Unfortunately, I have bad news for the many friends I was hoping to see at this year’s South by Southwest Interactive Festival in Austin: I won’t be attending this year. Not that my three-year attendance streak was much to brag about, but I was really looking forward to showing up there for a fourth year. In spite of my criticisms about last year’s show, I still had a great time, learned a lot and left Austin wanting to come back.
However, I have pretty good reasons for why I had to cancel. First, I’m heading to San Francisco in mid-March for a business trip. At the end of my trip, I’m going to take my eleven year old nephew with me for a trip to Paris to see my dad. It’ll be his first trip abroad, which is exciting for him and exciting for me, too. We’ll be there for a week at the end of March, so if you have any recommendations on how to entertain a pre-teen in the City of Lights (or its environs), please let me know.
Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda
Back to South by Southwest for a minute. Not only am I disappointed that I can’t make it there to see all of the terrific people that I only ever see once a year, but I’m disappointed that I won’t be able to give the presentation I had planned to.
It was called “Design Control in a Digital World: Getting It and Losing It,” and it was going to be part two of the talk I gave last October in Denver at the AIGA National Design Conference. The idea was to revisit the same themes, but rather than talking about how print designers need to embrace the dynamics of digital media, I had planned to talk about what digital designers can salvage from the traditions of print media taht we’ve almost unconsciously left behind. I’d share it with you here and now, but I, er, haven’t written yet. But it was gonna be great.
Have fun, though, all of those who are heading to Austin.
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