Background: I've been attending the South by Southwest Interactive Festival since 2000 and as a featured speaker since 2003. This year I decided to go to my ninth conference just as an attendee. South by Southwest was held March 9-18 in Austin, Texas.
Here's what I learned....
1. In the Hall of the Giants: Rumor has it South by Southwest Interactive has grown 200% in attendee population in 2005, outselling the SXSW Film Festival for the first time in their collective histories. Each official event and most of the off-schedule jamborees had corporate sponsors and an always-on tap of free drinks. The after-parties had after parties. Panels were held on Being John Malkovich floors of the convention center I never knew existed. It took three hours to get a table at lunch.
Forget having to explain to your friends back homethat South by Southwest Interactive isn't the same as South by Southwest Music. Them days are over. SXSWi has arrived. Its now the Sundance of New Media.
2. Which alters the attendee experience, probably forever. SXSWi is no longer one conference where everyone largely attends the same pool of events. It's now a swaying mobile of mini conferences where you hear a week later that your mother attended and played Legos with Wil Wright, but you'd have never known because you never saw her. Panels scattered about the convention center means everyone doesn't file down the same hallway to make lunch plans. Competing night events means you may go to one party and stay simply because you've lost your convoy. Most sadly, agendas now seem to be set by the tagline on your business card. Designers stick with designers, coders with each other, the rest in floating huddles. It seems like the only way to get a handle on the enormity of it all is to seek out familar faces. Surprise and spontaneity are a luxury now.
The frontier has closed, the west has been settled. How long before there's a geek version of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, complete with and 56K modems to romanticize an era long gone?
Keynote speaker Kathy Sierra began her presentation by asking the audience to group itself into three categories: Designers, coders and money people. As one of the "others" I stayed in my chair and shrugged. SXSW was formally a conference of "others" where engineers learned from english majors after drinking with lawyers and arguing with artists. That still exists, mostly in groups of friends who already knew one another, but it is an increasing rarity. Now reasons attendees come to Austin are practical: To network, get funded, to hang out with old friends, to drink.
3. I'm not bitter. No, really. You want what you love to succeed. And I have loved SXSW for the better part of a decade. Demanding it remain exactly how I first enjoyed it is selfish. Change is inevitable. The people I admire most accept change, evolve or don't but make a thoughtful decision and don't rag on yours. Asking for nothing to change then whining when it does is being a spoiled brat. And my mother raised me better than that.
Now that doesn't mean I was all higglety pigglety about everything. On more than one occasion (usually after getting stranded in the rain or waiting 2 hours for a plate of migas), I was ready grab the next flight back to California. But that's a child's instinct, running home with my football because I didn't get to play quarterback. Instead I drew on how I felt last summer, standing for 9 hours in the Chicago sun, during Lollapalooza.
"You chose to do this," I told my aching feet and sweaty eyebrows. "Being momentarily uncomfortable does not make it a bad choice. You'll only enjoy the rewards of your choice if you accept it and go from there."
4. Hard choices. I discovered by about day 3 that a) It's impossible to see/do everything that sounds interesting b)Even offered the choice to do everything is a kind of paralysis and c) Personally, I'd rather have meaningful interactions with 10 people than shallow 2 minute conversations with 100. This means there are people I love, attending the same conference as me, with whom who I cannot spend time. That sucks. It means I'll be spending even more on airfare this year to see them all. Which doesn't suck so much. It just is. It means that a giant media-rootie-kazootie is not perhaps the best place to link souls.
5. Where to look. Keep your eye on online video (Thank you gabillion dollar YouTube buyout), green technology (thank you Al Gore) and politics (thank you 2008 election) as spaces to watch for the next year. I'm sure there was more but can't see how to document treeing my accessibility or pimping my GUi or kerning my Helvetica or whatever else you smarter people do, will effect the larger world in the same way.
6. Into the Heart. The soul of the conference, for me at least, remains the activities I do year after year (without Fray Cafe and 20x2, without dinner at the Castle Hill, plan on finding me at Coffee to the People next March) and the quality time I spend with people I admire and respect. I may not leave with a fabulous new idea every year but warmth of the interaction (including family) more than makes up for it.
It helps that Austin, even after moving away seven years ago, feels like a second home. I'd like to make a point of coming back at least one more time during the year.
7. Three ways. For the first time, I felt as though SXSW was three conferences. I had friends in town for just Interactive, just Film, just Music and several combinations I hadn't considered. Each is its own experience. The days I enjoyed most are when I had a plan to do everything, did a little bit of everything that felt natural and gave myself time in between to eat, talk and get talked into doing something else.
8. Spore is going to set the world on its ear. It may be the excuse I've been looking for to upgrade iMacs.
9. Coming Home. Plan of action for all future Home-From-SXSW Re-Entries: Bring home as little media as possible, use available tools for exploring things missed at the festival, return emails and phone calls quickly, tell friends and family have arrived home safely, get good night's sleep and non-Hush Puppy accompanied meal asap.
Re: Stack of magazines, Tivoed shows and podcasts the height of a city bus, declare bankruptcy.
10. Everything changes and nothing does. I was 25 when I started coming to SXSW, a bored, lonely graduate student with too much time and nowhere useful to put it. The Internet had hit its first stride. Google was a baby. Podcasting, vlogging and World of Warcraft were like flying cars.
I'm 33 now, a published author, a home and cat owner, less tough but happier now. I probably can't hit 6 parties in an evening and know I don't want to. That's ok. I might have my kids to tend to one year like my friend Mike did. I'll adjust and still make room for the things that matter most: Learning, growth, time with people I love and spring in a place that's grown on me the longer I've been away.
This year was about acceptance. SXSW is bigger than any of us old timers had imagined it could be. That isn't going to change. But this once intimate now enormous conference isn't saying "go away" but rather "find your place." The joy is no longer in collective experience but the one you make for yourself. That isn't any less valuable, just different.
Beyond that, if you want to know why I keep coming back to Austin the second week of March every year, look at the masthead of the World Changing blog. It says "Another World is Here."
Every year at SXSW, I live in this message. The future we not only dream of but want is attainable. In many ways, it's already here. And it's not being decided in corporate board rooms or the halls of Congress but here, amongst smart people with laptops who believe that good ideas can live without excluding good values or making a good living.
Isn't that the adult world we dreamed of as children? One where work wasn't necessary druggery but both allowed us to live comfortably and aid in the coming of a better world? One that wasn't either or but both?
There is such optimism in Austin every spring. Despite the crowds, the noise, the gigantism of it all, the hope I feel sustains me for months afterword.
I had my doubts after 2006 whether I would be back. But when I am honest with myself, I can't imagine being anywhere else in March of 2008 and beyond that. Even if it's only for a few parties and a late night plate of migas, I will be back next year.
See you then, if not before.
Bookmark Now: Writing in Unreaderly Times edited by Kevin Smokler
The Customer Is Always Wrong: The Retail Chronicles edited and compiled by Jeff Martin. Essay by me on page 45.
