Ryan Joy (atxryan)

Paul Menard has taken it upon himself to start up Austin’s first Wordpress Meetup Group. If you use Wordpress as a blogging tool or are thinking about using it, then you should check out the Meetup.com and Google group. Same goes if you’re interested in using Wordpress as a CMS solution for client projects.

http://groups.google.com/group/wordpress-austin
http://wordpress.meetup.com/173/

I finished 1454 out of 16,082 runners in this year’s 30th annual Statesman Capitol 10,000 with a chip-time of 52:46.2 minutes and an average pace of 8:30/mile.

Besides me not passing out, other notable news from that day was that Nicodemus Malakwen broke the previous course record by finishing in 29:42 minutes.

This War Will Destabilize The Entire Mideast Region And Set Off A Global Shockwave Of Anti-Americanism vs. No it won’t from The Onion.

This war will not put an end to anti-Americanism; it will fan the flames of hatred even higher. It will not end the threat of weapons of mass destruction; it will make possible their further proliferation. And it will not lay the groundwork for the flourishing of democracy throughout the Mideast; it will harden the resolve of Arab states to drive out all Western (i.e. U.S.) influence.

vs.

No it won’t.

It just won’t. None of that will happen.

You’re getting worked up over nothing. Everything is going to be fine. So just relax, okay? You’re really overreacting.

“This war will not put an end to anti-Americanism; it will fan the flames of hatred even higher”?

It won’t.

In a word: Awesome.

I met new great people and hung out with people I already knew were great. I’m still exhausted. I slept so little and drank so much each night! In fact, just by listing all of the evening events I somehow crawled to below, I realize that I must’ve drank an amazing amount of free booze. That alone was reimbursement for the badge.

I’ll come back and edit this post to include podcast links or other corollary material as they become available. I’m still fleshing this post out and it’s as much for my memory as it is for anyone who wishes to read it.

Thursday, March 8th
I had lunch with PPK from QuirksMode.org, Marla Erwin (a fellow Refresher) and some of her coworkers at the soon-to-be-gone Las Manitas.
Later that evening PPK, Alex Jones, Paul Menard, and I discussed Austin, cover bands, The Netherlands and, of course, web development over happy hour drinks at 219 West.

Friday, March 9th

My coworkers — Tom, Ginny, Jacob, Wendy — and I walked over to the convention center at 3pm thinking that we’d be able to zip in and grab our badges, avoiding the lunch and after-work crowds. We were wrong.

We finally did get our badges and then headed over to the SXSW tent for what would be the first of MANY free beers. I would’ve loved to make it to the first panel, How to Rawk SXSW, but I had to rush back to the office in order to finalize some projects before taking the next few days off.

Kicking off the evening was Friday Night Mix at Six sponsored by Porter Novelli where I had my first chance to mingle with other conference attendees as well as a couple of my attendees.

Saturday, March 10th
This would be the only day I woke up early enough to make it to the first panels at 10:00am.

Met and talked with Chris Osborn about his new Austin Happy Hour Guide publication, The Froggg

Panel :

(more…)

Disclaimer: I work for the Austin American-Statesman; provider of Statesman.com and Austin360.com. Congratulatory praise goes to the Austin360 editorial staff and my coworker Ginny Min for their work and quick turnaround. :-)

Tonight Austin360 unveiled their newest SXSW guide to day parties and side events separate from the main conference offerings. If you’re smart enough to avoid the impossible-to-get-into downtown venues and you decided to skip the badge/wristband this year (as you probably did last year and the year before that), SXSW day parties and media mixers are where it’s at.

I present to you the Austin360.com Guide to SXSW 2007 Side Parties.

Using this tool you are able to view, at a glance, all of the various events going on in conjunction or auxiliary to SXSW. Select a date range and search for Film, Interactive, or Music events that are FREE and open to the public, and with or without free drinks & food. Or, narrow down your selections by venue or artist to be able to quickly see who’s playing where & when.

Most of these events are culled from this list. Other events come from sites such as showlistaustin.com, donewaiting.com and austinist.com who tirelessly aggregate all the party info and keep their loyal readers informed. Myself included.

You do have a wristband or Music badge? Then use this search tool to scope out all the official SXSW acts and venues. And don’t forget Austinist’s own Interactive Guide to SXSW.

With all of these tools at your disposal, there’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to rock SXSW!

The latest creation to come out of Google Labs has partnered with our own Capital Metro just in time to provide much needed guidance to all the out-of-towners in Austin for SXSW wanting to know which bus to take to get from the Alamo South Lamar to 6th street and then to Magnolia’s.

Try it here! To the left you’ll see the route I take to get to work and how long it normally takes.

While it provides essentially the same service as CapMetro’s existing Trip Planner, Google Transit mashes up CapMetro’s route/schedule database with Google Maps. And, as anyone who has ever ridden a bus/subway/train in a strange city, it’s always comforting to visually see the route you’ll be taking and which part of town you’ll end up in or near.

Do you think you’ll be using this new Google tool? Will it increase the number of people who use public transit? Comment below!

I look forward to them expanding their list of partner cities and services. I can definitely see myself using this service when traveling.

Thanks to Austinist for the heads up!

Since my avatar across the Internet is atxryan, I decided to update my website’s URL to reflect this.

If you notice any broken links or images, please let me know
via email @ r [at] joyserve.net.

Update: I was experiencing a lot of problems with this transition last night and this morning but I believe they have all been resolved.