Although he Twittered the opposite, Stowe’s a real accordion fan:

Thanks to Stowe for posing for these shots!

Hugh MacLeod and Stowe Boyd may not appreciate the powers of the accordion, but Robert Scoble does! Scoble, who is one of my tech evangelist role models, respects the squeezebox and can still party with the best of ‘em. The photo below certainly isn’t a good one of me, but I’ll share it anyway since it’s me and Scoble having a good time at the Mooseknuckles bar on Austin’s 6th street.

Scoble and me: Party! Whoo!

Master Chief feels the accordion love!

A couple of photos of people who wanted to try on the accordion:

Photo by Yours Truly.

Photo by Yours Truly.

Photo by Yours Truly.

Here’s a group hug after David Crow’s core conversation session, Startup or Sellout: Should I Stay or Should I Go?:

Phot taken by “whatnot”.
Click the photo to see the original on its Flickr page.

That’s Jeremy Wright on the left, me in the middle and David on the right.

My thanks to Rannie and MJ, who rescued me from an hour-long registration line and fast-tracked me so that they could have me perform the opening and closing number for their panel discussion titled How to Rawk SxSW, a guide for first-timers that show them how to make the most of their South by Southwest experience. After all these years, the accordion still opens all kinds of doors.

Here are the panelists from How to Rawk SxSW:

Photo by Yours Truly.

Here’s a photo that one “armiller” took of me playing the opening number, You Shook Me All Night Long:

Photo by armiller. Click the photo to see the photo on its Flickr page.

And by popular demand (which means Rannie), here I am playing the closing number, Baby One More Time:

Photo by armiller. Click the photo to see the photo on its Flickr page.

Here’s MJ posing with the bottle of bourbon that the panelists drank during their session:

Photo by Yours Truly.

The Ranch where the b5media crew and friends are staying is a twenty-minute drive from South by Southwest and it’s quite nice. Here are a couple of exterior shots:

Yesterday, I stepped into Toronto’s Pearson airport at 5:00 a.m. EST and arrived in Austin at 8:00 p.m. EST, so the total time I spent either on a plane or in an airport was 15 hours. That’s about twice as long as my original itinerary. Still, it’s shorter than time b5media blogger Darren “ProBlogger” Rowse took to get here, but he came from Australia.

We had a good team dinner at Chili’s (Darcie’s always wanted to eat at Chili’s; it has something to do with the fact that the people from The Office always eat there). I didn’t mind, as we’re deep in the burbs and it was nearby. We’re also likely to have less chain-restaurant-y food for the remainder of the trip, with the possible exception of a trip to the Waffle House. Now that I’m full of country fried steak (something that Darren had never seen before) and margarita, I’m ready to hit the sack. G’night, all!

It’s been a rather eventful first day on the job.

To save money and do some team bonding, b5media rented a ranch house outside Austin where we’re all crashing. It’s a great place situated on a 26-acre parcel of land with a nice view, a lot of rooms, a big kitchen, a fireplace, two outdoor fire pits, a lot of liquor, cowboy kitsch, Buddha statues (huh?), goats and an old black Labrador retriever named “Teaspoon”. Since we are a Serious Internet Company, some rules need to be spelled out:

We’ll be throwing a big barbecue party on Tuesday the 11th. If you’re in the neighbourhood, you should drop by!

…the airport has store based on America’s favourite fake news channel, FOX News:

Seen at my very short stopover at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston.

I’m chilling out during a four-hour stopover in Cleveland Hopkins Airport, drawing power from an outlet clearly meant for the custodial staff, handling some correspondence on $2/hour wifi. Some quick notes:

• The flight was on an Embraer ERJ, which meant gate-checking the accordion. Some minor damage ensued — the keyboard now slopes from the left side to the right — but it’s still playable. I see a repair bill in my future. I’m buying a copy of the Cleveland Plain Dealer to pad my accordion case.
• 7-year old boy on plane to 9-year-old girl: “Hillary said some mean things about Obama, and I hear some of them weren’t even true.”
• Resiting the urge to ask people here if they’ve heard of any of the many unsavoury terms in the Urban Dictionary that begin with “Cleveland”. (Start at this definition and work forward alphabetically — be advised that the text is not safe for work.)
• You know you’re in the American midwest when: the portions at Manchu Wok are way bigger. Good thing I only got the single-item-plus-rice meal; I can only image what the two- or three-item meals look like.

Check-in Woes

For my 7:00 a.m. flight to Austin (I’m flying there for South by Southwest Interactive), I arrived at the airport at 5:00 a.m., with my boarding passes already printed at home thanks to the modern miracle of web check-in. However, as soon as I arrived, I saw the word “retard” on the screen and knew that I was in trouble.

“Retard” is part of “En retard“, which then was replaced by its English equivalent: “Delayed”. To 9:30. Which meant that I’d miss my connecting flight in Cleveland.

To make matters worse, the line-up for Continental — which in Toronto is generally underserved and overcrowded at the best of times — was incredibly long.

Here’s a shot of the line in front of me:

Line-up in front of me for Continental Airlines check-in at Pearson Terminal 3, today at 5:00 a.m..

and if you think that’s bad, here’s what the line behind me looked like after 20 minutes.

Line-up behind me for Continental Airlines check-in, today at 5:20 a.m.

With only four ticketing agents and everyone’s schedules bunged up by yesterday’s snowstorm, it took a while to make it to the ticket counter. One hour and twenty-two minutes, to be precise.

The woman at the ticket counter had to work pretty hard to get me into Austin before Saturday. The only way to get me there was to fly me to Austin by first sending me to Cleveland, then Houston, then Austin, effectively turning a 6-hour trip into something approaching 14 hours. Good thing I have a whole unwatched season of Battlestar Galactica on the laptop.

U.S. Customs Knows Everything

“So,” said the customs agent as he read my file, “who do you work for now?”

“b5media,” I replied. “It’s my first day.”

He typed “b5media” on his keyboard and raised his eyebrows when he saw the resulting page.

“Have you…”, he said, with a little pause, “ever been refused entry to the United States?”

“Never, sir,” I replied.

“Not like some of your cohort.”

“Sir?”

“You get what I mean, right?” He said that with a nudge nudge, wink wink, say no more glance.

“I think so…”

“You know the person in question?”

“You mean my boss, Jeremy Wright?”

Jeremy had a run-in with the long finger of Homeland Security in what is now a now-infamous (at least in the blogosphere) incident with U.S. customs.

“That’s the one,” said the customs agent. “You don’t want that kind of trouble, especially since your wife is a U.S. citizen. He went for quite a spin.”

Yeah, I thought. On the end of some ignorant power-tripping Homeland Security goon’s finger.

He gave me another look, stamped my passport and said “That’ll be all. Enjoy your visit to the United States, sir.”

Man, those guys have a lot of info on me. I wouldn’t be surprised if they know what’s on my iPod and how I like my steaks done.

How Long It Took

Total time from arrival at airport to getting to my gate: 2 hours. Urgh.