player in a bar with a live band and a skateboard halfpipe. Nothing kills a party faster than trying to demo your software on a projector in the middle of a bar AFTER a decent local band played while skateboarders used the halfpipe in front of the stage. Still surprised about the presentation’s inappropriateness and the fact they thought they had to explain RSS feeds to a room full of geeks. The Media player actually looks decent (if not a little iTunes-ish) but they really need to work on the promotion side of things and figure out who the people that attend Southby are
• Most heard/overused word/phrase I heard this year: ‘Fail!’ or used in a sentence: ‘Epic Fail!’. #2 was ‘iPhone’. #3 was “I’ll have another Shiner Bock”.
  
• There wasn’t as many MacBook Air’s there as I would have expected. Consensus from those I talked to about it was they were hoping for more from Apple – or technically less as they wanted a true replacement for the 12″ Powerbook in screen size (or even smaller). It definitely got a lot of looks and was asked to hold it many times. There were a ton of eeePC’s in attendence which was cool to see.
• I managed to head over to BarCamp Austin between sessions at the convention center and sit in (briefly) on the iPhone DevCamp. As if the fact there was too much concurrent content at SXSWi, the fact that an awesome BarCamp AND iPhone camp was going on at the same time. Too much to do, not enough time to take it all in.
  
• As if you aren’t already tired of me talking about the BBQ, all the food was amazing…well except maybe not that late night pizza from 6th street
  
  
• as I write this post, there are over 12,000 SXSW related photos on Flickr. I have about 200 in there.

That’s pretty much it for me and this post…as I said at the beginning, there is still a lot of digesting to do (bbq and otherwise) so I may add to this once I’ve had time to take it all in.

See you next year, Austin!

I’ll post a big wrap up once I get back (possibly even on the plane home) so for now, here’s a few highlight photos:

MJ Kim rawking the first panel

Zappos.com CEO talking about ecommerce lessons

View from my hotel’s 18th floor restaurant

Attendees in the ‘big room’

Yes, there was an accordian performance and he kicked ass

The Flickr crew at the Cathedral of Junk

The Frag Dolls pwning all comers at the Screenburn Arcade

at the “Logos and why they’re irrelevant and may actually hurt your business” panel

More soon.

One of the great things about attending a conference for a bunch of geeks, is that if there is anything missing or lacking from the conference organizers themselves, the attendees will fix/build/make it. Case in point, there isn’t currently an easy way to see all the panels and sessions in one place.

Previously, I had a Palm device and there was actually a surprisingly good schedule app available. This year of course, just about everyone there will have iPhones or an iPod Touch. There are web optimized versions of the schedule but since I’m not planning on relying on the sketchy wifi, I’d rather have something a little more stable.

Enter Stuart Colville’s iCal version of all the daytime sessions as well as the evening parties. Just download the .ICS files, add them to your iCal and then sync with your device (iPod or iPhone) and you’re done. The added benefit is that you also have it on your Mac laptop if you’re taking one. Awesome job Stuart!

Check out the SXSW Tools page for other things that will help make things more fun.

Photo by kk+ on Flickr

Another cool thing about SXSW is that it’s also a music festival…well actually it was that first and then the geeks came along. A music festival has bands which play music. They want people to hear that music so what do they do? They post a huge pile of MP3′s online of all the bands coming. Then someone makes a giant torrent of all those MP3′s.

Yup, a big pile of free music to listen to on that long flight to Austin. Thanks to Laughing Squid for the torrent link – lots of other great SXSW resources in Scott’s post too.

Finally, check out Phillip’s round up of all the locals making the trek to Texas.

But I’m still going as an attendee and finally took a closer look at the sessions that did make the cut. It’s not a final list yet nor is it a list with the full details of each session.

As you can see from the list below, it’s pretty huge and I’ve chopped out a ton of sessions simply because I don’t know more about them yet. This is usually the problem at SXSW – there are too many great sessions going on and they always seem to be in the same time slot. I think there is something like 8 sessions going on at any time during the conference so it’s impossible to have a perfect schedule. Somehow, I’m sure I’ll manage, possibly with the help of some good BBQ.

Ironically, I had gone through the schedule before the names were attached and had actually circled the “Blame Canada” session without even knowing that kk+ was the one giving it so I’m sure it will rock. I’m also glad to see Kathy Sierra on the list again – she’s made SXSW worth attending every time I’ve been to her sessions.

Photo by kk+

Here’s a few sessions that have piqued my interest based on title or speaker alone – hard to believe this is only a small portion of the sessions too:

AJAX and Flash Mistakes (Jonathan Boutelle)
Behind the Scenes at the Onion News Network (Sean Mills)
Filching Design: When the Shoe Fits (Lindsey Simon)
How to Rawk SXSW: Achieving Geekgasm (Ariel Waldman)
The Rise of Authentic Media (Derek Powazek)
Social Marketing Strategies Metrics, Where Are They? (Tom Parish)
Social Network Coups: The Users are Revolting! (Annalee Newitz)
The Suxorz: The Worst Ten Social Media Ad Campaigns of 2007 (Henry Copeland)
Taking Your Web Talent to the Video Game Industry (Adam DuVander)
Top Ten Lessons Learned in E-Commerce (Tony Hsieh)
Worst Website Ever: That’s So Crazy, It Just Might Work (Andy Baio)
You’re the Pawn, Sucker: a Google Maps-Nintendo Mash-up (Rodney Gibbs)
Keynote Speaker: Mark Zuckerberg
A/B Testing: Design Friend or Foe? (Corey Chandler)
Career Transitions: From DIY to Working for The Man (Jason Garber)
Does Tomorrow’s World Need Designers? (David Merkoski)
Everyone’s A Design Critic (Jason Santa Maria)
From Frustration to Elation: Getting Emotional by Design (Dan Rubin)
Logos: Why They’re Irrelevant and Can Actually Hurt Your Business (Bryan Zmijewski)
Magic and Mental Models: Using Illusion to Simplify Designs (Jared M. Spool)
Make It So: Learning From SciFi Interfaces (Nathan Shedroff)
Mobileactive: How Mobile Technology Impacts Politics and Vice Versa (Justin Oberman)
The Science of Designing Interactions (Andreas Weigend)
Scope Creep and Other Villains (James Archer)
Social Design Strategies (Emily Chang)
Tools for Enchantment: 20 Ways to Woo Users (Kathy Sierra)
A Critical Look At OpenID (Jason Levitt)
The Art of Self-Branding (Lea Alcantara)
Blame Canada: 7 Ways We’re Ahead in New Media (Kris Krug)
Browser Wars: Deja Vu All Over Again? (Arun Ranganathan)
Building Developer-Friendly Web Service APIs (Ben Vinegar)
Building Portable Social Networks (Jeremy Keith)
Hardware Mashups: Introducing the Long Tail of Gadgets (Peter Semmelhack)
How Piracy Will Save the Music Industry (Jason Schwartz)
Make Your Audience Love You (Tom Merritt)
Mobile Phones: International Devices of Mystery (Michael Sharon)
Self Replicating Awesomeness: The Marketing of No Marketing (Brian Oberkirch)
Social Networking and Your Brand (Jina Bolton)
Startup Metrics for Pirates: AARRR! (Dave McClure)
Content Management System Roundup (George DeMet)
Creative Collaboration: Building Web Apps Together (Paul Hammond)
Data as Art: Musical, Visual Web APIs (Peter Kirn)
Designing for Freedom (Gina Bianchini)
The Future of Corporate Blogs (Lionel Menchaca)
Futurists’ Sandbox: Scenarios for Social Technologies in 2025 (Michele Bowman)
Getting There Faster By Using Open Code (Jack Moffitt)
How to Rawk After SXSW: Staying Inspired (Kevin Smokler)
Life After the i-Phone (Kate Ryan)
Roll Over Gutenberg, Tell McLuhan The News (George Kelly)
Secrets of JavaScript Libraries (John Resig)
Take Municipal WiFi Back (Joanna Rees)
Taking Over the World: the Flickr Way (Simon Batistoni)
Using Entertainment to Create Effective Mobile Advertising (Adam Zbar)

Whew…it’s going to be a busy conference.

When I was coming home from San Francisco last week, I got in fairly late to YVR and waited for my checked bag to come down the conveyor belt. Surprisingly it was the first one down the chute and I grabbed it quickly thinking I’d be on my way home that much sooner.

Then, as I was wheeling it away, another passenger asked if my bag ‘was supposed to be like that’:

It had come down the belt face down and I just picked it up and extended the handle and started towards the exit without looking at the front of it….obviously it wasn’t supposed to look like that. At some point in it’s journey from San Francisco to Vancouver, it appeared to have had the front main pocket ripped cleanly off along with the contents of that pocket.

Once I realized what had happened, and put the hanging threads and fabric back inside what was left of the pouch, I quickly thought that my speedy trip home just got a lot longer. Fortunately the Alaska Airlines counter was only a short distance from where I was and there was no lineup.

I wheeled up to the counter and showed the person behind the counter my luggage and that I thought it wasn’t supposed to be like that. She seemed genuinely concerned about the situation and asked if I had anything in there that might have been lost. I was pretty tired and couldn’t remember what I had in there as I had also shuffled everything around in SFO so that I wouldn’t have to lug too much around in my carryon bag which already had my laptop and a bunch of other stuff.

She told me the airline had a local repair shop that would either repair or replace my bag. I laughed at the thought of repairing the missing pocket – I had searched out for this particular suitcase for awhile and because I have a thing for green, combined with the ease of spotting it in a sea of black luggage figured it would be hard for them to patch the gaping hole. At least the rip was very clean and on the pocket’s seam.

I was then given a local number to call back once I had figured out what was missing and they would arrange to replace the items. She also gave me a claim form to take to the repair shop and I was on my weary way.

Given the circumstances, I couldn’t think of a better way for them to handle my situation. The woman that helped me seemed to really care about what had happened and wanted to ensure that I was taken care of. If only more companies had these kind of people working for them.

Once I got home and got everything sorted a few days later, realized I was only missing a couple of books and some magazines….I did have some gifts for Stacie in there at one point but decided they were too fragile for checked baggage and ended up swapping my reading material with them in my carryon.

All told about $70 worth of books is probably clogging up a conveyor belt somewhere underneath YVR or SFO. When I called back to tell them of the ‘damage’ I ended up speaking with the same woman who remembered my green bag. She told me I could simply rebuy the missing items and bring the receipts to the airport and they would reimburse me on the spot…or I could mail them in. The mail in option wasn’t that appealing since it’s a little too much like a mail in rebate so I opted to drop the bag off at the repair shop, pickup the missing items and head to the airport in one trip (a 60km roundtrip from my house). I figured it was worth the hassle and time to get it all sorted right away as we’re planning on going away in a few weeks and wanted usable luggage.

So I headed to a book store to replace the items, then to the repair shop. They determined pretty quickly that a repair would be too involved and opted to replace my bag with a similar one. Unfortunately it wasn’t green and so I now have a bright blue suitcase – so leave it alone if you see it on the conveyor belt – I’m talking to the old man that I always seem to see manhandling every bag that comes down thinking it’s his….going so far as to open the bag! At least the replacement is the same brand and a slightly better model than I had before – according to the repair shop staff.

Next stop was the airport. Of course the ticket counter I had to go to was at the opposite end of the airport from where you have to park. I swear it took 20 minutes to walk from my car to the counter.

Once I got to the counter, I was taken care of quickly and they even reimbursed me for parking which was nice. I was surprised they were able to just cut me a cheque on the spot and not have to go through head office or some insurance company. Of course, it was a relatively small amount of money. As before, the person that helped me seemed to actually care about my ‘loss’.

All things considered I thought the entire situation was handled great. Considering the hassles involved, it was very smooth. Kudos to Alaska Airlines and their helpful staff!

I didn’t even get to mention that the flight(s) were great as well…but I’ve rambled enough for one post so I’ll leave you with one word and photo: Legroom!