decompressing after sxsw - some thoughts
quicklink | heartofaustin.com
finally got around to writing a blog entry. going to just write, not think - just straight out onto the keys. i'm starting to feel a little better, it normally takes me a good week to get back adjusted to the timezone difference let alone adjust to heading to southby this year exhausted, drained and very poorly - not excuses, i was a mess. i've lost loads of weight in the process, oh and i snapped my veneer that was literally fitted days before i flew out. the highs and lows man, the highs and lows. It's no secret that my life has been a roller-coaster of epic proportions in the last six months. i'm not going to go over all the details but life has been tough, stressful and to be honest 'not very enjoyable' - most people that know me well enough know i like to work, dabble and play in this space. my creative energy has been constantly zapped by the day to day battle that we all go through - the grind. Saying all that i was really pleased when aquilatv (nat/julia) said they had managed to secure some funding for a mini 'ontheground' team to go out to austin - amazing. i was never going to be able to go this year and so i was 'over the moon' to go. we had a rush job to get a lot of things going before we went away and it was tight and untested on the theme (as seems to be the case with me and ontheground/sxsw) as we literally flew away. i was coughing and flying pretty darn shitty before i even arrived in austin and was hoping that the sunshine/vitaminD would give me the boost i needed... .
sxsw videos | clips for edit later from Phil Campbell - England on Vimeo.
and, well it never. i was vacant and exhausted and really out of whack finding some days it hard to concentrate on what i was supposed to be doing. i felt like i was really letting the side down on a few areas, looking back i could have done a much better job - and should have. Here in lies 'therub' - i have never been to sxsw in a working capacity before and it felt extremely weird to be in the trade section. In the three years i have been going to sxsw it was the very first time i have seen inside the trade part before! - i normally just frequent the hallways and 'float' about - probably the reason for my lack of media in recent years.
I really travelled light this year, i never took my laptop and knew that we were on limited funds. also getting the sprint evdo card back online was something outside of the budget i had per day so having connectivity all the time was going to be a real problem - even then the US phone i had sometimes worked when called inbound, sometimes not. I found myself hanging out with @jasonjarrett most of the time 'to catch up after so long' and crashing on his settee at his hotel as he was reasonably 'downtown' - sarah was a good $20 taxi ride away and unlike nats hotel (where they could arrange a taxi and it was on the side of the freeway) getting a cab BACK from sarahs was a major nightmare. Waiting up to 1hr and ringing numerous times to get make sure it was on the way - lots of connectivity and mobility problems compounded by my constant hacking up. I know, i sound lame and should have 'got my shit together' - i did try on numerous occasions and had a really good day one of the days.
sxsw videos | clips for edit later from Phil Campbell - England on Vimeo.
Then there was the rezpondr problems (again) twitter feed just would not allow for twin hashtags for some reason and trying to arrange getting a simple fix like that done with the added timezone shift and lack of contact directly was stressing me and others out. After getting back it turns out the problem is that each single subdomain is polling every sixty seconds. each one! - we have no rate management, no subdomain traffic management (as in go quiet if traffic to that domain is low = not busy) we just have a stack of domains that are constantly polling. something that after three years of sxsw i only get to truly find out the problem too. as you can imagine, i'm really keen to get the crawler ported to ruby or python asap. i would have also liked to have done the layout different after realising that the website was going to be displayed on the stand. it was not really designed for screen - i would have made the vimeo areas bigger and the player more dynamic so things were moving. a live and learn lesson i guess.
nat was a superstar media maker. he is used to turning up at a shoot and just hitting it all day - whatever there is to record and record it. fit in as much recording as possible in a day and boom. i was shocked at the pace and sheer amount of capturing a camera man does, i did feel out of place and did not know how to compliment nat - my esp radar of covering things when he was shooting them was totally off. i did not know if i should be recording audioboo with your average joe about their products and services or if that was off base for what we were doing for screen west midlands. the things we did capture for screen west midlands i think was good thou - i would have loved to have had a schedule to hit each company one after another. i guess i just like the idea of capturing a bulk of content more linear. sxsw is not linear - it ebbs and flows and things change very quickly, things are not close by and rooms are a long walk away. the green room was on the other side of the building. maybe a remote fixed camera we can control from a stand would be the order of the day next year - something remote but fixed, everytime i went to the room it was empty. the ustream presentation was a highlight. i went to the ustream presentation to maybe glean some information about the cloud infrastructure they use and how they might be developing special hardware as they grew into the cloud with all the celebrity endorsements they were getting. i decided to stand in the line to ask questions and asked 'are ustream developing greener hardware to offset their carbon footprint as they grew bigger in the cloud' to which i was met with a really firm texas 'no' - not pleased with the comment i waited a short while because asking if that was a 'texas thing' which got a slight 'ooooh, ahhhh' from the audience. i said my piece and left. i seem to have come all over all green yet i still had flown all those miles to attend. catch 22. I hardly got to see any of my friends this year, i hardly went to any parties - i never stood in a que for anything (because i see no point in spending an hour in a que like a fanboy just to attend a named party to hang with the premade packaged and ready a-list posse) but was really pleased to get to attend the 'lemmy' world exclusive of his autobiography that was recorded over three years. that was brilliant - that man is made of iron and is still very much a badass, it is amazing to me that he is still touring!My new veneers cracked on the last day of video recording. cracked right down the middle and by the time i had got home had completely come off - as of writing this i have two/three weeks to wait to get it replaced. i'm so so pissed about it. one minute a decade of confidence issues was wiped away for a week and all was good in the land of campbell and then the next i'm back to the world of hiding away and wondering if you can really paint over the cracks knowing that what remains underneath is still the problem. i know, too deep and meaningful for a set of nashers. i'm really hoping that this one will be ok. i know that my 'bite' is completely wrong because of some missing teeth which totally put all my eating and biting out of whack. it was my own fault - i had a mexican drink the size of my head and went head long into a taco like that scene in jaws where you see him chewing on that airtank. muppit.
another highlight was seeing the 'boys' boot shopping. what with jason and his armadillo/lizard boots and nat purchasing a pair too (we really should have bought the hat as well) it was a nice time out from the conference centre. it was great to hang out with some of thescreen west midlands posse at the iron cactus too - the food there was pretty special. sixth street came alive in that warm, horse and cart vibe with people spilling out of bars into the street. i really never managed to capture a lot of content (wanted to get some fixed shots) from sixth street and i never went to my favourite bar at the top on the left there. i totally forget the name - a very weird sxsw year for me.
sxsw videos | clips for edit later from Phil Campbell - England on Vimeo.
so that's my decompression. i guess there is a lot more to add which i'll probably do over the coming week if anything pops into my mind (of which i'm sure there is plenty) that i have forgotten - also i have a debrief with the aquila guys next week.
oh and yeah i forgot to mention, racing pedicaps is way cool. ;)
sxsw videos | clips for edit later from Phil Campbell - England on Vimeo.
Comments [1]
click here to subscribe to this blog by email