Friday, March 07, 2008
SXSW 2008 begins!
SXSW 2008 has begun! Thanks to having attended Interactive last year, there are a lot more things that I knew how to prepare for compared to then. The main things were booking my hotel early to get the Hampton and arranging to sharing a room to keep costs down, now that I actually knew people who were coming back. I arrived last night around midnight and took the Super Shuttle to the hotel, where Sarah and Vanessa had arrived before me. Breakfast at the Hampton consisted of early celebrity sightings—Stan and Rob from Happy Cog, and a large portion of the Brit Pack, including Jon Hicks, Andy Budd, Richard Rutter, and Natalie Downe. The three of us then got in line to pick up our badges about 15 minutes before it actually opened, and thus missed the massive queues that I endured last year. I had a minor double-take because my badge had my picture from last year, which I had replaced. So a short and easy trip to the help desk got the right picture back. Picked up our swag bags, and we’ve been geeking out at the hotel, figuring out a private wifi connection and blogging about our conference experiences before. This is Van’s third SXSW, my second, and Sarah’s first, so we’ve all got different perspectives on it.
I switched out the lens on my camera to the kit lens (18-70) instead of my zoom lens for this trip. I’d been getting a little tired of photography lately because I never seemed to me able to see anything different. The wide angle provided instant satisfaction, and I’m looking forward to using this lens again, both for capturing SXSW and producing shots that I like.
The airport terminal at Logan