Wow. I am finally getting this up.  I wanted to do this blog forever ago and I probably should have considering I passed out my card to some of the biggest social networking geeks on the planet.  The guy who runs all of the web content for Village Voice Media (Including he LA Weekly where some of these photos were already published) asked me to come out to the Mashable party at Buffalo Billiards.  It was really the first party I shot at SXSW and I have to say that it might have been the best one.  When I walked in I told my editor that I didn’t know what I could possibly shoot and make interesting at a tech event.  There weren’t a lot of half naked girls, no fights, no crazy fashion, nothing… but what I soon realized is that these dudes party harder than anyone.

Before I go any further I have to say that if I sound like I am talking down to tech geeks, I am not. Anything I say that sounds patronizing or sarcastic is meant with all sincerity.  I am a tech geek really, at least a web geek.  I spent 8 hours a day online and I have been running websites since 1997.  I read Boing Boing daily, have 6 Twitter accounts own more than 30 domain names. I can hand code HTML and I use both Adobe CS and Photoshop 5.5. Yeah, that’s right, I do all my batch stuff with 5 point motherfucking 5.  And you know what? I still own a 1200 baud modem. Oh yeah, you remember 24k? This is 1.2k motherfucker. I still have a copy of AOHell on floppy disk. What?

So, now that hat has been said, these nerds know how to fucking party.  It may have been the 2 free Monster energy drinks I chugged in under 5 minutes but this party was so much fun.  I have to imagine that tech people don’t spend a lot of time at night clubs.  The week of South By Southwest Interactive is their time to party and party they did.  The dance floor was like an awkward senior prom at first, but then as the night progressed it morphed into an awkward wedding reception.  It honestly very much reminded me of when I went to my cousins wedding in November and at first everyone was just standing around with a few weirdos dancing until everyone had a few drinks and all of a sudden my parents were doing the YMCA dance.  I had never seen my parents dance before that night, and to the same degree I have a feeling that many in the Mashable crowd had never danced… ever.

I have to give all the credit to DJ Chicken George for knowing how to make awkward white people dance like no other DJ I have ever seen. He went from Rob Base’s “It Takes Two” into Bel Biv Davoe’s “Poison” and then moved straight into “The Humpty Dance” with out blinking.  The guy was on point playing all the 80’s hits that none of these people listened to until the relived their missing youth by downloading 80’s Hip Hop Jams on Napster. It was epic. At one point I was trying to get people to do the electric slide and it would have worked, but evidently it’s pretty hard to do the Electric Slide to “Ain’t Nothin’ But A G Thang”.

Now, as much as I am joking around the party was super fun, I had a bunch of conversations with some extremely interesting people doing things in tech that I could not even imagine. I get emails from time to time from people who tell me that they check my blog to see what the kids in NYC are wearing.  The kids at the parties I shoot are telling the rest of the world what’s cool, what music to listen to, and how to dress, but the kids at the Mashable party are controling the rest of the world.  These people can start a trending topic on Twitter with 140 key strokes. These are the people who are making the future and creating things that you don’t know exist but won’t be able to live without. And it’s good to know, like anyone else, when they get a few drinks in them they can bust a move like any young MC in the club.

I left the party nearly 30 minutes after it was supposed to have ended and it was still packed. I almost can’t wait for SXSW next year so I can attend a lot more tech parties and hand out a lot more business cards…

Speaking of business, if any of the fine social networking super stars and tech wizards I met last month are reading this… How about a quick RT or blog?  Maybe follow me on Tumblr or Twitter? All of that would be really 1337 of you…

 Click here to see all the crazy dance party time from the Mashable SXSWi party at Buffalo Billiards!

Comments (2)