sxsw Archive

Another year, another SXSW festival coming up in just a few weeks. What will this year’s event hold? Last year seemed like a big shift for both the event and for attendees. The event was split up into many locations (I think this was a huge mistake), more commercialization than ever and it seemed like lots of people came to Austin but didn’t buy a badge – they just surfed the hallways of the convention center and also attended lots of Sixth Street non-official events. Each year the event grows larger and hotel rooms display sold out signs earlier and earlier.

I wonder if this will be the year that the registration/check-in process will be updated similar to how Google handled the IO event registration.

The SXSW group has released demographics for all of the SXSW events: music, film and interactive. You can find all of the demographics data here (would have been great as an infographic). Remember that the numbers don’t include people who just came to town without an official badge.

Some of the interesting stats include:

• Total conference attendees across all three festivals – 50,000
• Interactive participants – 20,000
• Sessions – 935
• International attendees – 10%
• 75% of attendees have an income over $55k
• 30% of attendees are over 40

Drop me a line if you are coming to town for the annual gathering – I will be covering the event for CN.

SXSW is holding a panel picker kick-off party on Monday, June 20 at Hangar Lounge in Austin. The Panel Picker is the way that SXSW conference attendees can select which panels they are interested in and that helps the SXSW team determine which panels will appear on the agenda for the 2012 SXSW Interactive Festival.

The event is described as, “See a brief presentation from the SXSW staff about the new and improved SXSW PanelPicker experience, learn how to make your proposal stand out, have a complimentary beverage, and meet up with cool, like-minded, creative people.”

My questions for the SXSW team are: will there be any process changes to make badge pickup easier – similar to the Google process at IO? How did the split sessions around the city work – everyone I talked to was disappointed in the split sessions, what was the official feedback?

The panel picker is open from June 20th-July 15th so if you have a session you want to get on the agenda, make sure you submit the details during the registration period.

I’ve been to hundreds of conferences over the past few years and I am always interested in watching how the check-in process is handled at each conference. It always seems like the check-in process at the SXSW interactive festival is the worst in terms of time and length of line. SXSW has moved the check-in location a couple of times over the past five years to allow for more volunteer positions, but the check-in process is still a pain in the butt and frankly a waste of valuable networking time.

Most recently, I suggested that SXSW setup stations along the hallway where 50+ laptops would be setup to allow for individuals to check-in to the conference. You would enter your registration ID, confirm your name and company and submit. Since SXSW has so many different types of badges, you would then have a printer location displayed on the screen and when you get to that printer, the SXSW volunteer would hand you your badge. This would nearly completely eliminate the lines and the time involved waiting on the check-in line.

Well it seems Google was reading and listening because the Google IO check-in process was the smoothest I’ve seen in a long time. When I entered the Moscone West conference center, Google had 3 check-in pods. Each one had about 15 computers (apparently they were the CR-48 netbooks), a Google employee and a badge printer. You could scan the barcode from your printed receipt, enter the code manually, or scan the barcode image directly from your smartphone. After I picked up my attendee badge (I was attending as a CloudContacts employee no press pass for CN), I stood nearby and watched how long the process took for others who wanted to check-in. The process was less than a minute for almost of the test subjects with many completing the process in about 30 seconds.

Continue reading “Google Shows SXSW How The Conference Check-In Process Should Work” »

Last week I attended a 15-minute presentation at SXSW 2011 by blogger Julia Allison titled, “Social Media or Sado-Masochism? Cyberbullying & Celeb 2.0″. I’ve posted the video from her presentation below. The takeaway for me was that people are picking on Julia and she wants the police to setup a “cyberbullying” group that will go after anyone who says mean things online.

Before I go forward, I think bullying of kids (and adults) is horrible. Bullying someone about their size, shape, color, ethnicity, race, sexual preference, etc. should not be tolerated at any level and it’s great to see the government getting involved with education and other ideas to help end bullying.

After I left Julia’s presentation, I was walking around the expo hall and started to wonder if a personal brand is any different than a corporate brand? Should we be expected to treat personal brands different than corporate brands? Technically a corporate brand is made up of individuals so perhaps it’s the same?

Continue reading “Is There a Difference Between Julia Allison and United Airlines?” »

Here are some good startup and entrepreneurial readings as you travel home or get caught up with post-SXSW.

• You can’t do that – Jacques Mattheij
• SXSW Interactive douchebags and chasing a $5 beer – JWZ
• What I learned pitching 300+ times in 4 days at SXSW (This is a must read) – Swayable
• Happy Birthday Zinch (a look back at 4 years) – Founder Diaries
• How can I tell if I am failing at my entrepreneurial venture or start-up? – Mark Cendella
• 31 days, 120,000 hits, and $462 in revenue. The Startup Foundry’s story. – Startup Foundry
• Have Less Funding Than Your Competitors? Good! – Seth Levine

Don’t forget to submit links that you think should be included in the next startup updates.

Today I stopped by the SXSW 2011 expo hall – it’s definitely bigger than in previous years. Rackspace had a very large booth while Google and Microsoft had smaller booths (Microsoft had an end cap). The Google booth was pretty crowded while the Microsoft booth was empty (pics below). Mapquest also had a large presence. Apple had no presence which I guess makes sense since everyone already bought an iPad 2. The British startup area was also larger than last year – there were also a number of other countries that had booths (the only one I remember was Canada).

Here are my photos – click on a photo to view the larger size:

Pretty neat idea – a wall with chalkboard paint where you could write whatever you like – of course I had to represent with the yellow CloudContacts shoutout in the bubble – BatchBook is right above:

The British are here:

It’s Twonky – no idea what they do:

Are web designers sexy? This booth shook the 8 ball and the result was “yes”

Continue reading “SXSW 2011: Expo Hall Photos” »

The Interactive portion of the SXSW conference ends tomorrow and the Music portion of the conference begins. This is my first year in-town during the music festival. If you are planning to remain in Austin for the next week but don’t plan on purchasing a music badge, here are a few ways you can still get in on the action.

The Auditorium Shores Stage Concert Series will take place this weekend and will feature a variety of bands. The concerts are open to the public although badge holders receive vip seating. Saturday is made up of bands that are family friendly. Make sure you read the notes on the schedule page as there are serious restrictions about what you can bring into the arena.

If you aren’t staying in Austin for the Music portion of SXSW, you can download a large number of songs from artists playing at the various events around the city.

• XRT Radio has a list of 140 songs that can be downloaded individually or in batches
• Amazon has a 12-track Don’t Mess With Texas SXSW music sampler

While I haven’t heard of any of the bands and artists playing at the SXSW events, I am looking forward to hearing some new music around the city over the next week.