Jeff Smith

SXSW ‘05, @media 2005, and catching up

After spending the past week reading countless blog posts regarding SWSW Interactive as well as viewing many Flickr photo galleries of the festivities, I almost felt almost as if I was in Austin with everyone; well, not quite. I felt like a kid with the flu who had to stay inside while he watched all of his friends playing outside in the beautiful weather. I am extremely envious of each and every one of you that were able to make the pilgrimage to Austin, Texas for this gathering of web minds. There appeared to have been a huge amount of excellent panels this year, and I think I would have benefited greatly from attending a lot of them, but sadly, a lack of funds, as well as time off work, prevented me from attending. It appears that I’m also going to miss out on @media 2005. If I had gotten my act together a little sooner, I might have been able to find myself a bit of a sponsorship, so that I could attend, but I don’t think that it’s really feasible at this point. It’s a shame too, I’d love to meet The Brit Pack (Andy Clarke, Andy Budd, Simon Collison, Patrick Griffiths, Gordon Mackay, Jon Hicks, Jeremy Keith, Drew McLellan, Dunstan Orchard, John Oxton, and Richard Rutter). Not to mention the fact that Jeffrey Zeldman is giving the keynote address. So, to avoid this happening next year, I’m going to start doing a bit of planning now. Catching up on a few other things, my redesign for CSS Reboot has taken a very different direction. Instead of just redesigning my portfolio site, there is a major restructure in order for both jeffsmithdesigns.com as well as this site. I’m definitely making considerable progress, but with all of the custom components, etc. that I’m working on, I think I’ll be pushing it to complete the redesign for May 1st. But, I’m definitely going to try my damnedest to meet that deadline. I recently joined the ranks of iPod owners by acquiring my own silver iPod mini. I must say, I couldn’t be happier with this little gadget, I don’t leave home without it anymore. Not only does it allow me to carry the perfect amount of music with me, but I can also keep up to date on all my iCal calendars, to do lists, and any other little notes that I want to pack in there. It’s extremely handy, and is making my one hour commute to and from work much more enjoyable.