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AUSTIN–South By Southwest starts today, but I’ve been here since Wednesday. That seemed like a smart way to arrange my travel until last Thursday–when the PR Summit conference here vanished from my schedule. ou can’t tell this from the generic “under construction” page at that address, but I was going to participate in a discussion about communications strategies “in the age of Trump and Twitter.” That’s a fascinating topic I hope to address someday. But last Thursday’s e-mail announcing the conference’s postponement after a sponsor’s withdrawal ensures that time won’t be this week.

I have spoken at a lot of conferences over the past 10 years, and this is the first time one has gotten scrubbed like this. My great experience speaking at 2013’s PR Summit in San Francisco led me to expect this one to go just as smoothly–and since I was heading to Austin anyway, moving up my departure by two days and getting a better deal on airfare in the bargain made sense.

Thing is–not that I’d know this first-hand–putting on a conference requires difficult and prolonged work and demands the support of many third parties with their own interests. I should probably be surprised I haven’t had one implode on me before.

The immediate downsides of having the event cancel were realizing I’d spend two more days away from my family without any business rationale, and that I’d need to find someplace else to stay now that the conference-paid hotel room was gone as well.

But the local PR shop TrendKite put together its own small event Wednesday afternoon, at which it was comforting to realize anew that PR pros can find social media just as much of a game of chance as journalists. I stayed the last two nights with a friend from high school and his wife (cooking dinner for them Wednesday allowed an overdue introduction to the kitchen-newbie-friendly UX of a Blue Apron kit). And having last night free let me catch up over dinner with a college-newspaper friend whom I’d last seen in 2003. I can’t complain about those outcomes.


About 95 percent of the time, the “gesture typing” built into Android’s keyboard is one of my favorite parts of Google’s mobile operating system. I trace a fingertip over the letters of the word I have in mind, that item appears in an overlay before I’m halfway through inputting it, I lift my fingertip, and a Scrabble winner like “deoxyribonucleic” pops into a tweet, e-mail or note. But then I have to try to gesture-type the $10 word “already,” and Android will have other ideas. Specifically, cancerous ones: It keeps subbing in “ashtray.”

I could take some comfort in the privacy-preserving thought that Google’s sense of my interests is so off that it thinks I write about cigarettes all the time. (This post probably won’t help!) But, really, I only want to write a common adverb without having to tap keys one letter at a time, like some kind of an animal.

And because I’m in the same abusive relationship with autocorrect as everybody else, I keep hoping that this time, Android will finally realize I have no interest in tobacco products. That’s when it will humor me by inserting “airway” instead of “ashtray.”

I just don’t know what could lead Google to misread me so consistently. The path you trace to gesture-type “already” requires going significantly farther east on the keyboard than the route for “ashtray,” and Google’s own search results suggest the former word is used about 143 times more often than the latter. Who would see any upside from this pattern of error?

As I said, this is annoying because it’s so unusual. The only other common word that Android gesture typing botches halfway as often is “conference.” And there, it’s at least more creative: The software will sometimes choose to read my attempt to enter this noun for an occupational hazard of my job as me gesture-typing “cicatrice.” Yes, real word: It’s a Middle English-derived noun for tissue that forms over a wound and then becomes a scar.

One thing I do know about this mystery: If there’s a tech conference with “already” in its name, I may have to decline all of its invitations to preserve my own sanity.

LAS VEGAS–I am here once again for yet another conference, this time Tech Cocktail’s Celebrate. Some of the discussions here ranged a bit afield of my own consumer-tech focus, but It’s been a pretty good event overall–including my turn in the spotlight this morning, when I interviewed SmartThings founder Jeff Hagins about the future of smart homes and the “Internet of Things.” In one respect, however, Celebrate has clearly outdone other conferences I’ve spoken at or attended. During every session here, the screen behind the stage has displayed these data points:

Conference organizers, won’t you please go and do likewise?

I hate having to hit Google to confirm who said which quotable quip, especially in the too-frequent cases when the panel is all or mostly white dudes. (Note: In those situations, the organizers should address their diversity issues first, then tackle their presentation.) Having to lean on Twitter’s clumsy search to look up people’s handles–it’s basic etiquette to mention somebody in a tweet about them, their company, or their product–amuses me even less.

Make it clear who’s talking and how to identify them when I tweet about the panel, and I can focus on taking notes and sharing them. And when I happen to be on the panel and check my phone for Twitter mentions (don’t judge…), I can be more confident that I’m not missing any backchannel banter about my performance.

While you’re doing that, event planners, don’t forget to consult my advice about conference-badge design.

(Disclosure: I’ve known Tech Cocktail founders Frank Gruber and Jen Consalvo since at least 2009, long enough for them to move from “people I deal with for work” to “people I enjoy talking to outside of work.”)





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