I’m walking down a closed off Sixth Street, it’s 6pm and the street is packed and smells of heat dried booze and Kabobalicious wrappers. I’m already deep into my seventh or eighth drink of the day and trying to maneuver through the sweaty mob without ever looking up from my iPhone. They say that when you lose one of your senses that the others are heightened to compensate for this loss. I have lost my ability to take my eyes off of my iPhone, which means that my body has naturally taught itself to parade through a crowd without ever looking up. This is South by Southwest and there is a lot of business to be done. And, of course, by “business” I mean “networking” and by “networking” I mean having an excuse to get drunk with every major record label and production company executive in the nation, all within the course of a week. Organizing this kind of networking booze and schmooze is no easy feat, which is why I’m simultaneously having 30-50 conversations at the same time via text message, while I feverishly enter party times and venues into my iCalendar. The iPhone has changed the way I live my life. And I’m not just talking about raising the efficiency of my networking skills.

It’s 2am on a Friday night and while many of the bars are closing down, the ones I want to go to are just now opening. That’s the advantage of attending an event with after hours parties all sponsored by Red Bull. The down side being that injecting that much Red Bull into your body in so short a period of time can make your texting thumbs a little jumpy and the iPhone starts predicting words that you might have wished it didn’t. I’m sure Steve Jobs will figure this one out soon enough. As I pound Red Bull number six of the day, I’m texting back in forth with a lovely young lady I met the night before. Of course, she and her friends, like anyone else addicted to fun, are headed to yet another Red Bull party on the East End. We’ve been back and forth in text convo for the past 14 hours and while I’ve only met her once, and I never rearranged my schedule to do so, I feel like I now know her better than anyone. In saying this, I could be right. You see, the thing with falling in love via different forms of social media is that it is easy to get right to the point of things. When you have a few seconds to choose your words, questions and answers wisely, then getting to core information like birth date, place and time are questions that don’t seem inappropriate at all. Of course, this can then be plugged into an Astrology chart reader via Safari and voila! You now know that this is the person you’ll spend the rest of your life with, the stars have predestined it.

Okay, so perhaps its not exactly like that, but it’s similar. If I meet someone at a bar and we communicate the way that people traditionally do, then it could take me months before I figure out if that person is even someone that I want to hang out with, much less fall in love. But, if I implement a little text message Q&A, then without wasting any time whatsoever, I can ultimately learn as much about a person as I want to, or as they are willing to share. Over the course of 14 hours, I was able to learn more about this particular girl then I knew about previous girls that I had dated for months. Because of text messaging, I was able to get ALL of the formalities and “Hi, how are ya’s?” out of the way and move directly into the “So, we’re pretty compatible…” stage of our relationship. Is this the future of dating? Are text messages the new love letter?

I like to consider myself quite the romantic and I’ve been known to write my fair share of love letters in the past. That’s just something that I enjoy. But, in the past, even via mediums like email, Facebook and MySpace, it still takes a long time to get to know someone well. God forbid I go to the grandiose gesture of hand writing all of those letters, it would take me years to really get to know someone and in the letter format, it’s way too easy to build a romantic caricature of yourself. Which means, when you finally do hang out with this person, they aren’t who you thought they were a lot of the time. With text messaging that is also true, but not nearly to the same extent. Text messaging allows that you are much more candid, but still comfortable. I can’t spend an hour carefully crafting my answers in a text message, or I could, but it wouldn’t make for much of a conversation. Text messaging takes all of the positive things of writing a love letter and all of the positive things of getting to know someone and combines the two so that everyone can decide if they really like each other in a time period that is much more conducive to our run and gun society.

So, can you fall in love via a text message? I think I might have already fallen in love several times through text messages. But, if nothing else, I have certainly created a much stronger bond with people in a much shorter period of time. And, at the same time, I have opened up a very efficient line of communication. Over the past month, I have started communicating with many clients via text message and find it to be much more efficient than email or phone conversations. Text messaging has in a matter of weeks completely streamlined the way that I do business and interact with clients. Of course, there is a time and place for face to face meetings and phone conferences and MySpace and Facebook. But, I’ve been amazed at how much and how quickly information can be communicated through a simple text message. In under five text messages, I can communicate the equivalent of ten back and forth emails and completely cut out any of the fat. Text messaging makes business and personal interactions lean, which allows me more time to put towards providing my clients with more value, or falling in love with strangers.

Send me a text and find out what I’m talking about first hand…512.785.9160.

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*Dustin Doering, John Erik Metcalf, Bianca Malinowski & Jon Ray do some “networking.”

The drizzle coming from above head is accumulating on the shoulders of my plaid sport jacket. This wouldn’t upset me so much had it not just come from the dry cleaners only hours before. I’m whining while watching a bouncer meticulously study my driver’s license outside Pangea, the trendy “I’m in Africa, no wait…New York…who cares, they say it’s cool” night club which took over the former Alamo Drafthouse location in downtown Austin.

I hate waiting behind velvet ropes, but such is the price we pay while working our way up through the ranks of celebrity. Perhaps one day. I hold my breath. Walking up the stairs that lead to the club, I’m instantly greeted by one of several beautiful blonde hosts, “How are you boys tonight?” At first, I’m frightened. This type of upfront swooning is the type of thing you usually expect to find just before you pull out four hundred dollars from a corner ATM to blow on “entertainment” for you and those lucky enough to be sitting at your table. What was I walking into?

After getting outfitted with a color-coded name tag that lets everyone there know who I am, what I do and how much money I made last year, I head for the bar. A couple thousand other people had the same idea, so I find myself “excusing” and “pardoning” my way through a sea of people arguing about PR versus marketing, whether social media has any real merit and how successful or unsuccessful Coca-Cola has been with their Second Life efforts. I bite my tongue until it bleeds, refusing to jump into debate until I have a drink in hand.

A girl recognizes me and based on the way she says hello, I realize that this must be someone that I’ve never met in person, but vaguely spoken with over the internet. I picture myself in an iPhone commercial, speaking about how I pulled up her Facebook account just before she approached me and without missing a beat I knew exactly who she was, but it’s too late. “Hey, Jon!” I fumble around for small talk and then her name comes to me and we are lost in conversation for the next ten minutes. Glad to have found a friend, but still eager for a drink, I eye an opening at the bar and jump at it.

As the bar makes my drink (Jager with a 7&7 chaser), I lean against the bar and for the first time have an opportunity to survey the scene. The tribal themed club is packed with the Who’s Who of Austin’s geek chic. There’s a slight segregation in the massive room between two groups. The first; ladder-climbers holding business degrees, wear cocktail dresses or slacks, button downs and designer ties, while speaking of promotions, new hires and lost accounts. They are networking animals, bred for this occasion. Each, one of Susan RoAne’s perfect specimens, their starched collars moving across the room like pieces on a chess board. Business cards in Eggshell, set with Romalian type. The second; the bad boys of Web 2.0, still in sunglasses, though it’s raining and the sun went down hours ago. European jeans, logo-free track jackets, Bill Blass shirts and skinny ties, loosely tied, edges meticulously frayed to pass as vintage give this breed of networkers confidence to argue any issue, any time, no matter how little they know about it. When they leave, they’ll set up their gear and play a house party. Directions will be communicated through a mobile Twitter account. This is NetParty.

NetParty is a mix of business and social networking events, held after-work at nightclubs, lounges, mansions and other cool venues (like Pangea), attended by hundreds of young professionals and designed to make it easy to make new contacts and new friends. I once walked into what I thought was a NetParty event, but it turned out to be a Foot Clan block party in Shredder’s lair. You can understand my logic, though, as I wouldn’t be thrown off in the least if I showed up to NetParty and found myself dropping into a homemade skateboard park. It’s just that kind of party. Everyone is young. Everyone likes to drink. Everyone has an opinion they are willing to defend to the death! How can you go wrong?

I throw the Jager to the back of my throat and slam the glass down on the bar. A legal receptionist/Kindergarten teacher/”just working my way through school, then quitting” type looks at me and smiles and I suddenly realize that I’m wearing a camera on my lapel that is live broadcasting this all to the internet. Somewhere in Massillon, Ohio a 16-year old boy is drooling over this girl and probably thinks that I’m cool because she seems moderately interested in me. I approach her solely to appease his raging teenage hormones and because I can now feel the Jager racing through my blood. Lifecasting serves absolutely no real benefit in everyday life other than the fact that at events like this, people are fascinated by the technology and thrilled to embrace their strange voyeuristic need to be “seen.” The school teacher is no different and for fifteen minutes she flirts with my lapel.

In addition to the 1.6 pound laptop that is broadcasting this event live to the internet, my messenger bag is filled with one hundred-plus carefully folded origami notes, each with a special hand-written note from me, my contact information and a message that asks, junior high style, “Do you want to contact me and talk about social media, marketing or HD video production? Yes, No, Maybe (Circle One).” The ladder-climbers have their thousand dollar business cards made of shaved elephant tusk. The trendies pass around matted-gloss cards from MOO.com with only their name and blog address. I’m working the room with copious success dealing out nostalgia in the form of folded paper. No matter what group you’re in, the geek crowd loves creativity. I smile. Tonight, I’ve got it in spades.

Moving around the room, I spot a group of people that look familiar and share three or four drinks in their company. Now that I’m loose, it’s time to do some networking. For the next hour and a half I will personally meet and share 1-3 minutes with each of 50-60 of 650 or so young “professionals.” When I leave I’ll have danced on a table, hurdled a leather sectional, lost my laptop, commissioned three new clients, passed out the equivalent of half a Moleskin journal, found my laptop and kissed someone’s mom, all in that order. As I sign the bar tab that will bankrupt me when it clears in the morning, I can’t help but feel satisfied. Walking back down the stairs with a few new friends, I relish in the fact that it’s only 9:00PM. Where to next?

NetParty is unleashing its fury on Austin again this Wednesday, February 27, 2007. Click here to RSVP for what will no doubt be another night of nerd talk and debauchery. Remember: Some of you had to pay $25 at the door last time because you didn’t think the RSVP was for real. Don’t make that mistake again, click here.

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I’m working late, which isn’t really accurate. It is late out, but I haven’t done any work today. So, technically I’m just getting started on work that I should have finished hours ago. Fortunately, I am free of client work for the entire week. Unfortunately, that means that the work that I should have finished hours ago is part of some project I made up for myself in an attempt to stay productive, sharp and dare I say, innovative. I’m having trouble getting started, though. It’s hard to concentrate and focus on anything when you’ve been surrounded by fifty or so anatomically incorrect little people all wielding the greatest fashions of their time and purses too tiny to ever carry anything practical. As I write a song on a pink baby grand piano, I can’t help but feel like I’m at home.

When my mom started talking about quitting her job and selling Barbie dolls on Ebay, we all thought she was crazy. This is the sort of inevitable thing that happens when you work side by side with the elderly, day in, day out. If you keep at it long enough, you become one of them. It’s a vicious cycle, but my mother has always enjoyed caring for people in her various roles as a Licensed Vocational Nurse. Which is why the thought of her sitting behind a computer, pushing Barbie product onto the open market seemed far fetched.

There are many things that you should do before you die. I don’t claim to know what many of them are and certainly have not done near enough of them. That being said, if you ever have the chance to walk in on an amateur photoshoot with a 53-year old photographer shouting direction at eight inch plastic super-models named Francie, Midge, Skipper and Barbie, I think you’ll find a smile on your face, content, now that you’ve seen it all.

In retrospect, it amazes me that she (my mother) was ever able to list her first doll. She having never used a computer for anything up until a little over a year ago. This was a woman (and one that I love) that had once called me long distance because she couldn’t get the television to turn on and my dad was out. Learning to navigate the infinite depths of the world wide web and becoming an internet mogul wasn’t a concept I was prepared to associate with my dear mother.

I should have given her more credit.

Fast forward to present day, where I’m avoiding real work to feel nostalgic in my parent’s house, while supposedly on some kind of “business trip.” Business trips are, often times, my way of getting away from people that are annoying me in whatever particular city I happen to be residing (not from clients, I love my clients). And biz trips really can be productive. I get in my car and start driving in the opposite direction of the people I can’t stand and when I decide where I’m headed, I use the drive time to set up meetings in my destination city. My company was pretty much founded on this philosophy. I’ll return to Austin in a few days and no longer be annoyed with the people I up and left. If all goes well, I’ll have a few new client accounts that will come back with me.

Of course, that doesn’t explain how my mom was able to quit her nursing job and run an antique Barbie business out of her living room. It also doesn’t explain how they make such tiny little clothes with matching accessories. But, what it does explain is that it is possible for ANYONE to learn how to navigate the internet and utilize the tools and resources available there.

Learning this stuff (social media) is not hard. You just have to want to learn it. So, to the person who hired me to teach you and then gave up after a day and a half: I’m still willing to teach you, if you’re still willing to learn. And guess what? If you’re that person and you’re reading this, then you must have figured out how to use an RSS feed reader! YAY! See, I knew you could do it! Now let’s figure out how to alter the cascading stylesheet on your Wordpress blog… :)

In conclusion, how awesome is my mom?

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I walk into a chain bookstore’s coffee shop and step up to the counter where a teenager that would obviously rather be somewhere else greets me with lackluster enthusiasm. I order a non-fat latte in a monotone voice, then notice a cute girl sitting within earshot, so I offer with more personality to the barista, “How are you tonight?”

My attempt at being chipper sounds forced and after convincing no one I end up just standing around with a slight grin on my face that shouldn’t be there. I glance back over at the girl and watch her reading some magazine, which is thin and has more words than pictures, so I assume it’s something intellectual and this makes her more attractive to me.

It’s Monday night, but I assume that because of the President’s Day holiday things are busier than they would be otherwise. I look around for a table anywhere near this girl, but find that everything is already populated by an interesting mix of high school students, single mothers, three interracial couples and a guy that once tried to get me to join a multi-level marketing scheme that had something to do with cell phones.

The girl takes a bite from her waffle and I make eye contact with her and put forth a lame attempt at a smile. Confused, she looks back to her magazine and pretends to go back to reading it, even though I know she’s wondering if I’m going to come up and talk to her. My latte comes out, breaks my concentration and I hurredly retreat into the Christian Inspiration section of the bookstore, a section that I have never been in before.

I pick up a book called 3*16 and even though I know that it’s referring to a scripture verse, I pick it up anyway because my name is Jon and I was born on March 16th. I open the book, half expecting that it will be able to tell me what that strange coincidence means, but put it back on the shelf before reading a single word.

My iPhone keeps going off and I wonder if I’m the only person that is reminded of Justin Long when I hear the Apple Marimba ringtone? I make my way over to fiction, making sure to casually walk past the coffee shop to see if the girl is still there. She is and I decide its best to round up a pile of impressive books before sitting down, just in case she happens to notice what I’m reading. Once I have my pile of literature, I move into the coffee shop seating area, but cannot find anything close to the girl. I take off my messenger bag and instantly feel eleven pounds lighter.

Now, I’m slowly placing my books on the table, spine end towards her, as if she might notice the titles from twenty yards away. I’m reconsidering my book selection, not because I don’t love the authors, but because Ellis, Palahniuk and Fitzgerald make me look more like a psychopath than an intellectual. Why did I think this girl would be impressed by a series of well-articulated moral decline?

As I stare at her from across the room, hiding behind a recycled coffee sleeve I see an apron draped over her bag toting a CinemaRocks patch. She is standing up now and as she looks in my direction I pretend to be falling in love with Cecilia Brady. My coffee mistress leaves her magazine on the table, throws a nylon Jansport backpack with a University of Texas logo and an Obama ’08 patch over her shoulder and turns for the door, seemingly leaving my life forever.

When she’s out of sight, I casually walk over to her former table and inspect the magazine she was reading. Movie Maker Magazine. With that, I’m in love and there’s only one thing to do. Point web browser to google.com and type these words: site:myspace.com female “university of texas” film obama. I don’t even have to leave page one of Google and there is my love. I visit her MySpace profile, send message, see what happens. How are you using social media in your world?

Popularity: 100% [?]

Many thanks to Chris “Apollo” Lynn for taking time out of his day, while he was visiting Austin, to talk with me a little about social media and where things are headed in 2008. Head on over to his blog, SocialTNT, to read about some of the things we talked about and watch a video interview he did with me.

And if you’re really curious, you can watch my lifecast of our entire meeting below:

Watch live video from jonray on Justin.tv

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