While having a profound impact on the development of values is surely an important job of a good parent, force-feeding opinions to them is not.

As more ad spending shifts online, the ability to have expertise and to innovate quickly will become critical.

It's not all silliness, as interactive SXSW is filled with aggressive learning, discussing, and a whole lot of futurizing.

One of my favorite vacation memories was the Thai foot massage and Internet access salons in Bangkok, followed up by my testing cellphone coverage while wading in Provincetown Harbor on Cape Cod.

I think there's something so funny about Ram Dass. I was lucky enough to sit across from him at dinner once, and I got up the courage to tell him that he was my favorite comedian. Even though he's not a comic, he talks about showbiz in a certain way and understands that there's a presentation to it.

Your chemistry with your co-actors is more important in a comedy. You can't leave it to your performance alone. So many things have to fall into place to make people laugh.

That's the worst way you can hear about comedy material: from a third person's blog story that they wrote when they were upset.

I've worked a lot with Noah Baumbach, and he doesn't make it easy to like his characters, but the stories are funny and witty and there's an edge to that kind of humanity.