SXSW 09: The Aftermath

The Squarespace crew hit up Austin (and hit it HARD) for this year’s SXSW Interactive Conference.

After a few days of non-stop networking/shmoozing/panels and parties, Anthony, Dane, Tyler and Davin are back in the saddle here in NYC. They made lots of new friends (well, except for Tyler), met some cool Squarespace users, learned how to breathe fire, build robots, play the guitar just like Jonathan Coulton AND had a totally rad time with the Totally Rad Show/Revision3 crew at our joint shindig on March 17th.

We thought it might be fun if each of the guys gave you their own SXSW highlights, so I asked them all to answer the same few questions:

Anthony Casalena, Founder:

* Who was the most rad/interesting/unexpectedly awesome person you met?                                

I loved meeting Brian Brushwood in person (I watch his Scam School show in Revision3).  David Prager from R3 was also great to catch up with.  They’re doing a great job.

* Craziest SXSW moment?
Finding out from Davin that NASA engineers are using ideas from our UI as a model for astronaut heads up displays (!!??).  Was also fun sneaking a few underage Digg fans through the Malverde back door.

* Sum up the Squarespace/Totally Rad Show party in 10 words or less:

Epic.

Dane Atkinson, CEO:

* Who was the most rad/interesting/unexpectedly awesome person you met?

I have to agree with Anthony: Brian Brushwood.  He can breathe both fire AND water! Jonathan Coulton also made grown men cry with songs about Zombies; and the TRS guys were just as cool in person.

* Craziest SXSW moment?

While we were on the expo floor researching some other hosting partners, I overheard the man next to me say “I don’t see how you’re better then Squarespace? If you can show me that we can talk.” Needless to say, they couldn’t.  Not to mention hanging with the most amazing podcasters from Cali Lewis to Tom Merritt. Catching up with our friends and making new ones.

* Sum up the Squarespace/Totally Rad Show party in 10 words or less:

The backdrop of an Austin sunset, while listening to Code Monkey and the D&D film review crowd chanting “Squarespace Squarespace!” A memory never to be lost! (oh wait…how many words was that??)

Tyler Thompson, Creative Director:

* Who was the most rad/interesting/unexpectedly awesome person you met?
Gary Vaynerchuck. I love this guy and his message: “You can’t fake hard work.” He is, hands down, the hardest working guy on the internet right now. I also love that he is bringing wine to the masses.

* Which new company/site are you most excited to watch blow up in the months to come?
Fennec (Firefox mobile browser). Glad to see some decent mobile browsers to help put a fire under Safari’s ass.

* Craziest SXSW moment?
Sake bombs and eating hot dogs in taxi cabs.

* Sum up the Squarespace/Totally Rad Show party in 10 words or less:
Amazing spot, fire eating, banners and projectors.

Davin Chew, Engineering Director:

* Who was the most rad/interesting/unexpectedly awesome person you met?
It was amazing meeting Jonathan Coulton and listening to his music live.  Who else is going to write a song about code monkeys?  The whole Revision3 team was unexpectedly awesome and down-to-earth in person.

* Which new company/site are you most excited to watch blow up in the months to come?

Good luck to the fliggo guys!

* Craziest SXSW moment?

Sake bombs at Kenichi, watching someone who shall remain nameless almost get into a street fight, our epic shuffleboard match, the fire marshall showing up and regulating our party, and the number 147.

* Sum up the Squarespace/Totally Rad Show party in 10 words or less:

Climbing ladders, annoying projectors, loud bands and fanatical fans.

Sounds like everything was pretty South by South Awesome! (did everyone out in the Squarespace-a-verse have fun??)

See you in Austin next year!

Squarespace Hack: ESC + 1, 2, 3, 4

Every once in awhile, we’ll drop some of our fave quick hit Squarespace tips/tricks/hacks for all you inquiring minds that want to know…a Squarespace “duh,” if you will.

Now that we’ve all gotten chummy with our ESC key (thanks to that supafly login trick!), we thought it was time to get REAL advanced. So here’s one more trick that is sure to blow your mind: ESC + 1, 2, 3, 4 to cycle through editing modes.

The numbers correspond to the order of the editing modes, as pictured on the top of your admin screen.

So, let’s say you’re in Content Editing Mode and you want to bounce on down to Structure Editing, you’d hit ESC + 2 at the same time and BOOM! 

Or maybe you are in Structure Editing mode and you want to jump into Preview Website: ESC + 4 will get you there.

OH WAIT! You’re in Preview mode and you wanna hop on back to Content Editing mode, ESC + 1 is your ticket.

Wow, counting is actually kinda fun!

What are some of your favorite Squarespace Hacks?

What's Going On In The Squarespace-A-Verse?

 Here’s the latest and greatest on all of the fun stuff going on in the Squarespace-a-verse:

 Bre Pettis is human…but he makes robots that are definitely not human (we think). On Bre’s blog Things, he teaches us about all sorts of…well…things. Like crying while cutting onions and, our personal fave, the difference between a nerd and a geek.

 Bre makes lots of fun videos too. Including this one featuring Eric Skiff’s super cool binary finger counting method (which was recently featured on Wired).

Check out bre’s stats from his dug article.On the second day after moving his blog over from Wordpress, one of Bre’s vids landed on the homepage of Digg, causing a Mt. Everest spike in traffic. Needless to say, Squarespace didn’t even blink, and the Things blog kept chugging along like nothing ever happened.

Robots everywhere rejoiced!

Check out these other rad Squarespace sites:

 + Valiant Entertainment is a top 5 comic book publisher, whose characters have sold 80 million comic books and over 8 million video games. In addition, the Valiant characters are often called “the most important characters created since the Marvel revolution of the 1960s” (uh…not too shabby!).

 + Gary Rosenzweig at MacMost did a great video on how easy it is to set up a Squarespace site. He also moved his own blog, Rosenz.com, straight on into the Squarespace-a-verse. Schwing!

 + Josh Flanagan is one of the hosts of iFanboy. And in case you didn’t get the memo, iFanboy is one of the most popular comic book podcasts on the dub dub dub. He also has an adorable dog named George and, apparently, is one of Domino Pizza’s best customers in all of Astoria. Tres impressive, Josh.

 + Area 5 TV is the site for the brand spankin new Revision3 show CO-OP. CO-OP is a weekly webisode that plans to dive head first into everything and anything going down in the world of gaming. After importing their blog to their new site, show host Matt Chandronait got the following tattooed on his arm: “we don’t need a Wordpress login anymore!” (ok, he didn’t really get that tattoo…but he SAID it! We swear!).

See ya round the Squarespace-a-verse!

Squarespace Hack: ESC to Login

Every once in awhile, we’ll drop some of our fave quick hit Squarespace tips/tricks/hacks for all you inquiring minds that want to know…a Squarespace “duh,” if you will.

Tyler taught me this trick the other day, and not to get all dramatic, but its kind of changed my life: ESC to login from any screen on your Squarespace site! This works from A-N-Y page on your site…just hit ESC, and tada, a login screen will pop up.

You know where I was going!?—to the Squarespace home page! [you hear that?? That’s the sound of everyone in the office laughing their faces off at me].

Bonus: Under your “website managment” dashboard, there are some rad login/logout buttons you can simply drag to your browser toolbar. They’re under “tools and goodies” in the Support column (all the way over the right).

What are some of your favorite Squarespace Hacks?

Squarespace + SXSW

Squarespace is gearing up to join the biggest and baddest creative minds in the worlds of film, music and web 2.0 down in Austin, TX for the SXSW Festival.

Anthony, Dane, Davin, Lana and Tyler are super excited to head down to the lonestar state and jump feet first into SXSW Interactive from March 15-17. On the agenda: meeting lots of new interesting folks, hitting up all the best panel discussions and, of course, enjoying lots and lots of parties.

In fact, Squarespace is teaming up with our friends from Totally Rad Show 2.0 for a knock down, drag out, no holds barred party on March 17 at 7pm @ Malverde (400B W. 2nd Street) and, trust us, you won’t want to miss this shindig. We’ll have live music, live Squarespacers, drinks, food and more fun than you’ll know what to do with.

Totally Rad Show will taping a live episode right before the festivities get underway, AND our good friend Bre Pettis will be hosting a Robot Builders meetup (and releasing details about a super secret project he’s been working on!).

We’ve been busily planning this rager for months now, and we can’t wait to let loose with new friends and old, SXSW style.

If you plan on attending, please @ us up on Twitter or leave a comment below. We’d love to connect with as many SXSWers in the Squarespace community as we can…and also, we promise not to bite.

Squarespace @ SXSW:

+ Follow Squarespace on Twitter: @acasalena (Anthony); @daneatkinson (Dane); @Tyler_Thompson (Tyler); @davinchew (Davin). This is where we’ll have all our most up-to-date info on the comings and goings of the Squarespace crew.

+ AND here on our Squarespace Blog - we’ll be posting updates throughout the event.

+ March 17: Squarespace Party with Totally Rad Show 2.0 @ Malverde:

* 3pm - Bre Pettis will host a “Robot Builders of the World Unite” meetup;

* 5pm - Johanthan Coulton will play a little and join in the show;

* 6pm - Live taping of Revision3’s Totally Rad Show;

* 7pm - The Last Place You Look will perform and the party will get rockin!

See you down in TX, y’all.