Handles
So, I was sitting at a table and the fellow sitting next to me looks over and says "hi Sam! I've been following your weblog for six months or so. I'm Dave Shea".
Seeing the blank look on my face, he says, "you don't know who I am, do you?". I pause for a second, and say no.
He then tells me that he's the Zen Garden guy.
The look of instant recognition on my face must have been very obvious. He said, thanks, and he gets that a lot. He needs to work on the name recognition thing.
I said he does very good work. He thanked me again.
Later I bumped into Matthew Mullenweg, and the story is very similar. He introduced himself to me by name, and I didn't know who he was. He then told me that we had talked on IRC, but I still couldn't place him. He then said that he was the WordPress guy, and that I was able to place. Come to find out that he is photomatt. Why didn't he just say so? ;-)
I could go on, but the story is the same. We know each other through our blogs. Conferences should have a place for an irc nick and blog name on their badges. Perhaps someday soon this will happen, but I kinda doubt it will happen at SXSW any time soon. This conference is blogger unfriendly. Who'd a thunk it. Free wireless, but power is unavailable.
Power is unavailable in the conference rooms or in the hallway. I'm told that there are special rooms where you can get power. Kinda like smokers rooms for us network adicts.
As I wind down for the night, it begins to bother me that David Shea follows my blog. A master of CSS design following the blog of somebody who's design is so... visually primitive.
Update: Matthew Mullweg (who I have chatted with on IRC and is an author of Wordpress, wrote a blog entry entitled: Have we Met? In it, he lists the people he have met at SXSW, and I am not on the list. Hmmm. Now I am wondering, did I miss the name, or did I really meet Matthew or was it another IRC user who works on Workpress? The location was Frog's, and the time was 9pm.
Update: According to Cory, it is now OK to plug in!
Update: I now met with Matthew, and have confirmed that it was him I met at Frog's. He has since updated his badge with an insert that says both Photomatt and WordPress.