I spent 4 nights in Austin Texas for SXSW 2009. It was my first trip to Austin and my first SXSW. I have known of this conference for about 5 years and even joined Twitter immediately after they won an award there in 2006. It wasn’t until I was chatting with Scott Beale of LaughingSquid at a tech party in August ’08 that I decided to go. Scott said, “you have to go. Austin is a mini-San Francisco and the geeks come there to play for 1 week in March.” Following Scott’s advice I went but I didn’t buy a pass. I attended SXSW without a conference badge and I would do things exactly the same next year.
Day of passes to the conference are $495 and I believe they’re as cheap as $375 in September. The price of a badge admits you to the exhibit hall and to sessions. Sessions are a miss and there’s a few reasons why. SXSW Panelists are chosen as a popularity contest. The cook kids submit panel ideas and they ask their blog and Twitter followers to vote on their contest. It’s a democratic system that ensures the popular tech personalities get their time in the spotlight as an “expert” but in actuality, not everyone is a good speaker or is able to deliver useful information off the cuff. I’m not saying that I would do any better but a lot of SXSW attendees warned me to simply skip the sessions and not one person was sorry for me when I mentioned not even buying a pass.
The reason for going to SXSW isn’t the conference. It’s the social events after the conference. There is a value to bringing everyone together in this kind of setting and maybe there’s a solution for people that aren’t there in person to virtually enjoy the social aspects but, for now SXSW wouldn’t be a good fit for a virtual attendance solution because it thrives on the human interaction. I wasn’t completely thrilled with how SXSW carried out but I understand it’s meant to be one big party.
My plan? Stay up until 6AM every morning with friends, sleep until 2PM and after some work in the bloggers lounge I’d start hitting parties at 4PM. I did this for 5 days and boy am I exhausted. That was the most exhausting vacation I’ve ever been on but it was worth it. Many of you that follow my tweets would agree. I managed to stay completely sober the entire time which was perfect because I strengthened existing connections and forged new friendships with some very unlikely personalities. There were people who lived in SF who I saw at parties and thought, “we’d never be compatible enough to hang out” and here I am sitting around a hot tub, eating BBQ or playing pool with these people. On Sunday, Guy Kawasaki hosted a party in the backyard of a cowboy apparel store. The party had catered BBQ, pit cooked stew, local beer called “steiner bock” and live country music. I honestly couldn’t stop smiling because it felt like a down home BBQ that I used to experience often back in Florida.
To give you a taste of SXSW, let me recap the last day (Monday). I woke up at noon and worked at the Bloggers Lounge brought to you by Windows Mobile / TechSet. I worked and caught up with old friends and was interviewed for a few blogs. I saw the new Dell Adamo notebook (Thanks Brian Solis) and at 4PM I went to the RackSpace party. They had belly dancers, fancy finger foods, drinks and hookah. I camped out with a dozen friends by the hookahs and soaked up the warm Austin weather. Afterwards, I had drinks with the writers of Wired Magazine and got some awesome schwag. Then I hopped on a chartered bus that First Round Capital (A VC Company) sponsored. There was beer on the bus and we drove 25 miles out to “The Salt Lick” which is a world famous BBQ place. After stuffing our faces, the bus dropped us off at The 32Bit Party which my friend Scott Beale helped host. I hopped back and forth between that, Mashable’s party and The Brightkite party. Afterwards, I went to a hotel party sponsored by Famer and closed out the evening with my own Hot Tub party on the 8th floor of the Hilton hotel. I bought ingredients for mimosas and friends joined us at 5:30AM as the sun came up and we relaxed in a hot tub. Even Robert Scoble tweeted out about it. After the sun came up, I came back to my hotel room, packed and hopped on a plane. It was the perfect day full of friends, lavish parties and fun. I met some awesome people and the value of this conference is apparent to me now.
The downside of SXSW, which is just a personal peeve, is the amount of unprofessionalism inherent with the event. People for which I had high respect for were drunk, puking and making complete asses of themselves. Others who were total friends were hooking up with each other’s girlfriends. Everyone went back to the hotels each night with a different girl or guy and I was in the hotel lobby as young tech entrepreneurs make the walk of shame at 5AM back to their hotels. It was embarrassing and I want no part of that. Fun doesn’t mean having a hangover and having anonymous sex, at least in my book, and that’s my primary gripe about the event.
The parties weren’t extravagant but they were fun and it was basically a transplant of everyone from San Francisco into Austin to hang out in a relaxed environment. I also got to catch up with friends from New York, Toronto, Chicago, Boston, Atlanta and Texas. I even have some new friends from all over the US who will make excellent connections in the future. Austin has the same population as San Francisco but the physical size of the city is 10x larger. Downtown has an excellent bar district. The police shutdown 6th street every night and live music plays in every venue. This is not the Texas I knew and I never saw a cowboy hat or an SUV. There were Obama Stickers and rock music which was so not Texas. So overall, Austin was very pleasurable. It’s the state’s capital, is home to one of the largest colleges in the nation and has a very vibrant tech community. Honestly, it’s an ideal location to maybe one day settle down but that’s 30 years in the future so let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
SXSW is a must attend conference even if you do it once. The debauchery, parties and drunkeness is universally loved it appears but for those of us aiming to strengthen our connections and make new ones, it’s a perfect show for that. Skip the conference badge, follow the crowds via Twitter and don’t be afraid to talk to the “Web 2.0 Celebs”. It was a conference to remember and I’ll try to go again next year. I may not go for 5 days but I’m certainly staying at The Hilton again and I’m certainly going to organize more micro-parties. Austin, I barely got to know you but you are pretty rocking and if I ever take a vacation, you’re on my list. To all of my existing and new friends, you guys made the trip remarkable. I have to go through hundreds of photos taken of me and I have to go through a ton of Twitter followers that I gained and I certainly have to include this experience in my next book. More details on that very soon :)
Geeks. Book your flight now for next year. It’s the worst conference of the year but the place to be if you want to make real connections and build friendships. I’m ecstatic and can’t wait to go again next year.
Wow, sounds like SXSW knocks Macworld down a peg or two as the must attend event of the year. I followed most of your tweets and was impressed with your mobility…jumping from one party and crashing the next. It’s too bad the sessions are a drag but you’re right it’s all about the networking and connections.
Hey Dred. I hope you’ll join me next year. I’m awaiting registration so I can signup as soon as possible. Roommates? It was very affordable. Just skp the registration and you’re thinking about $200 a night for hotel (if you want to be close by) and $300 roundtrip flight. Food is cheap. Split the room and it’s quite a good deal.
The panel picker is not an automatic popularity contest and not all the panels are taken from the picker. And the idea is that tech isn’t supposed to have a hierarchy, anyone can submit an idea and theoretically get a panel. Only a very small portion actually make it onto the schedule.
The only reason you were able to do so much without a badge was because people know who you are and you have connections. Do you think anyone else who isn’t as well known as you could’ve hung out at the blogger lounge, where they were fanatic about checking badges every day? Or gone to the private BBQ party or had Scoble show up to their hot tub party? No, they wouldn’t have. Same for everything you went to — you had an in to that Rackspace party (where they were also checking badges) and you were invited.
Many of the panels are thought provoking and well done. To say that there is no value to them is erroneous and misleading. If you are so bitter about having to pay to play, submit a panel idea and see how it does.