First, while I love people, I cannot hang out with anyone for very long. This isn’t to say that I don’t love my friends who I hung out with at SXSW. I have some amazing friends, who likely saw an uglier side of me in Texas. That’s a shame, and I cannot express my apologies to them enough.

Second, celebrity fawning is just as much of an issue in tech circles as it is anywhere else. The very things I despise about Hollywood culture are very prevalent in the Valley culture as well. Anyone that knows me, knows how I absolutely despise treating people as anything more than that.

A funny thing happened while I was there however.

I sat in one of the last talks of the conference. When it was over I got up to collect my stuff to leave. I noticed someone collecting themselves behind me. It was Matt Cutts. For those of you who don’t know who Matt Cutts is, he’s the head of Google’s web spam team. He’s directly responsible for helping ensure the links you click on Google’s search results are valid.

I was completely star struck.

Matt was awesome. He’s a very level-headed, clean, nice guy. He even gave me a few breath mints (maybe I needed them). He even uses a PC (whoa). After a few minutes of chatting about relevant search results in google, and keeping the results clean (when desired), he went on to talk to some other people.

The absence made me realize, that for as much as I hated people worshiping other people, I was doing it too. Matt Cutts represents a guy who does things that I admire, and hope to imitate. I suspect other people fawn over folks they feel the same about.

So, I’d like to publicly apologize for being rude to some folks on twitter, and (more importantly) to my friends who tolerated me at SXSW. I had a great time, and it was better because all of you who were with me. It just took me a while to realize it. To those of you who were there: I was a big bag of douche, and I appreciate your ability to let me figure it out myself.

I’d like to recap all of SXSW, but it’d take weeks for me to write it and days for you to read it. I’ll just go on a rant about some of the other folks I met while I was there (Besides the awe-inspiring super-duper Matt Cutts). I’m horrible at remembering names (and I was drunk a lot), so if I butcher your name, _please_ forgive me.

The first night, I went out on my own. I saw Ted, then went to a bar off 6th st. Later, I was able to hang out with the Blogsmith guys (Plus the always awesome Erik Hersman). Gavin, Mike, Krystoff, and Bill were all a blast to hang out with and share a few 7&7s with. We had Thai and saw a burlesque show at Emos. Some of those girls had more hair on their armpits than me.

The next night Eric, Ryan, (who I shared a hotel room with) and me hung out at Gingerman. Gingerman is a story by itself (it has Old Rasputin Stout on tap). While we were hanging out, we met some of the guys and girls from Agency Net. I’m from West Palm, which is about 35 miles north of Ft. Lauderdale, where Agency Net calls home. Nini was taking pictures and hanging out with Larissa, while Augustin, Chris, and I talked about comic books and Death Metal.

The same night, Ryan and I went to the official opening party (Eric went back to the hotel, sick), and met the rest of the Ushahidi guys. David, Teddy, Erik (Hersman, same as above), Jon, and Kofi were all at the party, and it was awesome to meet them. They are likely some of the coolest people I met the entire time was in Austin (sorry to everyone else, but those guys are pretty awesome). They (minus Kofi) did a panel talk on web apps in emerging markets. One of the things I’m most certain about right now, is how much I intend to get involved with Ushahidi. Awesome stuff.

On Sunday, Alex cued me in on a conservative meetup at Moonshine, ‘Right-By-Southwest’. The event was put on by by Patrick Ruffini, on behalf of Michael Williams. Some of the awesome folks I met: Pat, Ned, Joe, and Robbie were all awesome to talk to and hang with. Hearing Michael Williams talk about his experiences in the mis-named Texas Railway Authority was awesome. Some people exude a sense of awesome, and Mr. Williams is definitely one of those guys.

Somewhere in-between all this, I met some other folks. I don’t remember when, or how but I recall meeting Vladimir, Billy, Todd, and Seth.

Also in between all of this was BarCamp Miami. I definitely love a BarCamp, and this was definitely the craziest BarCamp I have ever seen. Eric, Erik, and Ryan presented (all in different rooms). Good times there. The were even handing out free burritos. I expected the burritos to suck (free, right), but they were freakin awesome.

Monday, we had the Florida Creatives meetup at Gingerman (that place is awesome). Erik, Alex, Eric, Mark, Ryan, Etan, and a few others (bad with names, sorry) all hung out for a few hours to continue the tradition we’ve kept for years now. It was good to have a little home nostalgia over a thousand miles away from home. I’d met Mark Jaquith before, but never had much chance to talk. It was cool to talk about some non-tech stuff with someone who I respect a bunch. I got too drunk that night, and punched a parking meter. While my hand is still bruised, I’ll bet that parking meter will think twice.

Tuesday was the final day of the conference. I met some cool guys from YNot, presenting on a panel about how to make money in the adult industry. The lessons were pretty typical actually. Meet people, build trust, don’t suck. Afterwards I went to the finale party. I don’t remember the name of the place, but I do recall it had a mechanical bull.

I saw Vishal there with a very pretty friend of his (whose name I do not recall). I met Vishal at FOWA, and he’s a pretty awesome guy. His friend was pushing PR for New Orleans. I mentioned she had work left to be done. She agreed, but had me swear I’d be an evangelist for New Orleans. So, here I am …

After that I hung with Teddy and Jon the rest of the night. I said it before, but those guys really are awesome.

The next day I came home. I was hungover (from drinking) and sick (from Ryan). My plane was delayed for hours. I’m pretty happy to be home, but I’m happier that I went to South By Southwest

Yeah, so UCF Insider rocks, and you should check it out.

It’s funny how I started going to networking events a while back in order to meet people to further my career. I suppose that’s still a possibility, but these days I go because I geniuinely enjoy the company of the characters I get to talk to. I can’t say enough good things about all the guys I get to see every couple weeks.

I can try however:

So, I’d like to buy a beer for Chis , Erik , Gregg , Al , Ryan , John , Greg , and yes, even Bender. I should buy a beer for a few more of y’all, but those are the first few honkies I can think of.

I also had the oppotunity to meet a few guys from a really young startup, Dyverse . It’s neat to see the ambition of people who are willing to lay a lot on the line, to get where they want to be. John looks a lot like a younger version of Sterling, which might be a good thing for him.

Speaking of startups, I had the great opportunity to meet Gabriel Chapman, CEO for the locally started Talent Database . Talent Database is a great idea with tons of potential. I was thoroughly impressed with the humble nature of a man behind something with such promise. I guess it reinforces my egalitarian view of what the world should be.

So, this being the ‘Thanksgiving’ edition of Florida Creatives, I suppose I should mention what I’m grateful for: Having a Florida Creatives to go to. Thanks to all of you who keep it going.

Figures.

The story is that the new owner of the property the Improv leases, Cameron Kuhn, had agreed to provide a liquor license to the Improv as incentive to stay in the largely vacant historic Church Street district. The day before their existing liquor license was due to expire, Cameron reneged on his side of the bargain. Corporate management for the Improv decided to vacate the location, and sue for breach of contract.

Here’s where it gets interesting…

When the story hit the news today (dammit), Cameron decided to change the locks on the building to effectively lock the Improv out of their leased space. The only reasons I can come up with as to why he would do such an obviously dumb move, is

1.) Bullying – perhaps he thought he could scare Improv management out of a lawsuit.

2.) Collateral – Maybe Cameron thought if he removed Improv imployees immediately, he might be able to steal some valuable property of theirs, and use it as leverage against any possible lawsuite.

3.) Spite – The most auspicious of all possible reasons. Cameron might just be mad at the thought of being sued over something he thinks he has the right to do.

My good friend, was recently promoted to at the Improv after a debacle with the former GM (**details removed upon request**). That’s another story entirely. WFTV talked to her about it for their 11pm broadcast It’s always cool to be interviewed, I guess.

I called her after the broadcast to let her know they spelt her name wrong. She was typical about it, but she did mention how she won. The original locks are back in place, and they might just turn the space into a haunted house until they’re required by law to leave.

So, you might just have a downtown haunted house to go to this year! I guess there’s always some silver lining to be had.

Here’s what still frustrates me about this: Why would a developer who’s known to be broke right now, evict a stable tenant from a property that isn’t producing stable tenants!!?!!??!? Furthermore, Orlando needs steady downtown entertainment to keep people coming, and push business downtown .I can’t imagine why someone with such a vested interest in downtown Orlando (something over $50 million) would do anything to sabatoge that.

Well, the cat’s out of the bag now. All of the local news stations have it out for Cameron, so he may wind up in a similiar situation to what Lou Perlman faced before him. It’s unbelievable how people with so much to lose self-destruct in the most obsurd ways.

UPDATE October 17, 2007:

Upper Improv Orlando management has made a decision on where to move to. I’m under oath to not say where. However, I will say it’s in a more ‘touristy’ area of town

The topics were varied. Subjects like iMIS integration, LISP for AJAX, new time-sensitive transport protocols, and general business stuff. It’s always a good time. Plus, I’m a big believer in the local tech crowd here. There’s some amazing stuff going on around here, so it’s great to get everyone together to talk about it.

Chris and I also met up at the B&S Local Market for the linkmind event there at 8:00am this morning. It was much of the usual suspects. Alex , Ryan , John , Chris , another Chris , and I were there. Greg even made it out there, which was really cool. A local newspaper columnist, Etan , made it to the event as well. Anything that happens at 8 in the morning on a Friday has better be good, and the likemind events always are.

It was really interesting to hear the things some of the guys had to talk about. Alex discussed his recent success exposing poor customer service at Spirit Airlines (google “Spirit Air”, you’ll be impressed). Etan, being a tech reviewer, had some interesting things to say about the new iPhone. John is always fascinating to listen talk about the local business scene.

Overall, both events were a great time. The exposure to people like us is a great thing. There are far too many socially-inept geeks out there. That’s the sort of thing that’s slowing down tech culture in the world.

So, kudos to those who are running these events that bring us all together. It really helps everyone.

Hmm..

Thanks to Ryan and Alex for running it and sharing the nametag love.

A friend of ours drove us to the airport, after our flight was delayed an hour. We checked our bags with no problem headed to security. After we got in line in security, we noticed an ominous sound coming from the roof above us; hail. We rode the monorail to our terminal, and were amazed to see hail coming inside of our train car.

Of course, our plane was delayed even more, so we went to the bar. By night’s end, we had gone to the bar twice, and arrived in DC 5 hours late. To add insult to injury, there was a technical malfunction at DC and we were stuck on the plane for an additional hour.

Our friend there (who was an amazing host, she’s very gracious) drove us back to her house. It was a long day, and we were ready to get some much needed sleep.

The next morning Melissa and I got up, and was stunned to see that our friend didn’t have a computer. The only computer there was her roomate’s, which she gave permission to use. So I installed Apache and PHP on the machine, and started testing some of the ideas I had brainstormed while waiting to get to DC the night before.

That’s the sort of thing you do when you’re married. You spend countess hours waiting for the woman to get ready, so you might as well keep your mind busy.

After Melissa was ready, we headed out on our first full day on vacation! We went to Smithsonian first. Specifically, we went to the Museum of Science & Natural History. I didn’t realize how much that would be like going to Disney World, so we didn’t stay very long. Aftewards, we went walking around that area. The weather was nice, so it was good to be outside.

We checked out the Capitol, the White House, the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, and the WW2 Memorial. All of which are really awesome to see. There’s tons of history behind all of them, and it’s humbling to stand in front of the monument’s to our country’s greatest leaders and most somber times.

The next day, I was woken up by my phone. It was a company I consult for, and they were having issues with their Blackberry devices not being able to send. I tried to fix the issue with my phone, which I was able to do with a degree of success, but I needed a computer. My phone was almost out of battery life, so I really needed a phone charger too.

I looked all over for that computer I had used the day before, as well as the phone charger. I hesitantly peeked in the roomate’s room to see if it was in there, and sure enough, both the computer and the phone charger were in there. I grabbed both.

I started charging my phone, while I went to work on the Blackberry issue. I was almost done with the issue when the roomate came home, and began searching for her cell phone charger. I told her where it was, and she was apparently upset that I had entered her room.

My mistake. However, she was awfully rude about the issue.

I looked up hotels.com to see if I could get a good hotel room close by. I didn’t want to be uncomfortable on my vacation. Melissa had me wait to book anything, as not to make a rash decision. Ultimately, we didn’t get a hotel room, but the rest of the time in that house was awkward (at least it was for me). It’s funny how one person can ruin things for you. I should be bigger than that, but hey, I was pissed.

We did a bunch of hanging out after that. We did all the nightlife stuff . We drove up to Gettysburg. We met some really cool people. I don’t think there was anything left of DC that we still wanted to do. We even hit the International Spy Museum. I would have liked it more if I wasn’t so hungover when I was there.

The one thing that got to me though, was the amazing lack of manners by people there. I can’t count how many times I thought “The nerve!”. I guess that’s what happens to a city when it gets to be that big. All I can say is that I hope Orlando never gets that big.

To round out the trip, Southwest lost my luggage on the way back home. So I went to work the next day in an old pair of jeans and the sandals I had worn traveling home. After all of the nasty food and beer we had while on vacation, all I could think of was getting back to the gym. Too bad my gym shoes were with my luggage.

After we got home, I had to drive to Lakeland to get my dog. My buddy had generously watched her while I was on vacation. I can’t tell you how much it sucked to have to make a 2 hour drive after all of that.

Don’t get me wrong, it was good to get a vacation, but now I feel like I need a vacation from my vacation. Perhaps that’s why it’s good to be home.

I sat in a sort of star-struck gaze as I listened to what these guys were talking about.

Erik and Alex were both talking about things I could barely keep a handle on. I’m incredibly impressed by the in depth knowledge these guys have not about coding, but business. Alex is a well established software developer, So I wasn’t surprised to hear him talk about that. but the things those two, plus some others (I forgot the names already. I know I’m a bastard, but I can’t remember anyones name unless I’ve spoke it at least 10 times. I only know Erik’s name because I’m looking at his card).

Oh yeah, Al & Erik got me turned on to Bon Echo. It’s a Firefox derivation (a version of the web browser, Firefox). It’s the “longhorn” version of Firefox. It’s pretty neat. Most of you probably don’t have any reason to use it. But, if your a web developer, it’s not a bad idea to test your client side stuff out on what will eventually become the next big browser.

FYI – Alex and some of his ilk have created emurse.com. It’a resume hosting an job searching site. It’s very nice. They already have a substantial base and they’re growing. I’d be seriously remiss to not mention it. It’s very much worth your time!

So, in short, I’d just like to say thanks for humoring me, and letting me learn a thing or two.

Muchos Gracias