Once again, it’s time to start planning for SXSWi which is coming up pretty fast in just under two months. It’s the annual ‘geek summer camp’ held in Austin, Texas every March. Check out my previous posts about it to see why you might want to go.
Now is the time to start doing a few things to maximize your time in the Lone Star state. If you haven’t already booked a hotel room, expect to be spending a lot of time in cabs getting to and from your room out on the interstate and the Austin Convention Center….all the close hotels (walking distance) were booked up last summer.
If you haven’t already registered, you should do it soon since the price goes up the closer it gets. Peter and I booked our flights last weekend….airline prices are down thanks to the current economic situation…$100 less than last year.
If you want to use your iPhone (or any other phone not from the US at least), you’ll probably need to unlock it and acquire a US Sim card. Cheapest route I’ve found still is an AT&T Pay as you go phone which can found almost anywhere in the US (Target, Walmart, 7-11, etc.) for as little as $15 (with a $10 airtime credit). You then add the $19.99 Medianet data plan for unlimited data for a month while you’re in Austin.
When you activate your cheap phone, make sure you choose the option to pay $1 per day of use. It means that you’ll only pay $0.10/minute for most calls (plus $1 for each day you use it) and calls to other AT&T users (like say, anyone following these instructions) are completely free (aside from that initial $1/day). If you don’t use it on a certain day, you don’t pay. Text messages are still a rip off at $0.15 per (incoming or outgoing). Keep in mind you probably won’t be able to use a foreign credit card to top up these phones but plenty of places (including gas stations) sell top up cards.
Now is also a good time to order some Moo cards. I just ordered another batch and it came in less than 2 weeks….last year lots of people were upset because they ordered either too late or it took longer to deliver due to increased demand (not sure if it’s SXSW related but possibly).
I know a few people haven’t been happy with the quality of their moo cards but I’ve ordered at least 5 batches with no issues at all and have been very happy with their quality. I’ve got a few 20% off coupon codes if you’re placing a first time order so leave a comment if you want one.
Finally, now is a good time to start scoping out the activities. Sites like Upcoming already has a number of the parties listed so you can at least start RSVP’ing to those that interest you. Most things you can simply walk up to on the day while you’re there but some require being on a list of some kind in advance due to the huge crowds that get bigger every year. Hopefully Jeremy Kieth will update his fantastic Adactio Austin party list for 2009 soon too. My pals over at Raincity Studios have already booked the biggest party at Southby each year. I stumbled across an Austin Flickr meetup last year that turned out to be really special and it wasn’t on any SXSW agenda.
There is even BarCamp Austin to check out while you’re in town if you want to skip out on SXSW for awhile.
I’ll leave you with an awesome three-letter-word reason to go to SXSW:
and maybe the fried pickles at B.D. Riley’s too:
BarCamp is happening this weekend and a component of that is PhotoCamp.
What would like to talk about this year? Submit your topics here in the comments or on the wiki.
A few things that are on the table which will be finalized this Saturday include:
- a photowalk around Granville Island
- RAW vs JPG – why you should use one over the other and the workflows that come with that decision
- Lens Adapter and Macro Tubes – inexpensive addons to your gear that can greatly expand your options
- Film camera resurgence – Lomos, Holgas and more….why they are fun
- Mobile photography – using various tools and apps on mobile phones
Be sure to bring your gear to PhotoCamp too!
I really wanted to do a proper, long and detailed wrapup post for SXSWi but I’m not going to because there was just so much going on and it’s still digesting in my mind what transpired in Austin. That and I’m really tired due to a day at the airport, flight delays and BBQ withdrawal.
So in no particular order, here’s some thoughts on what happened in Austin over the past week:
- this year was way bigger than last year – lots of people guessing on the numbers so take this with a grain of salt but it’s ‘supposably’ 50% bigger than last year. So that puts it somewhere between 5000 and 10000 geeks in one place. This was especially evident since previously, you’d always run into people you know but this year, I know there were people I knew in Austin and yet I never managed to see them in the halls/panels
- I wished I made it to the I Can Haz Cheeseburger panel – they were actually giving out hamburgers to the audience
- 12 sessions per time slot does not work
- 10am panels are very hard to attend
- there needs to be more technical panels. Of all the ones I attended, only two could be considered (by me) technical and they were incredibly well attended – as in standing-room-only-geeks-sitting-in-the-aisles-fire-hazard kind of well attended. Of course since there was 12 sessions in every timeslot (plus other stuff in and around the convention center), it’s entirely possible there were more technical sessions.
- the panel rooms need to be reworked (again). Nothing sucks more than having to go from room 18ABCD to Room C – it’s like walking to Surrey from North Vancouver. I’m all for the walking but when you consider that a panel ends at say 11am and the next one starts at 11:30am, it doesn’t give you much time to actually talk to the panelists afterword, or with friends about the panel before you have to start hoofing it to the other end of the convention center to get a decent seat for the next session
- Twitter stayed up during the whole conference which is a huge deal since it was probably the number one web site talked about (yes, even more than Facebook and the infamous interview). Impromptu ‘Tweetups’ happened everywhere and were awesome. Your twitter name should be printed on the badge next year (everyone just wrote it on theirs this year)
- Internet access generally seemed better this year…except at my hotel which crawled. The convention center’s wifi was much more robust this year and they had a 802.11n access point which was great. Also more and more venues had free wifi so it made using Twitter and checking Google maps a breeze. My prepaid AT&T sim also got a good workout and thanks to some flaky hotel access, ended up costing more than it should have – see my $12 flickr photo for one example:
- Apple should have sponsored a shuttle to the Apple Store…there was a convoy of cabs there from the convention center on a daily basis.
- Canadians showed up in force this year. Not just the 20-30 Vancouverites I knew were going either….great folks from across this great land came down and had a great time
- Once again, the Raincity Studios crew had the best, most coveted t-shirts (read about it in the L.A. Times) and hosted the best party at the Iron Cactus. My second favorite shirt (after the Space Invaders RCS shirt) is the “Hacking is not a crime” shirt I picked up from the MAKE booth
- in Austin (and probably just for SXSW) the term ‘Ranch’ can mean many things. What I didn’t expect it to mean at the Pure Volume Ranch (home of the huge Digg party among others) is dirt floors covered in wood chips and port-o-lets. Moby and Kevin Rose didn’t seem to mind.
- Finally had a chance to visit the Salt Lick BBQ in Driftwood, Texas (outside of Austin)…been coming to SXSW for three years and always heard about it but never had the chance to make it out there. It lives up to the hype
- you can buy iPods at the Houston Airport from a vending machine
- iPhones were everywhere and mine at least was indispensable during the trip. From the wifi that was available everywhere, to the Google Maps locate me feature, it was easily the most used item I brought. Using the sched.org tool to make a customized calendar of sessions/events/parties to attend, it was easy to see where to go next or what our options were if we decided to change our minds.
- I was able to get a tag for my camera that I should have exploited more. Strangely, I saw all kinds of cameras (not just DSLRs) with the tag, including a tiny little lipstick-sized webcam. There also seemed to be some discrepancy as to who should get a tag as Peter was denied just minutes after I got mine.
- If you don’t like Rockband, be glad you weren’t at SXSWi….every second booth in the Trade Show had it setup and many events used it as a focal point
- Adobe had a sneak peak of their new Adobe Media Player in a bar with a live band and a skateboard halfpipe. Nothing kills a party faster than trying to demo your software on a projector in the middle of a bar AFTER a decent local band played while skateboarders used the halfpipe in front of the stage. Still surprised about the presentation’s inappropriateness and the fact they thought they had to explain RSS feeds to a room full of geeks. The Media player actually looks decent (if not a little iTunes-ish) but they really need to work on the promotion side of things and figure out who the people that attend Southby are
- Most heard/overused word/phrase I heard this year: ‘Fail!’ or used in a sentence: ‘Epic Fail!’. #2 was ‘iPhone’. #3 was “I’ll have another Shiner Bock”.
- There wasn’t as many MacBook Air’s there as I would have expected. Consensus from those I talked to about it was they were hoping for more from Apple – or technically less as they wanted a true replacement for the 12″ Powerbook in screen size (or even smaller). It definitely got a lot of looks and was asked to hold it many times. There were a ton of eeePC’s in attendence which was cool to see.
- I managed to head over to BarCamp Austin between sessions at the convention center and sit in (briefly) on the iPhone DevCamp. As if the fact there was too much concurrent content at SXSWi, the fact that an awesome BarCamp AND iPhone camp was going on at the same time. Too much to do, not enough time to take it all in.
- As if you aren’t already tired of me talking about the BBQ, all the food was amazing…well except maybe not that late night pizza from 6th street
- as I write this post, there are over 12,000 SXSW related photos on Flickr. I have about 200 in there.
That’s pretty much it for me and this post…as I said at the beginning, there is still a lot of digesting to do (bbq and otherwise) so I may add to this once I’ve had time to take it all in.
See you next year, Austin!
Haven’t had a ton of time to post anything since I got down here in Austin….mostly just the odd twitter post. I’ve taken a lot of photos and they are viewable on my Flickr stream.
I’ll post a big wrap up once I get back (possibly even on the plane home) so for now, here’s a few highlight photos:
MJ Kim rawking the first panel
Zappos.com CEO talking about ecommerce lessons
View from my hotel’s 18th floor restaurant
Attendees in the ‘big room’
Yes, there was an accordian performance and he kicked ass
The Flickr crew at the Cathedral of Junk
The Frag Dolls pwning all comers at the Screenburn Arcade
at the “Logos and why they’re irrelevant and may actually hurt your business” panel
More soon.
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I spent most of yesterday on Granville Island at 
