I’m back in Lawrence after a long trip down to Austin with Matt, Nathan, and Michelle. As per usual, SXSW interactive was a blast. Also as per usual, it was the people that really made it so. I saw several good panels and presentations, but the real reason to go to SXSW is the relationship. Meeting people for the first time face-to-face, re-meeting those you met last year, and generally enjoying the good company is what it’s all about.
The Interactive portion of the festival felt a lot bigger this year than last. I’m not sure how much bigger it actually was, but it sure seemed like a big difference. Although it’s great that more people are getting to go, I’m not sure the SXSW organizers have quite figured out how to deal with the scale yet. It felt a lot harder to see everything you wanted to during the daytime. Scheduling conflicts abound, and once I actually couldn’t find a seat at a presentation I wanted to see, so I left and went to a different one. Also, I found it really difficult to get from the Convention Center to Sixth Street for lunch and back in time to make the Keynotes. I really wanted to see Kathy Sierra and Dan Rather, but no amount of rushing for lunch got me back in time.
It’s even worse in the evenings. The more people has made for more parties, but in just as many days. This may sound like a good thing — and basically, it is — but it just leaves you with the felling that you missed something. Avalonstar Bowling was awesome — but I missed the Web Awards and After-Party because of it. The British Booze-Up was maybe the best party of the year — but it was at the same time as Yahoo’s party (which was one of the best last year) and 20x2 (which everyone says is great, but I’ve not yet made it to). You get the idea.
But that’s nitpicky. Overall, Southby was a blast. Even Michelle (my girlfriend, who has nothing to do with interactive and isn’t much of a geek) had a great time. She went to panels that sounded interesting during the day (and, according to her, most of them were), and loved the parties at night.
The panel Kelsey Ruger arranged and asked Veloso, Veerle, and myself to be on met with mixed reviews. It was called “Design Workflows at Work.” Several people told me it was quite good, but it’s always difficult to tell if they’re just being nice or not. A few people have complained (some quite loudly) that it wasn’t what they were expecting. That’s a bummer, and I feel bad for not giving them what they wanted. I’m probably over-sensitive about it, but the fact that not everyone loved it has definitely been bothering me. I guess, in the end, you can’t please everyone.
From what I’ve gathered, the problem was basically twofold. First, it seems that what we meant by “workflows” didn’t quite match with what others thought we meant. We were talking big-picture — what kind of daily routines we have, what kind of things inspire us, what kind of things disrupt our workflow, what kind of things keep us going, and so forth. Seems some people wanted a less-meta approach. I think maybe they wanted to hear how we handle the workflow of a single project,or something. Secondly, it seems some people simply don’t like a more conversational, panel-style approach to the session. Whereas I find these are usually my favorite style because I get a very real insight into the panelist’s head(s), other seem to prefer a more structured PowerPoint-style presentation — I guess so they can take home the very specific bullet points they jotted down.
As with most things, better communication would have probably preempted these issues. If our panel had been given a better description (and title?), we probably could have avoided it. Also, it probably would have behooved us to talk to more people before hand and ask them just what they would expect out of a panel with that title and description. Greg Storey IM’d me a few weeks before SXSW to ask me exactly what I was expecting from his “Writing, Better” session, and I imagine he asked other people, as well. Oh well. Live and learn, I guess.
It wasn’t all bad for the panel, though. People seem to love the mini-site we crafted for the session. It’s got the same beautiful design that Veloso put together for the (very few) slides, interviews with 27 of your favorite web designers, and a whole host of resources for your consumption. To us, this was the “hard data” portion of our session that allowed us to do the softer, panel-style presentation on stage.
The quality of the sessions was mostly good, in my opinion. The best session I attended was one of the new 25-minute “power sessions,” called “Grids are Good.” It shouldn’t come as a surprise to much of anyone that I loved this, as I’m obsessed with grids, and Khoi Vinh and Mark Boulton are probably my two biggest influences when it comes to web design. The only problem with the session was that it was so short. They did a great job of fitting a ton of info into 25 minutes, but I could listen to these two talk about grids for hours.
(As an aside: the Grids session was great, but overall I wasn’t thrilled with the 25-minute format. Good experiment, but I’m not sure it worked.)
My next-favorite session was probably “Get Unstuck,” which featured Zeldman, Bengtsson, Messina, Wroblewski, and Liz Danzico moderating. For the record, Liz gets the moderator-of-the-year award (filling in for Kelly Goto), and as I recall, she deserved it last year, too. Liz a great moderator. She can ask me questions anytime. Another very good session with a great moderator was Inman, Gruber, and Bradbury’s “Design Aesthetic for the Indie Developer,” which was run by Rands himself, Michael Lopp. Again, it was no surprise that Lopp was great, as his session rocked last year, as well.
And oh oh — the one Keynote I did make it to was freaking mind-blowing. Will Wright is a damn genius. I’m not even going to try to explain it — just get the podcast.
And although I said I generally prefer panel-style sessions to their presentation-style counterparts, I’d be remiss to not point out how much ass Brian Fling’s “Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About The Mobile Web” kicked. It was packed with info, and I personally think it’s really important to get the SXSW crowd (which still features a lot of designers and front-end developers, even though a lot more programmers seemed to be along for the ride this year) excited about this topic. Every year we predict it’s going to be the year of the mobile web — and one of these years, it will really happen. It has to. We should be ready for it.
The “Future of Online Magazines” panel was downright hysterical. Featuring folks from CollegeHumor.com, Salon, Media Bistro, The Onion, and Nerve.com, this panel may not have been extremely informative (although there were a few tidbits to take away), but damn I laughed a lot. Good stuff.
“Writing, Better,” featuring Greg Storey, Ethan Marcotte, Bronwyn Jones, and Erin Kissane was also very good. In my mind, they were saying all the right things: what is important is to write. To get your thoughts out there. To tell a story. What is less important is to know your grammar inside and out. That will come with time — and with a good editor. They offered several good tips on how to focus on telling a story. Loved it.
Rob Weychert and Jason Santa Maria were great in their “Field Guide To Inspiration,” and I’m sure it would have been even more awesome if Cameron Moll had been there (he got sick at the last minute at wasn’t able to make it). Jason was also quite entertaining alongside Andy Clarke in “Bullet Tooth Web Design”
Overall, the sessions were quite good. I don’t think there were any I was disappointed with — but I’ve also learned to go into these things with few expectations and take them for what they are. Some are designed to be info-packed; others are built to be funny and entertaining. And that’s okay — at least by me.
Overall, the parties were great. The British Booze-Up and South By Northwest take the cake this year, I think — and it didn’t hurt that they were one after another. Great job to the folks involved with those two.
Avalonstar Bowling was freaking huge, and was fun as hell. What Bryan and Jen have done with this event is simply amazing. Honestly, they deserve so many kudos on this. If you were there, you know how much effort must have gone into it. Wow. Congrats, Bryan. You rock.
Everything at Six was cool. I just really like that bar, I think. Plus it was fun to take free drinks from MySpace before heading over to Tejas, hosted by the guys behind Virb (and PureVolume).
The only party I have anything bad to say about is the closing party. The “VIP Lounge,” if you can call it that, was a real downer. No offense to those who were in it (many of whom I call friends), but it really hurt the tone of the night. I’ve heard about a few people flat walking out when they saw it, and those of us down on the “regular people floor” heard nothing but complaints about it. It just seemed to be against the whole, “everyone is equal, don’t be shy about meeting your web rockstars” attitude that SXSW has always had in the past. And that doesn’t even touch upon the fact that the upstairs is the best part of The Foundation and most of us couldn’t even go up there!
Beyond that, the closing party got off to a rough start, with a serious lack of bartenders and problems with the sound system. They got that stuff straightened out, though, and we did end up having a pretty good time.
Bottom line, SXSW was great. Sure, I’ve got a few nitpicks and my panel didn’t go over quite as well as I’d hoped, but we still had a damn good time. And that, of course, is mostly due to all the wonderful people. I’m not going to try to name everyone, but rest assured that if I met you, you were part of the reason Southby rocked. Even you, Mani. :)
Seriously, the people in this community are amazing and it’s the relationships built that make this event unlike any other I’ve been to. We really need to find a way to do this more than once-a-year, guys.
001 // Keith // 03.15.2007 // 9:52 AM
Hey Jeff. Was great to see you and yours! Wish I could have made your panel, sounds like it was a good one.
I agree with you about the closing party, it was kind of awkward. But in their defense, I don’t think they intended it to come out like it did. I think it was supposed to be for Media Temple customers and I think the idea came from an innocent and good place. But yeah, it made it kind of weird.
ANYway, it was great seeing y’all. Hopefully it won’t be another year.
002 // Dan Mall // 03.15.2007 // 10:29 AM
So you’re saying you didn’t really enjoy SXSW at won’t be back next year?
003 // Jeff Croft // 03.15.2007 // 10:38 AM
Hah. Hardly, Dan. I had a great time, and I’ll be back every time they have one of these things. :)
004 // Matt Howell // 03.15.2007 // 11:05 AM
I do think there was a problem with how some of panels were categorized. I went to one called “Web App Autopsy” — it was in the Technical category, and the description said it would examine code and business requirements. The first 5 minutes dealt with how many lines of code in 4 different web apps were dedicated to the various parts of the business (86% for the app, 4% for marketing, 6% for billing, etc.), and the rest of the time was about conversion rates, beta-tester adoption and the like. The information was interesting, but it really was far more about business than the apps themselves… which I thought made the title more of a clever marketing hook than an accurate label.
Also I have to wonder…
Man, I wish. SxSW is like summer camp. :)
005 // Wilson Miner // 03.15.2007 // 12:36 PM
Agreed on all counts. Felt way more crowded, which made the whole thing more frantic and kept up a constant feeling that I was missing something.
The VIP thing at the Media Temple was ridiculous. It reminded me of that episode of Extras where Ricky Gervais gets seated in the VIP area and then gets kicked out when David Bowie gets there. It was also the least-exclusive VIP section I’ve ever seen. Here’s how the conversation went at the “gate”:
“Can I get in?”
“Do you have a stamp?”
“No, where can I get a stamp?”
“Here, I’ll give you a stamp.”
“Can I get in now?”
“Go ahead.”
Seriously. You should have just rolled up. You’re an Interweb rockstar.
006 // Jeff Croft // 03.15.2007 // 1:03 PM
Oh, I knew I couldhave gotten in. Seemed like they were handing out stamps left and right. The thing was, I didn’t want to get in. I was turned off by the elitest nature of it and didn’t want to be part of it.
007 // David Hemphill // 03.15.2007 // 1:05 PM
SXSW was a heckuva lot of fun. I heard some great panels and went to some killer parties where I was able to meet every one of my favorite web guys/gals.
The whole VIP thing was quite ridiculous as I was able to get in without effort and I’m certainly not a “celebrity”. I found myself thinking, “Wow, I don’t really deserve to be here with all these celebs”, and that’s dangerous for the community.
That aside, it was great hanging with you and I can’t wait for next year.
008 // Andrea Arbogast // 03.15.2007 // 1:31 PM
Agreed on all accounts, especially the Flash/standards point— we need more discussion about that. One of the most interesting panels I saw was the Flash and Ajax panel, which talked about how to use the two approaches together in one HTML-based app to make the best user experience. Doesn’t sound so different from the goals of the standards community to me.
009 // Brian Ford // 03.15.2007 // 2 PM
Well, in all – I really wanted to go, but finding out that Newsvine didn’t really have a presence makes me feel better.
Any “in” I have with that crowd is through people I ‘know’ there (well, and you) and I probably would have been most interested in a drink with those guys.
But, yes — if they could get more info about journalism in, that would be great as I find myself more and more interested in that field.
010 // Brian Ford // 03.15.2007 // 2:09 PM
Shoot, I forgot to mention:
The “Write, Better” panel would have been great, and I couldn’t agree with their point more:
My writing has matured a ridiculous amount over the last year of contributing to Newsvine, and this is primarily due to writing a lot of content.
I would say — read a lot, and you’ll write better. Read other blogs, read whatever — and you tend to pick up a lot of pointer subconsciously — and they work their way into your own style.
And, that’s another point: I’d rather read somebody who writes comfortably in a particular style — even if it’s not “correct” — than someone who follows strict rules of grammar, punctuation and form. Not a week goes by on Newsvine where some stuffy advocate of technique “tut tuts” imperfect writing — and this almost always comes from someone dull.
011 // Jeff Croft // 03.15.2007 // 7:24 PM
Definitely get the “Writing, Better” podcast when it’s available. Well worth the listen.
012 // Larissa Meek // 03.16.2007 // 1:14 AM
Hi Jeff!
I agree with you on getting some more Flash panels in there. And I felt like I missed out on so much too. That’s part of the challenge of the naming the panels and deciding what category it fits under. There’s so little time to try and get to everything.
I wish I had seen the AvalonStar bowling event! Looks like fun.
Overall it was a blast, and I will be back again next year.
013 // Alyson // 03.16.2007 // 2:40 AM
Nice wrap-up of the conference. And, from one online journalist to another, I second your call for more journalism-related panels! :)
014 // Ian Lloyd // 03.16.2007 // 3:15 PM
Oh yeah, the VIP thing - Craig Cook was having words with one of the MediaTemple guys outside for a good 30-40 minutes, neither side budging. He (mt guy) obviously didn’t get the silliness of the VIP area, that it was basically an arbitrary line. I said to him that had there actually been a separate VIP room where MT customers got given preferential treatment, I’d understand it more, but for half the upstairs to be roped off, and for people to be stood either side of the divider, listening to the same music and basically being in the same party made a mockery of it, but the mt guy just refused to accept that people might see it like that. Whatever, overall it was a grreat night - and another great SXSWi.
Great to see you there, but I just had a thought - we could have signed copies of our book for each other, then we could have bumped up the book signing total :-D
015 // Craig C. // 03.16.2007 // 6:51 PM
Yes, I shall be posting a lengthy rant about the MT VIP debacle in the near future. Sitting on it for a few days to let the buzz settle (and to finish my last overdue chapter).
Basically, the MT folks were trying bring a slice of Hollywood hipster pomp to a laid-back Austin geek conference. It was destined to fail and ultimately the whole thing was more pointless than it was offensive. They just couldn’t recognize the futility of it.
If they really wanted to give their customers some special treatment (which would be a very cool thing for a company to do) they could have organized a separate event for subscribers only, or a truly separate VIP room instead of a corner surrounded by nylon tape. The transparency of the barrier only flaunted the stupidity of drawing the line in the first place. The fact that one only had to know someone on the other side to gain entry made the barrier even more redundant. But MT was too caught up in the whole LA “pay attention to me” mindset to grasp the plain fact that we love SXSW for its lack of those very pretensions. How could people NOT be annoyed by a VIP area?
But look at that, I’m ranting… must save it for my own blog…
SXSW still rocked. Sorry I didn’t get to chat with you, Jeff. I’m missing one autograph in my copy of Pro CSS.
016 // jason lynes // 03.17.2007 // 12:22 AM
jeff, good to see you covering the VIP room. i wasnt at the MT party, but read about that nonsense on Veerle’s blog, where she said she basically walked out at the sight of it. glad to hear you didn’t partake of it either. that’s the kind of crap i’ve been railing against, the kind of thing that can kill our small industry.
one of the coolest things about the web and our so-called a-listers is that you can get their attention pretty easily (as i recently found out). a quick referral or just walking up to someone well-known at SXSW gets you face time with a “celebrity”, and it’s easy to learn from these guys. brining a little “hollywood” to SXSW in the form of this VIP room is total lameness, and i’m happy to see the people i look up to reject it.
i’ll have to write this up over on my site. you know where i can get a list of people on the VIP list? ;) i’d be interested to see which designers were hanging out up there..
017 // Veerle Pieters // 03.18.2007 // 7:21 AM
It was nice seeing you again and meeting Michelle, and an honor to speak with you in the panel. Can’t believe how packed the room was! And yes, you can’t please them all. I suppose some people expect another approach, a bit less conversation-like. Though this is what panels are about and I tend to find the kind of panels more interesting to listen to. Otherwise it’s a presentation, not a panel. It’s like you said, you get a better sense of how they think and work. There were a few ideas I had in mind that I would have loved to talk about… but time flies when you’re on stage and before you know it it’s over :)
About that VIP thing, so glad people feel the same. It just reminded me too much of a situation I ran into a few years ago, and I was so frustrated about and I thought “oh no, I’m not entering this area myself now, I refuse to enter”. It got me agitated really.
018 // Adam Polselli // 03.19.2007 // 8:01 PM
Wow, the site is looking fantastic Jeff! Thanks for the great write-up on SXSW.
019 // Paul Mayne // 03.20.2007 // 1:39 AM
Great to meet you, Michelle, Nathan and Matt. Wish I could have hung out more, but I actually had to work from my hotel room most of the time there. I’m almost over being peeved about it.
See you at the draft.
020 // Bryan Veloso // 03.22.2007 // 8:34 PM
Just have to say that it’s always a pleasure to hang out with you Mr. Croft and it was that much more awesome (does that make sense?) to work with you, Veerle and Kelsey on the panel. It definitely was the most comfortable I’ve been during a speaking engagement, and I feel the mutual respect that we have for each other really contributed to that. I think we made the right decision to run the way we did and I know that there were people that learned something through it, so that’s all I really care about in the end. :) Nay-sayers be damned!
Thanks for the compliments about the ABX as well. Looking back on it now, there were a few things we could have done better (some of those things were made vocal, much to my surprise), but it was really awesome just to see the people who went last year just fall over at the sight of The 300. As I said in my write-up on it, it is definitely the biggest success Jen and I have ever had bar none.
Again, it was awesome to see you again and to meet Michelle, Nathan and Matt. Hopefully we don’t have to wait until SXSW ‘08 to party again. ;D
021 // Johan // 03.26.2007 // 2:57 PM
This geek blogging seems so boring at times. Cindy Li this and that, Twitter is fun.