I’ve been meaning to recap my first South By Southwest Interactive experience ever since I got back. But work and life got in the way. So, a month and a half later, hopefully I’ve gained a little more perspective, now that the adrenaline rush has passed and I’ve had a chance to reflect on all aspects of the…conference? Festival? I’m not even sure what to call it.
If you went it without ADD, you certainly caught it there. If you went in with ADD, that condition spread to all your other senses. Session over here! Keynote over there! Check out the Empanada/taco/curry truck down the street! VIP party starting now! Come try our new game! Nice to meet you! Nice to meet you! Nice to meet you!
This was the biggest SXSW Interactive ever, with 15,000+ attending, and there were thousands more who were in town for the film and music portions of SXSW too.
I read up on SXSW as much as possible before I went, and I tried to apply the guidance offered. But it’s impossible to really know what the hell to do until you’ve been through it. There were a few nuggets that really helped though, like:
1. Tapping into the social site offered by SXSW, through which you can search for people by name, company, keywords, etc, to find, connect, and make introductions with particular people before you even head to SXSW. I contacted several folks and met a few of them at sessions (Tara Grumm from Microsoft and Jennifer Buxton from Real Posh Mom – a mutual friend in Seattle introduced us via Twitter during SXSW), over beers (Andy Pearson from Crispin Porter + Bogusky, Eric Swayne from RockFish, and Tac Anderson from Waggener Edstrom), and sometimes just via email or Twitter (Shawn McPike from AT&T and Paull Young from Charity Water).
2. Bringing a power strip with me everywhere I went. I made a ton of quick friends by offering them a source to recharge their mobile phones at sessions, parties, and even just in hallways. People thought that was a brilliant idea. But like most great ideas, I got it from someone else. So thank you whoever wrote that in your blog. At SXSW, being on your phone is considered being social.
3. Planning out your agenda in advance, but planning to scrap that early and often. I ran into my pal Jay Baer, of ConvinceAndConvert, in the Austin Convention Center hallway in between sessions and he said “Dude, you’re coming to ‘The Now Revolution‘ Tacos & Tequila lunch party right? You blurbed for the book, you have to be there.” I don’t think I was even aware of it, but you bet I immediately cleared my schedule for that. And seeing Jay in his mini sombrero was priceless. By the way, the book is brilliant. Go buy it. Now.
At SXSW, new events are announced like popcorn, meet-and-greets and juicy conversations happen everywhere, and sometimes you just need a few minutes to breathe.
4. Hanging with a friend or two. It’s helpful to have a buddy who can attend other sessions you can’t make so you can share insights gleaned and work a room together. I was lucky to have two, Josh Feig, my counterpart at the Make-A-Wish Foundation International, and Freddie Yeti, whose grand adventures you can follow on his Yeti Tales blog.
5. Serving on a panel. I had the privilege of serving on the “Social Media for Social Good – how digital charity is changing our world” panel hosted by Blackbaud. That opportunity came to me, but it was a phenomenal opportunity to meet a bunch of people, including an all-star cast on the panel:
Frank Barry (Moderator) – Internet marketing & strategy at Blackbaud and the blog voice of NetWits ThinkTank.
Ramya Raghavan – Political and social change programming at YouTube.
Claire Diaz Ortiz – Social innovation and philanthropy at Twitter.
Charles Porch – Marketing related to public figures and nonprofits at Facebook.
Jake Furst – Business development at Foursquare.
Beverly Robertson – National director of the Pregnancy & Newborn Health Education Center at the March of Dimes.
And of course Freddie Yeti.
My attendance resulted in me being interviewed for two media pieces and one video blog segment. Following the panel session, Claire Diaz Ortiz and I were interviewed by an Austin NPR reporter for a “Social Media for the Social Good” piece. I also was interviewed for an AOL Daily Finance piece, “Where the Geeks Are: Dispatches From the Largest SXSW Interactive Ever.”
Then the panel moderator, Frank Barry, interviewed me for his blog.
The SXSWi sessions were hit-or-miss, but part of that was because I didn’t understand how best to pick them. I quickly learned that if a session’s title sounded like a good blog post title, it was probably a very broad, high-level session about general theory and principles, and that if I wanted to get some practical meat from a session, I was best served looking for titles about very narrowly focused subjects.
It took me days – maybe a week – to recover from all the walking, running, hailing cabs and cars, eating and drinking, thinking, and networking. And it was awesome. I can’t wait to go back next year, now that I know a thing or two about what I’m doing.
Finally, where else could you get someone like Guy Kawasaki to cradle your yeti?
