The following short story contains adult themes and suggestive writing, though it does not contain sexual intercourse. The story is not recommended for individuals who are not aware or comfortable with the topics of sex, seduction, or intimacy.
She slipped her driver’s license into the slim pocket of her purse, zipping it closed quickly before following the rest of the girls into the club. A few heads turned to stare at the small group as the lights danced across their white dresses. They headed towards the bar to order a new round of drinks, but by the time Meredith joined the group, the predictable batch of guys were already swarming, their wallets open on the counter.
“Hey baby, what can I get you?” Meredith smiled politely and pushed her gentle curls behind her ears. “A cape cod, please.”
“Right away sweetheart.” Her smile dropped away as soon as his gaze turned towards the bar. She hated it when the creeps called her cute nicknames. She already had a name that she liked; why couldn’t they just call her that?
“Thank you,” she said as she grabbed the clear plastic cup from his hand. His lips flexed as he formed a thought, but she spoke again before the sound could escape his lips. “We’re going to go dance. We’ll see you later.” Meredith’s smile grew large as she moved past him and scooped her arm under Sarah’s. The group fell into step behind them, leaving the boys at the bar, unable to decide on their next course of action. Read the rest of this entry »
This article is part of a 3-part series recapping my experience at South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive 2012. It is split into the following sections: Panels, Parties, and Personal. As a reminder, everyone has a different goal and thus a different experience with SXSW. This is one extrovert’s take on 2012′s conference.
Quick Note: This is going to be personal. Unlike parts 1 and 2, this is a more intimate look into me and my experience. For some background, I attended as a single, 32 year old male extrovert without anything to pitch and no goals other than to have a good time and try and learn something new.
Thank You
South by Southwest 2012 would not have been what it was (in a good way) without some fantastic people who added to my experience in one way or another:
Rose Mary – My host; It’s her world, I just visited for a while and tried and keep up.
Shelby – My party buddy. Another local Austin resident, I simply pointed her in the right direction at her first SXSW and she rocked all on her own.
Jacqueline & Dana – Hosts at the SapientNitro party, consummate people watchers, and seekers of 2am street food. Oh, and an incredibly smart and talented Art Director and Copywriter, respectively.
SouthByFreeNOMS – Never met him/her in person, but without them, I would have been very very hungry (or actually had to pay money for food).
This article is part of a 3-part series recapping my experience at South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive 2012. It is split into the following sections: Panels, Parties, and Personal. As a reminder, everyone has a different goal and thus a different experience with SXSW. This is one extrovert’s take on 2012′s conference.
“I’m hungry.”
“I need a drink.”
“How’s the line?”
These are just some of the questions you’ll hear at SXSW 2012, and in all of the cases, you probably are going to get an answer that involves a party or a lounge (micro parties). Before I tackle the larger party scene, I’m going to talk a bit about lounges. Read the rest of this entry »
This article is part of a 3-part series recapping my experience at South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive 2012. It is split into the following sections: Panels, Parties, and Personal. As a reminder, everyone has a different goal and thus a different experience with SXSW. This is one extrovert’s take on 2012′s conference.
SXSW is full of panels. From 9:30am till 7:30pm for 5 days straight, you can gorge yourself on information across 15 different campuses, with a metric ****ton of content. I categorize all of the panels up into three categories: Learn, Interact, and Entertain. You can think of it like a Venn Diagram:
Over 400,000 individuals have seen the website; the one-liner website that makes you laugh when it presents the unexpected. I’m talking about DefendRush.org, a website I built in a stroke of genius frustration. There is a much more eloquent write-up of my reasoning for creating the website on The Atlantic, if you’re interested. As the Executive Producer of The Daily Show, Rory Albanese, said during the Political Humor 2.0 panel, sometimes what amuses the audience the most is as simple as a poop joke. DefendRush.org was my poop joke.
What I wanted to add to the discussion was the background metrics and traffic trends that occurred for the website in the 7 days from creation on March 7th through the peak of its traffic 48 hours later. Hey look, a graph!
The title of this post is from a conversation this week at a Reddit Denver Business Owners meetup/meeting. When I first heard it, I nodded my head in agreement, but today when I was speaking with my accountant about my failed business, Survival Gift Shop, she said, “Did you make any money from it?” The sad answer to that was no.
I’m not terribly proud of this fact, especially since I sunk $700 in product, fees (PayPal and Shopify), and advertising, not even counting my time (because really, what startup actually places a price on their time in the beginning). Results? Not a single person clicked BUY over the 6 month period where it was heavily marketed and even got some organic search traffic. At the very end, I even tried unloading them at cost on ebay and still no takers over two 7 day auctions. Now I grant you, a wise woman who loved the idea and built a Lady’s Personal Survival Kit of her own once exclaimed that it was more of an impulse buy, so the method of delivery was possibly wrong (not the idea), but I didn’t have the capital or the faith to try it again. Read the rest of this entry »
I’ve been pretty lucky lately. I spent an hour in January speaking to a writer for Gourmet magazine about my experience with Kickstarter. He then wrote a fantastic article about crowdfunding food items through Kickstarter, where I was proud to end-cap the article. The same day that the article was released, I recorded a guest spot on the Pingdom podcast (episode #5), talking about an article I published on SEOMoz regarding page speed improvements. We talked about a few other things (okay, I talked a lot), but you can listen to it below or at the podcast page.
