48:22
11 s faster than last year.
Category Archives: Keep Austin Weird
Things I do or feel like talking about around town.
SXSW Interactive 2015
This year my SXSW experience was different than previous years – other than for the fact that I also wasn’t able to get Jimmy Kimmel tickets.
This was due to two reasons:
1. Amit from Israeli startup MobileODT came to represent the company in the 2015 SXSW Accelerator. So I went in to provide moral support and video recording during the pitch. They were great. It was also cool to see the other startups: some with very creative ideas, some with extraordinarily shallow and pedestrian ones (these make money), and some that were science fiction and likely lies.
2. Eli the shark came to check out the festival in general. He’s been threatening to come for years and finally made good on it. We got to check out a bunch of sessions.
More importantly, I met the team behind SmartyPans in person. They’re nice.
Cap10k training begins
Lack of time and sleep are going to make this difficult. We’ll see how it goes.
B’nai Abraham Synagogue
I find it kind of cool and terribly impressive that full buildings can be moved from one place to another.
This happened last Friday here in Austin, as the B’nai Abraham Synagogue was moved from Brenham to Austin. This is the oldest synagogue in the state, or at least the oldest in continuous use, if you believe Wikipedia. It was built in 1893. It will now be the only orthodox synagogue in Austin.
I stopped by looking to take my mom to eat Kosher BBQ (they were sold out so the review will have to wait).
Here’s some additional reading in The New York Times and Austin Monthly.
iFly
What started out as a simple outing for ice cream on a Sunday night at 10 PM ended with me and my father-in-law wearing a one-piece inside a wind tunnel.
Check it out:
Capitol 10K
HONK!TX in the Park!
Points to Jaramillo for letting us know about HONK!TX 2014 Festival of Community Street Bands a week ago on Saturday.
I had never heard about it. We made it to watch a few things at Spider House. It was great. Here’s a couple of videos.
D20 Brass Band play music from The Legend of Zelda.
Illya Kuryaki and The Valderramas @SXSW
Last SXSW 2014 post. Argentinian duo Illya Kuryaki and The Valderramas was in town. Since they don’t sing in English, most locals have no clue who they are. I credit my coolo shaking skills more to them than I do to Miley.
The concert was at The North Door. Great venue: Excellent sound, good pizza, short lines for beer. The rest of the lineup for the night:
- Los Petit Fellas: I missed them but was told they were very good.
- Rebel Cats: Odd Mexican band than plays 50s rock. Rarely do you see a bass being abused so badly.
- División Minúscula: Reasonably well known Northern Mexican band that play indistinct generic rock.
- Porter: Guadalajara based electronic rock. Lead singer seems like a nice guy.
Enough, cellphone videos from my excellent vantage point:
Jaguar House (IKV):
Coolo (IKV):
Peggy Sue (Rebel Cats):
SXSW Start-Up Nation Israel Showcase & Networking Event
Not quite done with SXSW-related posts just yet.
Myself (lead writer of this blog), Louise Kahn (lead singer of Terry Poison), Albert (lead singer of his shower), Jason (not a singer but quite a dancer), Anna Landesman (SynthGuitar and B-Vox). Photo-bombed by Jeff (lead founder of Vonage).
In the middle of SXSW Interactive, right before the music festival begins, I went to this event organized by the Government of Israel Economic Mission and Israel Bonds. There was food, drinks, music, and a bunch of interesting start ups showing off their work.
Israeli band Terry Poison played after the event. Really good show… the singer climbed on to every wall in the bar in her heels. Very daring.
SXSWeros
Read: “South by South Westeros”. Hahaha, get it? (their tag line, not mine). If you don’t get it, then you probably don’t watch HBO’s popular TV series Game of Thrones. If you don’t watch it due to its premise (dragons! fantasy lands! magic!) I don’t blame you, but I guarantee that if you can get past your prejudices, you will like it.
In any case, HBO has put together a Game Of Thrones Exhibition and they brought it to Austin for SXSW.
What they did is take props from the show, which are impressively detailed and well made, and put it all up on display as if it were a museum. It’s very cool to see for fans of the show. It’s also very sad that you never ever see a line this long in order to get into a real museum.
They also had a replica of the iron throne that you could sit on and have your photo taken (wait time: 45 minutes) and an Oculus Rift powered Wall of Ice elevator simulator (wait time: 180 minutes) that look unbelievably cool. Unfortunately for the reader, I did not wait in line for either.
