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Is This What It’s Going To Be Like All Weekend?
I’ve heard from multiple people along with SXSW event staff that this year’s event will be the busiest ever. I’ve been coming to SXSW for 5 years and from what I can tell, it sure is more crowded than it was 5 years ago. More sessions rooms are being pushed out to the nearby hotels and there are more people on the street than before.
I decided to select one of two sessions in the Hilton in the first round of sessions, Friday at 2pm. I arrived 30 minutes early and, as you can see from the photos below, the rooms were both packed. A couple of people were wondering if the entire event will be like this. The last couple of years the keynotes were crowded, but the session rooms were sometimes full.
Since SXSW is still allowing people to register, is there even a capacity limit? If there isn’t, there certainly should be.
As I noted in an earlier post, it’s also interesting to watch SXSW become the NASCAR of tech conferences. It seems like they moved the registration to allow for more sponsor areas. So far I’ve seen huge displays for Pepsi and AOL – tradeshow-like displays.
If you are at the event, leave a comment on your take on capacity limits and if you feel like you are riding the 6 train at rush hour trying to move around the convention center and into the sessions.
My bandwidth sucks at this hotel, but I wonder if the my.sxsw site gives any indication to how many people expressed interest in an event. They could have used that as a sample to figure out how to allocate space.
it’s not great here either – and i am far outside downtown!
not one person i spoke with used the my.sxsw site – and neither did i.
I will say this: have been mostly satisfied with the wifi at SXSW. Now, I don’t try streaming anything, but have had few problems doing routine stuff.
yes wifi is very good – was good last year as well
btw – more capcity planning issues? i wanted to buy a book from the 37signals guys to get for a friend signed – and guess what – they sold out yesterday
wtf
If they’re going to continue to grow like this they need to do better capacity planning. All of the mobile sessions on Friday were placed in “small” rooms of 200 people, and had at least 200 people queued up to enter after the sessions started, while other sessions were in much larger spaces with much fewer people.
agree completely. although the rooms in the hilton were all packed. i’ve been to what is probably thousands of conferences over the past 20 yrs and i can’t remember the last time i saw a line 200 deep to get into a room for a simple panel.
i can only assume the conference makers are making a boatload of cash this year because of the commercialization of the event.
i think the issue with capacity planning is that it seems like there is no further room to expand. the hotels are even being used to capacity.