Blog Standard Stuff

Following a very successful event in Birmingham a little while back (despite Bruce’s vivid imagination), the people behind Public Sector Forums have recalled the same team to put on another show in London . That team includes Bruce Lawson, Ann McMeekin, Patrick Lauke, Grant Broome, Dan Champion and myself. We’ll be speaking at the Barbican on the 8th of August and would love to see you there.

Don’t be mistaken by the ‘Public Sector’ part of Public Sector Forums – this time around the organisers are opening the event up to anyone – you don’t need to be working in some dingy council office to apply for this one, anyone’s welcome!

I will be doing a general show and tell, finishing up the day’s events with plenty of real world examples of people getting things wrong-diddly-wrong, including many web sites you know and possibly love.

Interested? Find out more on the PSF site and you can book your place here (and please mention ‘Accessify’ in the booking form when asked how you heard about it, even if you did read about it here - thanks!).

While I realise that there are already many other write-ups about people’s experiences of South By Southwest Interactive 2007, I thought it wouldn’t hurt to add one more voice to the mix and in it reflect a little on how things have changed over the years.

Like the title says, SXSW 2007 was my fifth time in Austin. In 2003 I went along courtesy of the company I work for, arriving on a Friday night and leaving halfway through the day on the Tuesday (a somewhat compressed visit). I had no idea what to expect other than a great conference. Even then, it had a buzz about it. I had read about it on Zeldman.com and others who were luminaries back in the day (and still are, lest that be misunderstood!).

In 2003, I was - as far as I could tell - ‘The Lone Brit’. Still somewhat wet behind the ears, I found myself being taken under the wing of Min Jung Kim who introduced me to lots of people, brought me along to the Salt Lick BBQ in Driftwood, TX and generally helped me to feel part of the gang. Most were amazed that a Brit would come to the event, and for the event alone rather than adding it on to a bit of sight-seeing. I came away from that first SXSW buzzing with enthusiasm and with a feeling I’d made a lot of new friends.

In 2004 I found myself on the other side of the world - in Sydney, Australia - as I was a quarter way through a year-long trip around the world. Despite the distance away, and despite the fact that I was not working my way around during the year out (I remortgaged to pay my way for the year), I still felt compelled to make a massive diversion from Sydney (via San Francisco and Denver) to Austin. That’s how high an opinion I had of the conference. I remember at this point that there were a couple of other Brits at the conference, but still I was in the minority.

In 2005, the Brit invasion started to take hold. The boys from Brighton, Malarkey and a handful of others came over flying the Brit flag. The numbers at the conference were on the up, but still manageable but by 2006, the numbers were getting a bit too high. The number of open bars sponsored by the likes of Yahoo!, Google and co were crazy, and getting a seat at a table of a lunchtime was starting to get difficult. So, how would it be in 2007?

I was never all that sure that I’d make it to SXSW this year (having been married the previous year, I wasn’t sure if I would be a dad, or waiting to be a dad. Turns out I’m neither and SXSW still had a green light). I didn’t have massive expectations this year in terms of learning much from panels and presentations because that’s the way it’s been heading year after year. There are only so many CSS tricks you can learn several years down the line. And this probably explains the distinct lack of CSS-themed panels and more open topics regarding design and user experience. That said, I found that the panels I picked were all a bit vague and airy, like you were eaves-dropping on a pub conversation, only without the beer and, often, the ability to hear people all that clearly. For the first year I can’t truly say that I came away with any firm learning, but part of that was simple bad luck in not picking the right panels; it really is a lucky dip. I regret missing the Web Typography Sucks panel (blame the Great British Booze Up and subsequent open bars for that!), though, based on what others have said about it. Sorry Mark and Richard - I’ll re-live it via the slides and podcast!

A whole new part of the conference centre was revealed to me this year. I’m told that it used to be used years ago for Interactive but now the event is so huge that they’ve opened up many more rooms to cater for the number of events and delegates. Often this would mean walking long distances between the various panels (doubly annoying when a room is swapped because of high demand and you have to walk all the way back again!). It anything, I’ve come away thinking ‘less is more’. The ‘power sessions’ that lasted 25 minutes always felt too rushed, but I can understand that if they didn’t open up the venue and have more events in general, the increased number of delgates would have nowhere to go. So if the number of events needs to decrease, as some have suggested, then so will the number of delegates. Could numbers be capped at SXSW 2008? That may well happen as it can’t scale much more than this, surely?

Socially, SXSW 2007 was excellent. The evening events were all great, but I must say well done to the guys from @Media, Boagworld and Clearleft for putting on the Great British Booze-Up (even if it did mean I missed the typography panel the next day!). Aside from the organised evening events, though, I feel that the growth in numbers (I’ve read 6000+ delegates for interactive) did actually stifle conversation a little, to some extent. There were simply too many people going in too many different directions to be able to see everyone properly, and there were quite a few people I wanted to see but only saw fleeting glimpses of from a distance.

From a cost point of view, I still think SXSW offers exellent value for money. The value of knowing someone who works for x company and who can help cut through the proverbial red tape to get answers is difficult to put a price on, but it’s come in useful in the past, and no doubt will continue to do so. This is what I get out of SXSW, as a ’salary man’ - I’m not there to score business or land a contract. Just getting to know some good people and build up a network is what matters to me - I just wish that there were not quite as many people there ‘adding noise’, if that makes sense.

So it was another blast. I may not have gained as much learning from panels as in previous years, and socially it was more difficult to hook up with some people, but nonetheless it was an excellent networking event. I met a whole raft of people there for the first time who I hope to bump into again, either in person or by email.

Technorati Tags: SXSW, SXSW 2007, SXSWi, South By South West