SXSWi.

I gotta come clean. I've never been to SXSW. I've lived in this area for 15 years and have never gone. Tried to go a couple of times. Never made it. So this will be a completely new experience for me and it's kind of overwhelming. The first thing I did was watch the "First Timers' Guide to SXSW" and read the tips and pointers and FAQ. I'm really excited to network (something I'm not very good at) and learn about brand building, etc. Very excited. Austin is one of the few places (if not the only place) that could pull something like this off.

As for past speakers, I instantly recognized Diana Eng's name. She was a contestant on season two of Project Runway, but I haven't heard anything about her recently. Turns out, she's got a lot going on. She just launched a PBS program called "Fairytale Fashions." According to her blog, she makes girls pretend like they're fashion designers in a fairy tale - and they have to use new technologies to make everything happen. She's documenting the whole process over five months Pretty cool. Eng also has a jewelry line, wrote a series of articles about HAM radio and wrote a book called Fashion Geek, which is all about combining clothes and tech gadgets.

The second name I recognized was Ben Huh. He's the CEO of Pet Holdings. Doesn't ring a bell? You may know him better from this..


Yes, Ben Huh is the guy in charge of all the lolcats. His company runs I Can Has Cheezburger and I Has a Hot Dog and Fail Blog and all other kinds of internet meme sites. Huh didn't start the lolcat site, though. According to a cnet article, he hated his job and sent an IM to a friend that he thought the Cheezburger site was funny. His friend replied back, "why don't you buy it?" So he did. His sites pull in four million hits a day, 80 million video plays a month and make up 10% of WordPress' traffic a day. And strangely - he's allergic to cats.