As I’ve mentioned in earlier posts, I got to attend this year’s South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) festival in Austin, Texas, from March 9 to 13. This was my first time attending SXSW, so aside from being overwhelmed, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Since today was my last day at this huge nerdapalooza, I thought I’d write down a few of my thoughts and impressions while they’re still fresh.

I should say first that it was great to meet so many people across a variety of industries. During my time at SXSW, I had conversations with film producers, software developers, CEOs, philanthropists, content strategists, graphic artists, community managers… the list goes on! I was so tickled that I even got to briefly introduce myself to some of my content strategy heroes, including Kristina Halvorson!, who encouraged me to blog more. In context, she meant for me to blog more about content strategy specifically — I’ll get to that! — but in the meantime, here are the 5 things I learned at South by South West Interactive 2012:

1) This is a conference of ideas you’ve mostly heard already, presented well
Panels at SXSWi are ranked by comprehension or difficulty level (or something)–basic, intermediate, and advanced–and I was honestly disappointed by how many advanced panels I found myself leaving after only 15 minutes or so of listening to the speaker. With one or two exceptions, after attending panels for four straight days, nothing I heard really blew my mind. After hearing years of hype about how life-changing SxSWi is, this was pretty disappointing.

The things that DID blow my mind were mainly where cutting-edge tech and art intersected — engineers doing amazing work with sensors and light, for example. Aside from that, a lot of the ideas presented were nicely packaged and argued well, but weren’t terribly new. Perhaps I didn’t hit the right panels, or perhaps it just wasn’t the best year for new ideas at SXSW. (Fellow attendees, I’m especially interested to hear your comments on this!)

Here’s a I video I took of something I found noteworthy: life-size boxing robots completely controlled by players using a Kinect:

2) It’s really not that nerdy or geeky
As a bonafide capital-G Geek and sorta-Nerd, I saw and met a lot of high-functioning, extroverted types at SXSW who made eye contact and could hold a real conversation. Yes, you’ll see some references to Star Trek or Star Wars, and yes, I saw at least 2 Deloreans parked around the festival, and yes, references to internet memes will be dropped with gusto, but when news reports call SXSW a nerd convention or some such, that’s just lazy. You’re seeing way more ironic mustaches and skinny jeans here than anything else. Let’s be honest: It’s a hipster convention, not a geek convention. (And that’s A-OKAY!)

3) The most high-tech things you’ll see may also be borderline scary
I attended a number of panels on cutting-edge technology and their applications, and the tech displayed therein has seemingly unlimited potential to be exploited…for good OR bad purposes. My faith in humanity fell a bit after attending a panel on marketing and consumer privacy (in relation to exploiting personally identifiable information or PII), because hearing marketers salivate about how to exploit PII can be a bit terrifying if you care at all about privacy and security. Even just walking around the SXSWi convention center halls and seeing displays hawking the latest and greatest in technology made me uncomfortably aware that the Eye in the Sky is definitely (already) watching and analyzing us.

4) The best fun is spontaneous
On my second night at SXSWi, my friends and I were flagged by a group of loud semi-drunk Brits and pulled into an unlabeled limo bus. We had no idea what was going on, but they soon put beers into our hands and that bus started blaring awesomely trashy techno music: we’d been pulled onto a party bus rented by a new startup social application. While bracing ourselves as the bus lurched back and forth, we actually managed to shout a few words at each other and establish some basic business connection. It was undeniably fun, and not something we could ever plan for. I’m glad for it, too. Why does it matter? Anyone who says they’re not going to try to have fun while at SXSWi is completely lying. While you’ll network your face off, some of the best networking happens at after-hours fun events.

5) Your feet are going to hurt after a day or two
Just like at any other tradeshow, you’ll be walking, but mainly you’ll be standing around. The walking wasn’t bad (I’m a Bostonian after all) but wow, the standing around was killer. Even in my comfiest sneakers, I was in pain after the second day.

A few extra observations…
Google throws the best parties: Google Village is a series of parties along Rainey Street where Google rented out entire bars and themed each one after a major Google product, like Droid or Maps. The atmosphere at these bars were perfect — a little geeky (lego robots!), very chill, and not too crazy. The music was never too loud so you couldn’t hear people talking. I enjoyed my time at Google Village and had some great conversations with fellow Google fans. (And hooray for not being the only Droid user in a sea of iPhones!)

A lot of people really can’t handle rain: As you probably heard, it rained the first few days of #SxSWi, and everyone complained about it. Well, everyone but anyone from Seattle or Boston, from what I can tell from the overall chatter. It was 50 degrees and rainy in March. In Boston, we call that awesome weather!

A big THANK YOU to the wonderful people of Austin, who were generous and kind to the noisy invaders overrunning their city. Austin residents do their city proud by how well they treated SXSW attendees, and they have a well-deserved reputation for being wonderful hosts.

I head back to my lovely home city of Boston tomorrow morning, I hope to do a write-up of apps, sites, and tools that caught my attention at SXSWi, some of which I’ve already taken for a spin. In the meantime, time for me to pack up.

If you’re interested in seeing the other photos I took, you can view my Google Plus SXSW photo album right here.

Was 2012 your first SXSWi too, or are you a veteran? I’d love to hear what you thought of this year’s festival in the comments.

One of my original picks for this list made its way into entry #1 — COLOURlovers – so this list is accidentally a little shorter than I intended. On to business:

My favorite UX and design apps and sites
Golden Ratio Typography calculator
When I found this site several months ago, my jaw DROPPED. How did I ever do any kind of font selection before this site came about?

Picking the right font for your website is a fair mix of art and science. For a lot of us, it comes down to either general utility (“I know Tahoma’s easy to read online so I’ll use that”) or completely personal preference (“I love serifs and Times New Roman is just dreamy…”). Other folks will — rightly! — agonize over their font choice for months. Readability and personality are all wrapped up in your font, after all.

But the right font size, line height, et cetera? There’s not nearly as much discussion about this. But this typography calculator uses Golden Ratio principles to determine your font parameters based on the font face, size, and content area you’ve selected. Very, very handy!

MindNode
A graceful and simple application for mapping gorgeous thought progressions, process trees, algorithms — you name it.

I’ve found this to be an especially handy tool for discussing an example user flow on a given website or a site’s information architecture (IA). I’ve seen a number of people use it very effectively as a visual aide during presentations too.

Skitch
– now a part of Evernote, which you’re already using because it’s awesome, am I right? Right!

If you’re not using Skitch to markup screenshots in discussions with colleagues or clients about site interactivity or design, why not? There’s no excuse for marking up screenshots in Photoshop or Paint (ack!) anymore, Skitch makes it so much easier and, let’s be honest, prettier. Next time someone prints out a screenshot for you all marked up in red pen, send them a link to Skitch.

Honorable mention: fluidIA
I dream of a day when I can use a stable and completely free wireframing tool. Until then, I have two choices — pay for a tool like HotGloo or even Vizio — or try some of the less complex web-based wireframing tools out there.

I’m holding out hope that fluidIA gets off the ground soon, as it holds great promise: a versatile web-based wireframing product made by (and for!) IA folks. At the moment though, it’s a bit too buggy, though I can see its potential for greatness. Thus fluidIA gets honorable mention on my list, I’m definitely keeping an eye on it.

What’s this all about then? Read the intro here.

Ends up that when I went on vacation in mid-February, I got engaged. Upon returning home there was a lot of celebrating with friends and family!

This picture is my fiancé Eric and myself at the Grand Canyon, where we got engaged. So for once I have a decent explanation for my blogging-lateness. :)

Anyway, down to business!

General utility sites I love most
MoodShare
Before there was Pinterest, there were a heck of a lot of other sites. MoodShare.co has been my tool of choice since it first went beta. Much like fashionista site Polyvore has been the tool of choice to help assemble stylish looks, MoodShare is a solid go-to to communicate a creative concept, like the inspiration for a website redesign or the key elements of a promotional campaign.

The core idea of MoodShare is the good ol’ physical inspiration/concept board, for those of us who remember (or still do save) magazine clippings, random postcards or flyers, and group them together on pinboards. But MoodShare lets you gather the internet equivalents of all those random little findings–not just images, but videos, color swatches, even tweets. Anything that helps you communicate an idea, no matter how ephemeral, is something you can paste onto your MoodShare board.

Above is an example MoodShare board I put together for a blog redesign concept I was toying with, one that took inspiration from my love of the video game Secret of Mana and the beauty of Saipan.

What’s lovely about MoodShare is they know a lot of creative professionals use this tool–as their landing page says, it’s “built for agencies”–so privacy levels can get incredibly granular. If you don’t want to share your board with the world, no problem. You can grant access to just to the people whose emails you add, letting you get really collaborative with just the right people.

Kuler, by Adobe
As much as I love, love, LOVE ColourLovers as a tool for web design, you’re at the mercy of other peoples’ tastes for the color palletes they generate. Sometimes unless you know exactly what you’re looking for, ColourLovers can be a bit too much.

Enter Kuler. Say you know you want to create a webpage and you know you want the primary color to be blue. But what about highlights? Links? Text? There are go-to complementary schemes for blue, but if you want it to look something all your own, and you’re not a colorwheel genius, this can get tough.

Kuler generates color palettes based on a primary color (one or several) you name and the kind of scheme you want to create — variations on a shade, complementary colors, monochrome, analogous, et cetera. For those of us who need a design and color help, Kuler really comes to the rescue.

Definitely click around and explore the lovely interactivity Kuler provides — and don’t miss out on Kuler Pulse, which showcases popular colors and schemes over a range of time spans. Fascinating stuff.

Dropbox
It’s storage! In ~*~*the cloud~**~~!

I lose some serious nerd cred for admitting that while I have my own server, I still prefer to use Dropbox for storing photos and documents I need easy and frequent access to.

Can you blame me though? The Dropbox mobile apps make photo uploading completely painless, and the cross-platform programs (Mac! Windows! You name it!) let me sync all my files, everywhere, all the time.

Long gone are my days of emailing myself important documents back and forth. Gmail, you know I love you and will never leave you, but you are not a good document storage solution! When I see the little spinny Dropbox icon, I know that file I uploaded at home is now on my work computer, on my home laptop, on my home editing station/Mac, on remote storage, and easily accessed on my phone. It’s fantastically reassuring and it’s free. Can’t beat that.

Honorable mention: Delicious. Yep, I still use it. I may be the only person who still does, but the one thing it really only does, it does really well.

What’s this post all about? Read the introductory post here.

I don’t make it a secret that I’m a geek of many stripes. Every time a new tool comes out, I make a point to give it a try. And I’ve always felt lucky that I work in a field that uses a lot of the same tools I love to play with in my hobby time. So when I bring a recommendation to the table at work, chances are the thing I’m recommending is something I’ve vetted and tinkered with at home as a prosumer.

When I saw MITX’s invitation for guest blogs on “What Technology Do I Love The Most,” I was pumped! Reviews of tech I love, opinions on tools that I use? Perfect, as I, like so many internet denizens, have an opinion or two. But this guest blogging opportunity is only open to MITX members, and I’m nothing but a lurker.

Good thing I have my own blog—I’ll share my picks here with you instead. Here’s what I’ll post on:
#1: General utility sites I love most
#2: UX/design tech picks
#3: Mobile & location-based service picks
#4: Social media picks
#5: Imaging and photography picks
#6: Video tech picks

I’ll update this page with links to the entries as I write them.

P.S.: Are you going to SXSWi this year? I am, and I’d love to connect with you if you’re going to be there (especially since this will be my first SXSW! *gulp*). Drop me a comment or an email if you’d like to meet up.

I took this video an hour after the water started coming down outside our unit. The water kept coming down like this for several hours, and yes, the ceiling eventually gave out.

After the indoor-raining stopped many hours later, the final take was that the damage to our condo wasn’t too serious. But having the quiet and safety of my home, my space, ruined so unexpectedly was very upsetting, to say nothing of the needed administrative and maintenance work that followed.

Fate is never convenient of course, and this condo flood was no exception. I was in the thick of several important assignments at work, and those deadlines could only hold off so long.

I admit that I had a hard time getting my head back in “work mode” when I sat in my chair the following Monday. We’ve all been there, days where your mind is a million miles away. I needed the proverbial kick in the butt to get my mind going, especially since I had so many deadlines looming.

If you’re in similar straits (though I hope your home is safe and dry), these are the productivity tenets I followed to get me back on track:

1. Get started. Dive in. I liked Copyblogger’s post on GOYA as inspiration for not holding myself back. Not only that, but I liked the the acronym GOYA so much that I put a sticky note on my computer that simply said “GOYA.” I’m sure my coworkers were wondering why I needed the reminder to buy Latino groceries, but I knew what it meant.
2. Get going. Once you’ve started, manage time effectively. I’ve always been a big fan of the classic 4D paradigm (do it, delegate it, defer it, drop it), but there are many different variants of this philosophy. Just whatever you do, don’t waffle.
3. Get it done. I love the Cult of Done Manifesto – it may seem a little brash for some folks, but it’s a handy reminder to not get in your own way (we all do it sometimes).

That’s it. Nothing terribly complex: Get started, get going, get it done. But it’s easy to forget, especially when the walls (or ceiling) seem to be coming down around you.

How about you—what do you do to get yourself going when you’re up against a deadline?