DerekAllard.com : CodeIgniter, ExpressionEngine, and the World of Web Design

South by Southwest 2008 : Day One

March 08^th, 2008

Preamble: Since I had my laptop in front of me all day, I decided on a stream-of-consciousness post.  If you’re looking for juicy CodeIgniter or EE news and not interested in my comings and goings then I’d advise you to skip today and read tomorrow. ;)

5:31am
Getting to Austin was much nicer this year.  Specifically, customs was much nicer.  In fact, it was downright uneventful.  I got to the gate uneventfully, and opened up lappy and started hacking away on EE for the demo.  A little voice in the back of my head was telling me that its dumb to do that at 5:30am without a full cup of coffee in me… but there’s always work to be done.  Duty calls!

7:33am
The little girl beside me has an unhealthy fascination with the glowing apple on my black laptop, demanding that the people around us look at, (at about 260 decibels).  All she manages to say to me is “the soap is sticky”.  Strange kid.

9:03am
I have a connecting flight in Cleveland I need to make, but it seems they won’t let us land due to airport congestion.  When we finally do land, we’re almost an hour late and I have 12 minutes to… (Celine Dion in the airport?  What is the American obsession with Celi… OMG!  No time to finish that thought, my plane is leaving!) get to my flight.  I get rushed onto the plane, but I still haven’t had any coffee yet today and I’m hurting here…

10:57am
Made it to the plane.  Sitting beside a fellow nerd, Jeremy, who does User Interface work with Prudential.  I know he’s a nerd, because he’s reading a book about the deeper meaning of type-faces, and I’m actually thinking to myself “that looks interesting”.  When did it all go so wrong?  Our pilot seems to like the sound of his own voice.  I wonder if he knows this isn’t open-mic night?

11:20am
iTunes: Zepplin/House of Pain.  Was ever a finer re-mix made? Thanks for that Cliff. “When its time to rock a funky joint…”

11:55am
Derek Jones got here ahead of schedule, and we sat in an airport pub munching away on adequately greasy food.  Les arrives shortly afterwards, and its off to the conference center to see our rooms.

4:40pm
Since we’re sponsors, we get all kinds of special treatment.  I like this ;)  Thanks for footing the bill Rick!  I assure you its all going to my head.

11:14pm
What presentation would be complete without significant last minute changes?  No presentation.  An entire day of traveling and little sleep over the past 2 weeks hasn’t done much for my energy levels either.  The entire EllisLab crew has congregated in my room for last minute dev work.  Considering how exhausted we all are, we’re remarkably patient, and even joking.

12:41am
Still plugging away.  But since the day is now over, I’m posting this entry.

Can’t wait to see everyone tomorrow.  Don’t forget about our ExpressionEngine 2.0 sneak peek (or “peak”) as the programme printed… sheesh…

This entry was made on March 08^th, 2008 @ 0:43 and filed into CodeIgniter, ExpressionEngine, Noteworthy.