+8* @ SXSW | Post-Mortem
ThoughtsPublished March 19, 2010 at 12:49 pm No CommentsI just came back from the South-by-South-West (SXSW) Interactive conference in Austin.
About SXSW
This festival is particular for several reasons:
1. It goes on for a week (for the interactive part, there is also film and music)
2. There are hundreds of talks and celebrity keynotes
3. There are thousands of participants
4. There are competing parties every night from 6pm to 2am and more
One week of events?!
The direct consequences are:
1. You will miss 95% of the talks, even if you show up
2. You will miss 95% of the people too (since there are thousands)
3. You will get tired (“it’s a marathon not a race”)
4. You won’t get much of your regular work done
Some, such as my friend @kenbrady called it “Spring break for geeks”. It’s pretty accurate, especially since the gender-unbalanced tech crowd gets to mingle in the evening with the students from the University of Texas who are conveniently in Spring Break – assuming the tech crowd does not go only to tech events.
Listening & Speaking there
This was my first time there, speaking on a panel on “Social Media in China“, but here are some takeaways on how to manage it:
1. Big keynotes are generally sure shots. Of course you’ll get it online, but live is nice, and you might meet the speaker! I saw Danah Boyd (whom I had met in Paris @ LeWeb last year), Clay Shirky, Kaiser Kuo, Evan Williams, Bruce Sterling. Already a good roster.
2. Other sessions are hit or miss. You can vote with your feet and move after a few minutes if things don’t take off. I had mixed fortunes but attended an interesting one on privacy in the context of Burning Man. Due to my work in virtual worlds / online identities / robots and joining both Halloween in SF and Santa Con in London last year, it was surprisingly relevant – to me and the 20 people who attended at least!
3. Days are for meetings, nights for encounters. Daytime is easier to set up a meeting, evenings are for meeting lots of new people (with lower signal-to-noise ratio).
4. Smaller parties offer better networking. Of course if you can hang out in the VIP area with Ev Williams it might be fun but realistically most useful connections are made at dinners or smaller parties. Crowded 200+ parties only offer the benefit of free drinks, so it depends how valuable your time is.
5. Is it business? Hanging out with tons of people during a week generate a lot of ideas and serendipitous connections. It might not be direct business like a “sale” but definitely plants many seeds for future opportunities.
Location, Location, Location
One particular mention is to make about Twitter, Foursquare and Gowalla, which made meta-following and identification of good places possible (including knowing about how bad a queue some events had). The most sought-after item at the conference was surely the iPhone charger!
What did I get out of it?
I would say my best achievements have been:
1. Catching up with friends and discussing for long hours
2. Two short meetings with people I really wanted to meet
3. A dozen interesting encounters that might turn into something one day
4. A hundred also interesting encounters that were pretty random
5. Not running out of business cards
6. Surviving
7. Writing this post to manage even better next time!
Enjoy the read!
@benjaminjoffe – in the Bay Area for a month to recover from #SXSW.
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+8* | Plus Eight Star jeopardizes its health going to #SXSW to tell about Asia so you don’t have to go to Asia do the same. If you’re not following us on Twitter, you’re missing out!
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