A Short Note About My First Visit to South-by-Southwest ‘07
For a number of years, I’ve been a big fan of the idea of the SXSW (South by Southwest) Music Festival. As a world-class, indie music event throwing down each year—like your Sundance festival, mom—it takes the gumption of both Seattle’s own Bumbershoot music weekend and San Diego’s Street Scene, plus probably a few others, and combine them into one Super-Festival. But, being far away in Seattle, I have yet to attend. Only in the last year did I become aware of the two sibling festivals that occur just before SXSW Music, SXSW Interactive and SXSW Film.
In the middle of March of last year (2006), suddenly the blogs of most professional web designers, web developers and geeks were awash in breathless reviews of SXSW Interactive (hereafter SXSWi), enthusiasm and a “see ya next year” summer camp vibe. I didn’t really see the connection or over-aching theme, so I chalked it up to general geekiness and self-reference among blogs I read, and went on my merry feed-reading away.
This year, I had the great good fortune, due to my role as Prod Mgr with Digital Web Magazine, to attend the pre-meetup to SXSWi, Web Directions North (hereafter WDN; everybody loves acronyms—you do, don’t lie). WDN was absolutely fantastic, and truly a top-notch event in its own right. Two days of fabulous event organization, high-quality panels, meeting talented web geeks and lots of Wii, beer, food and fun. Add in two more days of geekery on the slopes of Whistler/Blackcomb—with Microsoft generously covering the bar tab in a real, hearty, beer-fueled embrace of the web-standards community—and I really can’t think of a more enjoyable career-related thing I’ve ever done. Or, even, if you count it among my vacations.
After WDN, my Dig-Web boss, Nick Finck, started pestering me about “Southby”, as it is called by some indeterminate number of geeks too lazy to say the whole name. After a sprint session to find out if my day job would cover any of it, I ended up taking vacation days to attend. (I hope it’s not a trend, but I’ll still do it every year if need be.) Blue Flavor kindly loaned bed space, and I moseyed into Austin, TX, with a set of quasi-ironic authentic cowboy boots…and absolutely NO idea of what would come.
I’m not going to review individual panels and events, since the are so thoroughly covered by just about every other blog I read. But I would like to comment on the character and quality of geeks at SXSWi. I’ve never met such a warm, engaging, outgoing group, and I’m thrilled to call them my peers. Every individual I met was sincere, eager to geek-out about any kind of topic, and genuinely stoked to be at SXSWi. I met more people than I could list (or spell), including most of the talented geeks who write the books, blogs and articles that get my through my day job. I tried my best to express my thanks as the festivities closed, but undoubtedly I missed a few hundred. To all—you goddamn rock, “see ya next year”.
The reason I wanted to comment comes from an observation, then a discussion I had with the ardent Jeremy Keith. I’m still taken aback by the number of people I met who blow apart the mold that geeks are introverted and flawed, socially. Most people I met were so strong of character, personality and elan* it was genuinely surprising. Which leaves me to wonder why. What is it about the public-facing side of the Web that attracts such a diverse group of people, with such similar senses of humor, geekery, passions and personality quirks? Sure, creative types are often strong on opinion, and even front-end programming has a strong creative element. And geeks are compelled by an internal need to join any nearby geekery, which is where SXSWi gets its heart.
But I wonder if we are shaped in personality by the inanity of the browser-wars? Slogging through W3C specs? Internalizing the cascading nature of CSS? Tabled designs, and the latter purging of? I don’t think blogs are the commonality—those also seem to me to be symptomatic of a similar strain in personalities, rather than the spark. I’m sure I’ll continue to think more on the matter, as the year continues. But, the net effect is SXSWi was such a massive confidence booster to me, as a person, as a geek and as a career woman, that I will always be grateful. I’d be remiss if I didn’t call out awe-inspiring conversations with Nick Finck, Andy Budd, Dan Rubin, Dave Shea, Derek Featherstone and Bokardo, aka Joshua Porter. All those gentlemen took moments out of their socializing to have frank discussions with me about the nature of this industry, and I’m proud take their advice to heart.
So, until next year, I will see you all online, and continually lament I don’t get to see you all in person nearly as often as I like. Which would be daily. really.
* arch-nemesis, look it up.
