Archive for the ‘SXSW’ Category

SXSWi 2008: A Recap

so it begins

For the second straight year, I attended the South By Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) festival. This trip was much different than the last for many reasons.

The Panels

big banner

There weren’t a ton of memorable panels, to be honest. These stood out:

Nick Finck’s The Contextual Web gave me some good ideas for things I could do on BatchBook, especially if we start optimizing for iPhone/mobile. I went to the Henry Jenkins Keynote because of the urging of my friend Kate from PatientsLikeMe. The talk was amazingly thought-provoking and probably should have a post of it’s very own. Jason Fried’s 10 Things We’ve Learned at 37signals was a reinforcement of a lot of things we’ve already heard on his blog, but it was nice to hear it all in one package.

Social Design Strategies (Joshua Porter, Chris Messina, Daniel Burka, and Todd Sieling) was one of five panels I was considering going to. It was a good choice. I was particularly interested in Todd talking about the “gardners” ma.gnolia uses to control spam accounts. I don’t use ma.gnolia enough… probably should. Kathy Sierra, of course, was fantastic in Tools for Enchantment: 20 Ways to Woo Users. The online downside was the remember that we don’t get her incredible blog posts anymore.

Again, seven panels at one time that I wanted to see. Who won? Self Replicating Awesomeness: The Marketing of No Marketing Brian Oberkirch was supposed to moderate this, but unfortunately he couldn’t make it. But the panel still featured Dave Parmet, Hugh MacLeod, Tara Hunt, Jeremiah Owyang, Chris Heuer, and Deb Schultz. The only complaint is that there were so many great minds on the panel that it could have gone on for at least a couple hours. Portable Social Networks was another one that really could get it’s own post. Jeremy Keith is a moderation master and his panel included Chris Messina, Leslie Chicoine, Joseph Smarr, and David Recordon.

A Few of My Favorite Things… and People

John Eckman

We hung out with a lot of great people at SXSW. It was great to spend time with folks like Kate Brigham and Joshua Porter again, but one person I had never hung out with before was John Eckman. By then end of the trip, we were playing shuffleboard with John. Best moment? Michelle’s amazing 5-spot on her final shot against John:

Michelle hangs on for big win

Matt Gillooly

I had met Matt Gillooly of Providence-based Public Display before, but… never really got to know him. Some of his pre-SXSW Twitters clued me in on what was to come (things like wondering if the sharpie on his arms from the night before would be a problem with airport security).

The dude didn’t disappoint, and I come back from Austin a total Gillooly fanboy. The dude knows how to rock. Not only that, the dude knows how to work under pressure. You see, he was at SXSW to show off his product, FuseCal. They were going with a relatively lo-fi booth anyway, but then Delta went ahead and lost everything they had, including business cards.

But Matt ripped up sheets of notebook paper and wrote “shittycard@fusecal.com”, asking attendees to email that address so they could be mailed a real business card. The booth design (seen in a video shot by Michelle below) actually won them an official “Fanciest Booth” award from SXSW.
Twitter

Many people were asking as SXSW approached… “What will be this year’s Twitter?” The answer was easy: Twitter, again.

SXSW ran on Twitter. The audience revolted using Twitter. Meetups were planned ad hoc using Twitter. Party arrangements were made using Twitter.

Even Michelle started using Twitter.

Three cool things about Twitter this week:

  1. We never had to plan what we were doing at night. We just checked Twitter to see what might get the most bang for the buck.
  2. I had never met Kara Soluri before, but we’re Twitter friends. Turns out, we were in the same panel. So we Twittered where we each were sitting and met after the panel ended.
  3. We didn’t get to meet Dave Seah at the recent Newburyport meetup we attended, but the first evening in Austin he Twittered that he was in the hotel lobby checking email. Just so happened to be our hotel. So, we went downstairs and said hi.
From Hard Rock to Storytelling

There’s karaoke, then there’s karaoke with a live band. Karaoke Apocalypse played at the end of BarCampAustin (shortly before we got there) and simply rocked. It was here that Chris Brogan and Pistachio (two well-known Boston bloggers) completely stole the show. Ewan Spence was the M.C. and that Scot rocked like no other.

At the other side of the spectrum, Fray had a storytelling event. It was an open mic for personal stories. Again, Ewan was there. He told an amazing personal story… he writes about it, so I’ll let him explain it.

Ira Kaplan

I already blogged about meeting Ira Kaplan. That still hasn’t quite sunk in. I did actually meet two rock stars. One of them just happens to be a techie NOW. But back in the day, I was a HUGE Orbit fan. I met frontman Jeff Robbins.

Steve Ganz

I like to say that this year was about meeting real rock stars and not web rock stars (see above). But being a fan of Microformats and LinkedIn, it was really cool to meet Steve Ganz. I told him about some of the things I’d like to see from LinkedIn, debated portable social networks a bit, and talked about my complete lack of Javascript knowledge. Hell of a guy, really.

The Final Word

It was a very inspiring trip, again. I gotta thank BatchBlue again for sending us. I know I’ll be going next year—I’ll be going every year. In fact, I’m already planning to submit a panel…

I Met Ira

Yo La Tengo
Photo courtesy of djenvert on Flickr.

I went to SXSW with different goals this year than last year. Last year, I was meeting a lot of my web superheroes for the first time and trying to “get out there” so I might be able to work in this swell field. This year, it was more about learning, business networking, and handing out sweet BatchBlue tee shirts.

Then something happened on the way back to the hotel just now. I opened the elevator door.

There was Ira Kaplan.

Okay, I love all the cool web kids to death. But this is Ira Kaplan of Yo La Tengo. This is the man who fronts the band that I, in all seriousness, will always and forever call The Greatest American Band (here’s proof, my top two are Scots!). The door wasn’t even opened yet and I said “Mr. Ira Kaplan”. He gave me that “wow-that-sounded-formal-should-I-know-this-guy?” look. I reassured him with “I’m a huge fan.” and off he went. His wife and drummer Georgia came out of the other elevator, but they looked like they needed to get somewhere, so I stopped playing stargazer.

But man… Ira Kaplan.

If you don’t know them, please… go ahead and enrich your life:

SXSWi 2008: I Wish I Could Be in Two Places At Once (or Three?)

Last week, SXSW organizers sent out a survey gauging interest in panels so they could pick rooms. In the survey, the presented a list of panels that were scheduled for a certain time slot and asked you to rank them 1–3 based on how likely you were to attend them. The schedule is certainly still in pencil, but I already caught some major scheduling bummers (from my perspective).

Many sessions contain one panel I really want to attend. Perfect. Others contain none. Others… well, have a lot. Here’s an example:

Sunday, March 9: 10–11:00 am

Good lord. And there’s even a couple more that look interesting. Friend Josh Porter is on Emily Chang’s panel, so I’m really drawn to that one. But one of the gems of last year’s SXSW was Richard Rutter’s presentation on Web Typography.

The other one that bummed me out was seeing that the Web Standards Group Annual Meeting is at the same time as Jeremy Keith’s talk on Building Portable Social Networks. I’ve never gone to a WaSP meeting—and I’d like to—but Jeremy’s going to be too much to pass up.

Oh well. As we get a wee bit closer (wow, it’s really only like three weeks away?) I’ll have to work with Michelle (we’re heading down together) to formulate an attack plan. Ah, the pains of multi-track conferences…

« Previous Entries