SxSW? Late news, I know.
I was pretty excited to go to SxSW this year. There’s a lot of hype circling this event, and how it’s one of the best interactive events in the country. I was excited to learn new things and take home tons of inspiring ideas and thoughts.
I left rather disappointed.
I didn’t learn anything. I may have learned the best way to get free drinks and free food at the event, or where to get free shirts, but I really didn’t learn anything woth mentioning. Most every talk I went to started as a promotion “I do this for this company, and this company does all these things, and please buy services or products from this company for xyz reasons!” “Hope you enjoyed the talk! Please visit our website at xyz.com! We do xyz the best!”
Or whatever.
Granted, I will say probably out of all the talks I went to, there were about 2 that stuck out. One was the founder of Tom’s shoes who just had an amazing drive to help people and inspire others, and the other was on product design and invoking feelings, and the relations between objects and people.
I couldn’t tell you how much Matt and I spent between the two of us, but it was in the thousands. It wasn’t worth what we took back. So be wary if you’re going to go to it again. We won’t conclude or dismiss the idea of not ever going again, we probably will give the event another chance. But 2011 was the year of suckage for us, and we’d have rather spend our money vacationing in New Zealand.
In regards to the location, pretty sweet college town. There’s a great sushi place around the corner and an awesome diner that we both loved to go to in the morning to watch the unorganized madness of the staff. Very entertaining!
Lastly, I will say, if I were to run an event like this, I’d limit talk promotions to 1 slide and 1 minute long. Get to the point of what your company offers and why it’s “amazing.”
Unrelated note: I opened up freelance business again, starting October 15th. Get your project scopes in!
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