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It was brought to my attention on Sunday morning that I might need a bike. I do, after all, live in Portland – land of bike-friendliness; Daniel recently acquired a bike; and nearly all of my close friends have and use bikes as a primary mode of transportation.

We had visited Little Red Bike with several of these friends and I realized that the only reason we used our Zipcar account that morning was because I was the only person in our whole group of friends who did not have a bike to ride. Sad! Even Daniel could have ridden there but I would have been left at home all alone.

I halfheartedly checked Craigslist for something that seemed appropriate, but as you well know, I am very, very short. My chances of finding a women’s bike (not a little girl’s bike) that was my size for a decent price were extremely small, and I really didn’t expect to get this lucky this quickly.

The headline said something about it being a “bike for shorties” so I figured, what the heck, I’ll call. After I made the call and agreed to met Mr. Bike Seller after work to check out his wares, I realized with horror that I:

• Know absolutely nothing about the prices of bikes, bike sizing, or really anything about bikes at all other than that they have wheels and make you go;
• Had just agreed to meet a male stranger on the East side of Portland in an unfamiliar neighborhood to me;
• Would be by myself. The whole time. And I might end up with a bike afterward that I wouldn’t really know how to get home since I didn’t know where I was and I would probably have to take it on a bus and HAVE YOU SEEN WHAT YOU HAVE TO DO TO PUT A BIKE ON THE FRONT OF A BUS?

I called Daniel in a panic.

“Hi I know you are at work but I just called about a bike and could you PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE ask any of your bike-type friends if they would be willing to come with me to check this thing out? I know nothing about bikes! WHAT AM I DOING?”

Daniel managed to recruit Tim, who is a lovely person with a (un?)healthy interest in bikes and I am so very, very grateful he came with me and told me what to look for. He even helped me put my bike on the front of the bus! WIN!

Meggan’s new Centurion, by Tim:

Skipping right over my lengthy absence from my website, I am here to tell you about my trip to Texas for South by Southwest! I was there for five days, and here is a list of the famous people I met:

• Alan Taylor of The Big Picture
• Susie from Dumb as a Blog

Okay, okay, so my list is pretty short. I did, however, see both Jeffrey Zeldman (several times!) and Jason Santa Maria while I was there. Whee! Zeldman was shorter in person than I expected, and I totally would have introduced myself if he had not be engaged in a conversation EVERY TIME I SAW HIM. Argh. JSM was a moderator on one of the panels I attended, and then I saw him in a mexican restaurant where he was engaged in a conversation that I didn’t want to interrupt. Argh again!

I went to yoga in the morning on both Saturday and Sunday. Later, I realized that I had been doing yoga with two of the Web Typography panelists. Hee!

Texas appears to be enamored with brown countertops. Really marbley brown countertops, so you can’t actually see if you’ve set anything down on them because they are too camouflage-y.

One of the best panels I attended was “Are Women Taken More Seriously on the Web?.” These women were FASCINATING. I loved hearing their experiences being a woman in “tech” and how they have dealt with being taken seriously in a dude-centric environment. I didn’t really come away with any concrete notes from that session, but they brought up a couple of good points:

• Do you come off as a woman online?

  One panelist talked about how her mother frequented a college football forum and noticed that the women’s opinions were never taken that seriously or were made fun of. She created a profile on the forum that was deliberately androgynous. She did not state her name, her picture was of something innocuous like a football, her username wasn’t indicative of her gender, and when asked about herself, all she would say was that she had “a son who plays college football.”

  She eventually became one of the most recognized and respected members of that forum. Should she really have had to disguise her gender in order to be respected?

• Online “handles” have changed and the pseudonym is dying

  More and more people (not just women) are realizing that names have power. In relation to the first point, an unusual side effect is such that if you have a complicated or unusual name (like panelist Blagica (“blah-geet-zah,” like “pizza”) Bottigliero), you may accidentally end up coming off as a man online.

  Blagica said she sometimes consciously cultivates this misconception via email by using more “manly” terms or words. She related that she had a lengthy conversation with a confused client on the phone, during which she had to really work to convince the person that, yes, she was the developer on the project and not just the secretary that had taken over for the “real” developer. The person could just not believe that the “Blagica” developer he had been speaking with over email was the same, womanly “Blagica” developer on the phone.

Again: FASCINATING.

I learned why analytics are crap: Let’s say you see a peak of activity on your site. Is that peak because the person loved your site so much they stayed there a long time? Or could it be because they were hopelessly lost, stuck, and confused, and were trying to work their way out of a hole? Conversely, if you see a drop in activity, is it for sure because your site sucks horribly? Or could it be because your user found exactly what they needed in a short amount of time? There’s really no way to know.

B = f(P,E) Behavior is a function of a person and his or her environment.

Think about your default avatars. If it looks “okay,” people will be less inclined to change it. I think Twitter does a lovely job of this – their default avatar is scary and people want to be rid of it.

A user’s ultimate goal is NOT to be on your website. They want to be done with it and LEAVE. (This, I feel, is different with personal sites/blogs. Users elect to be there. For sites that sell things or offer services, this is much more relevant.)

I did learn an awful lot while I was there. I’m in the process of going through my notes in order to have a good write-up for our creative team blog at work, but I wanted to share some of the tidbits I learned with you. (I am omitting the story about the Worst Airline Seat Partner Ever that I encountered on the way back to Portland, mostly because I am still seething about it. The dude talked, nonstop and loudly, for the entire four-and-a-half hour NIGHTTIME flight. Also he was creepy. And I still want to punch him in the mouth.)

Any questions? Anecdotes? Want to slap me for not actually talking to Zeldman or JSM when I had the chance?

I have finally done it – I signed up for a non-credit German course! I’ve wanted to learn German FOREVER and, while I own a ton of books meant for teaching yourself, I really haven’t progressed farther than learning to say things like “the hedgehog” in my head because I don’t know how to pronounce anything.

I do have a “Learn German” computer program that lets you speak into a microphone and it grades you on your pronunciation, so that has helped a bit. That said, it’s super embarrassing to use and I’ve probably only messed with it two or three times. (Sad! I wanted it really bad when I first got it but we didn’t have a microphone for our computer when I was in high school.)

As far as languages go, I took a year of Spanish in high school but was thwarted by the Worst Teach Ever in the second half of the year (my lovely, wonderful initial Spanish teacher went on maternity leave) and learned nothing. Or if I learned anything, it was idiotic and useless like “the elephants eat peanut soup.” I taught myself how to say “I am a piece of toast” in the sixth grade and that remains the only Spanish phrase I can reliably recite.

I also took an “Afternoon Academy” class (a simple, after-school program for elementary-age children) for French when I was probably seven years old. About all I remember is how to count to ten, and that we ate cheese and bread in class.

So! I am very excited. I don’t really have a use for learning German, I suppose, but I would love to know it nonetheless. My first class is on March 31 so I will definitely post about my progress. Squee!