Fun at SxSW with Tim Ferris, Gary Vee, and Rally Fighter

Last weekend I flew out to Austin, TX to see my awesome friends and check out the SxSW interactive scene. I went with no badge, no expectations – I went there purely as a blank canvas. Life – as usual – painted it with awesomeness. I got to meet Tim Ferris, got bartended on by Gary Vee, ride in one of the coolest motor vehicles on earth, and meet some extraordinary people.

SXSW 6th Street, Austin Texas. CC photo by John Rogers

I stayed with Emily and Duane, my great long time friends who live in Austin. Right after I got in we went to dinner where I saw Erica from Erica.biz (and her bf Richard) who I had met earlier this year on the Internet Marketers Cruise. Erica is such a class act – she immediately introduced me to Chris Guillebeau from the Art of Non-Conformity and Adam Baker from Man vs. Debt, both cool down-to-earth dudes.

The next day I met Kayla Ludy, a folk singer, on my bike on the way to a kite festival who told me to keep my out for the Ice Cream Man because they were giving away a sweet mobile phone to whoever tracked down their car and recited the first 10 digits of pi. We hung out taking pictures of bugs with my new macro lens adapter at the park and I biked home to get rid of my heavy bag.

my tinyest friend

Going out later that night with my friends Nick, Emily, and Duane I came across this beautiful machine pulling up to 6th Street.

Rally Fighter

It’s a Rally Fighter (an open sourced car) built by Local Motors that I had just read about in Wired magazine a month ago. I struck up a conversation with Ariel (who has an infectious smile) and John Rogers (the man with the balls to start a community-designed car company in a recession – gotta love that).

We arranged to meet up the next day so I could get some video with all the fun camera equipment I brought with me to Austin (with a waterproof/adventure camera, a Canon 5d mark II, and a highspeed camera). Later that night I was walking from an art party put on by Cool Sofa (thank you for the free beer), guess what I ran into? That’s right, the Ice Cream Man. I Googled the first 10 digits of pi, memorized it, and scored myself a Nokia Nuron cell phone!

3.1415926535 booya!

Woot!

With a brand new cell phone in hand, I walked over to where Gary Vaynerchuck was having an afterhours party and arrived in just the perfect time as he was walking by. I followed him inside where he poured me some wine. It’s classic Gary to be working as the main bartender pouring all his fans and friends drinks at 2am after a full day of speaking. Love that man – and thank you. That night I also ran into and chatted with Heather Herr about a client of hers – Red Bull – who was sponsoring a man about to skydive from space (and be the first person to break the speed of sound in freefall). Might have to check that out later – sounds right up my alley.

The next day I stole a SxSW pass from a friend (covered the face of the badge with my camera) just so could get into the conference center to meet Tim Ferris, who gave me a copy of the 4 Hour Workweek and signed it (booya!).

play often I do

Later that afternoon I got a text from Ariel who was hanging out at the Wired Party at Moonshine with the Rally Fighter. I came by to take pictures but John (the CEO) had to go the airport so Ariel walked us past the line into the Wired Party, where we sipped on complimentary Starbucks Via Coffeetinis courtesy of Susi Park, the sparkly and gracious host / marketing coordinator for Wired in NYC. BTW, Wired is the only remaining magazine I read. At the party I met Jim Hopkinson from the Hopkinson Report and Eric Keosky-Smith from Shwaag.com and had some fun conversations with them.

An hour later the Rally Fighter was back. I attached my Go Pro camera to the hood and whipped out my cameras as we got inside the machine to go shoot some video of people’s reactions.  Ted Ladue of Autotrader rode with us in the back. The inside of the car was still unfinished and the car roarred! However my batteries were dead and we started losing daylight fast so we cut the ride short and decided to do it another time.

Afterwards Sarah and Ariel gave me ride back to Duane’s house in the Rally Fighter, which was definitely a cool way to arrive. I got to find out more about the girls (who are total badasses btw) – next month I will probably fly out to Arizona and shoot some real video with the Local Motors crew.

Next day I met back up with Kayla and gave her the Nokia phone I won since I already have an iphone and she was the one who told me about it in the first place. I spent last day in Austin hanging out with my close friends and eating tacos. SxSW film and music were starting but I got homesick for my girl and booked a flight home.

Now that I wrote this post I realize what a fun ass time I had in Austin. It’s funny – when I go anywhere with zero expectations, I always have an incredible time and meet just the right people at the right time in my life. Life just flows. And I flow with it.

Oh, and as a bonus, when I got home a great friend of mine invited me to A Small World, so now I will be able to connect with other awesome movers and shakers around the world. Life is good!

If you want to check out some brilliant material, here’s some best of the best link<3 from some of the people mentioned above:

• Tim Ferris recently posted some great advice about intentionally keeping a company small.
• Erica has written some really helpful tips for outsourcing logo design with 99designs (perfect timing for me).
• Adam from Man vs Debt just came out with a practical guide to finances called Unautomate Your Finances (at a ridiculously low price).
• Richard Soderberg just wrote a post on a clever way to create a free ecommerce system using Blogger, Picasa, and Paypal.
• Jim Hopkinson profiled the fascinating DJ Girl Talk in one of his previous podcasts, who Duane learned has about 8,000 songs in his head that he mashes up with unparalelled talent.

I didn’t take that many pics in Austin, but here are a few more.

Ted getting in. It's steep!

getting gas

some live music at the Zone lounge

in front of Duane's house

roarrrr

inside the cockpit

this guy thought my elbow was a lounge

Ariel and Susi with Viatinis at the Wired party. See how bright Ariel's smile is? It overexposed the pic