Adaptive Path Blog

I’m writing this in the Denver airport en route home from South by Southwest Interactive 2007. I thought I’d jot down my impressions of this year’s conference.

SXSW gotten very large (again, so I am told). I have no idea how many attendees there where this year, but it felt in the thousands. There were many people I know were there and that I wanted to meet or talk to that I simply didn’t get to see or saw from afar. Granted, I was there for fewer days than most people, but three days should be enough to at least say hello to everyone you want at a conference.

The splitting up of the interactive sessions in three different locations (one on a different, hard to reach floor) didn’t help this fragmentation effect either. Unlike previous years, you couldn’t just stand in the hallway and expect that everyone would eventually flow past you because there were three hallways. Similarly, with there being half a dozen parties and events going on at any given time, it was hard to decide between them. It made you have to go with the flow, moving rapidly from party to party. I suppose this isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

In general, I am becoming less and less enamored of panels as presentation format. I know it is supposed to spark conversation and lively debate, but it seldom does. I suppose they are a way for people who aren’t good presenters or speakers to give their views, but IMHO bad presenters will probably make bad panelists. A great panel is probably filled with a set of great speakers–preferably with conflicting viewpoints.

During some parts of the day, there were ten sessions to choose from. Which on the surface is awesome, but I missed some of the community feeling you get with a smaller number of tracks. The power sessions (which lasted 30 minutes instead of an hour), were an interesting idea. As someone who does some speaking, 45 minutes is probably a better length. I’m guessing there are some lengths that work well for speaking lengths: 10 minutes for a single, simple idea. 45 minutes for a complex, developed idea. And an hour and half for a connected cluster of ideas. At least, this has been my experience.

The parties and social events were (as always) great. SXSW is the social event of the geek year. 8-Bit was insanely good, an 80s flashback with a playlist straight from my prom. Yahoo! party with its glowing purple ice cubes was better than last year. Best, of course, are the chance encounters, bumping into people and following them (or them following you) to dinners or lunch or drinks. You never know where you’ll end up some days, and that ’s what makes SXSW such fun.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 13th, 2007 at 1:14 pm and is filed under Conference Commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.