It had a great premise: there was a “timequake” and we had to relive the past 10 years. Everything you did last time, you had to do this time (no free will). You know exactly what’s going to happen but have to say and do it all over.

People got used to being on autopilot, and disaster struck when the timequake ended and free will returned. People just sat in their cars as they crashed into walls, not knowing they were in control. Everyone had to be “woken up” from their daze and start living.

I’m always amazed at how many people are living their lives as a timequake. They have the exact same weekly schedule, never seeking randomness or new experiences. If a timequake hit, they wouldn’t know because they are already on autopilot.

2008 was a great year for me because of randomness. My friend Todd Huffman inspired me to be more open to randomness, and so much good has come from it. When I’m traveling, I post to twitter “I’m in [some city], anyone want to meet up?” – and I’ve met so many interesting people this way. I’ve also increased my traveling; any time I’m not in school (and sometimes when I should be) I’m usually flying or driving somewhere.

I encourage everyone to give randomness a try. If you’re invited to some event or gathering, don’t find a reason not to go; find a way to fit it in your schedule. You never know what great things will happen.

(By the way, the above photo was from a Robot fight put on by Cody Marx Bailey to launch Youth Inspired Robots. These are the kind of random events I’m always looking for.)

The BIL conference was a huge success! People came, saw, and learned! And HELPED! And heckled! And spoke, and listened, and shared! And they were FREE! …

What utterly chaotic noise, what focus, what network, what beautiful minds and new friends!

I don’t remember when I was last so engaged by so many brilliant input streams!

- savorie, on her experience at the BIL Conference

How do you organize an event that has that kind of effect on people? I don’t think you can design it; it must be spontaneous, authentic, and emergent from the community. Just as the culture of a city like Austin or Boulder isn’t created by a specific person, it emerges from everyone involved.

Part of BIL’s success was that no one had any expectations of what was to come. We thought, “If 10 interesting people show up, that will be great!” When 300 from all walks of life showed up, it was unreal.

BIL2009 might have over 1000 people in attendance, and we’re a bit worried about maintaining the culture and experience as this grows. There’s both the organizational issues as well as the more fundamental participation issues (larger the group, more passive they become).

One thing we found was that certain aspects of an unconference don’t scale well. The BIL schedule was organized BarCamp-style with a large whiteboard. Within 2 minutes, the schedule for both days was completely full. There were some great speakers who didn’t get to share their ideas in the main room. The larger the group, the more of a problem this will become.

We also had some fun with wiki-based organization. The day of the conference, the wiki was changing so much that we had difficulty keeping the important information always accessible. While it’s important that everyone can be involved, there needs to be some organization for everything to work out. Again, this becomes even more important as the grows.

I’d like to share with the community what we’re planning to do to ensure this emergent, ephemeral experience can scale. I’d love it if you guys could share your thoughts on it.

1. Voting for the main room. A month or two before the conference, we’ll ask people to post what they’d like to discuss, and have a SXSW-style vote for the best talks. Clay Shirky suggested we have an “interestingness” rank based on views, comments, and votes. Once we sort them by interestingness, we might add and remove a few to make sure we have a diverse set of talks.
2. Short talks and long talks. We’ll have 15-20 minute talks in the main room, which holds about 1500 people. Right after the talk, the speaker can move to a smaller room (100-200 people) for a more indepth and personal talk for 30-60 minutes. Then the speaker and crowd can head down to the game room and common areas.
3. Whiteboard for small rooms. We’ll also have a bunch of smaller rooms that have Whiteboard schedules, like the original BIL.

We want to make sure anyone who wants to share an idea has somewhere to do it. We also believe that the smaller group discussions are much more valuable than the big, main room presentations. We’ll have Revision3 filming all the main room talks, so you can always catch up on what you missed later.

Don’t sit back and passively watch big talks in the main room. Watch these quick talks until something catches your interest, then follow that speaker and the ad-hoc group that forms around him for a great discussion. When you lose interest, break off and find another small group, or start your own talk.

So that’s the current plan. What do you guys think of it? Any suggestions or ideas?

(By the way, BIL2009 will be in Long Beach, CA February 7-8. Get on the mailing list if you’re interested.)

Knowing that I’ve always wanted to be at Oxford, my Mom had saved an ad in a magazine about The Oxford Experience. Of course I didn’t see the advert until the final day for applications, so within an hour of reading about it I sent in my application.

The Oxford Experience is a summer program where you study one course for one week at Christ Church in a class of 6-12 students. The ages of the students range from 20 to 80+, with a majority of the students being older and already retired. You don’t receive university credit for the course (it’s only a week long), which is why there aren’t too many younger students.

I took Moral Philosophy – one of my favorite subjects. People often ask my why I prefer philosophy over business or computer science. Entrepreneurs seek to change the world, and philosophers seek to understand it. I find entrepreneurship and philosophy quite similar. I also love philosophy because no matter how many times you take it, you learn something new. Most the learning comes from the great discussions you have, which is why it’s important to study it with a great group of people. Here’s a photo of my class:

I stayed on campus in the student housing, which is much better than the on-campus housing here at Texas A&M. I had a bedroom and a reading room all to myself, and some people even had pianos in their reading room. Every meal is eaten in the Great Hall – the same dining hall where Harry Potter was filmed.

The typical day started with breakfast in the Great Hall, followed by class from 9a-12:45p (with a tea break in the middle), lunch in the Great Hall, then the afternoon free, and dinner in the Great Hall.

Every dinner was a 3 or 4 course meal, and everything tasted amazing. I spent the afternoons doing tours of the campus, exploring the many gardens, and reading.

I encourage anyone interested to spend the summer at Oxford. It’s only £980/week, which is quite reasonable considering what you get. Here’s the Oxford Experience Flyer if you’re interested.

While I always wanted to go to Oxford, I feared it might not live up to my high hopes of a true university environment (like Texas A&M). I took this week-long course to see if I’d be comfortable getting a graduate degree here, and I found it even better than I hoped.

Right now my plan is to graduate from Texas A&M this year, then spend a few years doing consulting or doing a startup (possibly in Boulder), and then go back to Oxford for a Masters in Philosophy.

I’ve been in London for the past week. I love it here, and I might be living here next summer (either here or Sydney, Australia).

I haven’t taken my camera out much or done the tourist thing since I did that last time I was here. Mostly I’ve just been walking around the city, hanging out with friends, and doing a little bit of shopping.

Be back in College Station next week, and we’ll be moving into our new office – The Creative Space.

I’m up at Lake Travis for the week. I was hoping to go out wakeboarding, but the lake is up so high that they’ve closed it. Here’s a shot of our park – notice the swings in the background. The driving range at the golf course is completely underwater, so we weren’t able to warm up before golfing today.

Here’s one of me feeding a deer on our driveway. The photo came out pretty cool.

If you’re in Austin this week (whurley?) give me a call.

He was walking across the road right as I drove up, so I got out and moved him to the grass. I waited a few minutes to see him pop his head out but he wouldn’t – stubborn little guy.

The lake, with a little bit of the golf course. The course used to be private but they didn’t have enough members, so now it’s closed. No one will buy it so we haven’t been able to play on it for the past two years.

A few photos I took this Easter (more here). It was actually snowing for a while, which is a first for Easter here in Austin. I went down to the lake to take a few photos because it looked surreal.

Thursday, Mar 15

Today’s my birthday! We took a break today from skiing to recover. I also sold iPod in car.net (more info here). Fun day.

Wednesday, Mar 14

No photos for today. Skied the blacks and double blacks with my little brother. We’re totally worn out so we’re taking tomorrow (my birthday!) off.

Tuesday, Mar 13

The weather here is amazing; today I skied in a long-sleeve shirt, and most of the time I didn’t even wear gloves. But no matter how warm it is, you should always wear gloves on double blacks…I went bare-handed and now I have a few cuts across my knuckles. Fun, but tiring. I’m worn out.

Monday, Mar 12

Skiing today was great! The weather was perfect (almost too perfect, was getting a little hot in my ski jacket) and the runs were a lot of fun. We took it easy (mostly blues) because my brother was snowboarding. Tomorrow he’s going to ski and we’ll probably take on some blacks and double blacks. Last time I was here the bowls were amazing; hope they are as good as I remember.

Sunday, Mar 11

We didn’t get a chance to ski today. We spent most of the day going to the grocery store, getting lift tickets, and just walking around Downtown Breckenridge. Drew and I spent some time in this nice little coffeehouse and played poker. But tomorrow we’ll get to go skiing – can’t wait.

Saturday, Mar 10

Driving to Breckenridge, we got stuck in some pretty bad I70 traffic. There was an accident after the Eisenhower Tunnel, and when we got there (like 3 hours after the accident) the traffic was still completely stopped. We were stopped for about two hours.

BUT, we finally made it to Breckenridge. Despite the traffic, I love Colorado.

Other than missing out on all the cool discussions and people, SXSW would have helped out my summer a bunch. All the British designers come over for it, and I’m trying to get a job over there this summer. Emailing all the Brits I know doesn’t seem to be working very well, and I’ve talked to a few recruiters over there that say “When you get here come talk to me and I’ll find you a job.” I really can’t fly over there and rent a place for the summer without a job already lined up. I’m a college student with limited funds; I think I can last in London for maybe two weeks without a job.

So if you’re in London and you’re reading this (what’s the chances of that, I set up this blog about two weeks ago, I don’t think anyone reads it) check out my porfolio and CV on the left and send me an email. Even if you can’t hire me, I’m just looking to make contact with as many people as I can over there. I’m probably going to be in London at the end of February to walk the streets looking for a job/house, so a meetup would be great. I’m hoping to grab lunch one of those days with Hugh MacLeod (one of my favorite bloggers/marketers/illustrators ) but I’ve never even talked to him so who knows.

Oh, and I’m not going to break my trend of sticking a picture in every post – here’s a shot of my salt and pepper shakers:

Brittany and I went to see Subject to Fits over at the Alley Theatre in Houston this Saturday. It was a great play based on Dostoevsky’s “The Idiot” (I’m not going to write a full review, the Houston Chronicle did a great job of that). They say you don’t need to have read the book to see the play – it stands up on its own – and I agree; but I’ve read through half of the book and that made it a lot easier to understand.

The play was basically what is left in Mr. Montgomery’s (the playwright) head after reading The Idiot. Like the beginning of the play, it was really 5 different parts of the book all put together – like how after reading a book parts of it all blend together. It also had some memorable quotes from the book, like (and this isn’t a direct quote, I don’t remember the exact words):

Natasha: Do you think life is overly joyful?

Myskin: I find it rather normal, for I have nothing else to compare it to.

I thought it was a fun play and hopefully I’ll have time to finish the book soon.