spasticrobot

Sweet Home New Orleans

We're back home in the Dirty City. Barcelona is an amazing, beautiful city full of visual, gastronomic, olfactory and audial delights & surprises. But even with all that BCN has to offer, no other city gives me the comfort and satisfaction of my beloved New Orleans.

It's actually really nice to be home, even with the reality of Nagin's victory. Perhaps we'll find a way as a people to pressure him into being a more reasonable and progressive city leader and maybe, as Rivault put it in the previous post's comments, monkeys will fly out of my butt. Either way I'm excited and feeling good to be back home.

Today I'm catching up on laundry, making groceries, uploading photos and catching up on my DVR material including the Giro d'Italia (BASSO!!) and Lost. I promise to have some posts up before the end of the day.

Catalunya

So far our vacation has been intense and pretty inspiring.

FC Barcelona won the Champions Cup on Wednesday and the streets filled with hundreds of thousands of futbol mad Catalonians. It was really something amazing to witness.

Last night we had a nine course dinner at Cinc Sentits that was the finest gustatory experience of my life.

We've seen so many amazing buildings and structures already and today Shanna and I are going to see many of the newest buildings including Jean Nouvel's Torre Agbar.

I'll have plenty of full posts and descriptions when I get home. In the meantime I've posted just a few photos to my flickr account.

Off to Barcelona

I've been slacking on posts this week due to wrapping up projects at work before my trip to Barcelona next week. I'll probably be posting intermittently at best while I'm there but expect a bevy of images and notes when I return.

BCN

Our flight is booked to Barcelona. We leave May 15th and Return May 22nd. I'm thoroughly excited!

Chicago

I just landed in Chicago and am now at my gracious hosts' home. It's chilly outside and I'm excited to get to the conference tomorrow. More to come.

Dutch Design Symposium in Chicago

I just booked arrangements to be in Chicago next week for this incredible symposium entitled Sustainable Waterfronts - Learning from the Dutch Experience. They have added an extended program called New Orleans and the Dutch in order to discuss how Dutch design methodology can be employed in the reconstruction of New Orleans. From the website:

After the devastation left behind in New Orleans and the Gulf region by hurricane Katrina we received numerous requests and inquiries if we would include presentations on this subject. We therefore decided to extend the program with presentations and a panel discussion about the Dutch expertise on water management and urban planning and if this could be of use in the rebuilding of New Orleans. Speakers from the Netherlands and the US will be announced shortly.

I'll be up there furiously taking notes, trying to get my two cents in and making contacts for the New New Orleans Initiative. I'll also be posting the whole thing so check back for updates.

Austin

I'm now in Austin staying with Sarah M. & Rick at Damon and Sarah's place. They are very kind for putting up with us refugees for a few days. Last night Rose and Heather came over and we all drank Tecate and started discussing ways that we can help in the rebuild. So far I'm thinking I will volunteer in any capacity I can when I get back and start to plan a public advocacy initiative.

This morning we went to Las Manitas for a Mexican breakfast and my favorite author/futurist Bruce Sterling walked in just as we were being served. Shanna suggested that I go and talk to him about the disaster, which seemed like a great idea. I introduced myself to him and Jasmina Tesanovic a lovely Serbian journalist who is here covering the refugee situation. He was kind enough to talk to me over breakfast about what we should do as citizens to ensure that the redesign/reconstruction is properly handled. He gave me some great ideas and it was nice to hear him riff on the political/ecological situation.

We're gonna make it through this people, we just need to make sure we make it through with the proper changes at the end of all this.

Dallas

I'm in Dallas, TX at my Aunt & Uncle's home where I just finished a delicious warm meal accompanied by many glasses of deliciously chilled Chardonnay. It's wonderful and rejuvenating to be back in air conditioned comfort but my heart is broken, maybe beyond repair for my city. I want to believe that New Orleans will be back but right now it just seems so unfathomable. I'm torn between my civic desire for a glorious rebirth and a knee jerk impulse to flee. I'm going to rest and recuperate here a few more days then I'm headed to austin to meet up with a bunch of you guys to make some hard decisions.

I feel blessed to be alive and for all of my friends and family to have made it out alive. No matter what people decide to do it's nice that we're all still here.

Reason #1,000,001 that New Yorkers are the luckiest people alive:

This weekend was the 2005 Big Apple BBQ Block Party featuring top BBQ from the top BBQ regions including Texas Hill Country, Memphis, Kansas City and North Carolina. I would love to attend this event and if I had known about it I probably would have planned my annual summer trip for this past weekend.

Post SXSW Roundup

Well, I'm back at home in New Orleans, my mind reeling from five days of informative panels, great conversations with interesting people, delicious TexMex & BBQ and sweet salty Margaritas.  It's always nice to visit Austin and even more so when nearly 4,000 of the most intelligent designers, developers, bloggers and general geeks from around the world are there with you.

SXSW has always been one of the most interesting and important tech/design/interactive conferences around but I feel like this year it hit a new plateau, especially in terms of content about web design and development. The addition of so many How To sessions, which I was a little skeptical about at first, was a genius move. Those panels more than anything are the reason that I have more takeaways from this year's SXSW than any other conference I have ever attended. I have new knowledge about so many subjects I don't even know where to begin.

To all the supercool people I met over the last few days I just want to say thanks for being so convivial, interesting and approachable. To all the friends that I wasn't able to meet up with because I was too busy with the conference I just want to say sorry we didn't get to hang but I promise to come see you whenever I am in your town(s) again.

Hot Topics at SXSW Interactive 2005:

• The Wisdom of Crowds
• Thin Slicing
• CSS
• Accessibility
• Semantic Markup (meaningful code, emergent semantics, XFN, etc.)
• Microformats
• Qualitative Data Analysis (ethnographic research & analysis)
• The return of the DOM and Javascript
• Agile Modelling
• The advancement of screen Typography

My Takeaways from SXSW Interactive 2005:

• Work harder on all aspects of my practice (design, development, research, writing)
• Create more meaningful code both on the style side and the markup side
• Supplement quantitative data gathering and analysis with qualitative data gathering techniques
• Make more time to experiment, play and "practice" design
• Pay more attention to type
• Make all of the sites I build more accessible
• Continue my pledge to make all new projects valid & standards compliant
• Build a space for my professional interests (FINISH MY PERSONAL SITE) as well as one for experimentation & play

Some final SXSW Links:

SXSW Notes Exchange

SXSW Flickr Gallery

2005 Web Awards Winners

Blake Haney's DataDump

My del.icio.us Southbyerati List