• SXSWi & Ze Frank follow up

    Posted on March 14th, 2007 by and currently 2 commenting.

    A few weeks ago, I blogged about heading to Austin for the creativity free-for-all that is the South by Southwest Festival and my excitement over the possibility of seeing Ze Frank in person. Here’s what transpired.

    Saturday night, after surviving SXSW registration, I joined a good percentage of the interactive community that had converged on Austin for a party hosted by Buzzfeed that would feature a live performance from Ze Frank. The registration process was a bit disorganized but featured amazing people watching as participants for 2 parts of the featival – interactive and film – share a line. I felt terribly square standing in between a woman sporting fuschia hair under what appeared to be a yarmulke and a guy who had stretched his earring hole so large that you could see daylight on the other side. Not your typical WOMMA gathering.
    Ze & VeeDub.JPGBut, back to the party. Ze is a very tall guy (he never looks tall in that tiny window on my laptop) and was immediately spottable on the roof of the Molotov Lounge. Flanked by Jake McKee, I started sidling his way. Happily, it was early enough in the night that he was not surrounded by the throngs of fans that circled him mfor the rest of the night. I had a chance to ask Ze some questions and wanted to share his thoughts (paraphrased as I was not organized enough to bring a recorder).

    Why did he start “the show”? - Ze had been doing consulting on conversational media for the television industry. He was frustrated by the fact that there was no shining example to point to of content so provocative and involving that it began a conversation and community. www.zefrank.com and the community of Sports Racers are now that example. He also said that this had fulfilled a personal creative desire.

    With the March 17 end date of “the show” looming large, can we expect a big finish? – No. Americans are “addicted to orgasm” and there is no way he can try to top some of the shows from the past two weeks. He mentioned the Jonathan Coulton show in particular.

    Why end it? It’s going so well. – While the show has made Ze a star in design and broader geek circles, it has also made him unemployable – the filming & editing of each show takes up to 7 hours meaning that he could show up at another job around 4pm. He’s found that most employers aren’t very excited about that. He’s looking forward to thinking about media in a broader strategic context.

    Ze went on to give a great show and be mobbed by interwebcybergroupies. I appreciate him giving me a few minutes earlier in the night and wish him the best post-Show.

    At the crack of 10 the next morning, I joined Community Guy Jake and representatives from Habbo Hotel, Suicide Girls (NSFW), and the Discovery Educator Network to talk about balancing the needs of brands with the needs of the communities that they created and host. Because of the wide spread of communities we represented, it was a very lively discussion with tons of questions from the audience. Hearing stories of other communities where members take out real life restraining orders against each other made me appreciate my dear Fiskateers even more.

    Check out Ze’s commentary on SXSW here.

    Check out Jake’s post on our Community Ecology panel here.

  • http://www.communityguy.com Jake McKee

    Glad he got to meet his biggest fan! :)

  • http://www.cricketschirping.com sean

    Hey I’m Adam’s friend, I think met standing in line- I’m glad you were sufficiently lucid to ask some interesting questsions (and remember the answers). By the time I got my photo op all I could say was “dude, you rock”