I’m going to be heading down to South By Southwest in a couple of weeks, and I am stoked … I’m even going to be taking the Startup Bus!

Unfortunately, I’m going to have to miss one of my son’s gymnastics meets. He has ten this year, so making 90% is a decent percentage, but the fact is I HATE missing this.

As I mentioned not too long ago, most problems can be solved with a specific amount of money, and this is such a problem. I could

• Fly back from the conference for the meet, rent a car (it’s in Detroit) and fly back to the conference. Cost – about $1,200 and it  would cause me to miss 20% of the conference, which is a problem for work.
• Teach my wife how to use the Flip video camera and have her record everything for me. Cost – nothing.
• Teach my wife how to set up a laptop with a good video camera and stream the event to me live via Skype. Cost – almost nothing (I might have to borrow a mifi). The real problem here is that I would be expecting my wife to handle A/V issues that I normally handle myself. That’s not going to happen
• Buy my wife a tablet with a built in video camera so that she can stream the event to me live via Skype. Cost – $300-1000 depending on which tablet I get.
• I could get a “Windows 8” ready x64 tablet, but that would wind up being a toy for me
• I could buy Paula an iPad or Android tablet (like the 7” Samsung) – that latter option is pretty tempting
• I could borrow a tablet. Cost – $0 (plus some sort of favor in return, I suppose)

I’m not exactly sure what I’m going to do at this point. Seeing the video would be cool, but I really want to stream it live.

Next step: checking out the wifi quality at the venue …