Goodbye and Thank You SXSW!!
March 15th, 2006
I am sitting on a plane flying back to Portland. I am lucky enough to have the whole row to myself, yet unlucky to have the people in front of me lean back and give me no room for my laptop. So imagine me siting sideways across two seats,with my laptop on one pull down tray, and my right arm on the other tray. Ah, the luxuries of traveling coach. Is it still called coach or is it just, “Now boarding group 4.”? Moooo.
I am trying not to sleep on the plane even thought I am exhausted. My plane lands at 10:45 p.m. at PDX and I have to be in the office by 9 a.m. tomorrow. If I sleep on this second leg of the trip I would not be able to fall asleep and be up late, and be useless at work. Its interesting how one can spend the past fives days drinking free alcohol into the wee hours of the morning and be able to listen, take notes, participate, learn, and interact with people the next day, only to start the cycle all over again that evening. Yet one can have a full nights rest, go to work, and be out of it by lunch. One of the many “pieces of loot” that I picked up while at SXSW. I guess fortune cookies, do know what they are talking about.
I arrived in Austin at 10 o’clock Friday night. Took a cab to the hotel, where I found “Puke Man” (aka Al, but I’ll let him tell that story himself) holed up in the hotel room because he wasn’t feeling well. Food poisoning or something. So I went out to find Mike and see what he was up to. I met him and his friends at a place called The Paradise on Trinity and 6th. The Paradise is a pretty decent bar where people seem to gather at the end of the night. This being my first time at SXSW I didn’t know anyone and it was great to meet some people before the conference started.
The hotel that we were staying at was only one and half blocks from the conference center, and it had free breakfast that ended at 10, which came in handy. The majority of the events occurred within walking distance which was great, because there was no need to take cabs or rent a car.
I was a little afraid of the first panel I went to, because I didn’t think it was all that great. It was very unorganized, there was no structure (I am not implying that everything needs structure, but these people most certainly did), and the moderator was extremely annoying. She was constantly making herself laugh, and what a horrible laugh it was. The majority of the rest of the panels that I attended where pretty good, informative, and engaging. I attended panels that discussed, blogging, DOM Scripting, CSS, AJAX, Web 2.0, tagging, folskonomy, microformats, accessibility, startups, and chickens.
The keynote on the first day, with Jason Fried and Jim Coudal was excellent. I found it interesting, informative, and inspirational. Jim postulated that perhaps the meek are not the ones that will inherit the earth, but the curious. I liked that. Jason’s concept was that less is better. don’t out do your competition, under do them. Don’t have more features, have less better ones. Work with less money, don’t get funded, bootstrap it your self. Work with less time, you will waist less time. Basically his message was that with less you will waist less, and therefore have more in the end.
I missed the one on the following day because I had a choice of seeing Henry Rollins speak the hour before, go to the key note and miss not eating until later, or I had the choice of seeing Henry Rollins speak, miss the keynote and be able to eat lunch. I chose the latter option and I am glad I did. It was awesome. I have never heard him speak, just Black Flag and his spoken word. He is an incredibly down to earth and intelligent man.
The keynote on the third day was with Craig Newmark, of craigslist.org He is a very curious and interesting man. It was interesting to hear him go on and on about the west wing. Later in the week I had the great opportunity to sit next to him during the “Design Eye for List Guy” presentation and hear him grunt and talk to himself, as the panel discussed how they would redesign the site. I liked the finished product and it seemed that Craig liked it as well. It was pretty interesting to see how they came up with the redesign and get a glimpse into their thought process.
I thought that the Bruce Sterling’s presentation, ‘The State of the World’ was intelligent, thought provoking, and emotional. I was left speechless as he broke down while he recited an excerpt of Carl Sandburg’s ‘The People Yes’. All I can say is amazing.
Every night, after the conference, was spent out at parties hosted by various companies and individuals. I took full advantage of all the open bars that I came across. It was great meeting tons of new and interesting people. Learning about who they are and what they do.
SXSW was a great experience and I cannot wait to again next year. This was my first conference and I think I may be addicted to them. I just need to figure out a way to be able to take time off so that I can make other conferences.
Happy birthday and thank you SXSW!
