Infrequently Noted

Alex Russell on browsers, standards, and the process of progress.

SxSWi '10 Reflections

I first attended SxSWi amidst the rubble of the dot-com crash, a time when the interactive festival filled only one hallway of the third floor of the Austin Convention Center. It's changed a lot since then, mostly in scale.

The lack of technical content is something I've bemoaned in years past but have finally come to accept. I was grateful to be on an excellent panel this year that touched on some topics that I both think and care a lot about. Our panel was also blessed with amazing audience engagement from people I respect. I chalk most of that up to Michael Lucaccini and Chris Bernard's excellent prep and panelist selection. Any panel with Chris Wilson and Aza Raskin on it is going to be good.

The explosion of SxSWi has not been a good thing and I went in the hopes that contraction had started as the economic disaster crimps budgets. Guess not. SxSWi was bigger than either the music or movie portions of the conference for the first time this year. Others have commented insightfully on the problems of scale, so I'll spare you the rundown of what makes an enormous conference uninviting, but suffice to say it seems like SxSWi has gone over some crucial limit and will continue its inexorable expansion until something gives in a dramatic way. Gravity cannot be reasoned with.

Unlike some of those who found themselves post-hoc disappointed, I really didn't think there was much chance of having a good time. Luckily I was wrong -- not so much because it suddenly got better than in '08, the last time I went -- but because I had learned how to cope better with the scale. My brother lives near Austin and getting to hang out with him made the entire experience better. I also employed a series of strategies that helped me have an experience that I'd gladly repeat:

I think all of this implies that folks who haven't been to SxSWi before aren't going to be able to have the same sort of open, trusting experience that I had when I first started attending, and that's a real loss; but at least I now feel like I can go and have a good and productive time. I'm grateful to have gone this year and I'm looking forward to next year already.