Another good day at South by Southwest. I had the night out last night, so I stopped at the Frogdesign Party for a while to see people and have some beers. I left to try to see Douglas Coupland's new movie, Everything's Gone Green. As a speaker I got a "gold" pass, which means I get to go see some of the films in the festival, but by the time I got to the theatre, it was at capacity. Too bad! Over to Club de Ville to see old friend Ben Cerveny, then trying to catch up with Niko, then an early night getting home.
This morning I went to see Identity Woman (Kaliya Hamlin) talk about OpenID at the identity panel. It was a good discussion about identity and privacy, and I also got to meet Scott Kveton in person, too. Mike Linksvayer was there too, which was nice; it's great catching up with such a sympatico person.
This afternoon I watched the incredibly valuable Everything You Always Wanted to Know About the Mobile Web...but Were Afraid to Ask. Great practical information for people willing to give mobile a try. I came away enthused and ready to make wikitravel.mobi a reality.
Best of all was seeing Ben on his panel about virtual identity and avatars. Ben's got a talent for identifying the most intellectually stimulating thread in a conversation and following it with gusto, so it was really cool to see him talk on stage.
tags: sxsw07 austin douglas coupland identity woman mobile web ben cerveny
La Traviata
We stopped in for dinner at La Traviata, an Italian restaurant on Congress that Maj had heard good things about. The menu was nice but not too friendly to us pescevegetarians; we were excited when we heard that there was a seafood special that night. But the waiter came back to tell us that they weren't available.
After we ordered, I heard the waitress behind me saying to her very big table, "...and we have two plates of the mahi-mahi available..." I stopped our waiter when he came by, and he was sheepish. "The chef was keeping those two plates for this big party." Oh.
Our food was great -- I had a mushroom fettuccine, Maj had a grilled salmon with greens -- and we forgot about it. But the waiter came out later and said, "I talked about it with the chef and we want to extend our apologies. We should offer the specials to every customer equally. The chef wants to offer you dessert on the house." OK, sounds good.
It doesn't take much to make up for a mistake, especially in the restaurant industry. La Traviata had good food, a really nice building, and great service up until then, but going that extra mile to make up for a mistake -- a debatable mistake I probably would have never thought about again -- gained my trust. More restaurants -- no, more businesses -- should have service like that.
tags: la traviata austin italian restaurant
Blog review roundup
I wanted to quickly shout-out to people who mentioned my talk at SXSW (Talks/SXSW07) in their blogs:
- Mike Linksvayer, SXSW: Commercialization of Wikis.
- Angela Beesley, Commercialization of wikis. I hope she saw that she was thanked at the end!
- Liz Henry, SXSWi panel on commercialization of wikis. The canonical notes, better than my own.
- Adam Darowski, SXSWi: Commercialization of Wikis. Adam's doing some wiki projects himself, and he found the talk helpful. Great!
- Mathieu Ouellet, Commercialization of Wikis. I hadn't seen Mathieu's great travel/tourism blog before, but it's bookmarked now. Great reading.
I'm really glad to see so much positive response to the talk. I worked really hard on it, and the subject is obviously very dear to my heart. It's great when your work pays off and people appreciate it.
tags: sxsw07 me talk blogs wiki
Wiki BOF
We're having a Wiki BOF lunch tomorrow at the 4th-floor coffee lounge. It should be fun. Thanks for announcing it, Liz!
tags: wiki sxsw07 bof flock together