With the rise of online retailers and big box stores (Best Buy, etc.) and the general decline in hard copy sales of music, independent record stores have been shutting down at an alarming rate. Indie record stores, in addition to providing local and off-the-beaten-path music, are typically vibrant mini-communities within their larger, physical community.

So get out there and support your local indie record store today, Saturday, April 19, 2008! For more information, visit the Record Store Day site.

There you have it, SXSW 2008 by the bullet points. You can check out all my photos from this year over on Flickr.

DC Design Talks is the first of what we hope are many one-day, low-cost conferences for DC/Mid-Atlantic web folks by DC/Mid-Atlantic web folks. Should Design Talks go well (and we have no reason to believe it won’t), our goal is to put on three or four a year, each revolving around a theme (design, development, strategy, etc.). For each, we’ll gather some of the best local and regional talents in their discipline and arrange presentations on timely and relevant topics. Top it off with some great sponsorships from local businesses and you’ve got the makings of something special.

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m learning a lot about putting together a paid conference (first one I’ve ever done!), so please do bear with Jackson and I as we figure this whole thing out. We’ve been quite fortunate to have such an enthusiastic response from the community and our sponsors.

Expect plenty more to come. While you’re hanging out on the ol’ Internet, why not check out the DC Design Talks.

Samantha Warren has joined up with the fine folks at Viget Labs. Samantha’s a bad ass designer (just look at her site!) and an all around rock star.

Also switching it up is Justin Thorp, one of my co-conspirators (*ahem*, co-organizers) on BarCamp DC last year. Justin’s smart as all get out and he’s hooking up with Clearspring as a Community Manager. As I understand it, he’ll be an advocate for Clearspring’s widget platform and is charged with going out to the community and spreading the good word. That strikes me as right up his alley.

There’s a few other folks moving around, but I’m probably not allowed to speak about that. Congratulations to everyone! The DC area is really lighting up with opportunity.

I’ve long since warmed up to the concept and have posted nearly 3,000 largely nonsensical “tweets” in my time. It’s only been recently though that I’ve started to see the real power of the mass of information cycling through the service on a given day.

What if one could harness Twitter messages from the general populous based around a single topic or event? Enter Politweets, slapped together over a weekend or so by Doug, Gabe, Min, Dan, and myself. What Politweets is doing is observing Twitter for messages mentioning any of the Democrats or Republicans currently vying for their respective party’s nomination in the Presidential primaries.

We launched Politweets yesterday, focusing the launch date around the New Hampshire primaries. Clever, right? Anyway, the site gives you an absolute, up-to-the-second view of the political musings of the Twitterverse. I’ve frankly been astounded at some of the observations one can cram into 140 characters available. In addition to displaying lists of messages, we also keep track of the frequency candidates are mentioned (displayed in the center column of the main page).

Speaking for the rest of the crew, we’re all exceptionally proud of how this turned out. We’re far from done, though. We’re cooking up additional features that’ll help visitors drill down through the data and make some real sense out of the mash. It’s going to be good, rest assured.

Thus far we’ve gotten great reviews. A sampling of sites talking about Politweets:

• Politweets: Twittering Politics on ReadWriteWeb
• Politweets Tracks the Primaries. Why Didn’t Twitter Build This? on Mashable
• Politweets, a political buzz tracker based on Twitter on ZDNet

Heck, we even got a mention on Wired. Cool stuff.

The primaries are just heating up, so keep your eye on Politweets!

• Washington, DC (I live here-ish)
• Somewhere up in Maryland (for Mir’s one-and-only show)
• Austin, TX (South by Southwest)
• Nashville, TN (Ameriganzapalooza)
• Graceland, Memphis, TN (Ameriganzapalooza)
• Oklahoma City, OK (Ameriganzapalooza)
• Albuquerque, NM (Ameriganzapalooza)
• Grand Canyon, AZ (Ameriganzapalooza)
• Boulder City, NV (Ameriganzapalooza)
• Las Vegas, NV (Ameriganzapalooza)
• San Francisco, CA (Ameriganzapalooza)
• New York City, NY (Future of Web Design)
• Harrisonburg, VA (spoke to Grover’s web design class with Jeremy)
• Richmond, VA (my family lives there)

Looking back, it’s been a helluva year. I finally got to make that cross-country drive I’ve wanted to do since I read “On The Road” in high school (thanks Cindy!). I finally visited New York City (cool town, looking forward to going back). I’m indebted to all my friends and family near and far who’ve helped me out along the way. You guys are the best.

See you in ’08!

I found out a few weeks back (on a boat coming back from the Statue of Liberty, no less) that my (our) panel for South by Southwest was selected. I’m pretty excited about this, it’ll be my first time speaking at a large-scale conference and I’m honored to share the stage with Kevin, Cindy, Thomas, and Leslie.

So if you find yourself in Austin for SXSW, come out to our panel. More details once we know exactly when and where we’ll be speaking.

Mixx buttons!

A whole bunch of the DC crew is heading up to New York City for the Future of Web Design conference next week. Mixx is representing in a big way with myself and Alex in attendance. We’ll also be handing out the shiny new Mixx buttons seen above!

This will be my first time in the Big Apple (as preposterous as that sounds). Other than the conference (of course), I intend to hit up some record stores, see a show or two, and maybe go to Letterman. We’ll see what happens. Either way, it’s going to be a blast.

Mixx logo

I’m happy to announce (a few days late) that Mixx has gone beta and we’re slowly letting people in to hammer away on the system.

What is Mixx, you ask? Well, Mixx is what I’ve been working on for the last three months with my incredibly talented friends and co-workers. Mixx is our take on social news. We’ve drawn inspiration from sites such as Digg and My Yahoo! to create something new and (we think) unique. For those not familiar with those sites/services, the basics are:

• Anyone with an account can submit a link to the site, adding categories, tags, and locations to the story to help make the link more findable.
• Everyone else can vote the story, photo, or video up or down depending on how they feel about the link’s content.
• Anyone with an account can create private groups for sharing links between your friends or other real-world or online social groups (I created a Refresh DC group, for instance, for sharing links with local web designers and developers).
• Users can also customize their “YourMixx” page (essentially your homepage on the site) by browsing around the site and clicking “Add to YourMixx” buttons.

These are just the basics, there’s a whole host of other features and design niceties that I’ll talk about more in other posts. In this post, I wanted to give a brief overview of what I’ve been working on (and why a lot of you haven’t heard form me!).

Some of you more web-savvy users out there will likely decry Mixx as a “clone” or “copycat” of the services I’ve mentioned above. To you, I say this: fine. If your news needs are being filled by another service, that’s great. The web is a large enough community that there’s room for everyone. Some will be more successful than others, yes. It is my firm belief, however, that building a pleasant, self-governing community is more important than having the most users, page views, or whatever other metric you wish to apply.

Stepping down from that small soapbox, I’d encourage everyone to go visit Mixx, throw your email address our way, and we’ll let you in on the ground floor. We’re looking to beta test for about a month or so with a full-scale launch sometime in October. We’re also really looking for useful critiques and feedback during this beta testing period, so if you’re in the beta, please (pretty please?) let us know what you think. The site’s for you, after all.

This should be a ton of fun and will go a long way to building community. Not every event has to be lectures, after all. I hope to see everyone out and having a good time next week!