South by Southwest Interactive has been amusing, fun, and strange….all wrapped into a tight little package. Actually, maybe not so little…but it’s definitely been a huge experience.
I’ve been to a few conferences, AjaxWorld being one of them (which in a way could have been a complete waste of time if it weren’t for the networking aspect of it). Don’t get me wrong, a few of the panels at AjaxWorld were very good, but not $1500 worth. Not to mention, I saw alot of the same panels weeks before online. The best way I like to look at it is, if you’re a developer….don’t go to AjaxWorld! You live and you learn I guess.
But I digress, back to SxSWi. So the entry fee was very reasonable in comparison to what I’ve been paying before for other conferences, but it made sense as I walked amongst many of the attendants. Everybody was in a startup, or had been in a startup. I’ve never had the pleasure of being where most of these people were, and I envy that. Big adventure, struggles, working together on something new….its exciting stuff. And here’s little old me trying to find out about the latest and greatest in web tech so I can jazz up our company site, while everybody else is trying to understand the pitfalls and bottlenecks of a starving company. I don’t think I’m ready for that (plus I don’t think I can survive financially at this point in my life), but it’s a dream to be there sometime in the future.
The conference touched on everything imaginable related to the web tech industry: developers, designers, bloggers, artists, venture capitalists…you name it, they were there. And to see big names like Adobe, Sun Microsystems, and Microsoft amongst all these little guys, and the way they were there to help the community, rather than take over, made it that much better. I had just learned that AOL finally decided to make AIM open source….which is just great! I knew they had API’s available to the public,
but to actually go out and release the code, finally gave me the nerve to respect them (just a little bit at least). [I haven't actually gone out and looked at the code yet, so this statement could change, fyi].
Onto the parties. The parties were great (except for the Facebook parties, don’t go to them unless you like boozhee, shiny shirt, and god-wannabe door people). Yeah, sure, BT was there, but it just seemed too much like a commercial party. Which brings me to how the 16-bit party was….lame!! Too many dam people, no free drinks (apparently the check didn’t clear?), a line from hell (luckily we got there early), aggravated people (as my friend Andy likes to say: it’s like the many components packed into a notebook with a crappy heatsink). If there were a 32-bit party, no possible way am I recommending that to anybody.
Anyway, the Pure Volume Ranch parties were awesome! The Gametap party was even better (the food they had was amazing!). The Frog Design venue was nuttz. The 16-bit party should have used that venue instead of the Scoot Inn. The Digg party (at pure volume ranch) was pretty good as well, apparently Mark Cuban was there (cool I guess, but the Rockets are winning the championship this year). Midway through, I got a text from a friend about Moby being at the Mohawk, so we headed out there.
That venue is AMAZING! Not just because I know some people, that know people, who know people that are affiliated with the place (yeah, I’m practically just a normal citizen at that point huh?), but from what it looked like a year ago in comparison to today….all I have to say is WOW.
Anyway, I’m not the biggest fan of Moby, but he did rock it that night, and the crowd responded very well which is always good to see. He did make an appearance at the Digg party afterward as well, so I’m sure they were thrilled to see him (better than just Mark Cuban….Ha, just kidding).
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You can find out about the adventure in Eugene Hsu’s post on Ungerground Online’s website. More pics of the Moby event are available there as well.

So now that the Interactive conference is done, the music portion of SxSW has started, and I’m attending a few events here and there for that. I’ve got a few videos, and photos up, but I’ll save that for another post (maybe).