Good Morning Internet

Ear­lier this year, I sub­mit­ted a pro­posal for a SXSW Inter­ac­tive panel called “Why New Authors Should Think Like Indie Bands”. The ini­tial feed­back from the SXSW staff was very pos­i­tive, and peo­ple voted for it in the panel picker.

Over the past cou­ple months, my panel didn’t made the cut for the first two rounds of ses­sion announce­ments, so I had begun to lose heart. Maybe my lit­tle panel idea wasn’t quite up the stan­dards of SXSW programming.

And then, last week, I got this email:

We are very excited to inform you that your pro­posal has been accepted to be part of the 2011 SXSW Inter­ac­tive Fes­ti­val in March in Austin. We received more than than 2400 out­stand­ing pro­pos­als via the SXSW Pan­elPicker — so being selected for the event means that your pro­posal was one of the best of the best of the best. Con­grats!! And, thanks for putting together such an out­stand­ing proposal!

You should have seen my face. “The best of the best of the best”! My panel idea is just like Will Smith in Men in Black!

I couldn’t be more excited, and I can’t wait to into the panel plan­ning process with the SXSW staff. In the mean­time, I’m going to do a freak-out/happy dance in my apartment.

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It’s true: We’re finally liv­ing in the future. With the press of a but­ton, you can instantly trans­port your­self to a ran­dom loca­tion any­where in North Amer­ica, Europe, Africa, Asia, or Australia!

Okay, sure, maybe it’s only vir­tual tele­por­ta­tion pow­ered by Google’s Street View, but it’s one of those very sim­ple mashups that, once you real­ize you’ve sunk two hours into play­ing with it, it becomes your new favorite thing.

Ladies and gen­tle­men, enjoy Globe Genie, your new web toy for the week.

National Novel Writ­ing Month is right around the cor­ner. I’m not sure what I’m going to write this year, but if I ever feel stuck, I could hit the “Shuf­fle” but­ton on Globe Genie and send my char­ac­ters off on an adventure.

Maybe they will need to hide out in a sub­urb in Min­eral Wells, Texas. Maybe they will have to drive along the coast­line north of Valen­cia, Spain hop­ing to find and res­cue a friend who left a dis­tressed voice­mail. Maybe the dreary weather in Wales will increase ten­sion among the group. Maybe they’ll encounter some­one run­ning from the woods in a des­o­late part of South­ern Fin­land, some­one beg­ging for their help. Maybe they end up at Mother Lode Appli­ance in Jack­son, Cal­i­for­nia, where they find a spec­tac­u­lar deal on a blender.

I need to make sure my whole novel doesn’t take place within sight of the road.

I love the idea of using this site as a writ­ing tool. I might even design a full-fledged writ­ing exer­cise around it. Keep an eye out for some Street View-inspired flash fiction.

(Screen cap and link via Boing­Bo­ing.)

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I am extremely excited to announce that my pro­posed ses­sion for SXSW Inter­ac­tive 2011 is now listed on this year’s Pan­elPicker web­site. It’s called “Why New Authors Should Think Like Indie Bands”. Here’s the offi­cial description:

The pub­lish­ing world is wrought with uncer­tainty. Tra­di­tional book sales are down, dig­i­tal pub­lish­ing is in its infancy, and pub­lish­ing houses, faced with shrink­ing bud­gets, are forced to shy away from pub­lish­ing nov­els writ­ten by new, untested authors. The rules of the indus­try are chang­ing. Before approach­ing agents and pub­lish­ers, new fic­tion authors are work­ing to self-publish and grow audi­ences with social media tools. When they approach a pub­lisher with a new novel and a built-in audi­ence, they take note. On this panel, hear from lit­er­ary agents and authors describe the way the indus­try is chang­ing and why it doesn’t mean doom-and-gloom for unknown fic­tion writ­ers. They’ll share suc­cess sto­ries, prac­ti­cal advice, and opin­ions on the future of publishing.

I really hope that my ses­sion makes it through the com­mu­nity vot­ing process, which counts for 30% of the final deci­sion, along with a 30% say of the staff and 40% of the advi­sory board. If you’re plan­ning on going to SXSW, I’d cer­tainly appre­ci­ate it if you include my ses­sion amongst those you vote up for next year’s con­fer­ence. If you’re not plan­ning on attend­ing, I still sug­gest you check out the Pan­elPicker and help shape next year’s SXSW Inter­ac­tive con­fer­ence. There are some really excit­ing ideas in there, and I hope you think mine is one of them.

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Sun­day, March 14, 2010

I’ve been doing web design pro­fes­sion­ally for almost a decade. I’ve worked free­lance and for com­pa­nies, both large and small. But the fact of the mat­ter is, I’m get­ting a lit­tle burned out on it.

I’ve been doing more and more writ­ing these days. Grad school for cre­ative writ­ing keeps me busy and I’ve been writ­ing more and more on this site.

Amidst hopes of shift­ing my pro­fes­sional focus from web design to web writ­ing, I was very inter­ested in attend­ing this ses­sion. Tt seemed to val­i­date a lot of the things I already knew (or sus­pected) about writ­ing con­tent for the web, and gave me a bit of con­fi­dence that I can make the shift. The panel con­sisted of Ian Alexan­der, Erin Ander­son, Tiffani Jones Brown, and Dan Mac­carone.

First, they touched on the fun­da­men­tals: It’s impor­tant to write web copy in a voice that will make users feel that you’re part­ner­ing with them. It’s essen­tial to have a call to action, such as links to related blog posts at the end of a post.

And then they described some­thing I had always believed, but I was sur­prised at how many audi­ence mem­bers found to be new infor­ma­tion. Web writ­ing should be part of user expe­ri­ence design, not a “fill-in-the-blanks” ele­ment. Copy should explain why every web­site action hap­pens, using a strict econ­omy of words.

All too often, copy­writ­ers get pulled into a project late in the design cycle. The pan­elists urged writ­ers to fight to be involved in the design process from the begin­ning. End­ing up at the end of the con­ver­sa­tion makes everyone’s job more difficult. Writers should write and wire­frame with a site’s infor­ma­tion archi­tect. Design and copy go hand in hand and are not sep­a­rate issues. I was very sur­prised at how many peo­ple in atten­dance didn’t think of web writ­ing that way.

For writ­ers look­ing to posi­tion them­selves as “web writ­ers”, well-written nav­i­ga­tion copy and calls to action are some of the best port­fo­lio mate­r­ial. This, I real­ized, is some­thing I should assem­ble if I want to make the move from graphic design to the writ­ing end of the UX spectrum.

When fig­ur­ing out how to fit writ­ing into the infor­ma­tion design and con­tent strat­egy of a company’s site, it boils down to some essen­tial yet sim­ple con­cepts. What is the prod­uct doing or solv­ing? The writ­ing should never let go of the prod­uct. While writ­ing, it’s impor­tant to under­stand the rel­e­vance of tech­nol­ogy, but also how writ­ing and design all touch it. Be aware of the tools, but don’t let the tools dic­tate the message.

I left the ses­sion feel­ing pumped. Though I’m still not sure exactly how I could make the jump from design to writ­ing, it seems like a much smaller leap now.

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Sat­ur­day, March 13, 2010

With the frus­tra­tion of indef­i­nite delays and unfriendly Amer­i­can Air­lines employ­ees solidly in my past, SXSW Inter­ac­tive began for me Sat­ur­day morn­ing with a ses­sion called “Why Keep Blog­ging? Real Answers for Smart Tweeple”. It was a pretty solid ses­sion, so I for­give them for using the cringe-worthy term “tweeple”.

On the panel were pro blog­gers and writ­ers Guy LeCharles Gon­za­lez, Lizzie Skur­nick, Scott Rosen­berg, Josh Fruh­linger, and Emily Gor­don. They shared sto­ries and tips about writ­ing, stay­ing moti­vated, find­ing things to blog about, a blog’s life cycle, and gen­er­at­ing revenue.

The cen­tral dis­cus­sion was whether or not blogs remain rel­e­vant in a world of micro-blogging and sta­tus updates via Twit­ter and Face­book. I never thought that micro-blogging threat­ened to replace blogs, and the panel did a nice job of spelling out some rea­sons why. Blogs serve as bet­ter archives of infor­ma­tion that Twit­ter updates, can stim­u­late com­mu­nity dis­cus­sion, and can spot­light good writ­ing in ways that tweets and updates can’t.

To me, that already seemed fairly appar­ent. I found their sto­ries from “on the ground” much more help­ful, and they gave me hope that I might one day be able to sup­port myself through my writ­ing and web endeavors.

Also, I par­tic­u­larly liked hear­ing from Josh Fruh­linger, the author of one of my favorite blogs, The Comics Cur­mud­geon. If you’ve never read it, you’re in for a treat.

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I’m really glad I took notes dur­ing and about SXSW because I would have oth­er­wise for­got­ten a lot great of moments.

Yes­ter­day and this morn­ing, I sifted through my note­books and nar­rowed the high­lights I want to write about down to 35. Yes, my “short” list of favorite SXSW moments is 35! Maybe next year I’ll fig­ure out how to blog dur­ing SXSW so I don’t need to do all of this after the fact. Although, now that I’m back into the nor­mal, bor­ing rou­tine of the real world, it’s nice to revisit these notes, ses­sions, and memories.

I’m work­ing on re-writing my scrib­bling into coher­ent expla­na­tions and sto­ries, which I’ll begin post­ing tomor­row morn­ing, rapid-fire, and in chrono­log­i­cal order (or as close to chrono­log­i­cal as I can remember).

If you were at SXSW, what were some of your favorite moments?

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