Corvus Consulting

This post is so late coming that it can hardly be titled SxSW without looking like bait. But it’s true, I have lots to report and I’m going to do it, late or not.

When everything works out, the biggest problem one faces at SxSW is choosing what you want to take in. My first cut at what I might be interested in seeing made

Or, for a truer sense of the abundance of options:

This is not to complain; once things get rolling, they sort themselves out rather quickly. You find out what others are going to, watch Twitter for excitement in other sessions if the current one wanes, and even hop from one to another, a technique I came to call The Sampler.

That wasn’t the only new vocabulary I picked up in those 5 days:

• Scope-buster: an idea that will surely inflate a project’s scope.
• NTA: Non-Twitter Agreement, as in we agree not to post what just happened.
• The Vaselined Web: the state of the web post-widespread OpenID, OAuth and more portable data, whatever that ends up meaning, exactly.

But, back to the sessions. I have no notes to share, but the podcasts are starting to trickle onto the SxSW website, where you can also find Meebo discussion pages for each session. I’ll be listening to quite a few that I missed, and re-listening to these sessions that really stood out for me.

• Kathy Sierra shared 20 Ways to Woo Users in an engaging presentation. She’s a warm and humane presenter, in addition to a real knack for getting the important points across in ways that really stick. One thing to note is that Kathy called up Gary Vaynerchuk as someone who’s been doing a lot of things right. By coincidence, Gary shared some of his philosophy on how he works today.
• PMOG with Justin Hall and Merci Hammond use a browser extension-based overlay onto browsing activities to create a multiplayer game in a steampunk world on top of everyday browsing.
• I only caught the end of Self Replicating Awesomeness: The Marketing of No Marketing but I could tell it had been a great panel.
• Building Portable Social Networks was likely my favorite panel discussion to watch, with some charged and intelligent discussion. It’s worth noting that Jeremy Keith is a master moderator.
• A Critical look at OpenID sounded promising, but overflowing almost out of the room by the time we showed up.

A Funny Thing Happened…

At the end of day 1, Chris Messina introduced me to Daniel Burka and Joshua Porter. They explained how their co-panelists for a session on Social Design Strategies had to pull out. Chris volunteered to moderate, and after some persuasion and talking through ideas, I committed to talk about spam control measures we developed at Ma.gnolia. That was at about 11:00 pm, with an hour less overnight thanks to daylight savings time, but I was up with the Austin sunrise, put down an outline, called it slides, and .

They’re not very informative without the dialog, but several people have posted their notes. Overall, things came off really well. Joshua talked about encouraging positive behaviour in social applications. Daniel touched on ways of hiding complexity and balancing between the needs of people in the same community that are on opposite ends of various spectrums. We all talked a bit long, and Chris had little time to bring in questions from the audience. The questions that we did fit in were all on point, as were some discussions afterwards. It was a great extra to my first SxSW, and I’m grateful to Chris, Daniel and Joshua for pulling me in.

Wrap it Up

I could write a lot more, but we all have jobs to be doing. I’ll sum up the last highlights with a lightning round:

• I did get some great pictures and some very good bbq.
• I didn’t get to experience the squirm-worthy Mark Zuckerberg-Sarah Lacy interview, but I did watch the video, and felt like it was a big mis-read of the SxSW crowd that Mark adapted to quickly, while Sarah didn’t. You can watch the video for yourself. I’m looking forward to watching it with Twitter posts from the audience super-imposed and a bag of popcorn.
• I did bowl with some old and new friends in the Geeks Love Bowling tournament. The output, or score, was pretty bad: 46 out of 49 teams. But the outcome was a really great night, illustrating one of my favourite points: output is not as important as outcome.
• I did not arrive at BarCamp Austin in time to see the battle bot robot go rogue and smash into a nearby house after almost hitting one or more spectators.
• I did do a Citizen Garden podcast with Larry and Chris to talk about thmbnl

If you wonder whether this conference is worth it, the answer from me is yes, absolutely. I’m not sure if SxSW will survive its own success, though. After-parties at local venues that I’m told were easy to get into last year were at capacity with lineups for most of the night. While the conference facility seemed to hold the crowd with ease, local hotels were also said to be at capacity. If it grows even more next year, it might lose some of what worked for me.

I won’t believe that until I see it, though, so I’m good for at least one more.