Jefferson's Newspaper

I recently had the surprising privilege of attending South by Southwest Interactive (SxSWi) in Austin, Texas. For those of you in the know, SxSW needs no introduction.  In its 25 years, it has grown from a small local festival to a global industry conference covering music, film, and technology (the latter being the “Interactive” part, which starts a few days prior to the big music and film fest). I’m not going to write much in terms of “reviewing” the conference, as this is my first year in attendance and because there are literally thousands of such posts around the web from real journalists and “insiders.”  Instead, I just want to share a few tips and experiences, and perhaps a few things I learned while I was there.

Travel and Registration

First of all, I cannot say how important it is to plan your travel in advance. Not only will you save (your organization) a couple hundred bucks with “early bird” registration, you will also have a decent shot at booking an affordable downtown hotel (or other spot, see below). Airfare is also obviously cheaper – by a truly huge amount, like up to 50% – when booked even a month or two in advance. You can save some more money by arriving in Austin a day or so before the conference begins (The conference began on Friday and I got in at 11:45pm on Wednesday night, saving myself a few bucks on travel that more than zeroed out the extra night’s accommodations; this also gave me a full bonus day to pick up my badge, get to know the city and check in with some local friends). I would advise against renting a car for reasons I will get to later.

Accommodations

As I implied above, downtown hotels get to be scarce and expensive during SxSW (aka “south by” to Austinites). Luckily, my savvy travel companion managed to find alternative accommodations via Air B n’ B, a service that facilitates vacation rentals, usually in the form of apartments, condos, and studio spaces. Guests and hosts each have public profiles and ratings, which helps in making a your choice. We managed to house 4 people comfortably for less than $100 per night total (yep, around $25 per person per night).  The location, about 4 miles from the conference center was pretty good; I imagine rates go up the closer you are to downtown, but from what I can tell, they are still really really affordable (at least in comparison to downtown hotels).

Getting around Austin

As I mentioned, our place was a few miles from downtown, but that never became a problem, even without cars.  Bus service in Austin is excellent from what I saw. Plenty of coverage, regular service throughout the day and late into the night, and an all-day pass only costs $2 (perspective for the bus-averse: an all-day pass in my neighborhood is $4.50). The buses go everywhere you want to be and almost as quickly as driving; there’s even a $1 shuttle to and from the airport.  Cab service is also abundant downtown and by call-ins, though it can be pretty hard to flag down a cab later in the evening, when the streets are flooded with drunk people in need of a ride (I’m told getting a cab to the airport from downtown is also sketchy during SxSW, as some drivers prefer the bulk take of quick and dirty fares, and will turn you down or overcharge; in other words, plan to use the airport shuttle provided by CapMetro if you are leaving before the end of the conference).

I did most of my traveling around Austin via a rented bike (most(?) of the indie bike shops, instead of officially renting, will sell you a bike with a “guaranteed buyback” minus a few bucks a day; I got mine from the nice people at Peddler’s).  The city is pretty bike-friendly, though bike lanes do come and go frequently and inexplicably. In some areas (on my route at least), it was preferable to jump onto the sidewalk, but watch out for the telephone poles, street signs, and fire hydrants, all of which tend to be placed dead center in the middle of the sidewalk. It makes riding a bike on the sidewalk sometimes feel like a cross between downhill slalom and taking a motorcycle license exam. The road is usually fine, but I would recommend against trying to “claim your rights” in the higher traffic areas outside downtown.  In any case, riding a bike is certainly a feasible option if you are up to it and the city seems to be invested in making Austin one of the more bike-friendly cities in the nation.

Even being in less than ideal “winter shape,” riding 8-10 miles per day was not only fairly easy, it was one of the highlights of my trip. The average temperature in Austin in March is somewhere in the high-60s/mid-70s. Coming from colder climes, it was nice to spend some time outdoors, not only for the weather and the exercise, but because it really let me get to know the city intimately and quickly, and prevented me from falling into the state of fuzziness that sometimes comes with extended conference travel.

Food, Entertainment, and Parties

There’s plenty to do in Austin, even without a badge. W. Sixth Street, aka “the Drag,” is really the center of the city’s entertainment district, and is really a big part of SxSW activity.  There are tons of bars, restaurants and clubs on the strip, catering to an array of tastes.  In my view, while it was definitely a fun place to hang out during the conference, I would probably find it a bit too fratty and clubby if I lived in Austin.  Try to explore other areas as much as you can.  There is live music happening all over the city and plenty of off-the-grid weirdness to take in (The Capital building is also kind of cool, but, whatever…).  I spent an afternoon on the other side of the tracks (actually the other side of the freeway overpass), hanging around East 6th, which was a little seedier, a little artier, and a little more punk rock, which suits me fine.  I especially liked the coffee shop that served “moonshine” and the caravan of circled up buses-turned-semi-legal-food-trucks (Cock Sparrer was playing on the lot PA, so you know it’s legit).

So far, I haven’t really mentioned anything specific to SxSW; you could do all of this stuff in Austin any time.  But during the conference, there is definitely more going on, and some of it requires a SxSW badge.  I went to two parties (that I know of) that were sponsored by large tech/media companies.  A badge will not only get you in the door, but might also get you some free drinks and swag.  Without planning on it, I managed to see some pretty good bands for free just by happening upon sponsored parties (Ted Leo/No Age/Thee Oh Sees/Mister Heavenly being my favorite lineup). Sadly, I missed the Comedy Death Ray Radio party, one of many awesome looking comedy events I failed to attend for some reason.

My travel companion was (and is) the founder of a tech startup, so he used the parties for more directed networking, while I just kind of chatted up whoever would talk to me, which turned out to be a lot of people actually.  Locals and conference-goers alike were very friendly and quick with the business cards, which still seems a bit foreign to me, but when in Rome and all that. I handed out more business cards in 6 days than I normally would in 6 months (and, by the way, got some nice comments on the style of my cards, which I designed myself for the first time, hooray for me; one guy even said, “this is the best university business card ever” to which I happily explained how I’d gone rogue on the cards, but I digress into shameless bragging). Although I’m not a particularly outgoing person, there was definitely an air of camaraderie that seemed to make walking up to total strangers seem okay.  It might have been all the free booze.

At the Conference

I’ve heard a lot of people rumbling about how SxSW Interactive has become too big, too commercial, how it has lost some of the intimacy and communal feeling that made it so beloved. I can’t really speak to that since it was my first year, but it seemed fine to me – great in fact. I mean, it was a huge conference with something like 30K attendees (not counting the film and music badge-holders, a demographic orders of magnitude larger). So it probably has lost something in the process of growing so large, but whatever; I’ll leave that conversation to SxSWi veterans. My biggest complaint was that, while most sessions were clustered in or around the Austin Convention Center, a few were held so far out of the way on the other side of town that attending them was not an option.

So what did I learn? It’s really hard to say with any degree of detail. I had some great conversations with some really interesting people. I feel like I got in touch with a community and culture that previously seemed almost hypothetical to me. There were lots of panel discussions and speakers, some of whom I had heard of (like Matt Mullenweg, Christopher Poole (m00t), Jane McGonigal, that SCVNGR guy, Jeffrey Zeldman) and others I had not (like people from W3C, and CSS3 and HTML5 working groups).  The sessions were all pretty interesting and impressive in their own rite. I especially enjoyed the librarian meetup, the sessions on educational gaming, and the various panels about the politics and processes behind HTML/CSS standards-making.

I’m not sure about the exact numbers but there seemed to be between 20-40 sessions per slot, meaning there were always hard choices to be made when working out my schedule. Sometimes I picked right; sometimes I didn’t.

Audio from SxSWi

Lucky for me (and you), anyone can listen to pretty much any of the more prominent panels, sessions, and keynotes by scouring through the massive schedule and clicking through to the detailed view. This is great because now I feel no pressure to actually describe any of the sessions. Just check it out yourself. I’ll be digging though this stuff for months.  I just listened to the excellent (and important) Al Franken talk, which I missed the first time around. I’m not so sure how well some of these will hold up without visuals.  Either way, it’s great to have them available.  Here are a few you might want to check out first.

Al Franken: An Open Internet: The Last, Best Hope for Independent Producers

Jane McGonigal: Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better

*Panel: The Politics behind HTML5

*Panel: Drawing Back the Curtains on CSS Implementation

More audio at: http://schedule.sxsw.com/