SXSWi In a Nutshell

Posted on 21. Mar, 2011 by Dan Patterson in Blog, Principles & Ideas, Trends

SXSWi In a Nutshell, 100% based on 2 ratings

I heard three common themes come out of SXSWi this year; it’s grown a lot, sessions were hit or miss, and there was no breakout technology. I’ll add my two cents to each of these.

First, the logistics of getting around or grabbing something to eat quickly have been impacted by the large crowds. Having to wait in line for 10 minutes to get down the escalator from the 4^th floor, REALLY? But, it seems like the people I have been talking to believe this isn’t all bad because of the improved networking opportunities that resulted from the growing popularity of the event.

As for the sessions, I attended a few that were memorable for the right reasons. How Print Design is the Future of Interaction was a great refresher course in some best practices that every interactive designer should keep top of mind as we start developing more and more for multiple platforms. Game On: Design Patterns for User Engagement offered some practical tools to use while we are all gamifying everything. The Panel in Brand Journalism: the Rise of Non-Fiction Advertising did a good job of presenting the common problem of brand marketer’s needing to give up control of their brand’s message to their customers. The panel had a few “with all do respect” exchanges that prevented it from becoming an exercise in jolly, backslapping agreement. Which I think we can all agree is the downfall of many panel sessions. Bob Garfield’s colorful language kept everyone on their toes. Jared Spool’s presentation on the Anatomy of a Design Decision was as entertaining as usual and made a great case that designers needed an agreed upon language so we can communicate better and understand the type of design we are using for a given project, even if it is intentional design. Finally, Blake Mycoskie’s talk about TOMS shoes and his tease of their next 1-to-1 product was a great inspiration and the last presentation I attended so I could make sure I ended on a high-note. I’ve read a few comments about the Content Rules presentation, but don’t believe for a second it could have been worse then the Social Shopping talk where the presenter told us about the great things that Amazon is doing with rating and reviews.

Finally, I agree with not being blown away with any of the startup technologies trying to make their big debut. I still don’t really understand all the excitement around group messaging/email, but I could be wrong on that one; time will tell.

Tags: SXSW, SXSWi

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