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SXSW Interactive 2006 Thoughts - The Fringe, but for Geeks

Posted on March 17, 2006
Filed Under SXSW 2006 |

Austin's Bat RushSo the second major conference of my March mega-trip is over. South by Southwest Interactive in Austin, Texas, has been something that I’ve heard mentioned by many people over the years, and now I’ve finally attended I can see why it’s held in higher regard in some circles than the O’Reilly conferences.

The atmosphere is completely different. If Etech is the common room at Edinburgh University, then SXSW Interactive is the Edinburgh Fringe. There’s a massive number of people, the programme of talks and panels is almost overwhelming, but the big difference is in the evening. It’s as difficult to choose which evening party to go to as choosing which panels to sit in during the day. The networking opportunities are far and away more useful than Etech, and I think that’s because there’s a huge diversity in the attendees.

The panels themselves through the day weren’t as useful as I was hoping. The titles promised so much, but by the time the moderator introduced himself and the 4 other panel members, then those panel members justified why they were there (and did a bit of promotion) you’re twenty minutes into a one hour session. Chuck in a pair of softball questions framing the question and you’ve eaten another 25 minutes. Which leaves 10 minutes for audience questions to five panel members, plus a summary. Maybe I’m ahead of the curve on a lot of these issues, but there was nothing riveting in the majority of sessions, and even the softballs felt overly scripted.

But on the other hand, during these sessions I had one of those “a-ha!” moments that had me sketching out some website and software designs - with the networking opportunities I could start putting together a ‘team’ within a few hours. That never happened at Etech.

The one session that I found riveting was “Serious Games for Learning” because the concepts were both way out there, and grounded in reality at the same time. I captured two panellists for the Tech Conference podcast (Brody and Dr Jim) which should be up soon. On the opposite side, the panel that really disappointed me was “The Future of Radio.” When you have foour radio show hosts and a producer on the panel, it kind of becomes one-sided. Statememnts like “there is no business model for podcasting,” “people want to be told what to listen to rather than search a gazillion tracks,” and “we’re there to promote the record industry and the advertisers” are, to me, reasons why radio’s future is incredibly unclear.

I’m glad that the one hour ‘overview’ show never survived beyond the first encounter at Etech as it would have been pretty much unworkable here at SXSW. There’s just too much going on - right after the sessions its into ‘prep for party’ mode, choose which ones to miss, and see where you end up.

Or, more importantly, who you end up with. I’ve a bundle of stuff to follow up on from some nights, other nights I’m sure have people following up with me, and then there was sitting at the EFF party with Marc Canter, Robert Scoble, Eric Skiff, Rachel Clarke and a twelve year old bottle of Linkwood single malt…

Will I be back? I’m pretty sure I will, the networking opportunities alone are worth it. I’ll probably look to take in music and film next year though, depending on how the dates work out. What I do know is that it was definitely worthwhile going this year.

Comments

One Response to “SXSW Interactive 2006 Thoughts - The Fringe, but for Geeks”

  1. Deirdre on March 22nd, 2006 2:38

    Hey Ewan, I was at the top table too - but since i didn’t partake of the whiskey i guess i was skipped over ;-)

    Will have the photos up on Flickr to prove it soon enough… heh.

    BTW, i rated your carpark longdistance interview technique - BBC Radio 5 live in SXSW expose!

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