SxSW 2006 is less than two weeks away. This will be my first trip to the fest/conference/party excuse, though in certain ways both my professional and family center of gravity is in Austin (OK, one of my centers of gravity).

Because the speakers and bands and screenings simply won’t provide enough stimulus some folks have created the SxSW Interactive Playpen. Done wrong it could be as grimy and soulless as the free building areas of LEGO stores; done right — and there’s no reason to believe it won’t be done right — it could be a hell of a lot of fun. Can’t wait.

Oh, I’m also a panelist on the first day: Convergence and Transformation. That’ll be fun too. Bring some LEGO blocks.

Fellow Chicagoans Jason Fried and Jim Coudal are the keynotes.

Gonna be there and want to meet up? Let me know:

I’ve had some amazing moments of social serendipity lately. Call it the “small world” phenomenon or six degrees of separation minus most of the degrees, but frankly it is a bit odd. And, even though I’ve recently joined LinkedIn to explore my network of professional contacts once-, twice-, and thrice-removed, technology hasn’t contributed at all to what’s been going on.

Last week at the Special Olympics basketball tourney I wrote about I met a mom of one of the participants, a woman named Alison Leland. She was reading the New York Times in the bleachers so, this being middle-class Texas, I immediately knew she wasn’t like most of the other families there. Turns out, Ms. Leland is the wife of the late Texas congressman Mickey Leland. I only knew a bit about Mickey Leland: the causes he championed, the foes he made, the way he died. Forward a few days to New York City where I was meeting with some of the staff of the new National Museum of African American History and Culture and where, just for conversation’s sake, I mentioned this small world encounter with Ms. Leland. The team looked at me and said, “You know, the idea for this museum was Mickey Leland’s.” Hmm, small world.

This week I also learned about a computer scientist doing some interesting work in Arabic machine translation who one of my colleagues holds in very high regard. Her name is Violetta Cavalli-Sforza, a distinctive name to be sure and one that rang a bell. Now, I’m not certain of the connection, but it seems that she must be related (daughter?) to Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, the father of population genetics, author of the seminal History and Geography of Human Genes, and mentor of IBM’s globetrotting co-principal on the Genographic Project Spencer Wells — a project of which I am a part. Genetic forensics, indeed!

Then last night. A friend of ours lent my wife a book she loved to help us in our struggle to find a name for our third child, due in May. It was called The Baby Name Wizard by Laura Wattenberg. This of course is also the name of the much-lauded online app (also known as NameVoyager) from last year that dynamically maps the popularity of names over time and which was created by Martin Wattenberg, Laura’s husband, and an IBM colleague of mine. I had no idea there was a book to accompany the site.

What does this prove? If the connections between the pairs of people and myself in each of these examples was a little less random it might suggest a widening professional circle. But two of the three pairs intersect my personal life too.

Oh, how I’d love this web visualized. Martin, are you listening?

I saw an all-star basketball game in Houston this weekend. Nah, not the NBA one. I got to see my brother-in-law participate in a Special Olympics qualifying tournament. For a while it was hard not to get choked up whenever a game started, quite honestly. (They played 8 minute games.) These kids — some were adults, but all were children in a way — came ready to play and were as into the contest as any athlete I’ve ever seen. The joy on their faces was genuine and unbridled.

My brother-in-law, a physically-talented 16-year-old with Down’s Syndrome, stole the show. Last week he had the dubious distinction of receiving a technical foul for swearing on the court (for a not discreet “Goddamnit!”), but this week his notoriety was all the good kind. In game two his team won 8-6 on his two three-point buckets (one of which was all net) and a layup — and they play on full size courts with regulation baskets! He would run back after his shots and taunt the crowd into louder praise. It was high comedy. But there were other heros too, some of whom never even touched the ball. Autistic kids who would crack a rare smile when their team (or the other team) scored; Downs kids so severely afflicted that a high five was an effort, but one gladly made; kids with all manner of protective eyewear and headgear who would’ve suffered through the whole event in chainmail if that’s what it took to participate.

You might think that such an event would be hard on an expecting parent. The gymnasium was a collection of reminders of the ways in which the miracle of conception can go awry. But actually I felt the opposite. That gymnasium was also a collection of reminders of the way that true happiness has a way of trumping the saddest twists of fate.

How often do you get to see sport in its purest form? Competition without caustic rivalry, accomplishment without showboating? As in most aspects of life for those with mental disabilities, the tournament showed absolutely no recognition of differences in race, gender, or ability. Everyone was legitimately there to have fun. The difference between this tournament and the rowdy, gaudy crowds that poured into Houston for the NBA All-Star game all weekend could not have been starker.

Wow, I didn’t exactly bounce back from the Turkey trip like I thought I would. Here’s what I have been meaning to post. Unrelated, all of it.

The news that they’ve found a new tomb in the Valley of the Kings is, well, big news. This is the first such new discovery since Carter found Tut in 1922, though no one seems to mention that Kent Weeks’ re-discovery of KV5 in 1995 is actually just as profound — possibly more so. I’m skeptical that the new tomb, called KV63, will create as many questions as KV5 did and does. From the scanty information it seems like KV63 was a cache or waypoint or merely a lesser noble’s attempt to flank the pharoahs’ tombs. Time will tell, but one thing is certain: count the references in the media to Zahi Hawass, head of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, versus the number of references to Edwin Brock and Otto Schaden, leaders of the team who actually found the tomb, and you will get a sense of how things go now for archaeologists in the Egypt.

When was the last time the word “museum” was used to sex something up? Never comes to mind. Well, not at the former Chicago Historical Society which has been newly rebranded the Chicago History Museum. While former director Lonnie Bunch takes the helm of the newly-placed National Museum of African American History and Culture on the Mall in DC, the CHS has dropped the S to seem more inclusive, less upper-crust. Maybe “museum” is better. Though the etymology of the word as a cage for muses suggests old-fashion animals-behind-bars zoos, “museum” at least has an egalitarian sense that “society” does not. Better than the Exelon Chicago History Adventure, I suppose.

On the flight back from Turkey I sat next to a retired DEA agent who had made Istanbul a part-time home. In the 1990’s he was stationed there with the task of evaluating the anti-narcotics programs of the former Soviet ‘stans. He had tons of fascinating stories and, though we did no drugs, his penchant for drinking scotch hand over fist didn’t do me any favors. See not bouncing back from the jetlag, above.

Songbird, the open source, Mozilla-based media player is out in pre-alpha proof-of-concept form. It does little more than play music now, but the interface is awash in non-functional functions that really make you think this could be an iTunes killer if it is sustained and, most importantly, if the development community seizes the add-on opportunities as they have with Firefox and Thunderbird. I am keeping my eye on this one.