UK Register Gives a Snoot to SXSW Interactive
God, sometimes I read things that make me want to set buildings on fire... Take this, for example: a "journalist" for the UK Register, who apparently writes under the name "Ashlee Vance in Chicago.", seems to have something against both SXSW Interactive and bloggers. Now, beyond the fact that Vance's article was published 2 days before SXSW even began; beyond her misunderstanding of SXSW that was revealed in her headline, "Bloggers invade Austin music fest" (SXSW consists of music, film, and tech... she makes it sound like we're insisting that concerts stop so we can talk about blogging!); beyond all of that... I found her standpoint naive, snotty, and totally unwarrented... Take her childish attack on Scoble:
Scoble seems to scoot around the country - by Segway most likely - annoying all kinds of audiences with his "revelations" about blogging. Shouldn't someone be required to write something interesting before being asked to talk about writing interesting things?
You see, her snipe at Scoble only works if you accept the premise that Scoble and other bloggers were talking about "writing interesting things". And "annoying all kinds of audiences"? If I didn't know better, I'd say Ms. Vance is jealous. Oh, props on the "revelations" in quotation marks. You see kids, the quotes suggest sarcasm, and we all know that sarcasm is as good as evidence or examples when making claims... But wait, Vance snoots even furthure in the next paragraph:
Or maybe you prefer, the Wonkette, Sean Bonner, Jason Calacanis, Henry Copeland, Jason Goldman, Jon Lebkowsky, Cameron Marlow or Tony Pierce. Surely one blogger is plenty to describe the idea of an online journal. It's not hard to imagine the SXSW organizers looking back on this year's lineup with shame.
"Surely one blogger is plenty to describe the idea of an online journal." Okay, first of-fucking-all, does Vance understand that in addition to being a blogger, you can also be other things? I for example, am a web contractor... (insert suspensful silence) but I'm a blogger too! I can be two things at once! Wow!
This is conference for the tech world.... so guess what? There will be lots of geeks, and it should become a law (wait, I think I'll make it one.. we're calling this Lewis's Law):(number of geeks) is less or equal to (number of bloggers)
In addition, there was not a single second of the conference that was wasted on describing "the idea of an online journal". We all know what a blog is, what we are doing is attempting to figure out what possible risks/benifits such an open democratic medium will play on the future, and how we can maximize the possible benifits. That's why the discussions focused on cultural barriers in the worldwide blogosphere, censorship by totalitarian regiemes, ways that this new, massively expanding global culture can lead to good things... Vance makes it sound like we had 15 back to back panels on "what is a weblog?" "how can I start blogging?" "blogging 101". Of course, Vance is "in Chicago", and her opinion was based on her interpretation (which was based on false assumptions) of events that hadn't even happened yet. Maybe she just hates blogs...
Just like I hate haters... I need sleep, it was a mighty long day.