The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century

I’ve just come back from Seattle where I’ve been attending Microsoft’s 2011 Global MVP Summit, the annual gathering of Most Valuable Professionals, who are Microsoft’s most keen customers: they not only use our stuff, they help other people use it, they share their knowledge with others and they build communities. They’re like a volunteer evangelist army!

Part of the purpose of the Summit is to reward the MVPs for their work and fanhood by showing them a good time. There are parties galore, with the biggest one saved for last. The big end-of-Summit party was held at Seattle’s Safeco Field, home of the Seattle Mariners. There was food aplenty, booze aplenty-er, and a chance to go on the field and have some fun.

I couldn’t resist stepping up to the plate and trying my turn at bat. I didn’t have a bat handy, but I made do:

…after which I ran the bases while playing the accordion. I’ve always wanted to do that.

We then decided to watch the band. I’ve seen a gazillion classic rock cover bands and wasn’t expecting to be impressed, but I was wrong. The Beatniks, who’d been giving a stage in the middle of the field, played a very tight, rocked-out set of some of the best covers of tunes from the ‘60s and ‘70s I’ve ever heard.

While they were between sets, we checked with the band to see if I could join them for a number. The band were intrigued and willing, but the stage manager said “no”.

When the Beatniks came back on stage, they played a half-dozen numbers and then then Bobby, vocalist and rhythm guitarist, said “Hey, there’s a guy who wanted to do some Steppenwolf on accordion, and we want him up here! Come on up, Accordion Man!”

Damir captured the end result on his camera, and you can see the video at the top of this article. They later invited me up to help out with Free Bird by ‘Skynyrd. Who doesn’t yell “Free Bird!” when a band asks for requests?

Finally, when it came time to play an encore number, Bobby yelled out: “Accordion Man! Do you know E flat?”

“It’s the one between D and E!” I replied.

“Well, you just passed the test! Come on up!”

And thus I joined the band for one more number, Shout by the Isley Brothers. It’s a two-chorder, and since my academic career resembles “Bluto’s”, it’s only natural that I know every song on the Animal House soundtrack.

Pictured above is the view from my seat on Air Canada’s flight 540, the daily direct Seattle-to-Accordion City flight that leaves the west coast at 8:00 a.m. Pacific and touches down just before 3:30 p.m. Eastern. The only real snag in the trip was the incredibly long customs line at the end which resulted from several out-of-country flights landing at Pearson’s Terminal One at roughly the same time.

I won’t be in town terribly long, as I’m scheduled to go to Austin from the 9th through the 16th for South by Southwest, where I’ll be attending the sessions in the Interactive part of the conference and helping Microsoft with the Internet Explorer 9 promotions they’ll be doing there. There’s a party on Sunday the 13th that Austin JavaScript is throwing and for which Microsoft is the Platinum sponsor. They’re expecting anywhere from 500 to 1,000 people to talk HTML5, eat real Tex-Mex (not that horrible stuff that passes for it here in Canada) and drink Shiner Bock. I think I can get into that.

Although most people think of “SxSW” as a music conference – not a surprise, since that’s how it got started – it’s since grown into a conference with three branches: the original Music branch, the Film branch and the Interactive branch. When Interactive was added, it was the smallest of the three, but over the years, it’s grown in size and importance, with influential bloggers and technologists helping fuel interest. SxSW Interactive has become one of the conferences where people try to promote their software or site into a hit, with Twitter being the most notable one. It got its big boost at SxSW 2007, when all the “A-list” bloggers started using it to keep track of the whereabouts of their friends as well as find out which parties were the happening ones. Jay Goldman recently told me that Interactive is now the biggest of the three parts that make up SxSW.

Pictured above is the logo for CanLIT, which despite what it sounds like, has nothing to do with literature. It’s short for Canadian Livers in Training, and it’s a warm-up party for Accordion City citizens going to SxSW and those who wish they were going. When I went to my first SxSW in 2008, I was surprised at the number of people from Canada I kept running into, and how many of them were from Toronto. As I often like to say, Canada has been punching above its weight class when it comes to tech since Alexander Graham Bell, and it seems we like to drink above our weight class as well.

CanLIT takes place tonight and if you’re going to SxSW or wish you could, there’s still time and tickets for the party – just visit the site for the full details. I plan to be there, so if you’re attending, please do say “hi”.

My current strange bed at the Hyatt Regency Bellevue.
No, I do not sleep with my accordion.

So far, 2011 has been a roving year for me, what with me spending half my days in beds that aren’t my own (it’s like Crazy Go Nuts University all over again!). Not all of these strange beds have involved travel, as the schedule below shows:

• January 2011
  • One week in St. Joseph’s Health Centre, in three different beds (the whole story is covered in My Hospital Week):
    • One night in the ER
    • Four nights in the ICU
    • One night in a regular hospital room
  • One week at Mom’s, recuperating
• February 2011
  • 11 days at the Crown Plaza in Seattle for Microsoft’s internal employees-only TechReady conference
  • 5 days at the Hyatt Regency Bellevue for Microsoft’s Global MVP Summit
• March 2011 (planned)
  • One week at the Fairfield Inn North in Austin for South by Southwest Interactive
• April 2011 (planned)
  • One week at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas for the MIX11 conference
• May 2011 (planned)
  • One week at the Fairmont Waterfront in Vancouver for Make Web Not War
• June 2011 and beyond
  • Portlandia?
  • New York City?
  • Baltimore?
  • San Francisco?
  • Manila?
  • Burning Man?

I’m enjoying the roving life thus far, but it means that my apartment – which already looks a little different owing to major changes in the domestic situation – is a place just as strange to me as the places where I’m crashing. That’s okay by me, though; I love travel and this is the sort of shake-up that’s called for at the moment.

“Has it changed you?” my friend asked.

“Has what changed me?” I asked in reply.

“Your near-death experience.”

“Has it changed me, huh? You know, I’ve been asking myself the same question.”

It turned out that last month’s week at the hospital was brought about by a nasty version of the flu. Nasty enough to damn near kill me by constricting my airway to the point that I was a hair’s breadth away from an emergency tracheotomy, but not nasty enough to warrant its own letters and numbers or name it after me. I think my sister and Mom (doctors both) didn’t want to scare me while I was in the ICU, but a couple of weeks after I recovered, my sister said that “it was touch and go for a moment there,” amd Mom just yesterday said she’d never seen me so ill. I do remember, at a couple of the worst moments, thinking “Is this what dying feels like?”

I’m glad to still be here. Although I’m grateful for having what I like to think has been a pretty full life, I’m not ready to do an early check-out from Hotel Mortal Coil. But sooner or later, the hotel management eventually, and often forcibly, evicts each one of us.

“I don’t think I’ve changed in the way that you sometimes hear about in the news, or see in the movies,” I said. “You know, like going crazy and taking up base jumping, or maybe running away and joining a commune or any other freak-out that you’re supposed to have after a near-death experience. It’s not so dramatic. It’s a little more subtle…

I’m still doing things that are me, just…more so.”

He gave me this look that appeared to be a mix of “Oh, I see,” and “Oh, shit.”

Marketing Client Bear: it’s funny because it’s true.

Anyone harebrained enough to molest an alligator is going to ignore this sign.

The next issue of Spacing, the magazine about life in Accordion City and how to make it and other cities better places, should be available soon. The cover story is about winter and the city; for the most part, I think that although winter is always something to contend with, Accordion City generally gets off relatively easy with winter.

As always, Matthew Blackett and the other fine folks behind Spacing are holding a release party to coincide. I’m thinking of going – it’s at the El Mocambo (464 Spadina, just south of College, and really, you should know where the ElMo is) and the fun starts at 7:30 p.m. Cover is $5 for Spacing subscribers, $10 for non-subscribers. If you’d like to attend, let them know by RSVPing on the Facebook event page for the party.

If you attend:

• You’ll get the new issue of Spacing
• You’ll dance to the music of the Track Meet DJ crew
• If you’re wearing a Pinko button, you can get a free back issue of your choice
• You’ll be able to participate in the paper snowflake contest – best ones win prizes
• There’ll be Crayola markers for you to draw your own subway/LRT routes – sort of like the way our new mayor, Mayor Griffin – er, I mean Mayor Ford – seems to do his transit planning
• You’ll meet loads of great urbanists for conversation

Sound like fun – see you there!