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March 22 2010
SXSW Interactive Wrap-up
For years I've written a 'Weekly Wrapup' on my other blog, so I thought I'd write one about my first SXSW experience. It's been a very busy week and a bit. First at SXSW Interactive, then a quick trip to New York City for the Ai Weiwei event at the Paley Center, then back to SXSW for the music festival. I'm exhausted at this point, but I want to get some thoughts down here in my personal blog Velvets Fan. This post is about SXSW Interactive and then I'll write about Music in a follow-up post.
I arrived in Austin on Thursday March 11, for SXSW Interactive. I didn't go to many panels at SXSW, I was mainly focused on meetings and networking - in particular with the ReadWriteWeb team, whom I don't get to see face-to-face that often.
I also did a couple of interviews. On Friday I did a video interview with PBS and on Sunday afternoon I did a podcast interview with Wealth Nation Radio, hosted by Woopra's John Pozadzides and Cali Lewis. A few of us RWWers had been out to dinner the evening before with John, Cali and Trey Ratcliff, at the beautiful The Oasis restaurant in Austin, Tx.
Photo: John Pozadzides
Sunday evening was the PBS party, with ReadWriteWeb a partner. The pre-party, hosted by us, and the PBS party were both so popular that unfortunately there were long lines outside the event. It took 15 or so minutes for the RWW team to get in the door! While it was a bummer that so many of our friends and sponsors couldn't get in, for those lucky ones who did it was a great evening. The highlight for me was seeing Band of Skulls, who were a revelation and reminded me a lot of Nirvana and Kings of Leon. Alas I had an early flight to NYC the next morning, so I had to leave before they finished their set.
Overall, I enjoyed SXSW Interactive. It was busy and crowded, but the weather was beautiful and the people wonderful. I read some criticism of the event from a team member (who's since left RWW), which frankly mystified and disappointed me. But personally, I thought SXSW was well run and enjoyable. It's just a pity I had to leave early due to the NYT event.
