What I got out of SXSW 2010

March 18, 2010 in Business, Personal by dragos | 1 comment

“Experience is what you got by not having it when you need it.”

The first 2 weeks of March have been a bit extreme for me. The first good news is that back home, in Romania, Forbes ran a two page story about my work. The second one is that I went to South by Southwest 2010 and it turned out to be an incredible experience – and I will go into further detail.

A bit of background, South by Southwest (short SXSW) is a a set of interactive, music and film festivals held each year since ’87 in Austin, Texas. I went to the interactive sessions with low expectations, based on the experiences I had with most of the “offline” IT conferences. My good friends from UberVU convinced me that it pays off to fly a few good thousands miles for SXSW, and it did.

SXSW has two big  components:

  1. The conferences – panels, presentations and keynotes on various interactive subjects.
  2. The parties - public or private events where you get to have a good time and meet all sorts of people.

As you can see in the online schedule, there are hundreds of events crammed in 4-5 days. So much to do, so little time – that will definitely make you a bit nervous. Hence, some filtering is needed. My tips:

  • Avoid going to newbie sessions, stick with those that feature really interesting people or subjects.
  • The titles of the sessions are usually a lot better than the sessions themselves, so don’t fall for that.
  • Move from session to session. My overall impression is 1.5 of 5 stars for the sessions, so move fast to find the really good ones.
  • Panels are usually mediocre, some presentations can be really good, keynotes are boring.
  • Keep a smartphone or a laptop around, half the info is found out by following the specific twitter hashtag.
  • Have a backup internet connection, the free wireless is barely coping with the amount of users (since everyone has a wireless device).
  • Skip some sessions, but go to all the important parties!

The parties are by far the most important part of the event, because there you get to meet the real people in an informal manner, and that makes things really simple.

Partying tips:

  • Make sure you RSVP for all the parties or get tickets/invitations (usually given away from the booths of the companies in the exhibition hall). Otherwise it’s pretty hard to sweet talk your way in, although it can be done. In the infinite amount of time you spend standing in line it’s easy to make friends that can get you in, but not always accepted by the “entrance militia”.
  • Arrive very early or very late to skip the waiting in line part – which otherwise is great for networking.
  • Try to have some meaningful conversations, without coming across as weird or pushy, instead of speed dating.
  • Don’t get wasted on the free booze. For you it will be hard to remember the people you have met and for them it will be hard to forget you.
  • Be relaxed and open, don’t try too hard. It’s hard to believe the amount of interesting people you will meet. Eg: my friend met Robert Scoble and his wife and had no idea who they were, apart from the fact that they seemed to be nice folks.

Getting to talk to la creme de la creme of the online world, this is the best part of SXSW. My personal highlights were the fact that I had a nice conversation with Paul Graham, partied with the people from Seedcamp London, got to see Brad Fitzpatrick, met a lot of VCs (by accident), talked to people from Google, Skype, Facebook, Twitter, PayPal and so on. Also, very important, I got to talk to many professionals or entrepreneurs with excellent projects (heck, I already  signed up as a customer for a few!). Note that these were all the people I was interested in meeting. Lots of easily accessible online celebrities were there. Even Quentin Tarantino showed up at the Rackspace party. In the last day I even got to see Lemmy from Motorhead being interviewed in a bar.

I will spare you the talk about the film and music conferences, the incredible Austin night life, the live music and the non-stop partying. You have to be there to get the feel of it.

Fun, friends and business – the perfect mix. Cy’all at SXSW 2011, in about a year now!


March 18 2010, Sunnyvale CA