Help the Department of Alchemy return to South by Southwest!

Posted on 17 August 2009 by Alex Leavitt

Basically, there’s a big tech/film/music event called South by Southwest every year in Austin, TX. Last year, I was chosen to speak during the Interactive (ie. tech) festival, and I’m trying to make it back there to give another presentation. SXSW chooses panels/talks by outsourcing opinion via the “Panel Picker,” which provides about 1/3 of the overall score (the rest of the score is formed by the panel judges & staff).

If you’ve seen me in the past at anime conventions, you know that I can dish out a good talk. My proposal for SXSW 2010 is “Lurk Moar: Why Internet Culture Matters.”

So, if you’re inclined to spare 57 seconds of your time, please go to my talk’s page (http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/3203) to 1) vote up, and 2) leave a positive comment. Signing up for the voting is super easy (name, email, password), and you receive practically no messages (if you’re concerned about that).

Thanks for your help!

Serendipity, or Twitter and the Narrative of Rhetoric

Posted on 19 March 2009 by Alex Leavitt

warning, love via neoliminal on Flickr

The Internet accelerates serendipity. So says my good friend and colleague Diana Kimball. The more I write and think about the Internet, the more I believe her idea to be true.

video idea thanks to the valiantRachel Mercer

Twitter has exploded in the past year, and come along way since its introduction in 2006, its incipient user base of post-2007 SXSW, and its world-wide popularity come late 2008 (after Twitter was picked up by the mainstream media). But allthough Wikipedia pegs Twitter as “a social networking and micro-blogging service,” in reality it’s a mode and new form of communication.

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