Updated: I've added a few more folks to the list. I've been meaning to talk about some of the people I met at SXSW but I didn't want to just do a linear report. Also I wanted to take some of the energy I took from SXSW and put it into making something new. So those two things combined and I made this new slideshow type thing. Thankfully, in the future I can just use the new <slideshow> tags I made when I want to do this again. It's also reminded me that actually sharing your ideas and recollections about people is much harder than coding little widgets. The time I've spent remembering who I met has taken vastly longer than putting the slideshow widget together. I have a feeling the universe works that way for a reason. I don't have everyone I met in the list so I will be updating it over the next couple of days. In the mean time click on View to see my thoughts on who I met. I finally met Julie who is half of the large head. She is as quick witted as her IM personality would suggest. It's probably crucial that I stay in her good graces in order for things to keep working with Leia. Then there was Bryan. On the night of the DFWBlogs get together he earned major cool points with his Sandman t-shirt and letting me have a Dave McKean designed tarot card. The first night I was down there at Michael and Ari's place for the Pre-Break Bread with Brad I met Kristin. She was very nice. She's been organizing Bay Area web loggers. If only I wasn't the shy awkward type I'd have gotten to know her better. Jessica was usually with Kristin when I saw her. I first met her at the Pre-Break Bread with Brad get together at Michael and Ari's house. Sadly I couldn't find the right words to break the ice and was left with only a glimpse of the exciting life behind the journal. Michael was amazing. He's a keystone to the whole SXSW experience. He invited people to his house. He helped Derek organize Fray Cafe. He performed at 20x2. He and his wife Ari are definitely at the top of my short list for canonization. Based on my experiences librarians must be better people. Tim was quieter than I expected. He is a fellow list member on the oddity that is the Lawn Wranglers mailing list (A Wes Anderson/Wilson brother mailing list). His performance at 20x2 was clever and funny. I got very lucky at the Break Bread with Brad event in that I was seated with two very cool people I knew nothing about. Katherine had driven down from Toronto and was interviewing people for a piece on Definitely Not the Opera. I wish our public radio had a show like this. I talked with her often throughout the conference and my mind was perpetually struggling to keep up with her. She has all sorts of insights and ideas to share on automatic and digital poetry, spirituality, gender and on and on. Katherine's friend Julie had ridden down from Toronto with her. Julie was also at our table for the Break Bread with Brad event. Sadly I did not get to see her much after that. She's one of the few people I've met that has a great passion for making and watching movies. I learned a great deal about the Canadian film industry. She's a columnist on backwash.com. I wish I could be a fly on the wall for some of the conversations Julie and Katherine have. Brad is the genius who organized the Break Bread with Brad event. He is a gracious host and clearly one of those people that enjoys bringing a group of folks together. He is quite funny, friendly and quick on the snark. James is one of the few webloggers that I had actually corresponded with before SXSW. In the weblog world so many people stake their claim with biting comments and light ridicule. James is about the nicest guy I have ever met. Initially we'd swapped emails because we are both big Rheostatics fans. Since then I've learned how genuine and honest he is. I need to take a trip up to the Great White North and see the Toronto folks outside the hectic SXSW schedule. Min Jung, Ernie and Bertie formed an Asian triad who I had the pleasure of having lunch with a couple of times. They were full of the inside dish on Asian Hollywood. They'd met all the Asian-American movie and TV celebs. The interplay between Erine and Min Jung was like watching Cary Grant and Kathryn Hepburn. They always had something snarky or funny and almost stepped on each other's words to deliver the killing barb. Kevin is doing what I want to be doing. I don't mean specifically I want to run a web site devoted to book lovers. I mean he's doing what he wants to do and finding some way to support himself. Geoffrey wins kudos for cool URL. I suppose it's the romantic in me that is so easily caught up in words like Dreams. Geoffrey was yet another victim of the mad dash that is SXSW and I didn't get to really talk to him much. Dan—> Nikolai and I talked for awhile at the DFW Blogger cocktail event. Being the guy who wrote the code to tally votes, and throw out the bad ones for the antibloggies I was curious to know how Nikolai did it with the Bloggies. I was surprised to learn he tallies all the votes by hand. I don't think I have that much dedication for anything. Nikolai was kind of quiet though and the raucous crowd in Jazz made it difficult to carry on a conversation. Kevin put together 20x2 which was much cooler than I expected it to be. I was very impressed by the ingenuity and creativity of all the performances. I was expecting some more traditional like Fray but it was not. I wish 20x2 happened more often than just at SXSW. Mike is another of those hearty souls who is striking out to do his own thing, only he's a lawyer. A lawyer with a badass web site I must say. The next time I'm bailing friends of out of jail, or getting hassled by the man for my vegetable related religious beliefs I want him on my side. He's smart. He sees all the angles. He'll cover my ass. He was unbelievably generous with the free legal advice to folks at SXSW. Pam made it to lunch with me and a few other folks. She was kinda quiet. Luckily she's one of the Austin crowd so when I make the three hour trek south I can try and look her up. Later a horde of SXSWi folks descended on the Iron Cactus again and she came with but alas was at some far away end of the table. She's the hands down winner for web site that makes brown look good. I didn't think it could be done. Rebecca and Jesse endured a barrage of questions about weblogger unity. The Apt Minds trio was lucky to get a chance to talk with them. Unfortunately I showed up a little late but they had a lot of great guidance and ideas as to how a national weblogger assocation might come to fruition. Their ideas and those of many others need to be distilled and refined during the week so we can get moving on it. Chris Rusty—> On the last day of SXSWi at the Adaptive Path party I met Ben and Mena. Mena teased me about my own ambitions to build a CMS for other people to use. Then she grabbed Ben from a conversation and we briefly had the chance to talk. I really admire his code in Moveable Type. His data structures and algorithms are elegance defined. One gets the impression that he has seen the entire program in his head and he's just writing it down. Very clean. Very readable. Ben and I talked about where he had worked before, and where he picked up his coding skills. I imagine he would be a blast to work with.