South by Southwest 2007 Wrap-up

Another exhilarating time in Austin attending my second "SXSW Interactive":http://2007.sxsw.com. Last year I traveled by myself and was forced to meet a ton of new people and I thoroughly enjoyed that. I think I brought back several dozen business cards from fellow attendees. This time I convinced two colleagues, Brian and Tim, to come with so it was a bit of a different dynamic. I had a pack to travel with, so introducing myself to strangers was far more optional this time around. It worked out quite well though; I had some good bonding time with the guys and met some wonderful folks like Franca Renna, Jeff Croft, Nathan Borror, Dan Cederholm, Bryan Veloso, Andy Budd, and Kelly Abbott, and reconnected with friends like Josh and Jessa Works, Scott Jungling, and Cody Lindley.

South By is only partly about the panels and keynotes; it's as much about the parties and meetups. Sadly, we missed the Higher Ed meetup, having just gone through the incredibly long registration line and toting our giant bags of conference goods back to the hotel (there's no way I was going to drag that thing around to parties). The bar was completely empty by the time we got there. Fortunately I ran into quite a few higher ed attendees throughout SXSW.

Here are some of my notes from SXSW 07:

Memorable Experiences

• Avalonstar Bowling A shout out to my fellow Team Hit or Miss teammates! Top 8 finish, baby! And I'd like to think we'd have gotten farther if the competition had continued on in bracket style. Seriously cool bowling alley, that 300.
• Getting drenched walking back to the hotel from the convention center where the bus from the bowling alley dropped us. The rainstorm was Texas-sized. Perhaps you heard of the flooding in nearby Galveston? We tried our best to appear completely nonchalant as we traipsed through the hotel lobby looking like we'd just jumped into a pool with our clothes on.
• Toy Joy's: Perhaps the most nonsensical store I've ever seen. We just had to go in because of the bizarre things painted all over the exterior. Stuff like: "It's Toyalicious!" and "See Monkey Island!" I know, that doesn't say a lot. I wish I had a photo of this place. Suffice it to say, the contents of the store did not disappoint. Sadly they were all sold out of Pass the Pigs.
• Ruby's BBQ: Not a good experience, but memorable for the fact that they have the world's worst baby back pork ribs. Imagine eating bad ham off a rib bone. Then throw in mac 'n cheese that doesn't even beat Kraft's. In retrospect the small portions could be considered a good thing. The best part was the sign prohibiting firearms in the restaurant.
• Being attacked by the infamous bats of Austin. Okay, that never happened. But it could have.

Panels

• Grids are Good: This year SXSW introduced two half-hour timeslots. It's a good idea in theory to be exposed to more ideas and conversations, but too often it seemed some half-hour panels should have been an hour, and vice versa. Grids are Good, by Mark Boulton and Khoi Vinh, was one that could have been an hour. Excellent panel!
• Influence of Art in Design: Dan Rubin was a great moderator, and it was really neat to hear from Patrick Haney on his inspiration from web sites, Glenda Sims on the interactive experiences she's putting together in a museum environment, and the others. At this point I hadn't gotten into the habit of taking good notes so I'm forgetting some of best parts.
• Uniting the Holy Trinity of Web Design: I didn't necessarily come away with action points from this one, but I appreciated hearing from the panelists (esp. Sally Carson and Jonathan Snook) and I'm glad to see panels geared for those of us in large corporations (as opposed to indie or small-team developers). The panelists mentioned at the beginning that they rethought the trinity from CSS+HTML+Javascript to Design+Business+Users. Unfortunately this meant Dustin Diaz, while I love him, didn't have much to contribute; he recently quit Yahoo and came off pretty bitter with large company politics.
• Web Typography Sucks: Another great panel with Mark Boulton, accompanied by Richard Rutter. Typography is one of the biggest areas for growth on the web, IMO.
• WaSP Annual Meeting: I loved attending this last year, and just as much this year. I have a lot of respect for the leaders in WaSP and really enjoy hearing from them on what's going on.
• Can Social Networking Build Your Brand?: One of the most practical panels this year, I came away with a number of great tips.
• Helvetica, the movie: Crazy good, I can't wait to see it again. Think I'm nuts to watch a movie about a font? Go check it out, you'll see what I'm talking about. And let me note that I was addicted to Helvetica Neue long before seeing it.

Parties

Well, there's actually not a whole lot to say here but "The parties were fun (and loud)!" The exception would be to note that Ze Frank was freaking hilarious in his stand-up routine Saturday night. It was worth being packed into the club for an hour. And I'll take this opportunity to apologize again to the guy I kept whacking in the head when I thought his head was actually the wall. Whoops.

Well, that wraps up another great SXSW. Thanks to the city of Austin and the SXSW organizers, and see ya next year!