April 23 2007 / (1)

SXSW Interactive 2007, finally.

A lot has happened since SXSW Interactive 2007. So much that it's been daunting writing anything at all. Most important of all, I am now a free agent; I stopped going out to Barrington for work after one last day over there once I got back from Austin. (I'm still working with Glendale in a reduced capacity, and I've been back in two or three times since, but it's now just one of a few things I'm doing. Which is great.) More about that in another post.

Warning: Whining Ahead
South-By this year was quite a bit different compared to my previous three. Much of the difference can be traced directly to the fact that attendance had at least doubled over 2006 -- which had been nearly twice as large as 2005. The number I heard was 5,500 people this year. This was the first year that attendance for Interactive was larger than that for Film. I don't think the growth (at least to such a degree) was expected, and the seams in the usually fine-tuned conference showed at times:

• Wifi sucked this year. The connection ranged from slow but passable in between panels, to glacial or constantly timed-out when panels were on, to completely nonexistent in the third floor rooms (a new branch of the conference, necessitated by the sheer volume of attendees and panels). The irony of an interactive conference with such poor internet connectivity was not lost on most people. Interestingly, there was that at least one cellular company had positioned a temporary cell tower in the conference center to assure strong signals for their customers in panels -- yet no one thought to add additional wifi points. They had better fix it, or next year's even larger crowd will bring the whole thing down.

• Speaking of the third floor, whoever designed the Austin Convention Center was apparently an idiot. There were only two ways to get from the fourth floor, where the majority of the conference takes place, to the third floor: a single elevator bank, or going all the way to the ground floor and around to an escalator halfway down the building. Very poor planning. I was late to the first two panels I wanted to attend on Three, simply because I had realized too late that I couldn't get there quickly. (I was on time for the third only because I was already there.)

• The old check-in system was OK when it was a conference of about 1,500 people; it doesn't scale to 5,500. Checking in for your badge required a wait in a long, long line downstairs attended to by too few conference volunteers; people were allowed upstairs in groups. And the location of the check-in booths has always created a hallway bottleneck, as people waiting for their passes crowded in along the wall so they could hear their names called, while unchecked-in folks lined up to get theirs and already-checked-in folks squeezed through in between. This needs to be fixed. There has to be a better place to set up check-in, somewhere where the hallway isn't at its narrowest and directly in the way of people navigating to panels and events in different parts of the floor. How about downstairs by where we have to pick up our conference schwag bags? Then we don't have to make two trips.

I was hardly the only person complaining about these issues -- they were primary complaints brought up in the feedback forums on the SXSW website. The SXSW Conference has responded to these concerns and more, and say they are working on solutions to each.

The Death of the Hallway Culture
The much larger conference and changed layout had another side effect that was unexpected: very few people hung out in the halls. A few pockets of old-timers cropped up here and there, but for the most part the hallways were free of the clusters of people sitting and talking.

I can see two reasons this happened. First, so many more people meant there simply wasn't room in the halls for large groups to spread out on the ground -- and a superfluous checkpoint midway down the hall (what was up with that?) exacerbated this. Second, the hall that in previous years belonged to Interactive was given to Film this year. That hall, which connected to two short dead-end areas, provided more places for people to sit -- and, importantly, a couple additional electrical outlets where people could recharge laptops and cameras.

If this trend continues, it could be a serious threat to what makes SXSWi such a great conference, such a hotbed for new ideas and collaboration. I can't tell you how many amazing connections I and others have made while sitting against a wall in between (or instead of in) panels. The opportunity to commune with peers and to meet new people is a valuable part of the conference experience, and now that the after-hours scene has blown up (I'll touch on that next), hallway time is the only chance most people have to talk in an informal mode -- one that's neither serious panel nor crazy party.

I like to tell people that the amazingly great thing you'll be using online was got its start in the hallway at South-By. That's somewhat hyperbole, but there's a nugget of truth in it; in 2004 flickr was just a baby, and I "sent" a bug report to Caterina by literally holding my laptop in front of her and saying, "Look, this is broken." By the same time the following year, Yahoo had purchased flickr and it had more than a quarter-million users. (That thing this year was Twitter; did you notice that nearly all the press coverage of the service came after -- and referred to -- its rampant use at SXSWi?) If the hallway culture disappears, the conference runs the risk of damaging its ability to nurture nascent projects and inspire new ones.

On the other hand, the Interactive Playpen returned this year, which was a joy to behold and play in. It fills in some of the lost hallway creativity with a new outlet; my only hope is that Ryan and Sooz are able to bring it back next year.

We Came to Party
When I first went to SXSW for the first time in 2004, there were only a couple of sponsored parties in the evenings. By 2006 the web had clearly returned to profitability and companies such as Yahoo and Google threw lavish parties every night. That was very exciting, but it was nothing compared to this year. In 2007, there were even more parties and events, so many that you couldn't possibly attend all of them and so many that far-flung venues were booked to house them because the most of the places on 6th Street were already full. But here again, the vastly larger attendance was a hindrance: the bigger/better promoted parties often had a half-hour wait outside because demand far outstripped occupancy limits.

The Paradise remained the base camp, as in previous years, but this time it was in part because eventually it wasn't worth trying to get into the parties. It's hard to complain about free drinks and t-shirts, but when even Break Bread with Brad draws 300-some attendees, most of whom don't even know who Brad is, it's a little disturbing. (OK, so that was partly my fault; I pimped it on the "How to Rawk SXSW" panel.) Anyway, my hope is that next year's parties are a bit smaller, but more numerous.

Interestingly, the massive parties made it somewhat easier to get away in small groups if you wanted to. A small group headed down to South Congress one night for dinner, and met up with another group to cross the street for some Amy's ice cream and a little hokey-pokey in the middle of the street. Closing night found about a dozen of us playing Werewolf in a private room at a nearby steakhouse.

What About the Panels?
There's not much that I can say on the topic of presentations vs. panels that hasn't already been covered by others -- Khoi's thoughts here are particularly in line with mine, although I see more opportunity for redemption for panel discussions than I think he does. His discussion of the issue with SXSW organizer Hugh Forrest is required reading on the subject.

Overall I found fewer topics of interest, but I got a bit more total value out of the panels and presentations I did attend than I have in previous years, I think. The advertising panel I sat in on actually contained useful information for once, although that's probably just my opinion (both of this year's panel and those of previous years.) I do wish that the presentations were longer than half an hour; most of the ones I attended felt a bit rushed, and one was poorly timed out, such that we were just getting into the meat of the topic when the presenter had to wrap it up. I'm sure scheduling is a big headache for them, but maybe 45 minutes would be a better length?

Perhaps because of my current career status, I got the most out of two presentations, both about creativity: "After the Brief: A Field Guide to Design Inspiration" featuring Rob Weychert and Jason Santa Maria, and "Making Your Short Attention Span Pay Big Dividends" with Brendan Dawes and my friend Jim Coudal. Both were simply encouragement to get out there and do what you're thinking about, rather than just sitting on it -- "It's much easier to steer a moving ship than one that's stuck in port," Dawes said -- as well as to know when to set aside ideas that you're either not ready to do or whatnot, a concept that Coudal refers to as "the book." Ideas that are great, but can't be worked on right now or lose momentum, go in the book -- in part to record them for posterity but also to clear that mindspace for other things, so that great idea doesn't nag you and steal mental time from what's at hand. Santa Maria and Weychert recommended having a sketchbook -- or a Moleskine, as is the current geek milieu -- to jot down ideas, work out designs, stick inspirational materials and whatever else might contribute to and encourage your creative process.

This was the first year in which a significant set of panels took place on Friday, which used to be an unofficial conference day. My own Friday panel, "How to Rawk SXSW," was a good way to kick off the conference for noobies -- it was completely scatterbrained but full of good information, and hopefully set a casual but creative tone for those new to South-by. Thanks again to MJ for bringing me on board with that one.

2008, Here I Come
So, what's the bottom line for me? Despite the obvious growing pains, I still love SXSW Interactive, and there's no doubt I'll be back again next year. We finally got Naz to come down this year, and now he of course is hooked too. The Chicago contingent continues to expand. And I got to know many new people, notably Liz Danziko, Rob Weychert, Tony Pierce, Lynne d. Johnson, Chris Fahey and Noelle (whose last name I never caught). Not to mention the dozens of friends and acquaintances I reconnected with to varying degrees.

I've got a good idea for another panel next year, suggested and elaborated on by Fahey and others. I'll be one of the first in line when the panel picker opens up for submissions.

I can only hope that this year's problems are rectified, and that they and the crowds don't cause many of the veterans to stay away. Several of the big names I ran into in the hallways in years past have already departed, and a continued exodus of thought leaders in the blogging and general interactive world would be a sad thing, indeed. Time will tell.

1 Comments / Leave a comment

April 24 2007, 08:48 AM / Rob Weychert

Nice writeup, Andrew. I had a very similar experience, though the wifi issues didn't bug me because I purposely left my laptop in the hotel in favor of my nerdy Moleskine. :) It was really great to meet you and the rest of the Chicago contingent whose work I've been admiring from afar. I'll definitely give y'all a shout next time I'm out there.





    

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