Brand Flakes for Breakfast - SXSW
Friday, March 7, 2008

Trains, Planes and automobiles.



Austin, Texas...the most difficult place in the world to get to. What a day. We arrived at LaGuardia Airport on time, and ready to rock. Slight delay with our plane, as we heard there was some snow, in Dallas. Weird, but ok.

Our flight goes to Dallas, where we're supposed to connect to Austin. We land in Dallas, and it's snowing. Snowing pretty hard, by Dallas standards. (Which of course, made us laugh.) Until we found that 2 inches of snow SHUT THE ENTIRE AIRPORT DOWN. Connecting flight to Austin is cancelled.

Not discouraged, Giuli connected us up with American Airlines, and they booked us on a bus, to Austin. That's right. They can't get a plane off of the runway, but they can get a bus to the airport?? But, whatever - we're going to Austin.

We wait in an hour long line to find out where we're supposed to catch this bus. "Bus? This is an airport...." After several comments like this from American Airlines employees, we found a supervisor who confirmed that there was indeed a bus, that we were booked on it, and it was leaving at 9:30pm. But she didn't know where to get it. We'd have to go to the main ticketing counter, to find out.

The main ticketing counter. Can you imagine what that looked like, after the airport was shut down? More waiting, more searching for supervisors, and we're headed to "D30".

D30 is a doorway to the road in front of the ticketing area. A doorway. Not a gate. Nobody else is there. Nobody knows about a bus. We're nervous.

"Let's rent a car and drive there ourselves."
So we hop a bus and head to the car rental hub.

The car rental hub....six empty counters, and two counters with about 80 or 100 people in line. Most with reservations. Everyone else says "we have no cars." A woman at Enterprise says, "well, I can get you a Mustang Shelby, but it's going to cost $209/day" Rob's eyes light up, and we agree. Wait in line. 20 minutes pass. Manager comes to counter, and confirms there's no Mustang, or any car at all.

We head to Alamo, and beg for a car. "We don't have any left." I hop on the self serve kiosk, and managed (still don't know how) to get a car reserved. Even the Alamo desk agent can't believe it - and has to come check it out. "How'd you do that?"

And, so we leave Dallas, in a rented car, for Austin. 3+ hours later, we're here. Phew.

Did I mention that we checked our bags? Tomorrow's adventure: Find our luggage!!

(See video clips and more details tomorrow, on our individual Tumblr pages.)

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posted by darryl ohrt @ 2:34 AM   0 comments

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

how we're blogging at sxsw



We'll be keeping you informed about SXSW with a couple of new tools.

We'll each keep individual pages using Tumblr. We'll be updating our Tumblr pages throughout the days, using Utterz for audio and video posts, Twitter for microposts, and of course this main blog for regular updates. We'll also plan on sharing a Flickr photo set.

Here's the links to each of our individual posts (which right now may contain our existing Twitter feeds, and non-sxsw content):

David
Tumblr
Twitter

Rob
Tumblr
Twitter

Darryl
Tumblr
Twitter

In theory, you'll be able to do nothing all day but watch our posts, capture new ideas, and stay more informed than your friends. Just plan to push your work aside for a few days.

If you have any doubt about us taking this seriously, just check out Dave's mug above. He promises to blog all the details. Even when Rob gets all drunk and runs around the hotel lobby in his underwear. We're told that Texas beer has magical qualities, like that.

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posted by darryl ohrt @ 5:13 PM   0 comments

  A Blog Devoted to News, Ideas, Design, Branding and Gossip at Plaid.
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Update: Monday turns into Tuesday.
Is it Monday already?
Rob gets a Texas tattoo
Super productive Sunday
Saturday night. Plaid shows Austin how it's done.
Saturday. Lots of learning, listening and internet...
A fun first day at SXSW
Attempting to find our luggage...
Trains, Planes and automobiles.
how we're blogging at sxsw
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