Hello everyone, it's March 11, 2008. We're here at the Austin Convention Center at South by Southwest. This is RA Weekly number 10. I don't know if we'll need letters this episode. I don't think so. But this is the first video episode, right? So that's kind of exciting. Well, we did have the Engage episode. Oh, we had the Engage episode, yes. That's right. Which is a hard one to number because sequentially it was out of order. Yeah. Or chronologically it was out of order. Yeah, yeah. So we've been here four days, I think? Yeah, four days. Something like that. Something like that. And it's been pretty exciting. And I imagine you're pretty burned out since you were a mix. Yes, exactly. But, you know. But Austin's a rejuvenating city, so it works out really well that way. That's right. And so this being kind of like a non-vendor based event, right? It's been interesting to see the cross cut of RA stuff. It is kind of interesting that there was Silverlight people and there was, you know, off-course Adobe people. But there weren't really Ajax people. Yeah, no. It's been, yeah, kind of, I don't know who Ajax people would come. Like I'm assuming all the rounded corner kids are very Ajax-y in general. So it's kind of our, it's kind of our people. But yeah, there was a lot of Ajax vendors. Yeah, maybe there, yeah. I guess just the vendors don't really, it's too much sort of free and open source stuff, right? Yeah. And maybe not enough developer-y. That's true. There's definitely a geeky design-y slant to South by Southwest. Right. So yeah, that's a good point. So most of all the fun stuff here is all like at parties and things like that, staying up late and, you know, having hamburgers and drinking. Yes, exactly. So what do you, I mean, we went to a lot of parties on our own and together and whatnot. And so which one do you think worked out the best? The best party? I probably should say the Adobe party. But I think the Fizz Pop party was actually the one that I thought was the best because they did a really good job. Like it was a great event. We didn't stay for the whole thing, of course, but, you know, it was lots of people, lots of energy. There was lots of demoing. There was lots of demoing, exactly. Right, right. In a kind of a cool way that was part of the event. So I think they did a pretty good job at that event. Right, right. It was my favorite one, I think. And so when you come to an event like this, do you do a lot of work or are you more just sort of gathering and networking? More gathering.
2:00I usually have late mornings usually, so I usually do work in the morning to afternoon, then try to catch some sessions, then go out for the evening. Right, right. Yeah, collect business cards, basically. Right. You know, there weren't any announcements. This isn't the kind of conference where there's announcements, but is there any sort of like, I mean, like I'm trying to think of the sort of maybe topical or stuff that kind of happened. And I'll just answer my own question. Yeah, I was going to say, what do you think? I've actually had some fun discussions with some people about Silverlight. Oh, nice. Like what they think is going on there, right? And a couple of people I were talking to where they had a great theory that I just talked about when I was a guest on the Open Season podcast this morning that people are worried, or Google, I guess, was worried. Like where the scuttlebutt goes or someone is that if you have Silverlight, they'll just be parts of the web that are dark to Google. Like inaccessible to them, right? Because it's not just like normal HTML and things like that. Ah, interesting. Yeah, exactly. So you could have -- and, you know, Adobe could do the same sort of thing, right? It doesn't matter what the front end is. The whole point is that it's not just HTML. Yeah. It doesn't get compiled down to HTML, so to speak. And then at that point, it's kind of like Google's a little screwed. Or, you know, anyone who depends on the web. I had never thought about that angle before. I think it's always been Microsoft and Adobe wanting to work with the search engines to make their content more accessible. Right, right. I mean, that's what you would assume, right? Yeah, exactly. But you're right. No, there could be -- yeah. Like if everyone is doing this rich Internet application stuff and all the data is hidden behind these Flash or Silverlight interfaces, the other search engines would be kind of . And then, you know, I mean, that idea is a recurrent theme in a lot of the places I stick in my head. And especially in the idea of as you get new devices online, right? Whether it's like we've talked about chumbies and Blu-rays and all this other stuff, right? Yeah. And essentially, you could run all of that on top of the web, right? Or it could be run on top of the web but sort of encrypted like Skype. Like Skype's a very closed black box thing that just runs over the Internet, right? Or you could have a completely different web, you know, network, right? That ran over cable networks or like Spectrum or all this other stuff.
4:01And, you know, I only mention this because I've heard this concern many times over the past month or so. Starting with like on the Gilmore Gang, they're always kind of talking about how Silverlight's going to crush everyone, right? They're on that nowadays. Who else is on the Gilmore Gang, not to interrupt your flow? Who is on the Gilmore Gang? It's just there's a rotating panel of people, but there's like -- Every now and then there's -- Yeah, it's hard to say who's on it because there's like 10 or 15 people that kind of cycle through it. And it's not really dependable who's going to be on there every time. But, yeah, so I mean it's been interesting to think about -- Like the thing I always think is that people, the elder software companies, so to speak, are worried about having another sort of web happen to them, right? Where the web happened and it really -- it was very slippery as far as being able to monetize it, right? I mean it just comes along and it's kind of like not your yard. Like you come -- as a vendor, you come to the web with equal footing as everyone else. Exactly. That means theoretically, right? Well, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Whereas if you create an alternative network, then you can more do your own sort of thing. That's interesting. Well, especially on the devices side, yeah, because as content becomes distributed to multiple touch points or devices -- Yeah, like how does Google index that? Does brand become more important? Right, right. Like today, Google just got approval from the EU for the DoubleClick acquisition. Right. So like there's a big thing on TechBeam about like what Google and how that is going to be moving into display ads versus search ads. Yeah. You know, will they be able to target it just as well? Like are we moving back towards the kind of branding, rich media advertising? Yeah. Whereas it used to be the text ads because that's what the web was and now the web is no longer just pages of text. It's video, pictures, rich media application stuff, so. And do you think in RIA stuff there's a lot of focus on non-ad monetization? Like a lot of the stuff is -- I mean this is always my little snarky complaint of RIA stuff is like, oh, more video. Yeah, yeah. Which is sort of like broadcast medium going to the web and you monetize that with ads or whatever.
6:04You know, like it's that voodoo of monetization that we're comfortable with, right? Yeah, yeah. But there doesn't seem to be a lot of discussion of like here's a $30 RIA application, right? Yeah. And I think part of that is because it's really difficult to track. Like how -- like in fact I was presenting -- Have a license key or something. Well, I mean, so you could do -- you could sell it. Like that would be one thing. But like I was talking to -- I presented AIR to a group of people here in Austin. Yeah. And one of the things they wanted to talk about afterwards was how do we actually get metrics for our rich internet applications. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like they use page views. Right. So how do you decide whether it's successful and then you can kind of charge, monetize, and figure out that whole ecosystem of things. But you don't have any way to track it right now. Right. I think that's the tough part. So -- Yeah, like a way to track usage. Yeah. That's interesting. If you wanted to sell by usage instead of just selling outright license. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is what you would have to do for advertising. You'd like sell for usage or something like that, right? I think we're still just now getting into the model of, you know, this is the $30 rich internet application. Right. I guess there is the iPhone thing last week about selling it to the music store, right? Yeah, yeah. And which we talked about last week a much more, to me, like very Macworld friendly way of pricing things. Yeah, yeah. I guess to recap and repeat myself. Oh, yeah, yeah. It's like -- it seems like in the Macworld is the only place where you can like successfully sell a $5 application. Yeah, yeah. And like I've bought tons of them and there's lots of them out there. Yeah, exactly. I've wasted so much money on those applications. And they're great applications like Puka, which you turned into. Yeah, yeah, right. I love that application. Yeah, it is pretty nice. Yeah, yeah. But I mean, that's a good question. And I think it's weird because the web is kind of moving to this services model anyway. Right. So to use RIA technologies to take a step back and be able to charge for it is maybe a little -- Yeah, you know, you see -- Mixed up for people. I forget if it's Salesforce. You know, everyone's always got an example of like here's just using RIA as just a face on an existing service that we charge for. And that -- I mean, that works out. It's just like a different -- a flex version of Salesforce. Like I said, I forget if they have one. Yeah. You know, whatever. They have an Air client that I don't know if it's officially being used,
8:04but they demo it. Right. That's right. That's right. And that -- I mean, that works as far as -- but you're not selling the RIA front end. Exactly. You're selling that service that has an RIA front end. And I don't know if we've seen yet like here is an RIA application standing on its own that is sold. I don't think so. Like something like Twitter-rific. Yeah. Which is an OS 10, you know, client-side thing for Twitter is you can buy it for 30 bucks to get ads off of it. And like I -- another thing I've wasted money on. But it's a great little application written in Cocoa. And, you know, there's an Air one and I'm sure there's like probably a Silverlight one running around somewhere or whatever. And I wonder if people are actually going to be able to sell that just like straight up. Well, I would hope so. I think -- especially -- I think it's hard -- I think it's really hard to sell browser-based applications, right? Yeah. So you can do Air applications, but Silverlight or Flash applications would be kind of tough. Yeah. But yeah, I hope we see a huge marketplace for Air applications. Like I can't believe you paid for Twitter-rific because the Twitter clients on Air are so much better than Twitter-rific. Like they're beautiful. I tried to use them like six, maybe seven months ago and it just couldn't compete. I don't think you were using the right ones. Oh, man. Twirl, man. Twirl is beautiful. Here is like the killer feature I need in that while we go down this rabbit hole. I need like friend autocomplete because I have like a lot of people that I follow, right? Okay. And like it doesn't -- it's very hard. I mean people have crazy names and I can't spell for crap, right? Yeah, yeah. And so if someone has a crazy name or whatever, like I don't want to -- I have to go look it up. And it actually takes me several minutes to like track down their Twitter name. Does Twitter-rific do the auto-lookup for you? It doesn't, but supposedly they're thinking about that, right? Well, there's a client, Tweeter does auto-lookup. So I don't think Twirl does, but Tweeter does. So we'll get you hooked on the air, Twitter clients, because they're fantastic. I don't know. I don't know. I'm pretty strong on the Twitter-rific. I've got brand loyalty. Well, you paid $30 for it, so I suppose you are. Yeah. Yeah, there is that. So has there been any other exciting stuff that you've seen? Been here at South by Southwest? I guess not a ton. Mostly just cool to talk to the whole, you know, kind of a crowd of people who are really into the web.
10:06Yeah. I mean, it seems like this is the kind of conference where everyone is. Like, I don't know if you described it this way or we were talking about this with someone else, but it's like the spring break for geeks. Yeah, someone else was saying. Yeah, yeah. I think that's kind of an apt comparison. Absolutely. Because it is. Everyone's here. There's a lot of fun, impromptu conversations that happen. Right. And that's really the benefit to me. Right. Even more than the panels. It's just like, you know, oh, we can be all in the same place that are really smart, talking about random stuff, and then ideas flourish. Yeah, that makes sense. You know, I've turned into one of those guys who I used to think these guys were pompous asses. He's like, oh, I just spend time in the hallways. But, like, now I'm that guy. Yeah, exactly. Of course. You know, I had to go to one session and there was a line out the door, right? And so I haven't gone to anything. I've just been hanging out with people kind of nonstop. But, you know, it seems like having not been to the sessions, it seems like a lot of the themes are like, I don't know, basically Facebook stuff. Yeah. And then the more general thing of that, like having social networks and how to, I don't know, doing something with that. Doing some stuff with your social networks. Like, I think it was last year or the year before that, it was all about blogging. Like, the bloggers were like, it was the thing that was happening, right? You know, pro-blogging and being able to do that. Whereas this year, it seems like it's social stuff. Interesting. Or as another person I was talking to was like, oh, yeah, it's like social, open, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I don't know, something with that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that person had come from the Facebook party. Yes. They were a little jaded. They were a little overloaded. Yeah. Well, so what do you think the theme will be for next year? Because this is my first album in Southwest. Sure, sure. So I am seeing this all for the very first time. Well, you know, so again, not having been to the sessions, but I've been building up a theory from the, there's been sort of like conference-goer rebellion happening a little bit. Yeah, the Facebook. The supposedly bad Facebook interview. Yeah. Which, it's funny, everyone who's here has said it was terrible. And then all the people who aren't here have said, I watched the video. It wasn't that bad. It wasn't that bad, yeah. And then there was another panel that someone had written a blog post about where I think some people were disappointed that the content level wasn't good enough.
12:07It was one of these, you know, how to monetize social, blah, blah, blah, right? Yeah. And, you know, I got to thinking, like, after I read that, I think more so than maybe, like, when the theme is blogging and we haven't ever heard about it, I think maybe people are coming here this year and they're, like, ready to go, right? Yeah. And so they want to know, like, they want to be like, give me the action plan. Give me the strategy. Like, if I, there's a lot of sessions that are, like, top 10 this or practical that. And, you know, I'm never surprised anymore when I happen to go to a session or listen to a podcast of a session like that, that it's usually, like, blogs are a way of chronologically ordering things. Or, you know, it just, like, covers the very basics. As if you're, like, explaining it to someone who's never known about it. But I think people that are here, like, a lot of these tools have come from the consumer space. And so everyone here is living their day-to-day life in these tools. Yeah. So they know all the basics. And I think they're ready to get a business plan. And so that's kind of the theory that I've got. Maybe for next year's will be, like, monetization will be this. Yeah. Are we going to upscale it a little bit then to figure out? Like, is that what people are all about? Is making money? I mean, is there, like-- Yeah. That's a dumb question, of course. No, no, no. It seems like this would be the place where that would matter less. Like, people are more like, oh, let's get, you know, the touchy-feely rounded corners. I think, no, I don't think it's that dumb of a question. Because I think for a while in the tech world, it was less that. Like, everything's always about making money. Yeah, yeah. I think the best book there, you should go read this book if you ever read it called The Goal, like, written in '84. Okay. I'm going to give you a thrilling back-of-the-envelope summary of it. It's a business novel. A business novel. All right. Nice. I'm hooked already. Yeah, yeah. It's really a good book. And the whole point of that book is that all business is about making money. And, you know, rule number two, see rule one. I mean, it's one of those things, right? Yeah, yeah, okay. And I think, until recently, it's been all about indirectly making money or kind of like, we'll figure it out or something like that. But I think nowadays, individuals feel like they can make money individually on their own, right? Yeah. They don't have to, you know, necessarily get funding and then they can just be like, we'll figure out how to monetize it later, right?
14:11I mean, that makes you kind of not care about day-to-day making money. Exactly. But I think, like, an organization of one person or two people or if you have a Facebook app or you're giving Apple your 30% cut on something, things are being set up so that individuals and very small organizations or teams can make money directly on their own. And I think people want that. Yeah. Like, it's kind of cool to get lots of funding, but I think we haven't had that new generation come in yet that hasn't heard the sob stories about getting venture funding. Yes, yeah. And so maybe in a few years they'll know about it. I don't know, that's a long screed there. Well, it's interesting. Is that maybe what the platform wars are all about? You know, the platform wars being, especially in the rich internet application space. Yeah. Is it empowering the little guys so that they can build stuff so everyone is building stuff on your platform and making their own individual cut of money? Absolutely. Like, I think that's, you know, that's an interesting tactic. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Like, our goal at Adobe is penetration, obviously, and we're doing a lot of stuff with services to kind of… Right. And we're both on top of our platform, so a lot of it is driven from the top down as far as feature requirements. But, you know, at the end of the day, I think that's kind of what everyone wants to enable is this ecosystem of people who can individually make money. I've never really thought about it like that before. Yeah. Back at… I'm having a total brain fart. What's the name of your guys' mix conference? Max. Back at Max. I love that. Like, one letter off. We were first, by the way. I think the first Max I went to, like, two years ago in the lovely Venetian. Yes. Yes. Our favorite. I mean, I think it was the best thing along this line, and I tell the story to everyone. Like, one of the keynotes, someone went up there, and it was, you know, they got all the slides of, like, the fun people, and it's in 16-4 format and all that crap, right? But there was one slide that came up, and they were talking to Flash developers, and they basically said, "Here's how much money we made you last year." And it was, like, I don't know, 20, 50 million dollars or something, and who knows where that figure came from, right? I remember this, actually. But to basically have the room full of people who are… most of these sort of people are more, you know, independent people, or they work at agencies, or, you know, they're kind of… I wouldn't say hand-to-mouth, but they're people who, like, have to worry about the checks cashing, right?
16:15Yeah, yeah. And to say, like, you, the Adobe community, here's how much money you made because of us is a very powerful thing. Yeah, that was a good slide. Yeah, and I haven't really seen that direct connection between money and, like, the platform, like, in any others, from Adobe or anyone else since then. Just probably because it's an easy thing to attack because you're like, "Oh, where'd you get that stupid number?" Yeah. Right? But I don't know. I think to make a bold prediction, maybe next year we'll see more of those slides at South by Southwest. Yeah, that would be interesting. And I think that was easier because it was a mobile that goes on mobile platform. Yeah, yeah. So we knew exactly how much money was going out. It's those closed networks that are easy to track, right? Yeah, exactly, yeah. That's a very good point. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But no, that's, I mean, I, yeah. Like, if the iPhone's applications take off, they'll be able to have that slide, right? Exactly. You can say, "Yeah, we made you X amount of money." Right, right. And that's a power, that's a big deal. Yeah. So, yeah, especially as you said, you know, if you, anything can get hot. So if you can be a little guy, and I think that's kind of where developer designer workflow comes. Right. You've got to have really great tooling so that one or two people can get together to build something that they can make money off of and make a living off of. Right. You know, not getting funding, not getting, being millionaires, just having a good lifestyle based on something you created. Right, right. You know, with your own hands. Right, right, right. The craftsman of the 21st century, if you will. That's right. Yeah, I mean, and you know, we revisit this idea of the, the empowered individual. Yes. Like, every five years or so, and, but to be less cynical, which is a little uncharacteristic, I think, I think we get a little closer. It's one of those two steps forward, one step back thing. And you know, I was, I was talking with someone saying how, one of the PR people I know here, and they're saying they've been talking to a lot of, of course, reporters and all that. Yes. And this, this person was saying the crazy thing is everyone has a side project. Yeah. And even like a big magazine, like it could be, you know, gigantic magazines and everyone has at least one thing going on on the side. And he was, you know, thinking like, I wonder how that, like, why is that? And you know, my thought was that you used to need a large, you know, to, you've got to produce something, a product or a service that you collect money for, that goes out into the market.
18:20Right. And I think nowadays, especially for people whose product is information, the, you used to need a whole hierarchy of people to distribute, produce and get all this stuff out there. But now all you have to do is click a button, you know, and be able to spell, right? Yeah. And so if you can like write or produce a video or even like an application or something like that, it's actually pretty possible now that you can just put it up there. It's not quite as hard as it used to be. And so that's, there's kind of like that friction of starting up something on the side. Like, you know, you don't need an, I need an assistant to do this. Yeah. And all this sort of stuff, so. Well, that's, yeah, I mean, exactly. And that's kind of, that's the great thing about the web, right? Yeah. Is there is no barrier to entry to do whatever you want. Well, that's the, that's the promise we always had in the nineties and it kind of worked out, but it didn't kind of work out at volume, I see. Yeah. Right. We didn't have like, like there aren't like thousands of people paying their bills off of blogging. Yeah. Right. There's only like 50 or 100 or something. Yeah, exactly. It's a small number. Or, you know, traditional media people who are like doing it now. But we don't have quite the, you know, there, I guess there's a lot of eBay power. There's a little like. Yeah, there's been a little bit around for a long time. That's true. There's kind of like little shopping strips out there on the web. Yeah. People like making money, but it's, it's not like, it doesn't seem viable that someone can just quit their job and sort of like open up an Amazon shop. Yeah. And go to town. But on the other hand, I think part of the appeal of side projects, especially when the economy is good, is that you can do something interesting to you. Yeah. And then use that as an avenue to do something else. Like my, like my blog. That's a good point. I have a job at Adobe because of my blog. That's a good point. Right, right, right. Which is essentially a side project. Right. And it was something I was passionate about, I loved writing about, and it turned into a career. And I think Anne Zelenka talks a lot about this. Yeah. Kind of that whole of using the blog or using your side project as a way to build your personal brand. That's right. So I think that's part of the appeal of side projects is that you can do something fun and interesting while at the same time the benefit is further down the road, but still kind of in the rear view, you know, in where you can see it. That makes sense. Yeah. So were there any other exciting things you wanted to mention? Not really.
20:20What about you? Yeah. In Austin. Yeah. In fact, actually, there's an exciting thing I want to mention. Yeah. So South by Southwest, one of the really cool things that I have found, there are a lot of Flex developers who are kind of distributed all over the place. And I went back and posted on my blog, I think yesterday or the day before, like, hey, can we get a Flex user group here in Austin? Got a bunch of responses. People are like, oh, yeah, I'd love to have that. So there's one guy who was getting close to starting one. So now it seems like I'm going to be able to bring all of these people from South by Southwest together to start a Flex user group here in Austin. Yeah, that is good. Yeah, we were talking about, I think there's a lot of interest in RIA stuff in Austin. And BMC, man. I didn't realize BMC was doing a bunch of Flex stuff. Yeah, yeah. Your old crew. They were at the first Engage with their dashboards. That's right. I forgot about that. Yeah, that's right. That's right. So yeah, there's a lot of interest here. So yeah, that was kind of cool for me. And I think it's an example of South by Southwest helping bridge communities just because everyone's here. Yeah. No, it's like we said at the beginning. It's mostly, if you can get over, like, I'm actually sort of like a secret introvert, right? And if you can get over that, then it's actually nice to just be able to hang out with them. Yeah, exactly. That's really all that. Yeah, there's not really anything. People, I've been asked like five times, have you seen anything interesting? Anything cool? I'd be like, no. Just cool conversations. Not really, yeah. So yeah, what about you? Anything exciting? Anything fantastic? No, not really. The parties, the talk, the hallway conversation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I mean, I think it's all the stuff that we spend a lot of time talking about. It's more of the intentions of the people. Yeah. And like kind of what they want to do as a group, right? That I think is more interesting to see, to see where they're at, to use the old goose thing. So then the last question. So this is the first South by Southwest Interact you've been to, right? Yes. So do you have any like tips that you're going to use for yourself next year that you can tell to other people? Like some ideas you tried out that didn't work or something like, oh, I should have done that. No, not really. You should figure out how to get less sleep. Perfect execution. Yeah, no, it was perfect this time around. Like I was really stressed out about the party scene here before I got here. Yeah. I thought you had to have everything scheduled. That's kind of P.S. Like, yeah, just come with your good ideas.
22:21Right. And, you know, walk around. Yeah. Hang out with people you know. Get introductions and then on the party scene, just walk up and down 6th Avenue. Right. Yeah. And then find what's going on. Right, right. Up and down 6th Street. Or 6th Street. Yeah, it doesn't matter. But yeah, yeah. No, that's true. You have to be flexible. You've got to be okay being rude to like not go to a party or to leave. And then on the other end of it, you have to be understanding that you can just lose someone in the crowd and not see them until tomorrow. Exactly. It's very fluid. So you can't stress out about anything in South by Southwest. That's right. You've just got to chill. Well, I'll say at the risk of ruining this, my best kept secret of South by Southwest is the Driscoll Hotel bar. And I think that's -- I'm not going to say where it is. You better look it up if you care. But if you get a little stressed out, you can go there and you've got to kind of find it. But it's very relaxing. Yeah. It's not like a complete secret, but it's a good chill out place. Yeah. Exactly. They have great martinis, gin martinis there. That's right. With Hendrix and cucumber water. It's very -- it's nice. That's right. Classy. Well, great. Well, there's episode 10. Exactly. Thanks, Coté. It's been fun hanging out. That's right. in the Southwest. - That's right.