Well, the conference is over now and I’ve actually gotten a good night’s sleep for the first time in 5 days. What a week. I’ve seen and learned so much I don’t know where to start. In an effort to “conclude” my experience of the conference, I will try to summarize everything important I can remember. Let’s see…
Saturday was the first real day of SXSW for me. I got to the convention center and could immediately feel an energy in the air from all the brilliant people there. My first panel was A Decade of Style with Eric Meyer, Chris Wilson, Molly Holzschlag, and Doug Bowman. As they all introduced themselves, it was the first of several times over the following days that I would realize I recognized the speaker’s work without knowing their name. Doug Bowman frequently writes for A List Apart where I’ve read him without even knowing it! And, as it turns out, Molly Holzshlag co-authored a book I own called The Zen of CSS Design. Their panel was really a blast and a great start to the week. Next up was Kathy Sierra’s keynote speech on creating passionate users. It, too, was exciting not just because I own her book but also because her speech was so inspiring. She was even gracious enough to comment on my post about her speech.
At about 3:30 that day I realized my excitement had gotten the better of me and I had forgotten to eat lunch, so after going and getting some sustenance I headed over to the High and Low Class Web Design Panel with Khoi Vinh and Chris Fahey who, together, founded Behavior Design. The panel was actually a little odd, it seemed like Khoi was upset for some reason, but maybe that was just my opinion. The panel was a little slow but did make several good points.
Sunday’s lineup was excellent. The Why We Should Ignore Users panel was thought-provoking, but I have to say I didn’t totally agree with Mr. Hoekman’s argument. Very intriguing ideas though. The panel on Living in a Spatial Reality might have been the best panel of the day. My favorite speakers were John Hanke, manager of the Google Earth and Map products, and Dan Dubno of Blowing Things Up, Inc. They all basically talked about all the exciting developments happening in the digital mapping spaces. Google Earth was a panel sweetheart and the driving platform behind most of the ideas they proposed. Very interesting panel.
After that I visited the iF! tradeshow and got lots of free stuff (yay!) and then headed across the street to hear the discussion between Phil Torrone and Limor Fried on hacking hardware. I gained a real appreciation for Phil and his Make Magazine. Luckily I scored a copy of the current issue (see above). Next was the “power session” entitled Ajax or Flash? What’s Right For You?. A solo session by John Boutelle of SlideShare, he gave a fair comparison of the pros and cons of both platforms and when to use either or both. After that was rather boring technical overview of features of the never-quite-good-enough JavaScript language. I was really just killing time until the 5:00 panel on Self- marketing for the Freelance Web Geek. Now this was a practical panel. Moderated by Gina Trapani of LifeHacker, it offered a lot of useful tips on how to get yourself out there as a freelancer and stay in work once you’re there.
By Monday I had gotten the swing of things. First up was a talk about Web Accessibility and Universality with Jeremy Keith and Derek Featherstone. Their discussion was particularly useful to me considering the business fair project I’m working on. Scaling Your Community was a presentation by Matt Mullenweg, creator of Wordpress, about how to foster a community in your sites. It was inspiring to hear that he, like myself, attended SXSW as his first ever tech conference and just a few years later was speaking there.
Dan Rather’s interview was only tangential to the primary subject matter of the conference, but it was very interesting nonetheless. He obviously has so much experience in his industry and comes across as an honest and fair member of the media. My next session was Rails and Ajax for Building Enterprise Applications. This panel turned out to have little to do with the enterprise side of things but did shed a lot of light on the latest Rails’ RJS (Ruby JavaScript) capabilities. I’ll surely be using this technology in my next Rails project, which I already have in mind. Although I didn’t realize I knew the speaker of the next panel until he introduced himself, Peter-Paul Koch of QuirksMode gave a very entertaining talk about JavaScript vs. Java developers and the need for us to merge the two cultures of programmers. He also gave away like ten copies of his book to people asking questions, prompting a lot of B.S. questions from freebie-seeking audience members (I wish I could’ve come up with something to ask him!) Finally, The Future of Video on the Web Panel, who most people attended mostly as a “get to see Kevin Rose” opportunity, turned out to be more of a drinking game than a panel, but a handful of useful comments were made. At least I got to see Kevin Rose.
Monday night was the 20×2 party, twenty speakers each received 2 minutes to answer the intentionally-vague question “What if?” Some sang, others prepared videos, but most just got up and said something funny. My favorites were Michael Lopp’s “telling your loved one’s you’re dying over text messaging” bit and Khoi Vinh’s T. G. I. Interwebr’s Grill parody.
Tuesday must’ve been the day of typography because it started out with a great discussion of typography on the web with Mark Boulton and Richard Rutter. I was a bit late because I decided I would be leaving that evening after all the panels ended and had to pack my bags before I left my dorm, but their slides are available online. The last panel I attended was Design Aesthetic of the Indie Developer, which was (to me) an all-star lineup including John Gruber of Daring Fireball, Shaun Inman who made Mint, Nick Bradbury of FeedDemon fame, and moderated by Michael Lopp, engineering manager at Apple. They talked about all different aspects of being an independent application developer, showing both pros and cons, though they are are all currently ‘indie’ themselves.
I ended my SXSW week at the World Premiere of the highly-anticipated documentary Helvetica from director Gary Huswit. I’ve never been to a movie premiere before, and certainly not one about a font, so it was a truly memorable experience for me. I even got little buttons that say “I love Helvetica” and “I hate Helvetica”, a testament to how well the movie covers both the lovers and the haters of the ubiquitous typeface.
Overall, it has been an extraordinarily busy and exciting week. I will never forget the many people I met and who spoke on the panels and keynotes. As the first tech conference I have ever attended, this set the bar high for future years, but I’m sure next year will be even better. I can’t wait!
