This week I spoke with Jeff Masumoto of DataHouse about the realities of keeping his remote team of 12 on track.

What kind of team are you working with at DataHouse?
I manage a team of 12 that includes developers, testers, analysts, and documentation specialists. DataHouse is based in Hawaii, so I have folks there, as well as in Memphis and L.A. I’m the only one working out of Seattle. Right now we’re working with the state of Hawaii on a custom student information system that is servicing schools across the state.

How does your team approach large development projects like this?
All of our tasks are built around software releases. It’s very granular; we track everything. Pretty much every significant task has at least three sub-tasks. I create and assign all tasks in LiquidPlanner and then individuals update their progress and estimates. Not everyone on the team is great about updating so I’ll just do it for them when I’m approving time sheets. If my team is focused on the work and we’re hitting deadlines, I don’t mind doing some of the updating myself. It’s worth it.

Does that mean all team communication also runs through you?
Not really. We use dependencies for notifications and this is really helpful for my team. A task is checked off as completed only once it is truly complete. Before, using just IM or email, it wasn’t quite as clear. Now, if it’s done in LiquidPlanner, it’s really done. This prevents miscommunication about when, for example, a developer is ready to hand off for testing. It’s a form of communication that works for everyone.

With a team spread out over four cities, what’s the key to staying on track?
Updating estimates is the key. LiquidPlanner has really helped my estimation skills. It’s been a big change. Before, my estimates or delivery times were way too early or way too late. I wasn’t resourcing properly. I found that other programs were great for planning, but they didn’t cut it for execution. Our projects are way too fluid for something like Microsoft Project to work. What happens when a task that was slated to take 12 hours actually takes 200 hours? Everything flows. It’s a reality.

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This articles is the second in our series called, “Project Management in the Wild”. We’re reaching out to the LiquidPlanner customer community to hear, and share, their real-life project management stories.

Got a story that might help other teams think outside the box? Send it to info @ liquidplanner.com.

Original post from LiquidPlanner Online Project Management Software

Last night I went to a “symposium on culture” (the business kind) organized by my friends at Atlas Accelerator.

It was a “good room”; two dozen CEOs of Seattle startups - lots of talent, lots of experience, and lots of good wine. The stage was set for wisdom to flow.

We enjoyed a handful of very good presentations and war stories about company culture. That said, what really struck me was that almost all the comments where about the tactics of culture not the core source of it. Tactics are interesting, but very quickly tend to start sounding like “bread, circuses, and group hugs”.

Trouble is, I just don’t think culture can be reduced to a cafeteria plan of “things management can do”. Don’t get me wrong, some great tactics were shared like free lift tickets, free meat, rights of initiation, rights of intensification, etc.

I just don’t think that stuff matters if you don’t have trust. If people don’t trust each other you’re just bribing them to keep coming back to work. Culture is like mood; it’s temporary and changes easily and it’s just a reflection of the underlying relationships.

It’s easy to see that morale events and company rituals have a pretty clear line of reasoning back to trust building. But that’s really small change compared to the opportunities with daily work. Every project (the stuff that actually pays the bills) has strings of trust connecting all the moving parts; it’s the projects where the real culture building takes place.

By the time my wine class was empty, I decided that CEOs only need to commit themselves to two simple ideas if they want to have a great culture and everything else will become a detail the team will handle:

• Fully commit yourself to building a trust-based organization – set a high standard for the level of trust that your team has with you, each other, and maybe (call me crazy) with your customers. Extend trust until it hurts.
• Trust starts at the top (a.k.a. It’s about you stupid) - The CEO sets the standards through routine actions. You want a culture of accountability? Then the CEO should be transparent about his/her work, responsibilities, and personal performance. You want your team to care about the business more? Then the business better care about them more. You want your customers to trust you, then you better never do wrong by them.

Maybe it’s just that simple.

Today’s post is the first in a new series we’re calling Project Management in the Wild. We’re reaching out to the LiquidPlanner customer community to hear, and share, their real-life project management stories.

Got a story that might help other teams think outside the box? Send it to info @ liquidplanner.com.

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This week I spoke with Bill Lange, CEO of Full Slate, about how the young start-up collaborates, communicates, and manages projects with a lean team of four.

Tell me a little bit about Full Slate. Where have you been and where are you now?
Full Slate got started just over a year ago. There were four of us on the founding team, and there are still four of us today. In addition to me, we have a CTO, VP of Marketing, and VP of Finance. We ended beta a few months ago, so we have been intentionally running with a very lean team during this first phase. We’ve been heavily focused on product development up to this point, and we still are, but we’re also starting to ramp up our business development and sales efforts.

What’s project management like with just the four of you?
For one thing, we all work virtually. So for us, the SaaS application of LiquidPlanner is a huge benefit. We meet twice a week in person to go over task lists, make decisions, and clarify priorities. In between these meetings everyone manages their own work and we communicate as needed by phone, email, and Skype. Although we don’t have very complex project management needs and are not managing multiple interdependencies or anything like that, we definitely need a system to keep us on track. In fact, early on we struggled with prioritizing and keeping ourselves honest in terms of delivery dates. LiquidPlanner has made it much easier to keep ourselves honest.

Does all that independence mean you each have your own way of looking at tasks?
Each individual is responsible for managing his or her own tasks, but we share a common view of the big picture. We look at pending tasks in terms of their priority and put every task into one of three task folders in LiquidPlanner: top priority, which includes things we need to get done in the next two weeks; the holding area, which includes items that are important but not high enough priority for the next two weeks; and postponed, which includes tasks and projects we want to look at but that are on the back burner.

That sounds nice and straightforward, but how do you think you’ll manage as your needs change and the team grows?
We are by no means pushing the envelope in terms of how we are using LiquidPlanner, but we find it one of the most useful tools around. We get just the right amount of structure we need for now and know we can gradually tap into the other features as we need to. The balance between clunky, complicated tools and flying by the seat of your pants with email and Excel is what’s key. LiquidPlanner has struck that balance.

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Full Slate helps local service providers - like massage therapists, beauty salons, plumbers and electricians - use the Web to fill their appointment books. They offer online appointment booking that integrates into the service provider’s website, online directory listings and advertising campaigns.

Original post from LiquidPlanner Online Project Management Software

One of the very best parts of working at LiquidPlanner is having the kind of product where you often get to know your customers on a more personal level. When I worked at Expedia, this was never the case; it was just a transaction for the most part.

Yesterday a really cool customer asked me this question:

Charles,

This is kind of an off-topic question but I was thinking you may have some insight because of your business. We are a go with Liquid Planner so it will NOT affect our use one way or the other. I’m wondering if you have any insight as to the viability of a “virtual” or semi-virtual organization versus a traditional brick and mortar type organization. By virtual I mean, flexible office space in many locations (like using Regus) verus one centralized physical location or office. We are having internal discussions about whether or not to form some type of flexible structure for our next deal and I’m hoping to get some feedback. If you have experience with this any direction would be appreciated. If not, no biggie!

-Chris

Liz who looked over shoulder at my reply was adamant that I share my response, so here it is.

Hi Chris,

I do have a perspective on this, thanks for asking.

Proximity and ease of communication has been shown to have significant positive impacts on productivity (related post). If you think about it, all teams are part virtual anyway because they don’t live together. People work different hours and different days, they work on things in different order, go out to lunch at different times etc. Flex time is the price we pay for people accepting a round-the-clock type of white collar work style.

The great thing about a tool like LP is that it replaces the whiteboards, post-it notes, and filing cabinets of the physical office allowing people to have access to the company’s institutional knowledge anytime, anywhere. Even better, work structure and management priorities are always clear and available. LP also incents people to queue up work for more efficient processing and interrupt management.

This kind of electronic office is good no matter where you fall on the spectrum of traditional office or virtual office. The optimal place on that spectrum, I believe, is a function of leadership and culture and I think most teams would benefit from being in the middle. LP for example has a middle structure. Our culture is that we don’t schedule any meeting on Fridays because people like to skip the commute, focus on tasks, and knock off a little early that day. Tue & Thursday are “all in days“ because of our Triage meetings where we review priorities together. On the other days people do what suits them. Everyone has a desk, sometimes they us it, sometimes they don’t. Our culture is high performance and we track our time and there is complete transparency via LP so we know our productivity is very high.

An example of our ability to work virtually – Monday night we shipped a major site upgrade of LiquidPlanner and the whole company participated and we did it all from different locations using email and LP.

Best,
Charles.

I’m quite curious about how many other teams are experimenting with virtual offices and ultra flex time. Use that reply feature down yonder and let us know what you think about it.

Sandlot Games is the world’s premier developer and publisher of casual and family-friendly games. We asked Sandlot artists, designers, developers, engineers, and producers about their project management challenges, their decision to sign on with LiquidPlanner, and what it’s been like ever since.

AT A GLANCE
Company: Sandlot Games
Business: Developer and publisher of casual computer games
Employees: Around 50
Big-picture goals: Improve development practices, project predictability, and intercontinental collaboration
Project management before LiquidPlanner: MS Project, Excel, Basecamp, Twiki, email, IM, face-to-face meetings
Teams managing projects in LiquidPlanner: Development, IT
Favorite LiquidPlanner feature: A toss-up between the web-based platform and ranged estimates
Best results from using LiquidPlanner to date: The ability to create realistic schedules and keep feature-creep under control

STEP 1: GETTING CLEAR ON GOALS
“We are modernizing the way we develop software.”

Sandlot has quickly risen to success since opening their virtual doors in 2002. They continue to increase game downloads and expand their fan base every year, but limitations in timeline management and design planning were starting to cost them time and money—not to mention the drag on team morale. Sandlot needed the ability to accurately predict project completion dates, control timelines, and efficiently manage feature and design planning to keep the business headed in the right direction. With development teams in Bothell, WA and St. Petersburg, Russia, they also needed a better way to communicate and collaborate across continents.

STEP 2: CONFRONTING PROJECT MANAGEMENT CHALLENGES
“I more or less just beat my projects into fitting the timeframe I wanted.”

While Sandlot development teams have sophisticated project tracking and collaboration needs, they have been squeaking by with a less-than streamlined approach to both. Every team, and sometimes every person, managed projects differently, so it was nearly impossible to create and stick to a realistic schedule. And without realistic time estimates for each task, they also had no way of clearly seeing how the work load was divided among individual team members. Finally, with development teams in Washington and Russia, Sandlot needed to improve communication and collaboration across continents.

“Every project was slated to take six months, no matter what. In the end, some took eight, some took fourteen, but none of them took six. . . . It was a veritable house of project management horrors.”

STEP 3: FINDING THE RIGHT SOLUTION
“We wanted something similar to MS Project, but easier to use.”

Sandlot teams were used to doing whatever was needed to get the job done, but producers had a hunch that things could be more efficient all around. They weren’t sure how the solution would come, but they were clear about what was needed. Here’s their hit list:

• Standardize project scheduling between artists, engineers, and producers across projects
• Integrate the collaborative processes of design and implementation with the schedule
• Estimate task duration in a range rather than a single point of time
• Avoid source control conflicts when multiple people are making updates to schedules and tasks lists
• Automatically synchronize new and existing tasks in the schedule

STEP 4: SEEING RESULTS
“With LiquidPlanner, we saw that the design wasn’t going to work early on, rather than three months into the project when it was too late to fix.”

Once the teams settled into LiquidPlanner, it didn’t take long to see results. The best part of all is that whole teams—including artists and designers—are seeing results, not just producers.

Producers appreciate the clarity and predictability of LiquidPlanner’s project schedules. They are more accurately predicting and hitting deadlines, which makes the marketing department happy.

Things have improved from the designer’s perspective as well. Before LiquidPlanner, design planning was inefficient and feature creep was all too common. Artists would often spend many hours on design only to have features cut late in the game when the development schedule ran tight. And on other occasions, when the CEO would come knocking with requests for last-minute feature additions, producers had no clear way of telling him just how those changes would impact the schedule so feature lists would grow. The result: stretched schedules, missed deadlines, and plenty of frustration all around.

But on a recent new project with LiquidPlanner, the designer saw that his design was too big to fit the projected timeline on day one, not months down the road when time, energy, and money were already spent.

“Before, I would design the Taj Mahal and end up building a nice three-car garage house, but with wasted time and effort on features that we cut for time’s sake. With LiquidPlanner, we know how big the project is in advance and can cut features immediately so no time or effort is wasted.”

Producers are also happy about their new-found leverage regarding those last-minute feature requests. In just minutes they can add a new feature and its required tasks to LiquidPlanner and see the schedule shift before their eyes. If the new features stay, other features, or the deadline, have to give. It’s so clear and fluid, you might even say it’s liquid.

For more information on Sandlot Games, visit their website at www.sandlotgames.com.

It’s hard to open a newspaper or surf the Web these days without reading about the impact that micro-blogging services like Twitter are having on society at large. As a one-to-many mass communications tool, Twitter is truly a game changer. However, companies are still looking to identify practical applications for micro-blogging within their organization.

Web apps like Twitter, Jaiku, and Pownce (now defunct) offer users a way to communicate to others that is straightforward and direct. Recently, the micro-blogging phenomenon has penetrated the enterprise with tools like Yammer, which lets workers broadcast what they’re working on.

In her white paper “Enterprise Microsharing Tools Comparison” Laura Fitton describes micro-blogging (or as she calls it “microsharing”) as

• Social networking tools and systems that enable listening, awareness, communication and collaboration between people, through short bursts of text, links, and multimedia content.
• A surprisingly powerful way to connect people to one another for corporate benefit(1).

The key feature of micro-blogging is that these communications are characterized by short bursts of information. The temptation to spend a lot of time “spinning” content and making it pretty is eliminated when the content is limited to less than 200 characters with no formatting options. Only the “meat of the message” is transmitted. This improves the “connectedness” between the people involved because the reduced cost of both producing and consuming these short, pithy messages makes it possible to communicate conversationally on a nearly continuous basis.

Think of it this way: how well would a dinner date go if each person prepared a two page statement on each topic on their date agenda? Would it go better if small pieces of information were continuously exchanged between each party with each person considering what the other has already shared with them? This is the difference between a soliloquy and a conversation. And it’s obvious which one is more effective from a productivity standpoint.

Short bursts of conversation make for better information exchange and foster a sense of affinity between team members. This is true even if the people communicating are physically separated (which is one of the reasons why IM was one of the killer apps of the last decade). Therefore, the key benefit is connecting people in a way that improves the value to the organization.

It’s powerful stuff. But what does it have to do specifically with project management?

Figure 1. Probability of communication as a function of the distance separating pairs of people (2)

These days, many project teams are geographically dispersed. This is true even inside of a relatively small company (especially in today’s “flat” world where small companies rely even more on distributed development resources). Social research from as far back as forty years ago demonstrates that there is a positive correlation between physical proximity and the ‘probability of communication’. As the graph above demonstrates, the probability of communication falls off sharply when the physical distance between pairs of people is squared. Those individuals whose desks are more than 100 feet apart are unlikely to communicate with one another other than electronically.

Face-to-face interactions are characterized by nuanced communication coupled with personal information about the communicator and a rapid feedback loop. These same characteristics are facilitated in online interactions by micro-blogging (one major difference being that personal information takes the form of things like avatar photos and profiles). This type of communication between project team members can enhance the effectiveness of project management tools.

It’s also the case that integrating micro-blogging into a project management tool enhances the micro-blogging experience. Now, rather than the nebulous “use it for whatever” stance of applications like Twitter, micro-blogging is elevated to being on par with e-mail for rapid, personal communication between project team members where the subject is clearly of interest to the company. Additionally, because it is public within the company, anyone can search through the micro-blog stream for communications and topics that are relevant to their tasks at hand.

Micro-blogging inside of a project management framework presents an opportunity to fundamentally change the entire project management paradigm. It’s contextual to the project itself, dialogue between team members can be linked to specific tasks, and these streams of conversation can be saved as part of the project archive (this project “chatter” represents valuable project intelligence that is typically lost when a project winds down). Most important of all, it’s a dynamic forum. Micro-blogging within the context of a project plan provides a unique lens by which to capture and reveal the complex linkages and interdependencies within an organization which serves to facilitate (or derail) projects and productivity.

Figure 2. A screenshot from LiquidPlanner’s new version shows how integrated micro-blogging can be used in concert with an online project tool.

For example, suppose there is a guy named Jim who is not a formal member of a project team. He is being consulted by the project team leaders about the subject area because he worked on a similar project a couple of years ago. The fact that communication about a specific project goes through Jim can reveal that Jim is an expert inside the company on the subject area most impacted by the project. In effect, Jim is an informal member of the team and future work in this area should perhaps be reviewed by him. Many project managers would give their right arm to have this kind of information before a project kicks off. They might even be able to argue that Jim should be released from other duties to join the team full time.

But this intelligence is often difficult to glean without some type of shared enterprise solution – especially one that is embedded within a project execution tool. Without that context, corporate micro-blogging is not nearly as compelling. It simply becomes yet another decentralized ‘black hole’ of information (like e-mail inboxes, file shares, internal websites, and wikis) that must be searched independently to determine if the content is relevant.

By bringing micro-blogging into a central location within a project management context and augmenting it with document management, task management, time tracking, and a host of other project management features, we not only improve the project management function, but leverage micro-blogging to provide what enterprise projects really need; a way to clearly and rapidly communicate with an ever-changing and distributed set of people.

Footnotes:
1 Fitton, L. (2008). Enterprise Microsharing Tools Comparison. Boston, MA: Pistachio Consulting.
2 Allen, T. J. (1970). Communication networks in R&D laboratories. R&D Management

Bruce Henry is an advisor to LiquidPlanner, a provider of online project management software. He can be reached at bruce@liquidplanner.com. This article was originally published on www.ebizq.com.

We all know the challenge of estimation. For agile teams this is especially true as it’s all about small teams building high quality software according to aggressive milestones. Accurate estimating is a critical building block to achieving agile objectives (in fact, LiquidPlanner counts many agile teams as customers).

Planning poker was popularized by Mike Cohn in 2002 as a consensus-driven estimation technique. The “game” is based on a list of features (or “stories”) to be delivered and a deck of cards that represent units of time. A moderator is chosen to administer the session, features are described in terms of scope, and then team members simultaneously turn a card over that represents how long they think a given task will take. If everyone is on the same page, take one step forward! Mark the estimate in the schedule and move on to the next task. If estimates diverge, then the developers are encouraged to discuss their different estimates in an effort to gain consensus. They then choose a new set of estimates, select new cards that represent a revised estimate, and then reveal them once again to the group. Wash, lather, repeat.

This is essentially an analog version of what LiquidPlanner provides with ranged estimates (one that unfortunately requires the entire development team to take valuable time away from actually developing software). Ranged estimates obviate the need to drive consensus at a macro level because each task owner is liberated from having to come up with (i.e., guess) and stake themselves to a single number. Rather, if there is a great deal of uncertainty around a specific task, they simply reflect that in their range. Since all of the other team members can see one another’s estimates within the application itself, there is room for a dialogue as to what is and what is not realistic in terms of estimates. As work is completed on a given task, a developer can simply reduce the range to express that there is less uncertainty and the entire plan is then rescheduled accordingly.

Planning poker is actually a great idea for a bygone era — it succeeds in bringing all project constituents to the table (literally) to achieve consensus. It can work well for making estimates at the inception of a project but as we all know, those best guesses are just that — guesses. Most of the time, we don’t really have a good idea for how long something will take until we actually begin the work. Specifications change, obstacles arise, sh*t happens. Of course, because so many companies these days rely on offshore developers to build their products, it’s even more difficult to bring all parties to the table. In any event, unless you intend to play planning poker every day, this methodology is not truly sustainable. At least not in a true agile environment.

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Robert Nachbar is the Principle of Kismet Communications, a Seattle-based public relations consultancy that works with technology start-ups. As the result of his work with LiquidPlanner, Rob has developed a surprising interest in all things project management, so much so that he is occasionally compelled to blog on the topic.

Original post from LiquidPlanner Online Project Management Software

In my business I cannot go a day without, having a conversation about multi-tasking. It’s as if every wave of new recruits entering the business world rediscovers that it’s hard to manage ten things at once. So naturally, being type-As, they vow to get good at it.

And we all do get good at it and pat ourselves on the back for being “master multi-taskers”. I see this on resumes all the time, “Great at multi-tasking!“.

It’s an impressive skill to be able to juggle 10 things at once and sometimes it will save your ass, but at some point everyone faces the reality that multi-tasking is not efficient and they just don’t seem to be getting the results they want. Just once, I want to see a resume that says, “I’ve mastered single-tasking and am proud of it.”

Bruce Henry wrote a great article on how multi-tasking is killing your business, you might want to stop and read that right now. In Bruce’s post, he assumed that switching cost was zero to make the point that there is major business value at stake when you get carried away by multi-tasking.

My post looks at the issue of switching costs and personal productivity. Hopefully it gets people thinking about how much time is wasted just in juggling multiple tasks and (with a little self-control) how you can get more done and maybe get more of your life back.

I’ll make the case visually. Since most projects break down to small tasks, let’s pretend your job is processing a big bin of one hour tasks (think of each task as a ping pong ball if that helps you visualize).

The first fact to accept is that there is overhead associated with starting and ending any given task and I’ll estimate that at 15 minutes per task, on average. The 15 minutes covers grabbing coffee, pulling together the info you need for next task, checking twitter, and letting your brain sink into the work. So now we’re looking at 1.25 hours all in. I’ll draw the overhead as a red halo around the ping pong ball.

Assuming you eat at your desk, work 8 hours a day, and work 5 days a week, you’ll be able to fit about 30 tasks into a week.

That’s good productivity, in fact it’s awesome and I wish I was that good. I get interrupted more which is like restarting, so my tasks look more like this:

Everyone knows switching and interruptions come with a cost. If I get interrupted four times in an hour; I pretty much have to write off that hour for task productivity. It takes my mind time to get back into the task and do real work.

So if you are juggling three things at a time, stopping and starting, then your week probably looks more like this:

If you manage your tasks in a simple spreadsheet, your spreadsheet probably told you’d have 40 tasks done in a 40-hr week (that’s a BIG FAIL planning wise). That plan would be off by a factor of 2 when you consider switching costs and juggling 3 tasks at any given time. This is one of many reasons that spreadsheets kind of suck for planning.

Now let’s see a show of hands, how many people actually have a week that looks like this:

I talk to people all the time that are trying to juggle 10-50 things at a time and bounce between email, file shares, notes, calendars, and post-its. They swear to me that they cannot multi-task less. That might be true, but at least they can try to do something about the switching costs. And those costs will not change if they keep using the same bad habits and mishmash of tools.

To really knock down the switching costs, examine your habits and tools and aim for these goals:

• Use a tool that allows you to easily prioritize your tasks and reminds you to work serially as much as you can.
• Use a tool that collects and holds all the relevant information for your tasks.
• Use a tool that allows your team to make their contributions directly to your tasks without having to interrupt you or send you more messages and files that you to then have to process, sort, classify, and store.
• Finally, put some fraking quiet time discipline in place to get work done – close your door, shutdown email, close twitter, and reward yourself for getting things done vs. merely juggling work.

Do this and you’ll have less interruptions and it will be easier to get back up to speed after you context switch; it will be like money in the bank.

Of course these insights are why LiquidPlanner is designed to help manage the crush of everyday stuff as well as the big marquee projects. I’ve got my stuff lined up, do you?

How much further ahead would you be if you could get five more things done each week? You might even have time to write a blog post like this one.

This is just a quick post to give credit where credit is due. The team at HCF made our new home page video and if you have any interest in getting some video work done, you should get to know them.

I went in to this project a little skeptical and thinking “how do you communicate what LiquidPlanner does in a minute and a half without spending a fortune on production.” Liz talked me into the project and I’m thankful she did. We had a single one hour meeting with Max Kaiser, Director & Founder at HCF. Of the 30 minutes that were not filled with my dumb questions about video production, Max put together the storyline that made it (virtually unchanged) to the final cut. If you know me, you’ll know I cannot keep my design hands off anything because I’m a visual perfectionist. HCF executed the process so well and so quickly, I didn’t even have time to be nit picky.

Bottom line is we love the result and give this team our highest recommendation.

Well, I’m not writing about the panels I attended yesterday as they were entirely unremarkable.

Speaking of unremarkable, AT&T has been having a heck of a time dealing with the capacity issues that >3000 iPhones and other smartphone-ish devices have been causing here. As of yesterday my iPhone was completely unusable for anything but SMS and voice. In that I had put my schedule online so I wouldn’t have to fumble for the paper schedule (and the paper schedule lacks a detailed chronological listing of talks) this was… suboptimal.

Come on AT&T, you knew SXSW was coming and that it would be big. The data problems last year were forgivable because the iPhone was a new thing at the conference. This year, you should look in your logs for phones with data plans registered in the area and refund their bill for May.  Just sayin’.

Dinner… then… epic win.

(twitter handles have been used to incriminate the guilty)

So, the action begins when @geekgiant and I (@brucephenry) take a taxi to the Gnomedex/Seesmic/somebodyelse party. Things are cruising along, @scoblizer is getting quietly loaded. Well, quitely for him.

Then the word comes…

@garyvee, who is known to have brought several cases of excellent wine to SXSW is headed for the remains of the Toombla party. It’s on. @garyvee is gonna blow the party up!

@geekgiant and I procure a cab and pour a surprisingly loquacious @scoblizer into the car. Fifteen minutes later @garyvee, 6 cases of wine, and an army of erstwhile sommeliers decend upon the venue. Bottles are opened, cups passed… the proprieters shut them down… panic!

@garyvee says, “We need another venue fast!”

I say, “I’m on it!”

Thirty seconds later I’m across the street at a gay bar talking to the manager. I expain the situation and ask if we can bring 300+ people over and pour our own wine. He says sure; problem solved.

Three minutes later an inebriated herd of geeks pours into Rain.

The results, as I mentioned, epic win! (see the Twitter search results) And there’s just too much to lay out here. This is the classic SXSW experience. Companies spend thousands and thousands of dollars to throw parties, but it is the awesome people like @garyvee who can show up and give us geeks a chance to party like rockstars.

Thanks @garyvee, that was filled with awesome!

P.S. - At about 4 am @garyvee asked the question on Twitter about when Kathy Sierra was talking.  I realized I had to be up for Kathy Sierra, et al and the Presenting to the Brain panel. Irony, thy name is hangover.