Purple Heat Fest

Happy blogoversary to me! A commenter wished me well, but to be honest I let the second anniversary of my blog drift by unnoticed.  It was apparently 6 days ago. Wow. I’ve done a fair bit of  writing here in that time, posted quite a number of pictures. I have made 346 posts, in fact. Given how voluble I am in most of them, that’s a whole lotta words, eh? You know, it amazes me that there are still people in this world who don’t think I talk that much.

A bit over a week ago I ventured out to Blanco (west of Austin in the Hill Country) to go to their Lavender Festival. In recent years people have noticed that the semi-arid limestone hills of Central Texas are fairly Mediterranean in character, soil- and climate-wise. What that means is that we have a pretty fair time growing wine and grapes and lavender near here, and a number of people are actually making a living out of those things now.  It’s different from the usual ranching and farming operations that are traditional in Texas, but alternate crops (and animals like emu) are starting to take hold.

As the poster (from the craft fair)  indicates, that does not mean the area has somehow become any less, um, resolutely Texan.

This was, in fact, one of the best small town fairs I’ve ever been to (and I’ve been to a lot of them). It was even good enough for me to forgive the 100+ heat index, which I fought with copious bottles of water, frequent shade, watermelon gazpacho and a very liberal coating of sunscreen.  Whoever set this fair up actually found some good local crafters to come sell handmade things at the craft fair instead of what I usually see (which is resellers of crappy boring things made in China). All the local lavender farms were there selling things, plus people with everything from intricate handmade baskets to lovely strings of china chili peppers to inventive kitchen towels in the shape of dresses to spiralled handmade jewelry to … well, you get the idea. And of course my favorite is all the food vendors and their samples (I shall gain much weight now).

I bought a bunch of stuff. I got hot sauce, pasta and habanero honey mustard from Shayne Sauce, chili fixins from Blanco Valley Farms, lavendar bath things (oversized tea bags!) from Farm Fresh Soaps, and lavender linen spray and other things (pictured above) from one of the lavender farms, Heron’s Nest Herb Farm. My dad even got my pup Audrey special lavender and tea tree shampoo (which she tries to eat). Do you know how awesome it smells to be at a lavender festival? Where almost everyone has something lavender-themed?  Oh yes, it’s quite lovely.

Of course, it’s not really a proper festival without a Texas blues band, right? This guy is Bobby Mack and his band, and he was followed up by Zydeco Blanco.  They did an enjoyable job with the music. The organizers of this festival really knew what they were doing. And it is the first festival I’ve been to where everybody ignored the cheap not-really-beer. The Real Ale Brewing Company is located in Blanco, and it’s a great little microbrewery with a beer called Firemans #4 that you have to try if you’re ever here, and of course there was a whole bunch of wine tasting from the local vineyards that people seemed to be enjoying.

After the festival, we went to one of the lavender farms, the Blanco River Lavender Company, where they had a few more things to look at and a guy who was demonstrating flint-knapping.  All the farms were having special events, but mostly they were things on making girly sachets and wands or similar. I chose flint-knapping because my dad and husband were there. The guy was good. The farm was pretty. My dad, of course, found the owner and talked to him (my dad always finds someone to talk to and learn from. He is the king of 1,000,000 Facts You Never Knew Existed).

There was a painter there under the live oak trees by the hay storage, I believe the same one selling paintings there.  The tree grove was also housing an amazing collection of very old and rusted things, like a stove.  You could sit in the shade and have lavender lemonade. The farm had a sense of suspended time about it, which I guess fits because it’s been in existence for a century.

And then there were these Adirondack chairs, which sparked my imagination as a Connoisseur of Sitting Comfortably in Atmospheric Surroundings, and made me think that in spring and fall, when it’s not so perishing hot out, it’s probably pretty nice to sit out here when it’s cool in the dusk, overlooking the fields and pasture.  Needs footrests, though.

As a last stop to our day, we went to Luckenbach, which is purportedly a town of three that relies on the mythos of its Texan roots, and is where Willie and Waylon used to go to sing on the Fourth of July.  I say mythos because among other things, I noted that the roof of the rusted post office/general store was not really rusted, the paint was not quite the right color. However, it is still very modern Texan, and it was apparently Harley motorcycle weekend in the hill country, and the place was packed with bikers.  Squawking through all this were about a dozen chickens.  And this guy …

Who is my hero for riding a longhorn through the place, and yelling at the bikers.  Who, really, wants to mess with a guy who rides a longhorn?

It was a very Texas weekend.

Opinions, I has them … 2009 SXSWi

I have been attending the South by Southwest Interactive conference here in Austin since last Friday. I have promised myself that in light of all this technology stuff I’ve been doing these last few days, I will actually participate in technology this evening before running off to crochet.  Et voila:  blog post.

I go to this conference hoping people will argue with one another. I want expert panelists who don’t agree on stuff answering interesting questions, and I want to be around my tech peers.  That was sort of the case this year, less than I’d hoped.  This year the public relations, marketing and monetization crowds were out in greater numbers than I’d seen before, which alters the conversation from one of “what are the challenges and joys of making better interactive technology” to more “how does this materially benefit me.” The latter question is difficult for those of us who are here out of love for this stuff, particularly when the asker is only there because they feel like they have to be. Takes the joy out, you know?

As a very longtime Internet user (I got my first two email accounts in 1993 and learned HTML in 1996), I am hopeful the Internet continues to be a place where people can form positive communities and relationships, and where diversity of opinion and freedom of  self-expression are the rule. I hope more people can come to it and have that same kind of good experience.  I understand needing to make money from things, but I don’t want it to become another place where I am bombarded by commercialization and pitches. I want people and businesses to see the Internet’s value as a collaborative medium beyond pushing their agendas and advertisements in the never-ending quest for a piece of the pocketbook.

So I thought I’d note a few of the points that I saw over the course of the conference, little nuggets of wisdom to chew on.

1. Googolplex: Everyone reminded us that there are billions of people out there on the internet, all of whom come with differing motivations, levels of experience, beliefs and intent. No one can even begin to predict what all that communicating will produce each day, but the possibilities are endless.  Still, they will be guided by the same thing that has guided every other major human institution:  human behavior.
2. Quiddity: Adaptive Path would like us all to think about what will make our corners of the internet better.  What will make the web a transcendent experience, instead of just a collection of mediocre brochure sites no one particularly enjoys or cares about visiting. And then she suggested a bunch of ideas on how to go about doing so.
3. Be Great: Merlin Mann of 43 Folders and John Gruber of Daring Fireball (pictured before their panel began, to the right) would like us to please try to be the best (better than 80%, anyway) at what we do, if we’re going to bother to try to do it at all. Even if we don’t achieve the heights we aspire to, at least we’ll get a lot better at it. To not be  shill or a jerk, either.
4. Relationships: Kristina Halvorson of Brain Traffic would like us to use our websites to talk to others as if they were people. She would like even corporate writing to be comprised of engaging, well-written communications instead of just dry press releases and company messages.  A fellow panelist, [updated] Lane Becker of Get Satisfaction, would like to encourage companies to treat their customers/clients as relationships instead of potential transactions.
5. Respect: The community managers of Etsy, Flickr, YouTube, Metafilter, Current TV would like us to participate in their communities (and others), but to please do so in a way that is respectful of others.  Don’t call them names.  Don’t be That Crazy Guy or That Crazy Woman who can’t seem to operate without being uncouth, churlish, coarse, inconsiderate, boorish, etc.
6. Data Warehousing: You have no idea how much data is being collected about you online, and you have no idea to what purpose that data is being put. Don’t you think you ought to?  Checked out those privacy settings lately? Read any good Terms of Service? It’s fast becoming another credit reporting system, but larger, and right now there’s no way to find out what items are attached to your name or dispute them.
7. It’s a Good Idea: Nonprofit personnel (chiming in for the billionth year in a row to say the same thing) would like to please, please have senior management buy into the idea of having a web presence, and especially to buy into the whole social web thing. Even if they don’t use it themelves. And please, can we not have the PR department doing it?  We promise we’ll be good and stay on message, and we might even make some money.  But we want to do it right and get new people involved with us.
8. A Matter of Trust: Elisa Camahort Page of BlogHer believes that blogging is about community, and community is about trust.  In a world where we don’t trust the institutions in our lives to tell us the truth, care about our troubles or connect with us on a personal level, we have formed our own networks.  The masses of people involved are creating a responsive, interactive media that’s proven to have a powerful political, economic and social impact.
9. Reciprocity: If you want people to pay attention to what you’re doing, you need to pay attention to others. Why should people have time for you if you don’t have time for them?  Social media is all about two-way conversation, whether it’s blogs, Certain Unmentionable Uber-Popular Sites (everyone was pretty sure they were tired of talking about those), Flickr, forums, YouTube or anywhere else that comments are enabled and preferences are collected.
10. Heart: The stuff that the best, most interesting online folks produce is about heart and belief and philosophy, not money.

You can see recurring trends in the messages I’ve picked out.  The internet’s applications and communities are no longer in their infancy and no longer the province of a fringe group of nerds or young people.  Like any other social medium, the internet has its guidelines, appropriate behaviors and social norms.  We’re in the process of trying to negotiate that in this time when it’s becoming a commonplace part of so many people’s lives.

How do we manage it?  What do we do with all this data?  How can we make it better?

If you live in Austin …

… you might want to check out some Maker Faire related items.  The Craft blog is posting madly about the upcoming event (weekend of October 18th, I believe), and I do believe some of it looks rather entertaining.  At last year’s Maker Faire I spent most of the day I went looking at robots. Turns out Austin has a big community of robot afficionados doing everything from spin art to sand drawing to playing video games via trampoline.  Pretty darn awesome.  But I missed other things like weaving and spinning demonstrations, and the Swap-O-Rama-Rama.  And Evil Mad Scientist’s CandyFab machine (though I smelled it).  And some other stuff.  There was really too much to do for one day.  (That’s my hands at the 2007 Maker Faire with my brand-new tiny transistor making noise with graphite there on the right.  And you can see the Robo Spin Art that went into my A Piacere piece.)

This year I am going to look more into the crafty element, vis-a-vis:

• Bazaar Bizaare is making an appearance in 2008. I’ve heard many things about these, but have never been to one.
• The Craftzine bloggers made a Google map of crafty businesses in Austin. Except for the ones in Cedar Park (a bit of a drive for me) I’ve been to most of these.  I’m addicted to craft stores.  I can’t even really admit to my visit to one the other day.
• An interview with Lisa Stevens of Austin’s Greater Austin Garbage Arts.  This year’s Swap-O-Rama-Rama will be headed up by Stevens and her GAGA partner Molly Whitten.

I’d like to note that the Garbage Arts establishment is actually right next door to a very lovely local coffee roaster and shop called Fair Bean that you can find me at around 8:30 many mornings.  I’m a coffee addict, and they do know their coffee.

Since I’m just going to repost Craft today, you should also not miss the New York Times article on Faythe Levine, creator of the Handmade Nation documentary.  Not often the craft peeps get love from the big news outlets, so I like to pass on the links.