11:31am saturday.

guy next to me on his table with his two kids ‘be grateful for what you have’ – then he loses the plot and says i’m ‘sick of this bullshit’ – he reacting to the reactions of his kids – rising to it, pushing his buttons – not really communicating with his kids, just facilitating them.

buying them stuff, keeping em quiet. i guess as parents we all have days like that – that was until his daughter just shouts ‘fucking lune-a-tic’ and that’s when i stop, mortified as what his child just said. shocked and stunned and a reminder of the constant message a parent has to do to maintain intelligence, focus and a level of constancy to their lives.

been in preprep mode the last 48 hrs, getting the ark.me.dm site ready for when i get over to austin tomorrow evening. i’ve got an early start however so it’s going to be a long day – the actual conference is three days but i’ve got an adjustment day either side of the conference to get myself together.

the flight is non-stop so that helps a lot because i’m in really in the headspace for airports and rushing around between them – hope i can get some rest on the plane. i’ve got a stack of ideas in my wunderlist i need to pad out and i can add more drafts to the wordpress blogs i’d like to have up and running in october.

i’m glad i managed to get ella last night and today i dislike being away from her for any length of time when i’m stateside – i sometimes wish i could take her with me but ‘ontheground’ events are really not the perfect place for a four year old.

we are off to conkers in the next hour or so – look at the spot the ark is going to go and have a nice walk around the site and dropping her back early evening to mummy. i’ve then got to get some clothes packed and pick up my kit from the lacemarket.

i best book a taxi.

it’s an early start tomorrow morning – check out http://ark.me.dm and the little boxes at the top of the website to find the team to watch and locations we will be posting our content at.

if your going to #sxsweco please watch for us in the twitter stream (we would love to interview you) and also our tag of #arkeco