A chilly day in Austin, TX. The convention center is descended upon by thousands of geeks of the film, music and internet (under) worlds. I am one of them this year.
With a Starbucks cup of joe in one hand, event schedule and wifi enabled iPod touch in the other, I mosey my way around the massive complex in search of my first panel: Filtching Design. The panelist I'm most excited to meet is Luke Wroblewski, senior principle of product ideation and design at Yahoo! Last year I stumbled on some of his presentation slides while searching for some intelligent insights on "Web 2.0" navigation challenges. Oh the irony that I actually filched a bit from one of his presentations and incorporated into my own. (I did cite you Luke, for what it's worth!) A lively discussion and debate on the ethics of "borrowing" design, layout, code, apis and constructs ensued between panelists and the 200 or so attendees in the room. While there were no definitive conclusions as to what exactly determines "filch vs. fair" use, there seemed to be general consensus within the room as to when derivative works were way too close to the line. I guess it's a bit like knowing art vs. pornography when you see it. Something to be mindful of.
Our own Allen Mendelsohn drew quite an audience for his Core Conversation: Growing Pains: Your Web Company's Getting BIG. Go Allen!
Meanwhile, across the room I attended the Core Conversation: GTD for Startups: Getting Things Done in the Real World. The conversation became really animated as folks started giving props to the tools they use to GTD. Here are a bunch of suggestions that I'll be (re) visiting for evaluation: basecamp, zoho crm, esupport, google calendar, mingler, unfuddled, 5pmweb, spanningsync, busysync, freeconferencecall.com, gotomeeting, textexpander, swsx.surveygizmo.com.
Find a niche and dominate it
This was the significant "aha!/duh!" moment of the afternoon--a suggestion from panelists at The Art of Speed. Definitely sound advice for growing WEBCARGO. Will have to reinforce this idea with my partners when I get home.
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