3/21 SXSWi Recap
Once again, another South By Southwest Interactive is over, and for me the music fest as well. Overall, SXSWi was probably better than last year's, but let me stress that that isn't saying a whole lot.
The Good
The Good
- Jared Spool. Ever since Alex dragged me to one of his panels a few years ago, I have felt obligated to see the guy speak every year. He's entertaining, he's got a lot of numbers and research, and he draws conclusions that you can actually take home and use in your designs or business plans.
- My 3-year-old Is My Usability Expert. Initially I was skeptical, considering the standard "my wife/kid/mom/dog looked at your design and we have some feedback" thing. But this panel by University of Florida educator Dave Stanton made me want to take one of his classes. He rocked some science and brought the numbers, not to mention his case study: an eye-opening screencast of the titular 3-year-old playing online games focused at her age group.
- Chris Poole. The young 4chan founder actually has been devoting a decent amount of brain cycles to figuring out why the thing works, and his panel on how that can be applied to your site, web app, or campaign was really insightful.
- AOL's presence. While not something I can use to better myself and my work, the fact that AOL was such a large force at SXSW (the whole thing, not just interactive) was inspirational and exciting. The Seed booth was excellent, the response to the pitch (yes, our team did some pitching --who better?) was overwhelmingly positive, and I can't help but think AOL's image in the eyes of the tech-savvy is finally turning around. Not to mention we were able to attach some faces to those voices on the phone.
The Bad
- Commercials. When I go to a panel about prototyping, I neither expect nor want what amounts to a commercial for your favorite wireframing tool. Were you paid by them? Likewise, for four years now there has been at least one Drupal advertisement panel disguised as an intriguing look at website CMSs.
- Surface scraping. I realize some talks are not that long and don't have time to go into great detail, but if I feel like you've glossed over everything rather than really getting to the bones of it, you should maybe narrow your topic. After seeing Spool and Stanton, I felt even more dismayed by the lack of meat on these presentational bones. I want giant data dumps that I'll be thinking about for weeks to come, not overviews of single chapters in books I've already read. And I definitely don't want to see people just showing off their work while lamely "umm"-ing their way through explaining absolutely nothing about how it applies to me or my own work.
- Overcrowding. Apparently somewhere around 12,000 attendees registered this year, the first time interactive badge sales outstripped music ones. The conference has spilled into the Hilton, the Marriott, and the Radisson, but that really isn't the problem. The problem seems to be that no one quite knows how to estimate which panels will be popular. Giant ballrooms sit relatively empty while small meeting rooms spill out into the hallways, letting one in as one comes out.
- The iPhone app. Constant reloading, resetting to the first day, no panelist names in descriptions, inability to list events by venue... it was much tougher to get around using the iPhone app than the mobile-friendly site of last year.
Like I said, overall it was a better experience than last year's, but I think I'm even more solidified in my plans to do a panel next year...