Live on Leo Laporte’s SXSW Broadcast!

The night started out over at the Austin American Statesman Social Media Awards. I was a winner and got a cool little trophy – you can see it in the video below! While there, I met a bunch of interesting people… I’m always impressed at what a hub of social media Austin has become.

I was between parties and walking down the 6th street when along came Leo Laporte and his huge entourage.  Leo has a big battery pack on his back, a camera, and a light.  He carries around the contraption and broadcasts everything live to thousands of people on live.twit.tv.

To get a good view of his setup, AND to see how HUGE SXSW is here in Austin, see this amazing video of Leo crowd-surfing at the Diggnation event! He was live streaming the entire crowdsurfing event to thousands of people all over the world… very cool!

Anyway, I was walking down the street – and I said, “Hi Leo!”.  He didn’t know who I was at first, but then, after talking to me for a bit, he remembered.  I told him that I was, indeed, quite forgettable, and I certainly took no offense.

The group was Leo, Robert Scoble, Jeff Jarvis, Dane Golden, and a whole bunch of other people, including a small contingent from Rackspace. That first picture there on the right is of me, Robert Scoble and Leo Laporte.  Anyway, we geeked out for a few minutes talking about HDR Photography… he mentioned this website, which then caused a crash when the TWIT Army attacked it.  As you can tell, Leo could not have been nicer… a very cool guy.

After our little talk, they started talking a bit about SmugMug and Chris Makaskill — if interested in finding out more, see my “How to Make an Online Photo Album” here on the site.

Weird Things

One of the people I met tonight was Justin Robert Young, who has a show on the TWIT network, and runs a website called “Weird Things” with my friend Andrew Mayne (who Twitter-duced me to Justin). Be sure to check out their website if you’d like to see some cool and unexpected stuff!

Even better, he invited me along and then got me right into the Mashable Party, which had a line halfway around the block!

Daily Photo – The Rapture

The drive to Milford Sound is probably the prettiest in the world.  The landscapes were just outrageous.  It’s a 2-hour drive, but it took me about 5!

Along the way, the clouds and sun were doing some crazy things.  I drove down to the beach to grab this scene, just at the perfect time.