Each year I promise myself that I will get to SXSW the following year. So far I have failed, and failed, and failed. And yet, each year around this time I browse the list of panels on offer and dream of attending.
But each and every year, there are more and more panels to choose from. There’s literally hundreds of sessions on offer – needing your vote to move from “good idea” to “in room C”. This year, Bud Cadell offers up a short list for your voting consideration. Take a look. If you like the sound of the session, kick in a vote. And you never know, we may just bump into each other in the corridor!
These panels are all BudApproved™ for your voting pleasure:
- Better Crowdsourcing: Lessons Learned From the3six5 Project
- FTW: Building a Killer Professional and Personal Network
- The FIve Elements of Hip-Hop/Content Strategy
- Too Many Options: Choosing a Digital Media Platform
- Scratch Your Niche! How “Digital Dimensionality” Builds Influence
- Genius Steals: Remix Culture IS Culture
- The Death of Viral
- Second Screen: TV Meets The Web Backchannel
- Good News: Apps, Paywalls, Publishers and Content
- “Daddy, You Should Tweet That”: Parenting Goes Digital
- The Last of the Launch-and-Leave ‘Ems
- Writing Workshop with @BettyDraper: Saying It Short
- Younger Than Pete Cashmore
- People Are Stupid, and How to Fix Them (here’s a sick infograph to go w/ this one)
- (Bud’s) Community Thunderdome – Branded vs Unbranded, You Decide
I enjoy going but have found that I burn out after about four days. For next year I’m arriving in Austin on the Thursday (SXSW starts on Friday but registration is open on Thursday) and leaving on Monday …yes, meaning I’ll miss two full days of sessions in theory. But in practice I’ve gotten far more out of talking to people in the hallways and various locations around the SXSW site. The sessions get blogged, tweeted, etc (and the best sessions? are so overcrowded that they’re difficult to get anything out of). But the hallway conversations come and go quickly, and can be completely random mixes of well known dot celebrities and unknown “kids” who end up creating the next big thing the week after SXSW based on those conversations.
When I first attended several years ago I would rave to one and all that it was a must-attend conference. I’m not so sure the conference proper is a must-attend, but the hallway chatter and chance encounters is tough to replicate anywhere else.
My only “must attend” conference at this point is Defrag (17-18 November, near Denver, CO). Amazingly talented audience combined with a fantastic mix of presenters, small size (~300). http://defragcon.com/2010/DEFRAG10-Home.htm
(In the interest of full disclosure, I’m a very tiny sponsor and have come to be friends with the organizer, Eric Norlin).
I have heard that the corridors are where it’s at! I’m sure it would be a blast – just for that alone.
But the Defraf conference looks like it is shaping up nicely!
Ben Kepes (@benkepes) is coming to Defrag from New Zealand, he might be able to give you a sense of whether it’s worth the longhaul (*I* think it’s a great conference, but am not entirely sure I’d go if I had to come from Sydney).