SXSWi for the 2008 season is officially over, and aside from being exhausted, I had a great time this year. My experience was a lot better this time around because I wasn’t new to everything as I was last year. So I had a much better feel for the town and getting around and such. It also made a drastic difference having a hotel that was 3 blocks away as opposed to having a hotel that is a 10 minute cab ride away. It saves a lot of time. So here is my brief recap on the trip:
Panels
I wasn’t too impressed with the panels that I attended this year. Maybe I just chose the wrong ones, but very few stood out to me. My two favorites, however, were 37signals’ panel, which it exactly what I expected it to be. It was very informative and I run my business in many ways similar to 37signals, so it’s nice to hear him speak on that. My next favorite panel was from Jim Coudal, who in my eyes, is a creative genius. I can’t even begin to explain how the panel went about, but if I find a recap from someone else, I will link to it.
The last panel that stood out was from Jason Santa Maria and Rob Weycherts panel on “Everyones a Design Critic”. The title is fairly self explanatory but the panel was great. I think those two are great presenters and compliment each other more than any other presenters I’ve seen on a stage. So overall, the panels were just ok, and hard to tell whether I preferred this years panels to last years.
Networking
What made SXSWi more valuable for me this year was the networking. Last year I got a bunch of business cards from top people in the industry with no intentions on re-contacting them. I just wanted to see their cool business cards, and I was more “star struck”, if you will. This year I feel I’ve made some very good connections with people and built real relationships that will be lasting. With the business cards that I got from people this year, I actually intend on following up with them just to keep the communication lines open. But a definite thanks goes out to the great people I hung out with and communicated with via Twitter, which brings me to my next point.
Twitter
I mentioned in my beginners guide that Twitter is very useful in a conference setting. So to reiterate that, and more, I loved using Twitter and it become extremely valuable this year. In conjunction with networking that I mentioned above, being able to communicate with people through Twitter was a great way to get information fast, whether that be finding out how long a line is at a night event, seeing how a panel is, or looking for a place to eat. You post a tweet, and you get almost instant responses. I also set up Twitter to send SMS messages to my phone, but only for those that were at SXSW, which made it a whole lot easier to use it. So I was able to see what people were up to in Austin, as well as let them know what I was up to. It was great, and made the experience very cool. Now I’m more addicted to Twitter.
Socialthing!
There is always some kind of app that comes out each year and this years was Socialthing! I’ve been using it for about a week and a half, and I think it’s an awesome product. I try out as many new web apps as I can and haven’t used one that I really liked in a long time, until now. Socialthing! aggregates some of the more popular social sites (Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Flickr, etc.) and brings all of your contacts updates to one place. It’s very useful, and talking with the creators, they have some good plans to do more with it in the near future. So check it out, it’s in private beta right now so sign up. They also have an awesome iPhone interface.
So, that is the recap on my visit to Austin this year. Great times had, and thanks again to all those that I hung out with that made the trip more fun. I am already excited about going again next year.
