EMP 2008 Pop Conference

Very nice.

Thanks -- and Ned S. sez hi!

YAHHH!!! NED YAHHH!!!

Oh and if Nick is reading this, it's "Noche de Enierro" by Luny Tunes.

*Entierro

I should learn to read. I thought this was an EPMD thread.

Oh dear.

Anyway, that keynote panel as I haphazardly saw it

thanks rev

My Friday liveblogging will be here.

I AM POSTING FROM INSIDE THE CONFERENCE

So am I but liveblogging is on hold on my end -- connection's been flaky via the blog, which is odd since last night was no problem. Am taking notes though -- David Novak on Sublime Frequencies was a great start.

You folks gonna go see Christgau's presentation on John Mayer's "Waiting for the World to Change"?

Caught a lot of it. Lots of good lines.

Okay -- Friday presentations as I caught them.

The walking dead feeling is starting to creep over me. Must be Saturday morning. (By tomorrow morning at this time we will all be the walking dead here.)

Speak for yerself.

Mr. Jaq and I will be heading down to the Fantagraphics thing late afternoon today, will have room for 2 additional if anyone's interested. I won't be heading to EMP until 1ish, to catch Douglas Wolk's Green Beret talk, but catch up with me then or let Mr. Jaq know if you spot him.

Saturday panel/presentation notes

notes from KEXP's Chris Estey:

http://depts.washington.edu/kexp/blog/?p=5502

Including this:

This was followed by a complete mind-screw of a presentation by Jesse Fuchs, a computer game whiz kid who when he dabbles in music writing has a tendency to mess up our nerves a thousand ways. Using a magnificent Power Point presentation of very wacky and funny visual puns, “The Record That Eats Itself: Form, Content, and Subversive Recursion” combined Escher prints, Godel mathematics, They Might be Giants, and I can’t remember what else in an insanely paced and coded demonstration that nothing is as it seems. If the EMP Pop Con charged anything (it is ABSOLUTELY FREE), this would be worth the whole four days’ fee to get in. Fuchs got a hold of a recording, an answering machine hoax perpetrated by someone pretending to be Robert Christgau, calling up TMBG and warning them to give up or he would stop them, and then seeing as the final image Christgau’s own Escher-design-style reclining felines . “Hey, those are my cats!’ Christgau shouted, seated behind us, raising the presentation to an even deeper level of weirdness.

Can't believe it's already come & gone. Every year I say "next year..."

It's still going duder.

Ends today i thought?

True but at the time of your post I was still attending panels!

<A HREF="http://nedraggett.wordpress.com/2008/04/14/emp-2008-pop-conference-sunday-panels-and-presentations/";>Sunday panel/presentation thoughts</A>.

Bah.

Said thoughts.

Daily Swarm Gets Real Classy

Well remove the CL in Classy

Welcome to Web 2.5

best comment: "Actually, the only thing wrong with any of the above, is that Peter Scholtes speaks about Minneapolis/St. Paul without bring up one of the best bands ever to come out of the Twin Cities, The 'Mats."

I actually thought that Daily Swarm thing was a little funny.

I'm home! Exhausted!

"xgau maybe too on balance" -- how so ned?

Let me answer this when I have coherence. Yay home rah.

Went to a brilliant reading tonight by Molly Priesmeyer and other friends at the Loft in Minneapolis so that I could continue the EMP fantasy of life as this ongoing salon.

I'll eventually have more to say than this, but for now, just THANK YOU to everyone who shared their papers, their questions, their opinions, their food and booze, their homes, their smiles, their rides, their music. It was an amazing several days.

PS: Interested in more reactions to the Jesse Fuchs performance that I missed.

What do you attendees think of the mixture of critical and positive commentary at this site(found via googling)--

http://seattlest.com/2008/04/13/emp_pop_confere.php

The most important thing we brought away from the EMP Pop Conference was the name Labi Siffre, along with a link to the English musician's blog, Into The Light. This was the fruit of a moving, well-researched presentation from Charles Aaron, music editor at Spin, and we can't wait to dive deeper into Siffre's poetry and musical catalog from the 70s and 80s. Aside from that presentation and a few from the "Liminal Soul" panel, we were underwhelmed by the Conference.

For the most part, the presenters were reading directly from their papers on topics they're currently researching and clicking along on a Powerpoint presentation (usually out of sync and with some difficulty). The technology generally hindered rather than enhanced, though we did see some cool Youtube videos

In brief, I'd say that's a luck-of-the-draw assessment -- it's no secret that some presenters are real performers on-stage while others are fairly dry, while PowerPoint is its own cross to bear depending. If there was just one set of panels after another that'd be one thing but since anybody can only see a quarter of the conference at most, two people could come away with very different perceptions based on what they saw. (Heck, this was the first I'd heard about Aaron's presentation in particular, and sounds like it was a winner.)

Am still reviewing my posts and editing them to provide links to the presenters and to their subjects.

Aaron was excellent and a marked contrast to a few of the, shall we say, drier presentations.

OK, now that I've time to unreel from this past weekend, I'm now just starting to unpack it all.

EMP Pop Conf 2008 was just as fun, intense, galvanizing as the previous ones. I was hoping that, with the more serious theme, that there would be a "next level" thing happening. That didn't happen. I can't FULLY explain why I didn't feel that happening just yet, but I know it didn't. Par for the course is better than a bogey, I guess. I'll try to explain anyway.

I noticed a couple of things though: one that was an improvement on previous conferences and one that was a dearth. The improvement was the overall quality of the presentations. Yes, people should hopefully now know not to depend on the internet working to get their youtube links fired up (PSSST www.downloadyoutubevideos.com + AVS Movie Converter.) OTHERWISE, I think people have wised up a little more than before as far as knowing how and when to skip forward and make their points when time is up. Moreso, I think the moderators were better than they have been in the past -- especially given that many moderators were chosen at the last minute this year due to American Airlines complications.

The ironic dearth: less engagement, less discource, less conflict. I think people were more AFRAID to say anything during the q&a's this year than before. Then again, it's safe to say most of the conference attendees this year were pretty much on the same side of the political spectrum, so there was less to argue against.

BUT I noticed this during one of the more benign panels. Some guy in a Social Distortion T-shirt said at the end of a Clash presentation "Who cares about The Clash?" That's when about two dozen people raised their hands to ask the *presenters* questions. That Social D guy successfully did what was needed. He actually POKED people. Before that, no one wanted to ask questions. People were more afraid to "poke" this year than before. Why?

Has the Pop Conference hit the threshold of truely fatiguing everybody too early? I realize why there has to be parallel panels, and there's always so many good papers that they're hard to turn down. But maybe making people run around even more than before has just taken the inquisitive nature out of the attendees? Maybe? Still trying to figure this one out, or maybe I'm still unpacking it.

So while I think it was absolutely necessary to try a more serious theme for the Pop Conference this year, and I do mean THIS year, it just didn't pan out as I dreamed it would. I'm not saying we shouldn't try again, but I was hoping for a birdie or eagle this year and ended up with par -- which is great, I had just as much fun as the ones before, but nonetheless I'm slightly disillusioned.

I guess I'm in the minority in being a bit disappointed this year.

I'll eventually have more to say than this, but for now, just THANK YOU to everyone who shared their papers, their questions, their opinions, their food and booze, their homes, their smiles, their rides, their music. It was an amazing several days.

OTM. This was my first year. I had a total blast. Thanks to everyone.

Wait, remind me, did we ever introduce ourselves?

Never got the chance -- I think I saw you down the hall at one point before getting whisked away for another fine meal. I'd just say, "I was the guy with the glasses," but that would eliminate almost no one. Anyway, next time!

who was Mackro?

B. Mackrodonald, if that helps.

oh for god's sake do I feel silly

That's all right. Who were you again?

First wrap-up post -- these are linked back to the overall notes, which have now been cleaned up some and contain as many relevant links as possible to the subjects as well as the authors of the presentations.

i'll try and go next year. i missed you guys. this thread is a constant reminder of how much fun we had last year. and how long ago that seems now.

You were very much missed! But since Yeti 5 came out that meant we could all read your piece from last year in it.