Going to SXSWi? Part 3
Now that Northern Voice is over, everyone is gearing up for SXSWi which starts in just over a week. My damn Moo cards better get here soon!
One of the great things about attending a conference for a bunch of geeks, is that if there is anything missing or lacking from the conference organizers themselves, the attendees will fix/build/make it. Case in point, there isn’t currently an easy way to see all the panels and sessions in one place.
Previously, I had a Palm device and there was actually a surprisingly good schedule app available. This year of course, just about everyone there will have iPhones or an iPod Touch. There are web optimized versions of the schedule but since I’m not planning on relying on the sketchy wifi, I’d rather have something a little more stable.
Enter Stuart Colville’s iCal version of all the daytime sessions as well as the evening parties. Just download the .ICS files, add them to your iCal and then sync with your device (iPod or iPhone) and you’re done. The added benefit is that you also have it on your Mac laptop if you’re taking one. Awesome job Stuart!
Check out the SXSW Tools page for other things that will help make things more fun.
Another cool thing about SXSW is that it’s also a music festival…well actually it was that first and then the geeks came along. A music festival has bands which play music. They want people to hear that music so what do they do? They post a huge pile of MP3’s online of all the bands coming. Then someone makes a giant torrent of all those MP3’s.
Yup, a big pile of free music to listen to on that long flight to Austin. Thanks to Laughing Squid for the torrent link – lots of other great SXSW resources in Scott’s post too.
Finally, check out Phillip’s round up of all the locals making the trek to Texas.
ical is all lovely and such, but is there a PC version? I have an ipod, but it’s a nano 2nd gen and I find the screen too small to be effective for text. :)
You should be able to use Mozilla Evolution’s calendar to import the iCal file.
There also seems to be a ton of apps and plugins out there to convert iCal to Outlook or other calendar tools so I’d just google whatever you are using.
Not sure about getting it onto your Nano though…never really looked at that on a PC (calendar sync that is). I’m pretty sure my wife’s Outlook was setup to sync with her iPod on her PC….but she’s all web based now so she doesn’t use Outlook anymore so I can’t even check that.
There will be a lot of other calendar methods for tracking SXSW that are web based. This particular solution just works great for me and my iPhone. Wifi at the conference has always been sketchy due to the volume of users…I’d rather not have to rely on it working to know where I need to be next.