Rocking the vote

We learned this week that there is a good chance we'll be part of a panel discussion on Technomadism at SXSW next March.

If you are thinking, "Techno-what-ism at xyzzy HUH?" I'll try to explain.

SXSW stands for "South by Southwest" and is an annual festival in Austin, TX. The organizers call it a

...unique convergence of original music, independent films, and emerging technologies...fostering creative and professional growth.

Translation: a big party. Spring break for nerds. We've heard really great things about SXSW and have had a hankering to go for a couple of years. For, uh, the professional growth.

Technomadism, coined by Chris and Cherie, is a portmanteau of technology and nomad, and means the lifestyle of geeks on the road. Nerds to go. Buses and RVs and boats full of computers, GPS and other digital goodies. Karen Nace describes a technomad as "someone who lives a fully mobile lifestyle while using technology to make that possible." Hey, we know a few folks doing something similar!

Cherie and Chris have put together a proposal for discussing exactly that digital-on-the-go lifestyle at SXSW, and asked us to participate. Karen will be on the panel, as well as her partner Ben, and the Boyinks family.

Since lots of panels are proposed for SXSW, community support is vital to the selection process. Will you please vote for our panel and help get it approved? The voting page is HERE. Just click on the "thumbs up" icon at the top of the page to show your support. You don't need to register just to vote, but if you'd like to leave a wildly enthusiastic comment you will need to create an account. Comments help the selection committee choose the final panels. Even if you have no plans to attend SXSW, the committee wants to hear from you. According to the PanelPicker FAQ, "Rallying your friends and associates to vote for your panel proposal demonstrates energy, motivation and organizational ability. All of these skills are important when it comes to organizing a successful panel for SXSW."

We're looking forward to seeing Ben, Karen, Cherie, and Chris again in Austin, and meeting the Boyinks for the first time. If you think you might be at SXSW, leave a shout-out here in the comments. And please, please vote. Thanks!

(Edited on Saturday: The panelpicker page seems to be down. If you get an error when you try to view our panel, please try again later.)

Comments akimbo

We are still at the Elks lodge in Austin. We've had a great time touring the city on the extensive and well-run transit system, and have even managed to hit most of the restaurants on our friend Charles' list. We need to head out today to dump our tanks and do laundry -- I'm not sure where we will end up tonight. Louise flies out tomorrow for California, and I will probably try to park behind Lowe's to get some projects done.

I have received quite a number of private emails, along with a couple of comments posted here on blogspot, regarding various aspects of Friday's extremely lengthy post. In hindsight, I should have posted each of the various topics that day separately, so that I could link to them later individually. If I get the time in the next day or so, I may go back and break it up into several discreet posts. I'm not sure what that will do to those of you who get this blog via RSS -- I apologize in advance if you end up getting the whole tract all over again, in small pieces. In any case, thanks, everyone, for your support.

In other news, we are the "Member Spotlight" this month on the FMCA web site.

Miss May

We just had a visit from the very apologetic editor of Bus Conversions magazine. As I have chronicled here previously, Odyssey is the centerfold article for the May issue. It seems there has been some sort of transcription error in the editorial process, and the article, as printed, is not what we submitted. I'm actually afraid to even read it, but I am given to understand that there are a number of spelling and grammatical errors, and perhaps some of the text was deleted and/or some previously deleted text has been re-inserted. I am told that the end result is bad enough that a written apology from the editor herself is forthcoming in the June issue.

I have posted the original, correct, and unedited article on our web site, here.

There is a saying in the computer business that "to err is human; to really foul things up requires a computer." This is an apt description of what happened to our article.

Louise and I wrote the article using Microsoft Word. While I loathe Microsoft products in general, we use Windows out of necessity (the software that runs our satellite, does our mapping and navigation, and organizes our calendars, among other tasks, runs on nothing else), and Word happened to be pre-loaded (and is a de-facto standard anyway). We used the change-tracking and collaboration features of Word as we worked together to create a polished finished product.

When we were done, I spoke to the editorial staff at the magazine, who allowed that they actually preferred to receive copy in Word. So we made a final proof, and sent the finished article to them. It was spell-checked and grammatically correct. More importantly, it flowed well and seemed to us to be a good, well-written article.

The article we sent, of course, had change-tracking turned off, because it was a final copy. Word, however, in its infinite wisdom, still has all the changes ever made to the document stored within. In hindsight, there are ways to force Word to "accept" the changes permanently, which we should have effected, though they don't ever seem to go away from the raw document.

In any case, the staff at the magazine apparently had change-tracking turned on, either in the on-screen display or in the printed document. The result was, to them, a confusing array of red-lines, cross-outs, additions in multiple colors (how Word identifies different collaborators), and the like. This could easily have been fixed with a simple phone call, wherein I would have explained change-tracking to them and how to turn it back off, or perhaps I could have sent them the correct text in a different format. In fact, I placed at least three follow-up calls and sent two follow-up emails to make sure that all the materials were received in readable condition and that there were no questions on anything we had submitted.

What happened instead is that the staff at the magazine took the red-lined version, which, I have to say, even I could not make sense of if I had it sitting in front of me, and re-typed the entire article. Thus introducing the aforementioned spelling and grammatical errors. And, perhaps, re-adding formerly deleted text, and/or omitting current changes that were, possibly, in a different color. I can only imagine how the end result reads... at some point, I will have to work up the courage to open the magazine and read it for myself.

For now, I think I will have another Chianti.