We're heading out to Austin, TX tomorrow -- hit me up if you'll be out there as well. I'm really excited. I've been dreaming about Iron Works BBQ for the last couple of weeks ;)

alex at blogsmith dot com would probably be the best, or via twitter.

Just getting back from Memphis after attending what will undoubtedly be the most boring bowl game of the year for most folks. If you are not a UCF fan or a MSU fan, you probably fell asleep by the third quarter. We had a group of ten though and managed to have a great time regardless of the score/play.

On the game
We knew going in that Kyle Israel was going to have to play well for us to be able to put it away. Turns out, that was highly prophetic. MSU played almost as poorly, but reigned it in when it mattered most. Congrats to Croom on their turn around this season. 10-3 was the final score, with MSU scoring a touchdown off an interception late in the 4th quarter. That's right. We spent 95% of the game tied at 3-3. Fascinating.

On Kyle's play
Kyle has had a pretty solid senior year. He's a great kid and a hell of a student athlete. I'm thankful for what he has done at UCF and I think he will make a fine ambassador for the program.

However...

This may have been one of the worst first half performances I've ever witnessed (I've already blocked the USF game from my memory). Kyle typically makes great decisions (60% completion rate prior to Saturday), but for whatever reason he tends to get overly excited when facing a 'name' opponent. Telegraphing his throws, missing open receivers all over, passing into tight coverage and over/under throwing balls. This kind of thing plagued us the majority of the game. Three interceptions, two of them being completely poor decisions and completely inexcusable. (That last one was just a great defensive play by MSU. I think he got hit right when he released and it was pretty tight coverage.) One dimensional play isn't going to win a bowl game.

Here's what MSU's Derek Pegues had to say about his interceptions after the game;

He just threw it right to me both times, and I was lucky to catch the ball.

My thoughts exactly.

If I were in GOL's shoes, I would have put in Greco for at least one series after that second interception just to mix it up and see what happens. On the other hand, Bowl games are rewards, and Kyle deserves to play his last game.. It's just... man... I guess the backup QB is always the most popular.

On Torres missing two FG's
He has been automatic all year. People are allowed a bad game. It's unfortunate that his happened to be Saturday night, but he's not to blame for this one. Plus, the momentum argument is simply to hypothetical for me. No doubt the misses hurt though.

On 24k
The SEC homers are trying to play it up as Kevin being shut down. Limited, sure, but If hanging 120 on one of the best rushing defenses in the country is being shutdown, especially with 9 in the box and zero concern for the passing game, then Kevin is truly one hell of a back (keep in mind, McFadden ran for 88 on MSU). I'm not sure what game they were watching but in mine I saw a running back get hit in the backfield and still get positive yardage more often than not. He had a fumble that from our vantage point looked like either a strip or a bad hand off, I couldn't tell but I'm sure the DVR will hold the answer. That many carries with no pass relief and its bound to happen. We also got Kevin involved a bit more in what little passing game we had. I hope we see a lot more of it next year.

On UCF's defense
Outstanding. It helped that MSU was having a terrible offensive game, but still some of the best pass rushing I've seen from the Knights. We still can't seem to handle mobile quarterbacks well, and I think MSU would have been better served giving Dixon a few more touches in the middle. He would have had a much bigger night.

When your offense gives up 4 turnovers, and it's still 3-3 late in the fourth, the defense has done its job. We should be even stronger next year.

On cowbells
Talk about over-hyped. They weren't banned cause they are loud (they really weren't), they're banned because they're f'n stupid. It would seem that MSU fans forget to yell and instead rely on what ultimately sounds like locusts. For weeks all we heard were these jokers talking about cowbells like they were some sort of magic. 55,000 of them and I was completely unimpressed. From the hype you'd have thought my ears would have been bleeding. Not that I'm disappointed, but I'll take a 100% steel constructed stadium any day of the week. Add 20,000 to the top of Brighthouse and it's going to be deadly.

And seriously. Cowbells for bulldogs? And yeah, I know the story about the cow wandering on to the field and beating Ole Miss 80 years ago, but that only makes it seem even more sad.

On MSU fans
Most of the folks we met were mighty fine, but man. The more some of those backwoods frat types drank on Beale, the more I realized how thankful I am not to live in Mississippi. President Eisenhower pushed for the highway system specifically so people there could leave. The smart ones did, the rest started breeding. Then again, Southern Miss fans have never really seemed to bad. Maybe there's just something in the water in Hattiesburg that saves them from Mississippi's burgeoning idiocracy. Either that, or I haven't experienced enough Southern Miss fans.

On Memphis
When we got off the plane, we weren't sure if we should adjust our clocks to central time or to 1988. The sweet smell of charcoal BBQ was immediate and welcomed though and the towns support for the Memphis Tigers was great to see.

I had been warned that Memphis is pretty ghetto. After living in not-so-nice areas of D.C, I didn't really think much of it. I should have. The city has a we'll-rob-your-ass-in-broad-day-light vibe to it. During the game, a couple people in our group had their hotel room broken into through the window and everything was taken. We went out to Silkie's and ran into a friend from DC (an MSU fan). They had some dude come flying into their table, and then somehow or another some girl hit someone they were with. It turned into a little huffy puff and they were looking to press charges. The bouncer told her that it was simply "the manner of the town" and the cops didn't seem to give a shit. Nice.

Basically, the downtown area looks like every last penny was spent on a two block area. The rest of the town looks like a pre-storm 9th ward. Evidently, the apathy towards crime and shit poor behavior is just as bad. It's sad to see a town with such strong history and culture completely accept their crime as simply, as the bouncer put it, the "manner of the town."

It's great to know that whoever wins C-USA is rewarded with such an awesome destination. I think next time we'll try staying in Nashville.

On Silkies...
The same bouncer told me that there were in fact goats there, but they were behind the tents and you couldn't get to them. I didn't see them, and therefore I do not believe that they exist. If any place wasn't worth the cover, it was this joint anyhow. Unless you're meeting someone there (like we were), don't bother.

The best bars seemed to be B.B. Kings and Pat O's. Both are chains, and both are in Orlando. That was really really disappointing. We did see an Elvis impersonator sporting a disgusting male camel toe at club 152 though. That's gotta be worth something. Just not $5 cover.

On Graceland...
Graceland was so fantastically awful and cheesy it's beyond words. The museum of jump suits is now one of my favorite places on Earth. The captions talk about how stylish they were for the time, but Kat accurately pointed out that no one else was wearing such things. They seemed to get more elaborate and eccentric with every pill Elvis popped and you can totally tell when the bedazzler was released.

I really don't mean to keep ripping on Mississippi, but I'd be neglectful if I didn't point out that the MSU fans seemed to be really really into it. It was hard to make it through the mansion with all of their photo taking. I'm pretty sure at least one of them is putting together some sort of Elvis scrapbook to sell on eBay in an attempt to pay for their trip. Sure was a classy place, eh bulldogs? Enjoy your new commemorative plate.

Trip Highlight
For me, it was the food. Ryan arranged for a get together at Central BBQ before the game. The ribs were pretty dang tasty and the pulled pork was top notch. We didn't get to Rendevous, but I'd certainly recommend Central BBQ. On Sunday, we went to Gus's for fried chicken. Probably the best I've ever had. Definitely worth the time if you find yourself in Memphis. Corky's was okay, but I enjoyed Central more.

Anyhow.. It was fun and I value the experience, warts and all. We'll see you again next year, Liberty Bowl ;)

Anyone going? Looks like a few of us from the Blogsmith team are going to be out there next week after all. Hit me up if your going to be in Vegas. Looking forward to catching up with some peeps.

I'm just now over my jet lag enough to think through a few brief thoughts on TC40 last week.

General Overview

Pros:

• Laid back atmosphere
• Fancy hotel
• Demo pit was fun
• Keynotes were excellent, and imo, justified my attendance.
  
• Free swag bag was nice. It's replaced my wal-mart backpack.

Cons:

• At the event, I felt like it could have been kept the TechCrunch 20.. Then some time passed, and I thought it could have been the TechCrunch 10. A week out, and I feel like TechCrunch 5 would have been appropriate. Mint didn't just stand out -- they blew everyone away. It's a sad day when whats supposed to be the best of the best includes three video wikis and at least a dozen companies with no hopes for revenue.
  
• Would have been nice to do the happy hour thing in the lobby on the first day as well.
• Panelists were way, way too soft on the companies. Second day was better. Guy Kawasaki, despite the travesty that is trumors truemors, was fun.
• Some of the presentations were awful. Just awful.

Companies

• Cake Financial has interesting potential, but I'm not sure on the implementation yet. I'm going to have to play with it some more.
• Mint, as you've probably heard by now, is gorgeous and will kick Quicken's ass for most use cases.
• Silvia will be neat in toys.
• The hand motion interface stuff was really neat, but can't remember who-done-it. Viewdle screams acquisition.
• Xobni lived up to some of their pre-launch hype, but I don't use Outlook (gmail up in this hizzy). Their search looked like it kicked ass though, and made me jealous.
• TripIt actually solves a problem, which given the sad state of the presentations, made me happy. It's just not a problem that I personally have.
• I'm excited to see Flock reach 1.0, but... Out of that room, which would be a decent sample of the infamous "1 percent", how many of them are hardcore youtube users, facebook users and flickr users. Probably half or less. Seems like a terribly small market to me.

Favorite Demo Pit Company

• Satisfaction, by far, was my favorite. Maybe it's because of the Spirit Airlines debacle, but I truly believe there is a huge opening in the customer service space. This product is basically customer ticketing rethought. It has a b2b angle and a great consumer level face. Lane Becker, formerly of Adaptive Path, is one of the founders. In Adaptive Path like consistency, the application looks and feels like it's truly thought out. GetSatisfaction.com to check it out.

I went over to Citizen Space to take it all in and find more inspiration for our Orlando efforts. For those who aren't as up on the scene, Chris and Tara have been at the forefront of the coworking movement. They were an original part of hat factory and now operate citizen space along side their consulting company, citizen agency.

What separates coworking from a typical shared workspace is the common sense of values and community. The general feeling behind all of it has a lot in common with the open source movement -- open collaboration benefits everyone more so than not ("barcamp everyday") I've been cheerleading the concept locally since I moved back from DC (around the time I started talking to Chris, actually), and was really happy to be able to visit their space and take in their efforts.

Below are the pictures I took. It's about, I'm guessing, 1000sq/ft or so. Full time members pay $350 a month with no contract, all just month to month. There's a conference room, mini fridge, internet and an overall kick ass vibe.

One of the things Chris and Tara mentioned is that they find the retention rate is really really high for the full time members -- people who have a desk and are leaving their things at the office -- but not quite as high for the part timers. Day passes for folks visiting and looking to drop by are free, as it seems to add to the overall atmosphere. There's a master lease holder (Citizen Agency), and then everyone pitches in from there. An earlier effort involved trying out what sounded like a "parlor fee" to help buy additional amenities and furniture for everyones benefit, but it didn't work out well.

Overall, they estimate that they spent about $8k on renovations/furniture/etc over a six month period, which includes their kickass chandelier.

We also talked briefly about nicknaming our brown bag meetups. Jelly in NY, Cream cheese in philly -- something citrusy in Orlando, though not sure what yet. Suggestions welcome ;)

If your interested in this stuff, I'm sure the topic will come up at barcamp (I may talk about it if the schedule isn't busting at the seems. Word is attendance might push 300 :\), and it will for sure be discussed during my local session at blogOrlando. Alex Hillman, from indy hall in philly, will be joining us for that as well. (woot).

Saturday's game was amazing. A few opening-game quirks (running out of water, for one), but otherwise I couldn't have asked for anything more. UCF gave an amazing effort and almost knocked off the #7 team in the country. A few plays go another way, and that game was ours.

Thanks to the Sentinel for outstanding coverage leading up to the game. I hope it continues -- we're going to need a great crowd for the memphis game!

I'm out in San Francisco as of last night. We're here at the Palace Hotel for TechCrunch 40. So far so good, except the internet coverage is abysmal. Hotel internet is only via ethernet, and is $18 a day. WiFi is overloaded from all the laptops and iPhone's in the crowd. What was supposed to be 400 people has swelled to 1000 all in the ballroom here. High class problems, I suppose ;)

I'll do a writeup on my favorite companies after tommorow. A few of them have been great, some of them.... Not so much. I'm wondering if 40 may have been too many. "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" though, and I'm one of those pesky east-coast cynics.

Mark Zukerberg chats with Mike Arrington for the keynote tonight, which should be good times. I'm really looking forward to that!

Upcoming Schedule

• Update: Thursday, 9/13: Bill Cosby at the brand new UCF Arena
• Saturday, 9/15 - UCF vs Texas at the brand new UCF Stadium (first on campus football game in UCF history)
• Sunday, 9/16 - Travel to SF
• Monday, 9/17 - Techcrunch 40
• Tuesday, 9/18 - Techcrunch 40
• Wednesday-Thursday - Mini-code jam, various meetings
• Friday, 9/21 - Travel to Orlando
• Saturday, 9/22 - UCF vs Memphis (second on campus football game in UCF history ;)
• Sunday, 9/23 - barcampOrlando (Seriously.. this is going to kick ass)
  
• Update: Wednesday, 9/26 - Gavin's 27th Birthday ;)
• Thursday, 9/27 - blogOrlando, blogger dinner
• Friday, 9/28 - blogOrlando (I'm leading a discussion on the local orlando scene, come join us!)
• Saturday, 9/29 - blogOrlando Epcot trip, UCF vs. ULL (third on campus football game in UCF history ;)
• Sunday, 9/30 - A day of rest.

No no, seriously. It's really really hot outside. What happened to our habit of afternoon showers? :(

Gavin and I were up at the AOL Developer Conference last week in Reston, pretty good times and great to see some of the innovations taking place within AOL. Edo from Relegence easily wins the coolest presentation award with some of the raddest technology I've seen in awhile. I won't go into specifics, but that's a very interesting company and I'm glad they're a part of AOL.

I gave a presentation on UCD titled "Mockups are RAD," showing how some simple user centered design principles can greatly benefit rapid application development. I'll stop short of calling it "agile" or any other kind of process, but basically we went through how the blogsmith team operates. It's a "getting real" kind of thing, I suppose. The idea was to split it into 2/3rd's slides and then 1/3rd discussion. It ended up being about 50/50, but the discussion seemed to degenerate into pretty negative we-dont-like-aol-processes kind of talk. I guess I should have expected that, but I still tried to spin things positively. AOL is a giant corporation coming from a client background. Giant doesn't work on the web, nor does a client development process.. Sooo... it'll be interesting to see the culture shift over the next few years.

We got back to Orlando just in time for the shuttle launch. We left the airport and drove out to Space View Park in Titusville. Great location to watch from (it's directly across the river), and an unbelievable day. There's supposed to be something like 20 launches this year between the shuttle and various air force rockets, so it should be fun. This was Kat's second time seeing the shuttle, and she's two for two. With how often they get scrubbed, that's pretty dang good!

Hellloooooo, Austin!

We're at a codejam out here in Austin, TX. We'll be stopping in on some of the SXSW bruhaha this week. Give me a hollah via email, cell or twitter if you're around.

Michelle from Chicago next to us at MGM hit this the Saturday night we were there. I told her I'd post a picture of it when we got it.

Her and her husband seemed to be up pretty big that night. I wonder why.

In addition to the camera phone pics I uploaded here, Kathryn has uploaded some of our disposable camera pics to flickr (the ones that came out, at least).

If you've never done a cross country drive, and ever have the opportunity, I highly recommend it. It seems we Americans romanticize exploring Europe, but never our own back yard. There's lots of cool stuff out there.

Both Kathryn and I are in Orlando now. We arrived this past weekend after one hell of a cross country drive back.

We met up in Portland, Oregon, drove north of Seattle, flew to Orange County, and drove to the east coast. There's just too many things to talk about in one blog post, and we haven't gotten the disposable camera pictures developed yet (our elph broke), but, included are my camera phone pictures.

Click "continue reading" for the photo-journal of sorts ;)

Flying out of Seattle to Santa Anna, then immediately driving the first leg of the cross country tour to Vegas.

Oh, and, as of now, I'm officially turning the laptop off ;) Call the cell if something drastic happens.

So, we're actually not in Seattle. We're about 90 miles north in a small college town. It really does look like Narnia outside, or maybe one of those miniature Christmas figurines.

I don't know if you've seen or not, but there was a tad bit of snow last night up in this region of the country, which normally gets only little snow through the winter. What should have been a 3 to 4 hour drive, turned into an 8 hour adventure. I'm talking "driving" down I-5 with abandoned cars, buses and jack knifed trucks all around us. Who knows how many accidents we saw.

When we finally got to Seattle, which has the most amazing sky line around, there was a huge accident on I-5. We pulled off to try to make our way on back roads, only to discover they were a complete wreck. Solid ice probably an inch thick. We had chains in the back seat, but the idea of laying on the street in the middle of Seattle didn't quite seem appealing.

We slowly skated our way to a road that lead back to the highway, but it was too steep. Cars and trucks were sliding down and spinning off. The entire neighborhood, at midnight on a Monday, was outside helping people and steering off cars. We got around the pesky neighborers and attempted it, only to slide down with everyone else. At that point, we just slowly started to take back roads in a stair step fashion, somehow making it through seemingly abandoned areas to I-5.

About 30 or 40 miles north, there was no one left on the roads with us. I hit a patch of black ice and hydroplaned for easily 200-250 yards. My cat like reflexes and extensive video game training allowed us to maintain forward momentum, for the most part staying within our lane. There's something about sliding down the road at 50mph that makes for a pretty solid adrenaline rush.

Once we got a bit further, into a more mountain area, the skies cleared and the stars came out. The scenery, which I'm sure only a few of us out that night got to enjoy, was spectacular. Driving along I-5 with a mountain lake on one side, giant snow covered evergreens on the other, with a completely empty sky was a heck of an experience.

So, we're here now, somehow making it all the way in our rental ford focus while natives ended up stuck on the side of the road. We'll be here until Friday, at which point we drive back down to Seattle to fly out for L.A. Considering I've never driven in anything more than a half inch of snow before, and certainly not while its ever been actively snowing, I think I performed pretty well. I'm tellin ya, video games. Either that, or I'm part Yeti.

We're rolling out of Portland tonight to head north to Seattle. Portland's been a pretty cool place, sans the constant rain and cold. I've always heard good things about this town though, and from what I've been able to tell it's justified. We went and grabbed dinner at the happy hour at Portland City Grill last night, which has an amazing view of the city (it's on the 30th floor, with all glass windows looking out). The Saturday Market was a lot of fun this past weekend as well. Neat stuff. Too much incense, but.. neat ;)

Anyway.. more later.. lots of Blogsmith code to stamp out...