Author Archives: Kerry Janes
Another confession, Mum. I’m writing this posthumously. All the opinions and positions in this document have gone through at least two hazy evenings, 3 hamburgers and a bucket or two of Shiner Bock (mixed with razor blades and hipster cred). In fact, the number of hamburgers, seared on the side and glowing salmon in the middle, that I’ve eaten has astounded me. It’s a contest, I suppose: My brain cells vs my weight. One’s a race to the bottom while the other increases in order to decrease…
Bill Simmons, a writer for ESPN, has postulated (smart talk for: said) that we should wait 5 years before selecting a best movie/actor/director/etc. Why? Perspective, of course. The matured opinion is usually the reasonable one. We want to make sure what we say holds up to posterity.
I’m not bringing this up to support the late nature of my next few posts. Those were conditional, not intentional. No, I bring it up in order to address the relationship between real-time, always-on communication platforms like twitter and foursquare and events like SXSW. Do they add anything to it? Are they more than just background noise? Do they pump out any content that I, Kerry Janes, finds interesting or enjoyable?
The short answer is, No. The long answer is Noe.
I’m being obnoxious, of course. But, take a look at #sxswi. The thread runs from anticipation to arrival, through talk and party, and ends with everyone bitching about the airport. There’s really not much substance. Sure, you could farm the feed and find some interesting quotes and a few links but, for the most part, it’s a steady diet of nothing.
I’ll be honest: I’m hungover. My hands are shaking and the inside of my mouth, having been scorched by an ill-advised slice of 4-in-the-morning pizza, tastes like a day old sock dipped in pain, misery and West Texas dust.
Why I decided to allow that much caramel coloured liquor into my body is beyond me. Poor choices, Mum: poor choices. The reality is that it’s a condition of Austin: the booze. The place positively wallows in it. You can get a haircut and a beer, down a pint at the movie theatre and generally expect to be given some alcoholic option at every turn. So, Mum, you see: I had no choice.
We’re all made to suffer for our sins and, honestly, there are worse fates than sitting on a patio in mid-march and drinking yourself in and out of like-minded, spirited, discussions. What’s a few dizzy spells in the grande scheme of SXSW? Sometimes you have to eat a little snow on your way up the mountain.
So, it’s in this delicate state that I entered into Day 01 of my SXSW journey. It began with a sunny walk down Congress to pick up our badges and ended with me writing this on the back porch of our rented house in Bouldin Creek. Not a bad set of bookends. A good day.
Let’s talk about some of the sessions:
I learned that the general lack of infrastructure and regulation in Africa has provided an unbelievable platform of experimentation and hyper-active problem solving. Medical teams, the front line troops, are using mobile phones to create a network of diagnostic and preventative systems. Let me be explicit here: They are using antiquated cell phone cameras and mms to do blood tests in the field. I’d love to explain how it worked (some combination of characteristics and indirect measurement) but I can’t summon up the specifics. What was interesting (to this western world-view, at least) was how these medical teams approached the problem.
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