Five Things You Should Know about SXSWi Before You Go

Here are my 5 things you should know about SXSWi before you set foot in Austin:

1) You’re not cool: It doesn’t matter how many parties you go to, whether you’re VIP or not, if you’re discussing something that has to do with SXSWi – you’re not cool.  This is for the geeks.  And, even if you’re the king of the geeks, you’re still a geek.  You can still have fun and a great time, but remember to be humble – the cool kids don’t arrive until SXSW music starts.

2) No One Cares About Your Panel: SXSW is an amazing time and there are amazing people that are totally worth learning from.  But sadly, panels are secondary – sometimes even tertiary – in the tier of things.  Not only that, there are almost 200 different panels.  Seriously – that’s too many.  So – speaking at SXSW isn’t that big of a deal.  So stop trying to make it seem that way.  So stop telling everyone to come to your panel.  Just worry about putting on something good for the people that do show up.

3) Your party is lame: Parties are a big part of SXSWi.  I have seen more eventbrites invites than anything during the buildup to SXSWi.  If you’re sponsoring one, that’s awesome – I am glad you understand the culture of SXSWi.  You get bonus points for that.  However – your party is lame.  Why is it lame?  Because no one really cares that it’s YOUR party.  All they care about is two things: Open Bar and/or whether or not there is an open bar.  A few parties will have a chance for non-lame success – “Maybe I’ll meet Pete Cashmore at the Mashable party.”  ”Dennis Crowley is dreamy in his gap ad, maybe I’ll meet him at the Foursquare party.”  Other than that, your party is probably lame.  Deal with it.  Have fun.  Try not to do anything that I wouldn’t do.

4) Your startup is dumb: Unless your last name is Zuckerberg, Crowley, whatever Naveen’s last name is, the Tumblr people and a very few others – your startup is probably dumb.  So stop pitching your startup to every one and their mom.  It’s dumb.  You want to know the real reason that those names and start ups are successful – because they built something fucking cool.  The best thing you can do for your start up is to make it cool before you tell everyone about it. No, you can’t say you’re working on a secret startup.  That’s lame.  Furthermore, people will just assume you’re unemployed even if you really ARE working on a super secret startup.  Not good branding.  If you just try to connect with people, you’ll get further.  And then you can get what’s really cool. (but probably not because your startup is dumb).

5) The Person that wrote this is an asshole: Okay – what I wrote above may seem like it’s mean spirited, but that’s because I’m an asshole.  My entire point is that SXSWi should never be about you.  It’s about a community of people – all geeks – that get together and can make some great things happen.  The cream rises to the top and in a few weeks, we’ll have a new shiny toy/app/site to play with.  And that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t hustle – but learn to hustle with humility.  Learn to get people to ask you your passions instead of vomiting them all over every unsuspecting person that walks by.  You’ll find out the people that you engage with in real conversations will turn out to be your biggest advocates.  Except me.  I’m an asshole.  I give you carte blanche to punch me.

My BlogHer: in Pictures

BlogHer is sometimes best told in pictures. And, since I don’t take any pictures of my own, I will have to rely on a little help from my friends…

All that’s missing is a little video from me doing the Just Dance Game and we’ll have ourselves a nice recap.

I’m sure that’s coming. I’m pretty sure I saw a few people with their cameras out for that….

Random List of 5 Thoughts from this years BlogHer

I was talking to my friend Sugar Jones about how this year’s BlogHer was “different.” She smiled, started to bounce around to the music, and simply said – “We’re different. We’re older” and proceeded to dance her butt off. I smiled and realized that she was right. The first few days of BlogHer had me feeling slightly uncomfortable – something seemed off. But as Sugar bounced back on the dance floor, I knew that being different wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. In fact, after a few hours of recovering – I realized that this was a pretty great event. Below are some of the things that felt a bit “off” and some of the things I am excited to experience. In random order. I’ll probably have to write another recap too – but this is just what’s top of mind:

1) I cried. Here. And if you didn’t laugh more than you cried, well – then you weren’t listening. While I work in the internet, I always believed that it’s powered at its root by community. That’s what BlogHer is. And that’s what this panel was about – communities coming together to help those that are in need. While I’ve avoided real tragedy in my life, the internet has helped me more than once in coming to terms with that empty feeling of loneliness that comes with the mean reds. Big round of applause goes to Cecily Kellogg, Loralee Choate, Kim Trimble, Anissa Mayhew, and Peter Mayhew – who became the first man to appear on a BlogHer panel. And while he, without a doubt, would prefer that the circumstances that caused him to be up there never happened – he is also the only person I could think of deserving to break the gender barrier there.

The grieving session also made me miss Erin Kotecki Vest. While she was having BlogHer at home, she was in many people’s thoughts. I heard her named mentioned a lot. BlogHer missed you this year. Get better fast.

2) I missed my Ohio girls. I don’t have favorites in the Blogosphere. I work with a lot of different people. But sometimes you just miss people when they aren’t there. I missed Jenny and Emily. Amy. Katie. Andrea. Erin. and Tara (although I did see Tara this year already!) I’m sure I’m missing a few others. With my girlfriend being from Ohio, I do have to say that I have a soft spot for the Mid-West and missed all those Ohio women too cool to stop by. At least I did get to see Tricia from OnceaMonthMom.com – which made my day. I did drag her into the booth to make a video though:

3) I have great friends. Seriously – great friends. I was hugged by so many of my friends that “live in my iPhone.” Friends that I see once a year – if I’m lucky. Lori Falcon sat around with me for 5 hours on Wednesday while I did work and worked on final details for BlogHer. Christine Young took me to the Russian Tea Room after winning a gift certificate. Audrey McClelland made sure I was the best boyfriend by letting my girlfriend visit her Getting Gorgeous event. I saw some of my favorite Colorado people in Aimee and Bryan and, briefly, Tara. I had a great discussion about blogging/brand practices with Jessica Randazza, Christopher Barger, Bonin Bough, and a room full of attentive bloggers thanks to Lucretia Pruitt and Jenn Fowler. I saw so many people that I’m going to stop naming names because it will never be complete enough. All I’m saying is that the great people that I know – the people that make me happy – all come to things like this. It makes me energized and I am already looking forward to next year.

4) It was under control. The complaints from last year should vanish. No more repeating stories of blackmail, over zealous bloggers and swag, and brands hating babies. It was, in the end, a great conference with very little controversy (unless I missed something). Like Sugar said, BlogHer has grown up. So has the community. It’s a wonderful thing to see – especially since it still hasn’t lost the fun and there are still McDonald’s bag hats and Unicorns and Sparkles.

5) I can’t dance. Not that I didn’t already know this. I did a preview for “Just Dance 2″ three times. My scores progressively got worse. It’s horrible. As the sun set, it didn’t get any better. I tried twirling Sarah Pinnix a few times but only ended up looking stupid in the process. I tried dancing with Leah Segadie too. Nope. Not cool. Note to self: Don’t try dancing with people that get compared to Lady GaGa by the Huffington Post. Just don’t….

One Post Isn’t Enough – I mean, c’mon, most of the pictures haven’t even been uploaded yet. I will definitely write more soon.

Delurker Day

Today is Delurker Day – which means that if you are reading this, you need to leave a comment below.  Judging by my Google Analytics – there are a bunch of you out there.  From random places around the country and some foreign ones.  It’s fun to see where everyone who is reading my blog comes from – so when you leave a comment, just say where you’re reading from.  I’m a firm believer that blogs are supposed to be communities – communities of friends, family, people with similar interests and passions – whatever it is, the most important thing is community.

So here we are – please leave a comment and let me know where you are.  I’ve been doing it on some of my favorite blogs that I lurk on….

Just Popping In

Tonight, I appeared on my friend Danielle’s MomTV show.  It was fun to just pop in and say to my blogging friends.

Reintroducing myself to Blogging

I started December off with the lofty goal of writing the Best of ’09 Blog Challenge. It was an utter failure. I barely got through half the month of challenges before I gave up, posted two half fleshed out retrospections of the decade, and again had radio silence. Why? Why couldn’t I do the one thing that has remained consistent throughout the last twelve years of my life?

That’s when I realized that forcing myself to write something became like homework – and that was never why I blogged in the first place. A lot of people in the blogosphere are talking about how this next year is about hustle and hard work. I totally agree with them – except I’m not going to apply that to my blog. I’ll hustle where it matters – my job, my social life, my family – but, in the end, this blog was never meant to be a complete resource on things like social media, marketing, or the various other topic I write about here. This was supposed to be the complete resource on all things ME: George G Smith Jr. There are so many things that being “George G Smith Jr” entails, and this blog is going to become more representative of it. After all, I blog because I simply like sharing my thoughts with the world. That’s why I started, after all….

I remember my first real foray into blogging happened way back in 1997. I visited my friend Tracy, who was a freshman at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, NY. She had this snarky roommate Rebekah (I almost believe snarky may have been originated from Rebekah). Rebekah was probably the first true internet geek I ever met. She introduced me to the South Park Christmas Video (remember when South Park was just a viral video and not an amazing television show?). And she introduced me to her website – the now-defunct Rebekah.org. There, she wrote about everything and anything. She was actually quite dramatic, seemingly stirring up trouble here and there – but it was compelling. So I started my own. My friend Kim also started blogging regularly at the time. This was almost 13 years ago – before words like blog even existed. I haven’t stopped since – even if it went from geocities to tripod; livejournal to blogger to typepad to wordpress. All those venues, all created for the sole purpose of sharing my thoughts with the world.

So this year – my goal is return this blog to it’s roots: which is simply me writing what I feel like it. I guarantee my traffic will go down. Maybe I’ll return to the ranks of being invisible – just another blogger in a sea of millions writing about the mundane and not-so-mundane parts of their lives. I think I’ll find a better balance in my life this way. I think I’ll discover and rediscover the things that made me love this space. The things that make me happy that Vassar student housing, a teenage crush on Tracy, and ethernet combined to form Rebekah Jude Allen – the mysterious pale girl who I never met again and yet played a somewhat big role in my digital life.

So, 2010 is a chance for me to start back to the basics. A chance to reintroduce myself to the world of blogging:

“Hi – my name is George G Smith Jr. I’m 29 years old and I just moved to New York City. This is my blog….”

Retrospection – Part One

If I knew then what I know now, I wonder how different my life would be. Would I live my life over again – as in repeating the same mistakes? In regards to the matters of the heart – perhaps not. But, when you reminisce about the past, it can’t help but bring back the kind of emotions that you haven’t thought of in years. In the last 10 years, I’ve said “I love you” only a handful of times. I felt the pangs perhaps a few times more than that (or maybe a few times less than that). In retrospect, les amours of my life will be seen as much of the defining motivations of my life. They brought me to places that I never wanted to be, places that I needed to go; there and back again. I couldn’t have grown without them and without this flawed heart that I wear on my sleeve.

Long ago, when I was making merry, unemployed, basically homeless, but writing and living here in New York, I was reveling in the fact that my world was an emotional mess. My life, as it were, was falling to pieces. With that came inspiration. With that came a muse. While my fingers may have been inspired, what wasn’t was my soul. With pain, one feels the desire to do to things: to create or to destroy.

“There are events which possess a man and which live on perpetually. In the confines of memory, a man can return to these moments over and over again – withdrawing them at times of convenience. Conversely, there are moments of memory that dance upon the cerebral cortex – which no man is ever truly able to possess. They can not be documented, notarized, assessed or quantified. They merely exist as apparitions that guide a man’s will blindly. This is how I remember New York.”

I created a lot back then. I swore to myself, “This is not about love.” But on those gray days back in an old New York that feels like it never existed, those creations were all for naught. With each keystroke, I created words but destroyed emotion. I wrote not to create but to rewrite – rewrite the current existence filled with so much pain. I was destroying what I knew of love with each romanticized love note to a girl who was, in many ways, a product of that creative mind of mine.

I return now to New York a different person. If I could just do thing, it would be to attempt to create what I strived to create back all those years ago. It is now, without pain and emotion, that I feel I can finally capture that muse. Unfortunately, it alludes me now. Still, as I stare out the window of my Alphabet City apartment, I feel closer to that muse than I have in a long time. Muscle memory will take over. Perhaps it starts with a night like this – a night filled with the click clack of my computer’s keypad as I type out feverishly this retrospection. Perhaps this is where the muse is taking me now. Either way, I feel that I finally have the ability to create without destroying. I have the ability to embrace the muse once again.

So, on this post-holiday night, I’ve been hanging around my apartment in the various stages of writing: namely the not writing stage. The muse is elusive and, while I can scrounge enough mana from her to gather these lonely words, I am fraught with the fear that I won’t be able to create the landscapes and images that reside in my head. The past decade of my life has been one that I have shared with so many people through my writing, and as it closes, I can’t help but feel like that skill is in slow decline. What will the next decade bring? Will I still be able to gather the appropriate words to share my feelings. The next decade will bring new experiences and I feel that I need to take proper care, take notes, document diligently all the things that happen to me. While this past decade has been documented as well – it’s scattered pages strewn throughout the internet in various forms of nom-de-plumes – it has never been collected in one place. I guess this retrospection is providing me with the goal to create that one place where the next decade can reside. I guess that’s why I’m here writing tonight when I can’t think of anyplace other to write. I guess that’s what building a home is really like. So, like the great twenty-first century philosopher Jay-Z once said, “You could of been anywhere in the world, but you’re here with me. I appreciate that…”

Question: Why Do You Blog?

Growing up, one of the few lessons from childhood that I retained was that my father always encouraged us to ask, “Why?” After all, this question is at the crux of all innovation – it is the curiosity that inspires new thought, new horizons, and new adventures. So – as I spoke on a panel at Blog World Expo, and was asked to summarize the best way that a blogger can help themselves grow – I told them to ask, “Why do you blog?”

For me, that answer is easy. I do it because it is the best venue for me to express myself. Whether it’s thoughts on Social Media that I haven’t found a venue for internally, my appreciation for art and fashion, music reviews – whatever it is – my blog serves as a centerpiece for those conversations. Because of that, it has become one of the best representations of my personality – catering to each unique interest I have while also staying grounded to who I truly am. For me, I could not function without my blog and I write every single post – whether the long format ones here or the ones pulled from my posterous account – with a passion that I hope inspires others.

So, when I had a chance to sit down with some bloggers that I’m friends with – I asked them that simple question. Every blogger had a different answer, but in the end it came down to personal passions. It often came down to community as well – whether that’s a community of moms or a family – and that, to me, is a beautiful thing.

Watch this video and, in the comments below, let me know why you blog.

I want to thank the following bloggers for taking the time and sharing my stories – not all of them were able to be included in the video:

Amanda at HighImpactMom.com
Ann Marie at ThisMommaCooks.com
Beth at ThePlusSizeMommy.com
Drew at BenSpark.com
Danielle at ExtraordinaryMommy.com
Christine at FromDatestoDiapers.com
Monica at MommyBrainReports.com
Melissa at ConsumerQueen.com
Kim at CraftyMamaof4.com
Katja at Skimbacolifestyle.com
Debba at Girlfriendology.com

(Editor’s Note: Not sure why my comments aren’t working on this post. I’m trying to troubleshoot. Sorry for the inconvenience. If you can comment though, leave one. I love hearing why people blog…)

(Editor’s Note 2: Comments are back up – please comment on why you blog!)

Recapping Blog World Expo

What happens in Vegas, pretty much gets posted on the Internet – at least when you’re attending Blog World Expo (Editor’s Note: Minus 10 points for using the same line that probably 100 other #BWE09 attendees used to open up their summary blog post).  After four days that somewhat blended into each other, I am ready to recap the relatively tame weekend that I had.

I arrived in Vegas a lot earlier than I planned and was able to attend Pistacio’s opening Keynote.  From there, I checked into the hotel and unwound from my travels.  I went to Pool ‘Con with Jeremy Tanner, Andrew Hyde, and Jeremiah Owyang for a bit before heading back to the convention to check out Scott Monty’s keynote during lunch. (Editor’s Note: Thanks to the Fiesta Movement from providing impromptu travel arrangements).

The convention center was a buzz of activity.  People were coming in from their travels, attending sessions, and just conversing in the lobby.  The lobby, for me, is always where the best things happen during these conferences and Blog World was no exception.  I was able to connect with so many people that I work with, get introduced to some of my professional idols, and just converse about various things surrounding blogging that I grew as a professional every second I was out there.  It was also nice running into the friends that I so rarely get to see.

The next few days were a complete buzz of activity.  I met so many new people and connected with so many friends – it’s hard to keep track.  I do want to give a shout out to the people on my two panels: Jenn Fowler, Lucretia Pruitt, Lindsay Lebresco for the Panel on How to Work with Big Brands and Not Be Treated like a Mommy.  For my panel on Blogging as the Springboard to community – we have Jeremy Tanner, Jennifer Van Grove, Keith Burtis, and Bryan Elliott.

Considering it was Vegas, I actually kept things relatively low-key.  I spent a lot of time hanging out with friends away from the craziness of the parties.  While this was definitely better for me health wise, I did miss a chance to see a lot of people that I wanted to spend time with – and cause some mischief with weddings and false rumors (Editor’s Note: Did Barry ever show up?).  Tech Karaoke relieved some of that – as I was able to get on stage in front of most of the conference and sing “Rump Shaker” with Wayne Sutton (along with a background dancing appearance by the Queen).

You can take a look at the live updates that I’ve did during the weekend using the tag “BWE09″ on this site and via Twitter. Also, here’s a Flickr Slideshow of the search “BWE09″ to capture the weekend.  I don’t know what people posted on there but that’s part of it – I can’t capture everything from the weekend in just a few words.  This probably will summarize everything a lot better than I could:

Jessica Knows that It Takes Two

My friend Jessica Smith recently created a video to the music of Rob Bass – It Takes Two. It was a video made in collaboration with bloggers and PR pro’s – a quick video that symbolizes the symbiotic relationship between blogger and PR representative. Here it is:

The relationships between PR and Bloggers is an ever-evolving phenomena. As more corporations put emphasis on embracing the social web – this evolution will be an interesting thing to watch. Until I feel like more commentary is needed, just enjoy the video – it’s fun and has a bunch of people I consider friends in there!