Clinamen

The SXSW panel I participated in last week (along with John Jones, Jillian Sayre, Will Burdette, and Trish Roberts-Miller) seemed to go over really well. To our surprise, we presented to a full room at the Austin Convention Center.

In each presentation, a panelist took one of the canons of rhetoric (invention, style, arrangement, memory, delivery) and explained how they were playing out in online spaces like Twitter (though, some of us spoke of the Web more generally). My fellow panelists were predictably brilliant, and the crowd seemed to really dig the conversation. John followed the Twitter conversation that was happening during our panel, and this allowed us to get a good sense of how the audience was reacting.

I will be joining Will Burdette, John Jones, Jillian Sayre, and Trish Roberts-Miller on a panel at SXSW interactive called "Is Aristotle on Twitter?" It should be really fun to present some of these ideas to folks outside of the academy. Here's the description:

I got to see R.E.M. tape Austin City Limits today (the show will air on May 24.)





While, I'm not a diehard R.E.M fan, it was pretty awesome to be 10 feet from Michael Stipe during songs like "Man on the Moon" and "Fall on Me." Oh, and the new single - "Supernatural, Superserious" - is really good.

During a great SXSW day show sponsored by the Austinist, I spotted this piece of gold on the wall of the men's room:

Considering how many blackberries and side ponytails I've seen during the past couple of days, this nugget of wisdom is fairly accurate.

I'm going to be attending SXSW Interactive Sunday through Tuesday and blogging for the folks at Opera. John Jones, my fellow CWRL Assistant Director, will be blogging as well.

Check us out at the Opera SXSW 2008 Blog.