When we were in Austin a couple of weekends ago, for a very much overdue long weekend away (without the kids). I noticed a nice way to help some neighborhood musicians.

There’s a shop called Farm to Market, which is a little grocery store on South Congress. As we were leaving the shop, I looked up and noticed a little box of CDs for sale. Each CD was by customers who shop at the store.

What a cool way to give back to your customers and to support local artists. If you own a store, why not give this a try? If you’re a musician, why not ask your local merchants if they’ll sell your CD?

I would love to see CDs like this in the stores I frequent in Nashville.

Along the way we’ll be stopping in several cities for meet ups. I would really love to see you if you’re available. I’d also appreciate you spreading the word if you have friends in the cities that we’ll be passing through. We’ll also be stopping for lunch meet ups and coffee and gas along the way.

We’ll be buying some drinks and giving away Griffin products, Threadless tee shirts and more. You can RSVP for the meet ups in:

New Orleans, Decemeber 30th

Austin, New Year’s Eve

Phoenix, January 1st

If you’re going to CES be sure to pop by the Griffin booth to check out the bus and the goodies we’ll be bringing along. That’s right, we’re parking the bus “in” our booth!

We’ll also be posting blog posts, photos, tweets, videos and much more from the road.

If you’re a blogger and you’d like to cover our journey please let me know. I’d love to share more of the details with anyone interested. It’s going to be an insane trip!

Have a look at the state of the bus at www.cesbound.com. Thanks for your support.

A quick message to Google to thank them for their nifty Maps feature. As it turns out, it will take me approximately (Walking Directions are still in beta) 11 days and 17 hours to walk from Nashville to Austin.

You see, I’m on my way to Austin, Texas in the morning to attend SXSW Interactive. I decided that it would be best to fly the 861 miles rather than walk it.

I’m really excited to connect with old and new friends during this true festival for geeks. Speaking of geeks, if you’re in Austin and peckish on Sunday morning please join us for breakfast at the first Geek Breakfast.

I’ll be posting regularly on Twitter during SXSW (be warned). You can follow my tweets on my personal account @davedelaney and some special tweeting from me @griffintech.

See you in Austin (with happy feet).

So I’ve been mulling over throwing a Geek Breakfast in Austin during SXSW.

Geek Breakfasts have really starting spreading lately. The first one was held in Nashville, TN in December, 2007. There are now GBs in Knoxville, Seattle, Silicon Valley, Murfreesboro, TN, and two in South Africa.

There are three simple rules of Geek Breakfast:

1. Everyone is invited, attendance is free (excluding food, beverage and gratuity).
2. Pictures, audio and video should be licensed under Creative Commons and tagged using “yourcitynamegeekbreakfast” and “geekbreakfast”. Please add them to the Geek Breakfast Flickr Group.
3. Geek Breakfasts shall never be sponsored. If a company approaches you about sponsorship opportunities recommend they sponsor local unconferences instead, like a barcamp or podcamp. It’s important to note that if the breakfast gets sponsored you’ll wind up with many people turning up for a free meal, rather than being there to contribute to the conversation.

Please add your local Geek Breakfast Current Events page.

It just makes sense that a monthly GB should be created in Austin. I’m hoping we can do this during SXSW to connect and to start the tradition. The only question is if people are willing to meet up at 8:00am during SXSW?

Please tell me if you think I should organize this and if you’ll be there.
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Thanks for your two cents. See ya @ SXSW!