sippey.com

vote for my panel

I'm leading a panel discussion at an event in a few weeks, and I was asked if I would need anything above and beyond the usual (projector, mics, etc.). And since I'm regularly asked to lead panel discussions, I thought I'd share my rider in the spirit of making your panels better...and easier to organize in the future!

Here's the list of what I ask for every time I appear at an industry conference.

• An old school overhead projector with seven clear transparencies and four colored markers (green, red, black and blue)
• A supersized post-it note flipboard, with six colored markers, preferably the ones that have nice smells (strawberry, lime, blueberry, licorice and cherry)
• A bullhorn, with a spare set of batteries
• Three stick-on clown noses
• One pair of groucho marx glasses with attached nose and moustache
• Juggling pins
• Three quarts of flourescent paint. Seven 2" and five 1" paintbrushes.
• Black lights to fill the room
• Eight cases of bottled water
• One hunting knife, preferably serrated
• 2 x 50ft lengths of braided polypropylene general purpose rope
• 11 flourescent green glow sticks, at least 6" in length
• Six rolls of 1.87" wide silver duct tape
• 24 10x10 clear plastic sheets / drop cloths
• 2 body bags
• Three sheets of CIA-grade blotter acid

Oh, and SxSW is going to be awesome this year. You should definitely vote for the panel Ted Rheingold and I are organizing: On the Internet, Everyone Knows You're a Dog.

doing it for others

Via Put this On comes this waaaay-inside baseball men's fashion blogging discussion at Park & Bond about whether men are dressing for themselves or dressing for women or dressing for other fashion bloggers. (Yeah, I don't care either.)

BUT. Buried in the piece was this nice little bit from A Fistful of Style's Alex Yakovleff.

Many -- if not most -- people posting on the Internet are trying to show off to the Internet (myself included). You’re posting pictures to the Internet. Are you really going to argue "I’m just doing it for me, man!"? Because that’s kind of unbelievable. Of course you’re doing for others, at least to some degree.

American McCarver

Very happy to announce the launch of American McCarver, the group sports blog I'm contributing to along with Catalano, Gruber, Knauss, Michaels, Monteiro, Snell and more to come.

It's good company to be in. As my friend Mat Honan tweeted, "Wow, so this is an all-star lineup. I mean, except for @sippey." Couldn't have said it better myself. Humor me, though, and go read the post I wrote when we were in double secret beta, about David Foster Wallace and Roger Federer.

Also, kudos to Monteiro for the brilliant touch of cycling through classic McCarverisms in the header, like my favorite "It's better to have a fast runner on base than a slow one." Couldn't agree more.

breaking the logjam

It's been a busy couple of weeks; all appearances on this blog to the contrary. At SAY Media (where I head up our Artist Development efforts) we launched a new project:  The SAY 100. There's an (overlong) post about it (and a video!) on the site's about page if you want to learn more. But here's the short story:  (a) we believe in strong voices, (b) we believe curation is a good thing, and (c) the best way to demonstrate those beliefs is to show who and what we're talking about. Huge kudos to the whole team at SAY that put the site together, and I had a blast working with the curators (Clay! Seth! Amanda! Jeff! Jane! and more!) who picked some incredible people. We threw a big party in New York this week to celebrate; thanks to everyone who came out.

Also, during the midst of the madness last week I made a quick xtranormal video of an imaginary debate between Jason Kottke and David Galbraith about the merits of The Hangover. Jason blogged the whole backstory.

OK, enough about me. You've seen the placekitten thing, right? Love it.

liveblogging reading some of the liveblogging of the oscars

Last night, 10:30 pm:  Finished watching our Tivo'd version of the Oscars.  Ba-boop'd our way through the montages.  Did email during some of the songs.  Didn't liveblog.

Last night, 10:40 pm:  Check in on Vox neighborhood.  Hey, Anil liveblogged the Oscars!  Skim skim skim, scroll scroll, scroll.  Here's a funny line: "Poor Nicole Kidman, ruined herself. Used to be fetching. I'm just saying. I do like her brave choice to wear a chandelier."

Last night, 11:30 pm:  Oh, hey, looks like Jason liveblogged not watching the Oscars. How clever.  "My liveblogging outfit this evening: jeans by Banana Republic, long sleeve tshirt by American Apparel, socks by Wal-Mart, boxer shorts by Muji." (Ahem, that sounds like a series of Facebook is statements to me.)

This morning, 11:00 am:  Wow, David liveblogged 'em, too.  "I think Owen Wilson should take over Heath Ledger's career."  Yes!  Excellent idea. Couldn't have said it better myself.

This morning, 11:25 am: OK, that's enough.

short attention span theater

Note to self:  you have a very short attention span, as measured in the meantime between overhauls of your blog's look and feel.  Short story:  I fell in love with one of the new themes that Walt had put together for TypePad, and just had to apply it here.  Oh, and I'm sure there will be all sorts of Google weirdness with the flipping back and forth with the content on /unfiltered and now here back on /filtered, but we'll suffer through. I know everyone liked the new look (so did I!) but there's something comfortable and familiar about two-column right.

Anyway, we're back here for now.

here's an old graph

From Stating the Obvious, February 1997: The Network Diagram.  "I've abandoned link list. In its place I've drawn this simple diagram, a roadmap to the self-absorbed world of Internet publishing. Six degrees of separation? Ha. Try two at the most."

Extra credit for identifying the publications that still exist.

cringe worthy

I got Scobleized.  And my GOD I hate myself on video.

circling the bay

Events galore. Last night was at the Creative Commons mixer in SF, where we demo'd a new CC licensing widget we've built for TypePad (everything.typepad.com blog post coming soon) and presented to CC a check for $15,000+ that was raised by the LiveJournal community as part of this summer's permanent account sale. Tonight I'll be at the Silicon Valley American Marketing Association's event on Marketing 2.0 in Cupertino, on a panel talking about...wait for it...blogging! That makes it a "circle the Bay" day (Berkeley --> SF --> South Bay --> Berkeley), which means at some point there will be prog rock on in the car.

but i don't mean you. i love you.

From the department of self-promotion, Buddy List Zero: action-based instant messaging.

Want to really Get Things Done? Then turn off IM. These are tips on the skills, tools and attitude needed to empty your buddy list -- and then keep it that way.

all meta, all the time

Wednesdays are hack days at Six Apart.  My limited skills led to this limited (but fun!) hack:  activity on (un)filtered.  TypePad template tags + JavaScript = fun.

and a little bird said tweet tweet

Whoa, I think I've discovered an undocumented Valleywag API.

creative destruction and feed slamming

The blog is dead, long live the blog.  I've been mucking about with a new-ish form at a new-ish URL, and it's time to flip the bit.  The switch from /filtered to /unfiltered is an attempt to return to what I used to do at theobvious.com long long ago with "filtered for purity": offer reasonably context-free nuggets of linky goodness.