Wow. What a great time. I honestly am not sure how I am going to explain SXSW to people. I had wanted to blog when I was here but it just didn’t seem that there were enough hours in the day to do everything. Something had to give…and it was the blog. Oops. I missed the Zuckerberg/Lacy keynote, too. Double oops.
Some of the highlights:
Witnessing the audience revolt at one of the many metrics sessions I attended. Check out Greg’s recap – it’s a great summary – and he is really cool.
In a similar vein, really “getting” getting addicted to twitter. Learning that “tweet” is the verb and “twitter” is the site.
Attending Rohit Bhargava’s Core Conversation on “10 Ways to Piss Off Bloggers.” A really nice, productive conversation of a session. One of the 10 Ways is to not attribute where you’re getting the information you’re writing about – and on Sunday, Harrisburg blogger Jersey Mike covered the beef between a free weekly and the daily paper in Harrisburg: The weekly is accusing the daily of stealing their ideas for stories – and in turn, Jersey Mike says, the daily is stealing their story ideas from local bloggers!
photocredit: Seattle Times
Plus I got to meet Jackie Huba of the Church of the Customer Blog - we had a great conversation about our Steelers and how much we love Hines Ward. I hope her fan club gets a home bar before next season!
The “Scoop the Story on Your Blog” session, sponsored by Utterz. I had heard of Utterz but had never used it before. Becky McCray interviewed me for her SmallBizSurvival blog about living in a small town. Which reminds me why I like blogging better than interviews: I can EDIT. Haha.
The Gossip Session was way interesting. I chose it because I thought there would be tons of estrogen in there and because it was moderated by Heather Gold, who is hilarious. The panel got one person bigger when Julia Allison jumped in on it. I think “crashed” is too strong of a word – but I do think she used the panel as a way to air her personal grievances. I had never heard of her OR her exes before this panel – but halfway through I was jumping on Valleywag to dig through the dirt.
Seeing Hugh McLeod furiously sketch cartoons while serving on the “Marketing of No Marketing” panel. Seriously, everyone on that panel - Hugh, Chris Heuer, Tara Hunt, Jeremiah Owyang, David Parmet and Deborah Schultz – had interesting, relevant things to say. One of the best panels in terms of content, but the absolute best, I think, in terms of panelists. If you were at SXSW, what were your favorite panels?
Frank Warren’s keynote was absolutely amazing. I have read PostSecret almost since the beginning so it was an event for me. He really seems like a kind person who genuinely cares about what he does.
I cried on and off the whole way through. Anyone else out there blubber along with me? And it was the only panel where I actually paid attention to all of the questions at the end - from the proposal, to the guy who thought he was retarded, to the woman who is afraid for her sister (the site is www.debutaunt.com) -the keynote ran the gamut of emotions. If you ever get the chance to see Frank talk, I’d highly recommend it.
All in all, SXSW was a great time. I met so many authentic people from all walks of life – and it’s an experience I wouldn’t trade for the world. Thanks, everyone, for helping make my first time at SXSW great.
1 Comment
March 13, 2008 at 7:56 pm
You are such a natural interview subject! Thanks for playing along, and for sharing your insights.
Hope to see you again next year!