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March 14, 2006

20x2

Some of the coolest stuff at South By Southwest Interactive takes place after the convention center's shut tight. One of the most interesting things this week was 20x2, an annual get-together where 20 speakers, from all corners of the Web and the tech world, get two minutes each to answer one very open-ended question. This year, "What's The Secret?"

The answers were as varied and off-the-wall as you could expect. Some took the question very literally (two said the secret was love, which another speaker made fun of). Andrew Huff collected secrets from SXSW-goers, written in lemon juice, which he would then reveal at the event. Unfortunately, you can't get that many pieces of paper singed in two minutes, so he was only able to reveal the secret "Huff is Hot!", and set another piece of paper on fire, before his time was up. But that's good, since I had a secret in the box. And it's still safe.

Kevin Smokler called for a two-minute game of Telephone, which in a crowded bar, went about as well as you could imagine. Jory Des Jardins read off a list of secret advice, including fun phrases to teach your niece and nephew (I am so getting my nephew to say "can't complain" once he's talking). Probably the funniest secrets of the night came from Dallas blogger/journalist Josh Benton, who put together a two-minute video of non-geek civilians revealing secrets like "If it works in IE, but not in Firefox...I don't care" and "I get up early every morning and vandalize Wikipedia."

Speaking of which, the 21st speaker (yeah, they bent the rules) was Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia's founder, who told a really touching secret about how the site got started. I don't want to reveal his secret here (it is his secret, after all), but it was a really compelling motivation for him to want to put together such a massive project.

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Comments

Interesting. Can't complain, eh?

Posted by: Vin | March 14, 2006 05:10 PM