[dan ze'l-ik-man]

North by Northeast at SXSW

Posted on 21. Mar, 2010 by Dan Zelikman in Digital

The South by Southwest Interactive, Film, and Music Festival is absolutely nutty to say the least. In a single melting pot of geeks, film nuts, and music Gods, I stood in the center overwhelmed by both visual and audio overload. This event moves hard and fast (keep the minds out of the gutter shall we?) and “…if you don’t stop and take a look around every once in a while, you could miss it.” – Ferris Beuller.

The event has something for everyone, I myself was torn between the interactive panels and the ones that incorporated elements of film. For every slot I found myself interested in 4-6 different topics and having to narrow it down to one. There was a nice mix of panel presentations, keynotes, and group discussion events to attend. The topics covered social media, design and development, digital marketing and promotion, and your basic inspirational, “get off your ass and do it” type of keynotes. I’ll admit that some of the panels lacked some technical knowledge (a common complaint that you’ll find from some SXSW haters out there) but there were always concepts or inspiration to take away from the lesson.

Photo by Bill Oriani

The people were awesome. At a conference full of cell phones and laptops, not once did I hear a phone go off during a session. It shows the respect for the conference by the attendees in many ways. The people were friendly, knowledgeable, and always willing to talk shop and strategy on a variety of topics. Although I don’t consider myself the best of networkers, I did leave the conference with a ton of new contacts, and even some new friends (awww).

Photo by iheartsewing

The SXSW nightlife. What can I say? Take SXSW out of the equation and Austin is still a entertaining place to visit. The food, the music, the people, all great reasons to go. Thanks to the generous folks over at the Rubicon Project, I was lucky enough to party at Lance Armstrong’s Bike Shop in Austin called Mellow Johnny’s. Other than being slapped on the wrist for touching Lance’s bike a couple of times, the party was good fun. Buffalo Billiards was a bar I dug because it had foosball tables, pool tables, and good beer. It was lacking the live music which you can get at about thirty other bars down 6th. As for the food, Ironworks blew me away. A pound of ribs, half pound of sausage, two potato salads, a corn cob, and some beer. Night, night.

I leave Austin with inspiration. I have the opportunity to share all I’ve learned with Anthology Marketing and rally our team to do even more amazing work in 2010. I’m looking forward to it. And hopefully… I’ll look forward to SXSW 2011.

Tags: South by Southwest, SXSW