It's sweltering hot, and everyone in town seems to be sporting a mustache that makes mine look like a token gesture that I patched together the week before.
The Texan reputation for good wholesome small town values seems to be holding up pretty well. Nothing ever seems to be too much trouble. Most of the folks here seem grateful that I even exist, which is a first. It might be a bit of a culture shock when I get back to England and am confronted with grim weather and grimmer faces.
Austin seems to be awash with guys who are slightly overweight, and talking about location this and social that. Seriously though, this should be easy, right?
Two very clear camps of festival-goers are on display - geeks who are trying to be cool, and cool kids trying to be geeks. of course neither group quite get it right, but that's always been the case. I've been told though. I know the drill. The first thing I do is grab the wi-fi with both paws (yes, this is a festival with wi-fi), find a pillar (and there’s plenty of them), and sit there with an air of 'I work in tech and I've been here before.' I might be greener than Kermit, but it seems to fool most people.
I've been in the conference centre for a whole ten minutes, and three different people have already invited me to stuff. The choice is actually paralyzing me, and it's only the first hour!
What's clear, is that this conference is more than anything about Social and not Digital Social, but about handshakes, introductions, and beer rather than sitting in quiet rows listening to intelligent insights. And because of that, getting a job from someone here would be as easy as walking into a pillar while checking into Foursquare. By lunch, everything I own seems to smell of barbeque sauce. The girl serving me coffee just said to me 'soo.. London is the city, and England is the country, right?' Who says America is blind.
Charlie Gower, Group Design Strategist
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